[Kamen Rider Die]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Androzani84

So back when the movie itself got subbed (funnily enough, around the time you watched the OOO episodes of Zi-O), a few of us from the LP group got together to watch it and these two shorts, and the two things I remember from the conversation after three years are:

?Now you know why Kazari isn?t in OOO 10th? Never mind?.

(After Eiji says that he?s the only one who can save the world) ?And also there?s this kid who made a deal with devil? Perhaps we should get his help?

Cute!

[GodSpeedLove]

Well, we're almost to the 10th anniversary movie... everyone brace yourself, cause I've got...at least two or three whole paragraphs of thoughts!

[Kamen Rider Die]

Quote:

Originally Posted by GodSpeedLove

Well, we're almost to the 10th anniversary movie... everyone brace yourself, cause I've got...at least two or three whole paragraphs of thoughts!

Exciting!

[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER OOO - THE CREATION OF BIRTH X PROLOGUE



I like how these two OOO 10th short films each build out a slightly different side of the original OOO experience – the earnest melancholy of the Eiji/Ankh/Hina group, and the cheerfully deranged pragmatism of the Kougami Foundation.

It’s such a weirdly specific energy, and I feel like it trickles down from Kougami’s place at the head of the table. He’s stern, and mysterious, and childlike, and delusional, and scheming, and manipulative, and supportive, and and and. His giant personality allows for a lot of ways into this story for his employees, but they all still feel like employees. Satonaka grumpily acquiesces to a return to duty, but she a) immediately does it, and b) makes a case for self-care in the midst of an/the apocalypse. Date’s probably just here because he got another bullet lodged in his brain over the last 10 years, but he’s so goddamn jazzed to see everyone again.

The biggest section is given over to Gotou, which feels like a personal offense, but it honestly grounds this whole thing in a very cute way. In a single 60-second monologue, Gotou gets to showcase how much he’s changed over the last 10 years – valuing the safety of his family over the needs of the world – before completely flipping that around to get back to his original heroic motivation from the TV show. It’s kind of dumb, but Gotou’s always been the most confused and conflicted member of the Kougami Krew, the one most in need of guidance and/or a swift kick in the ass, so it totally tracks that he’d accidentally become everything he hated, before his (presumably long-suffering) wife reminded him of his entire ideology from the original series. What a dope! I love it.

The introduction of the new Birth X System or whatever, it’s fine, it’s an ad for the movie, I get it. But boy, I really liked getting to spend some time with the working class side of things.

[Androzani84]

So is the Birth X jingle there to emphasise the new form, or is Kougami playing it live over a speaker? Real food for thought there.

Also, the reason Birth X is specifically the BiKaSo medals, aside from being a callback to Movie Wars Core, is a nod to how Ebi, Kani and Sasori CELL Medals were the ones that came with the original Birth toys. (And indeed, the CSM version includes those specific Cell Medals as a reference to this)

[Kamen Rider Die]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Androzani84

Also, the reason Birth X is specifically the BiKaSo medals, aside from being a callback to Movie Wars Core, is a nod to how Ebi, Kani and Sasori CELL Medals were the ones that came with the original Birth toys. (And indeed, the CSM version includes those specific Cell Medals as a reference to this)

Neat! Thanks for the info!

[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER OOO 10TH - THE CORE MEDALS OF RESURRECTION



So, three things.

First, it’s strange to me that OOO, like Den-O before it, eventually ceded the story to the mascot. Den-O tried a few post-Ryotaro pivots, but eventually gave up in light of the unstoppable, ageless dominance of Momotaros. There’s really no need to design a successor, when the partner has overshadowed the lead. It’s the same thing with Eiji and Ankh. This whole movie’s about Ankh – his return, his motivation, his loss, his everything. Eiji exists as both goal and lesson, but never anything more than that. OOO as a brand was maybe always Ankh’s (I definitely called it that), but this movie made it official in a very funny way. Weird that it keeps happening for Kobayashi shows!

Second, I honestly don’t think Ankh should have come back.

It’s a problem with all good endings, the desire (wink) to go back to them, push them a little farther, see what could happen next. OOO practically demands it, with Eiji vowing to one day bring his partner back to life. But, like, no. No, you can’t ever actually deliver that. Ankh’s sacrifice is beautiful because it’s not a loss – to him, it’s a victory. He can only give his life because his friends gave him a life. Bringing him back inevitably diminishes that, and misses what was so amazing about Ankh’s victory over his own reckless desires.

Further, Eiji’s goal shouldn’t ever get fulfilled, because a lot of that story’s brilliance is in how it becomes a quest that re-engages Eiji with the world. Putting an endpoint on that feels like the journey means less than the destination, and that seems antithetical to Eiji’s worldview. OOO was a show about these drives within us, and how we manage them daily. It wasn’t ever about a thing you can get, or have, so creating a success state that requires Eiji to complete an objective is just, like… wrong. It’s a wrong choice.

Third and finally, I don’t think this movie worked, sort of at all.

I liked Goda. I think he’s a funny addition to a nostalgia project like this – villain as fanboy, eternally misunderstanding the source text to just run through the greatest hits. I’d like him more if the movie weren’t constantly steering itself into those same callbacks and references, but I want to say something nice about this project. Eiji’s actor is clearly having a great time playing Parody Eiji, and he’s suitably menacing as Possessed Eiji. In a vacuum, it’s a good character to dig into a 10th anniversary story.

