[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER W FINAL STAGE



Look, I don’t know how objective I can be on this one: it’s a stage show that gave a prominent role to Mr. Fuuto, the best suit in all of W.

That concept – Akiko has accidentally become a Fuuto Dopant, represented by the honest-to-god Mr. Fuuto suit – is brilliant. It takes the lemons of The Actors Are Definitely Not Starring In This (short a couple brief Akiko scenes) and makes transcendent lemonade out of them. Seeing that suit bumble around alongside Double, Accel, and a slew of other great suits from the breadth of W… so great. Exactly the sort of thing that’s going to defeat my critical faculties.

Which is not to say this wasn’t a fun story otherwise! I like the idea of centering this Greatest Hits suit spectacular on how Akiko feels about Fuuto, since – as Terui points out – we’ve never really heard how Akiko feels about the town that the other three heroes have sworn to protect. She’s an Osaka girl, and it’s a nice reminder that her roots in Fuuto aren’t that deep. The story doesn’t really go anywhere significant, though, in that its resolution is that Akiko loves Fuuto, but still loves Osaka, but I like that this stage show at least kept Akiko central to the narrative.

Nice to see all the villains again, too, even if most of them have briefly reverted to their basic criminal/monster templates. Beyond Kirihiko taking it on the chin yet again as Saeko’s most pathetic suitor, the Dopants are just there to be fun enemies for the heroes to defeat. (It is galling to me that Kirihiko doesn’t express any anguish over Isaka of all people using Kirihiko’s son Mr. Fuuto in a villainous plot. Kirihiko raised him better than that!) Clay Doll continues to be one of my favorite suits, and it’s neat to see Eternal get a cool (and completely silent) fight with Skull. Every suit! They used every hero suit in this thing!

They even used them in an especially fun way, which is kind of the main criteria I have for these older stage shows, the ones that can’t lean on the chemistry of the live actor performances. (Build, basically.) Having the Fuuto Dopant materialize all of the basic Double configurations was pretty fun to see, but even better was that they grouped them by Philips for one attack run, and then by Shotaros for the final attack run. There was actual logic to it! Instead of just a scrum of suits! What a treat!

Seriously, this was one of the better stage shows. The plot doesn’t exactly make a lot of -slash- any sense (Isaka is just from another world? But he remembers the villains of this world?), but the Akiko-centric story blends well with every goddamn suit, providing a visually-impressive send-off to Kamen Rider W. Everything you want a Final Stage to do.