[Fish Sandwich]

Okay, so what do you get when you resurrect a Rider summer movie that never was, made by a production team now filled with vigor and determination brought on by the very setbacks that forced them to shelve the script in the first place? What would happen if you gave those guys one last big chance to have Zero-One leave its mark on the new era?

And the answer is – you get something more than a little divine.



You know, I remember the last time a Rider show produced by Takahito Oomori and written by Yuuya Takahashi got a big movie coda, I was pretty hyped for it too. True Ending somewhat inexplicably managed to live up to that hype for me, so you might think I was really pressing my luck hoping to go two for two here, and with a much bigger wait in which grow those expectations to boot. I mean, Zero-One even already has a track record when it comes to being disappointing, right?

But no, sure enough, I adored Real×Time from start to finish, and having seen it twice already, I'd like to sit down for a second and just dig into reason after reason why until I'm satisfied I'm getting my passion for this one across.

Cutting right to the chase, reason 01 is that it's directed by Teruaki Sugihara. It would be impossible to overstate the importance of this simple fact. This is a dude who brings a level of flashy style to Rider and Sentai that nobody else is matching right now, and that's as evident here as its ever been. Sugihara's big inspirations are apparently anime and video games, like a proper nerd, and those influences are strongly reflected in the way he loves to use animation-esque exaggeration in his live-action fight scenes. The big sweeping motions, the dynamic angles, and the brief little moments where time almost stands still to let the viewer focus in on what's happening – it's exactly 0% realistic, and 100— no, 1000% believable and engrossing. Sugihara's action pulls you right into the world, and it always looks so beautiful while it's doing it. Like, do I even need to explain why this stuff looks good? Just look at it!








It's a total feast for the eyes, right!? This is only scratching the surface, too. The whole movie seriously does look this amazing. It's not even only a matter of the loud action parts being good. More subtle and quiet moments can also be hugely elevated by Sugihara.




He also knows to pay attention to things as simple as how a change in the color palette can give a scene a totally unique look.



Basically everything Sugihara has done to this point is in here somewhere, like the Jin VS Jet sequence that's straight out of the start of Lupinranger VS Patranger's second episode; or the shot that ends the final battle, which is sure to look familiar to anyone who's seen Zi-O or Reiwa The First Generation.




What these stills obviously can't communicate is the way the motion of each scene factors into everything coming together so well, my favorite part about Sugihara's direction to watch, and maybe my least favorite to describe, because I never feel like I'm doing it justice. I guess I can't speak for everyone, but my eyes just always know where they need to be in the frame when I'm watching something by him. That's what makes all those trademark techniques of his as fun to see as they are – how they're flashy AND functional. There's a beautiful rhythm to his scenes I can only hope to ever truly put my finger on. The direction in this movie is phenomenal. If you want a huge epic toku movie that balances pure adrenaline with purposeful stillness, Sugihara is the man.



Oh, and speaking of beautiful rhythms, reason 02 is that Gou Sakabe did the music, and his work on Zero-One impresses me every bit as much. The detail I'd immediately throw out there to sum up what I'm about to talk about is the noise of the timer on Eden's Thousand Jacker heard throughout the movie. It's clearly designed specifically to blend into the soundtrack where needed, to the point where you might not even realize it's diegetic, but it is! And that effort is really appreciated, because on top of the benefits to the score, it's just plain cooler, more ominous, and more distinctive as a sound than a typical digital stopwatch kinda noise would've been. The movie's music perfectly complements the visuals to add further clarity to everything that's going on, and in the process, Sakabe mixes together tons of the existing motifs from the TV series in fun ways. I think this is actually the first time we've heard the action version of the MetsubouJinrai BGM, and like, you get to hear it together with Vulcan's. The music in this movie isn't just good, it's glorious.

With the audio and the visuals locked down that insanely tight, it's really on the script at that point not to let that go to waste, and I don't think Takahashi did here. One thing I've always praised him for since Ex-Aid, what I feel is his most distinguishing thing as a writer, is that I feel he cares deeply about structure, and that means this movie's premise probably had him exceptionally fired up.

The timer is only broadly accurate to the film's runtime, if anyone was wondering. Between things like scenes in a digital world that might not necessarily follow the rules, and the simple demands of telling the story in a natural way, the clock only lines up properly for stretches at a time. That single hour takes ends up taking over 70 minutes. This isn't an issue of course, and I'm surprised it's as close as it is, but it's worth mentioning.

How exactly the idea translated on-screen isn't the point though; the point is that this concept is made for Takahashi, and he makes the most of it. Everything about the way the movie paces itself is impeccable. The film starts with events already in progress, and gradually fills in the details as it goes along. There's an instant sense of momentum and tension, but it's broken up very naturally by the scenes where the plot reveals its next layer, giving the audience spots to breathe while also feeding that new information right back into the drama to make sure the momentum isn't reduced by taking time to slow down. The way the story progresses is remarkably smooth because of all this.

