[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER X SUPER SENTAI: SUPER HERO TAISEN



So, I know this is on the schedule for tonight, but I’m calling an audible. For one thing, I already wrote up this movie a couple years ago, and you can read it here. For another, I really disliked that movie. (A lot!) Finally, and maybe most importantly – the Go-Busters part is incredibly minor. I tried rewatching it to see if the Go-Busters part somehow had more significance or intrigue than I remembered, but it absolutely doesn’t. Their appearance is immediately upstaged by Decade and bunch of monster suits, and their reappearance late in the film basically becomes a Fourze promotional segment. They aren’t really a part of this movie in any way that matters.

But!

When I was digging through folders to find Super Hero Taisen, I noticed a folder that I’d never looked in before, containing a toku project I never watched before – even better, it’s a project that features significantly more Go-Busters content, with as much impact on their TV series as whatever minimal screentime they got in Super Hero Taisen. So let’s talk about that instead!

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KAMEN RIDER X SUPER SENTAI: SUPER HERO TAIHEN - “WHO’S THE CULPRIT?!”



I only ended up watching the parts of this Net Movies series that included any of the Go-Busters: “Super Sentai Murder Mystery! You’re The Great Detective!”, and “Tokumei Sentai Buddy Go!” They’re each Net Movies, which means they are both absolutely non-canonical, and incredibly funny.

Of the two, I think I liked the Murder Mystery two-parter better. The solution is completely deranged – the Net Movie’s director, played by Maki from OOO! – and the clues are utterly irrelevant and misleading, but the absolute certainty that Hiromu has at every incorrect guess is completely in keeping with his appearances so far in Go-Busters. Similarly, Ryuji’s continual intimation of love gone wrong as a possible motivation is exactly the sort of mature insight I’d expect from the oldest Buster. It’s all very dumb, but somehow still in the range of Go-Buster characterization.

The other three shorts are fun, but rely a little too heavily on wordplay that never quite translates well for foreign audiences. I love seeing the Principal from Fourze reveal in an utterly non-canonical way that his character is an amnesiac Garren from Blade (before getting detonated alongside Yellow Buster and Usada by the Kamen Rider Club to avoid embarrassment), but the mysteries themselves were a little too region-specific for me to find much entertainment. Favorite Go-Busters touch, though, was seeing Yoko instantly not care about solving a Rider mystery because she’s Sentai. I love the inherent rivalry between the two brands in Fourze Net Movies, and it’s the best gag throughout these dumb movies.

Dumb movies that are still somehow worth more to Go-Buster fans than Super Hero Taisen, though!