Buy, y’know, we’re not in a vacuum. Goda’s presence is ensconced in a series of baffling, destructive choices. I don’t know why you’d bring back King OOO. I don’t know why you’d make his resurrection just be Somehow King OOO Returned. I don’t know how any of this works with either the end of OOO or the OOO/Fourze movie. (Ankh can’t have a body! His Cell Medals were destroyed when Ankh Lost was killed! And all of the other Medals were in the goddamn future and/or a goddamn black hole!) I don’t know why anyone thought “post-apocalyptic” was the correct setting for an OOO anniversary project. I don’t know why Shingo is constantly unconscious through the bulk of the film, when he was completely fine at the time that Ankh first possessed him. I don’t know why you’d bring Chiyoko back, just to make her shoot an assault rifle. I don’t know why you’d kill Eiji offscreen at the beginning, and then kill him onscreen at the end. I don’t know why you’d make this movie, in this way.

If any of it works, even a little, it’s because of Ankh. The world he’s in is beneath him, but then, he’s always thought that, so maybe that’s why his arc in this movie is so coherent and compelling. Miura makes the 10 years of absence (give or take a HeiGen film) come across in the few, frustratingly brief scenes he has with Actual Eiji. The Ankh/Eiji scene in the Medal Realm or whatever, that’s it. That’s what this whole film orbits around, and that scene works. It’s just two friends passing by each other, one furious that they can’t be together again, one content that his friend gets another chance at life. The quality of that scene is, again, the sort of thing that in a vacuum is worth overcoming your reservations to just watch two actors nail their moment. The actors salvage the best scene from the dumbest story.

And it really is the dumbest story. I wish I could understand why this the way Mouri thought to revisit OOO from 10 years distance. Like the little Eiji/Hina prelude, I don’t think it really leverages the amount of time between the series finale and this. It’s not the Faiz anniversary film, where the weight of decisions and the slow curdling of hope become the way you know you’re getting older – everyone’s sort of the same here from where we left them, and the stakes of the world preclude additional things to risk. (Gotou’s TTFC-exclusive family, most prominently.) Ankh returns to a war-torn world that’s otherwise identical to the one he left. I mean, shit, this is basically a Phase 1 summer movie! Nothing here says Time Has Passed, up to and including how terrific most actors still look. It’s a strangely miserable, bafflingly unmotivated film, set in a world that doesn't even allow for the passage of time. So dumb.

Man, I hope things are better in another 8 years…

[Switchblade]

It will never stop boggling my mind that the OOO reunion movie is a downbeat bummer and the Faiz reunion movie was hopeful and had positive character growth.

[Kamen Rider Die]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Switchblade

It will never stop boggling my mind that the OOO reunion movie is a downbeat bummer and the Faiz reunion movie was hopeful and had positive character growth.

INOUE FOREVER!

This was... god, it's such a tough watch. And then they play Anything Goes at the end like You're Welcome, Fans, and I laughed so hard.

[GodSpeedLove]

So, this movie...

I will say, I was really digging it for the most part. I kinda like the Phase 1 summer movie vibes! In fact, according to the wiki, Eiji's actor's favorite Kamen Rider movie is Paradise Lost, so it was a fun callback to that! I like the focus on Ankh, and the initial eerieness of Eiji's return. The uneasy alliance of Ankh and Goda is a really fun inversion of the original premise. I enjoyed pretty much everything about this movie until the last 10 minutes (I could even ignore the return of King OOO and the bungling of the Greed cameos)

Now, let's talk about the elephant in the room.

I could talk for hours about how Eiji's "sacrifice" is a complete slap in the face to his lesson at the end of the show, or how awful it is that Eiji of all Kamen Riders get this seemingly permanent death, and all the other things that come with the movie's ending, but there's one specific, ever so small part that really, REALLY bugs me.

It's the part when, after Eiji and Ankh defeat Goda in the final battle, Eiji pushes Ankh out of his body so he can posess a completely unharmed Shingo.

HELLO?

I actually like the idea of Ankh possessing Eiji! It's not a terrible way to keep both characters in the franchise while still keeping this movie relevant, and I like the tinge of blonde hair Eiji gets. I'm not sure why we couldn't just end with that? I'm not sure why Eiji decides he has to die, so Ankh can forever possess poor Shingo? Now Ankh can't use the OOO belt, Hina loses her brother, and the world is down a Kamen Rider to stop whenever King OOO decides to come back, because I guess that's just something he can do now.

I guess what really bothers me is how the movie just ends, literal seconds after Eiji's death. We get a single shot of a dejected Hina and a crushed Ankh. He's alive, but is he really happy about it? Um, I guess Eiji got what he wanted, maybe? How am I supposed to feel about this ending? There's no "thank you Eiji", no "we have to live on", no optimistic message at the end, or really any message. Life's a bitch, and then you die, and then you come back, except everything's worse now. Also, that part at the very end where Satonaka brings out the girl Eiji saved was hilarious. How did she find this nondescript girl? And she's still all dirty and wearing the exact same clothes she was on the day Eiji died? They really did all that just to have ONE last Eiji reaching out scene - which, along with that shot of Ankh closing his eyes with his hawk hand, is the closest I've ever been to groaning while watching Toku. It's so overwrought that I almost kinda love it?

I'm having trouble figuring out where they think OOO goes from here. Obviously you can never tell what's going to happen in the future - any of the actors could be busy or unwilling - but did they really have to close the door like this? If they want to do an OOO 20th are they just gonna have to spend half the runtime undoing everything this movie did?

Anyway, that's just about all my thoughts on this movie lol. I had a lot to say, can't say I liked the movie (or more specifically, liked the ending), but I guess I won't forget it? Could be in the running for "The V Cinema of All Time."