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Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

It's really good though, the only complaint I can think of at the moment is that Gentaro's hair has somehow gone from "stylishly stupid" to "just got out of bed", which is obviously a nitpick.

It was his first appearance so the hair was apparently still in beta testing.

I just finished the movie and... meh.

I've got a pretty mixed reaction to this one. When it first got going and for most of the beginning and middle I was not getting into it at all. It might just be that the hella blatant film continuity goof with Eiji's gloves in his first henshin automatically put me into a skeptical mindframe, but in general the story never really worked for me. The kid and his subplot was boring, the villain was nothing special, and every Den-O movie ever already taking place in the Edo period really robbed that part of the film of any sense of being special (gotta love how Eiji and Hina are in such a rush to get back that they settle in, put on some period costumes, and have lunch).

By the end, though, I did start getting more into the film. BuraKaWani was pretty cool and a lot of the fight scenes were pretty well done. After months of Fourze's pretty clumsy fights it was cool to see a more competent looking main Rider again. The final battle with the Os Gara monster was pretty boss, too, although I'm not sure why combining all of the medals turns someone into a big scaly bird thing - I'd have liked to see all of the different kinds of medal animals get represented somehow. Inspired use of GataKiriBa, though, which almost makes up for the fact that the Kuwagata and Kamakiri medals disappeared completely from the show by the mid-20s. Also, Satonaka's big scene near the end almost stole the entire movie.

The cameos didn't do much for me, though. The Rider Girls bit was actually kind of weird and silly and I don't know the Edo drama series that the samurai was from, which made that mostly pointless for me. The Fourze bit... actually, this one reminded me a lot of A to Z in that I'd also completely forgotten that the new Rider showed up in it, making that cameo actually a surprise when it started. I think Gentaro made a better debut showing, though, as he clearly represented the full character's personality as it would eventually appear on the show. Plus it was fun seeing Eiji totally confused as to what the hell was happening. There was a lot of blatant "kids, watch this show!" stuff in there, but it was still pretty fun.

All in all I think this was pretty mediocre and, ultimately, mostly forgettable. It was a hell of a lot better than Movie War Core, but so are some STDs, so that's not saying much. Hopefully Movie War MegaMax will finally give OOO a really great film (that isn't carried by awesome crossovers and nostalgia, at least).