The story itself also centers around an antagonist who benefits immensely from the way the story is laid out. Eden isn't spectacularly deep as a character, nor is he unlike anything you've ever seen before, but his role is very well fleshed out, and that makes him a compelling presence. Going back to the clever way exposition is handled here, I love how he's presented as this imposing cult leader seemingly driven by vague, grand ideals, only for it to be revealed how his motivations are entirely personal by the end. It's the kind of thing where Es is even more interesting on a rewatch, as you can go back with the knowledge of what "paradise" actually means to him, and what his fixation on sixty minutes was really about, and realize the significance of things like the visual of his transformation into Eden, or why Azu is dressed how she is. Es is not a deep character, but there's enough meat on him, delivered in an interesting enough way, that he can still hold your attention. A very well executed version of a fairly stock villain archetype. It helps that Eden himself is just plain cool, with the creepy blood vein aesthetic and the disturbing abilities.

On the other side of the moral fence is everybody from the show, who mostly get their moments to shine. Ikazuchi and especially Naki get the worst luck there, but I also know for a fact their inclusion in the film is a result of the (apparently relatively minor) rewrites the script received to be set after the series instead of during it, so at least there's an explanation for that. When it comes to just about everybody else, though, I mean, even Shesta gets to do something cool.

In contrast to his MBJR comrades, Horobi actually benefits from the change in the movie's timeframe, as he gets plenty of tiny moments that nicely reflect the character growth he had by the end of the show. This is also the case for Fuwa, although I don't think this was intentional, but he spends a huge amount of his screentime teaming up with Horobi and Jin, which kinda highlights how far he came from his "scrap all HumaGears" days. Valkyrie gets to be awesome, which is all I want from poor Yua, and Gai sure is having fun as usual. The show's main Riders outside of Aruto are distinctly in side roles, largely moving the plot along with no greater emotional investment, which contributes to the film's strong focus, but they're given enough neat moments to keep from feeling left out because of that. The strangely Sakamoto-esque scene with them all brandishing their weapons untransformed was also quite cute. (Yua and Horobi obviously pull it off, but Gai just looks silly.)

Aruto's role in the film is another thing that goes to show how neat and cleanly the plot structure is. We get a handful of Zero-One/Two fight scenes, all showdowns against the main bad guy Rider, all very unique in execution, and all spaced out enough so that it's an event each time one happens. He's the star of the show, so he's too good to go around fighting mooks throughout the city. Instead, he creates room for the other Riders to shine doing that in the first half hour by spending a huge amount of time in a virtual world learning about the plot, before ultimately leaping back into action with a greater understanding of what's at stake. His arc with Izu is fairly straightforward, but it's an arc nonetheless, and adds some emotion to the movie. Probably could've been something more with a more significant retool to the script, but the upside of it not being the core of the movie is that it isn't the core of the movie, so it's not exactly dragging everything down.

What's most impressive throughout all of this, as always, is the performances Noa Tsurushima and Fumiya Takahashi bring to these characters. For most of the runtime, Tsurushima has to deliberately play Izu like she was at the start of the show, which means I had to actively think to realize how impressive that kinda is, because it's rather subtle, but Takahashi, man. I honestly believe he's one of the most talented leads Rider has ever had. Whether he's making dumb jokes or screaming in horrible agony, he does it all with such conviction, and this story gives him plenty of room to display that. I'm sure a lot of people just find it all to be obnoxious mugging or whatever, but I'm telling you, he knows exactly what he's doing, and he's extremely good at doing it all.



As I touched on talking about Aruto's character arc, though, there are obviously some elements of the story that aren't particularly fleshed out, but I think it's kind of to the movie's credit how little any of that bothers me. Like, yeah, Lucifer's a big ol' ball of nothing much, but I'm kind of having so much fun watching the dream team-up between Zero-One and Zero-Two at that point it's hard to care too much. There's way too much this movie did right for that. I've gone this far and haven't even mentioned how solid it is about connecting to the series thematically, with all the concepts like the misappropriation of cutting-edge technology, and the cult of personality stuff, and the way that all reflects the often dark nature of the human heart and—

Well, that's probably worth a whole separate rant, actually, but you know, I have to stop somewhere. Again, probably to the movie's credit that I can go this long and feel like there are entire angles to it I've yet to cover at all. I REALLY liked this one. I won't make any premature declarations about where it might end up standing on my list of favorite Rider movies in the long run, but I can definitely see myself coming back to Real×Time pretty frequently. I wasn't surprised that it was good; I was surprised by how good it was.