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What are you watching? (Kamen Rider Edition)
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07-04-2019, 08:01 PM
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15437
Fish Sandwich
The Immortal King Tasty
Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: Every diner you've ever been to.
Posts: 3,833
13 Riders:
I've always wanted to like this special a lot more than I do. Not that I even dislike it, either. It's a concept that sounds super neat on paper, you know? Like, wow, an hour-long special episode of Ryuki that tells a condensed version of the story and has all the Riders in it! How could it go wrong? A lot of ways, and I don't envy the position Toshiki Inoue was in writing this. It's honestly impressive how much he managed to create a plot that was coherent on its own merits, but the trade off is that there are so many oddities and contradictions when compared to the main series that it comes off like a fever dream anyway.
It's generally all in service of keeping the story here simple and tight, but beyond the basic premise it has nothing to do with the show's plot. We get the whole central plot device of the Core Mirror you can apparently conveniently destroy to seal off the Mirror World, which is naturally nowhere to be found anywhere else. Then there's also the way characters who were previously totally independent are altered to fit into nice, manageable groups. There are a few weird things about this. It results in Tezuka being reworked into a guy who seems to be buddies with Ren, who
also
loves Eri, making this the first instance of Inoue shoehorning in an unnecessary romantic angle to Raia's character, which I guess is just his go-to way to streamline Ryuki scripts in a pinch. Note that he's still opposed to murder here, though. The rest of the Riders aside from Ouja also become this comical gentlemen's fight club, who almost immediately get together and decide they need to all team up to kill Shinji, before his heretical talk of stopping the Rider Battle proves dangerous. Which would be silly anyway, but this is Inoue Shinji we're dealing with. You know,
this guy
?
The one who never gets to do anything remotely competent or cool aside from occasionally doing his finishing move on a Monster? I think you'll be okay, guys. The other glaring flaw to this special is that despite bragging about it right in the title, it
still
manages to mess up having all the Riders in there, because even with all the work Inoue does to get everybody in there in 44 minutes, he ultimately resorts to having Tiger, Imperer, Femme, Ryuga, and Odin all be reduced to glorified mooks who show up entirely in suit at the very end to get in on beating up Shinji. Now, part of this is down to when 13 Riders aired. Right between episodes 33 and 34. What this means, aside from a pointless cameo appearance by Ryuki Survive a few days before his way cooler actual TV debut (Episode Final beat both of them to the punch though), is that Tiger was just about to appear, and Imperer wouldn't show up for a while. Their characters were probably still being worked out while Inoue was writing this, and in Imperers case, he likely wasn't even cast by the time they were filming it, so, what else can you do? Femme, Ryuga, and Odin were all established by this point, but just like in Episode Final, bringing up Odin's actual purpose would derail the story, as would Ryuga's in this case. Femme doesn't get quite the same easy pass, but even in her case it probably just comes back to that this thing is
way
too short to work in anything as complicated as what I'd like to see in an ideal world.
So the way to enjoy 13 Riders is definitely to just take it as its own thing. For what it is, the story is a competently told version of Shinji and Ren becoming friends, and that central element is made stronger specifically because of plot beats like turning Tezuka into someone whose death can provide a turning point for Ren. Especially in light of what we got down the line, it seems clear their relationship was something Inoue enjoyed writing, and he does a solid job with it here. The climactic scene where Shinji taking up the mantle of Knight in Ren's place is actually a pretty awesome moment, and while it used to baffle me as someone who's a huge fan of the show why viewers actively voted for Shinji to betray to his core belief from the series, going strictly off of 13 Riders' own story, the ending where he decides to keep fighting makes infinitely more sense, and frankly, given the way the other one plays out, it doesn't even feel like Inoue wanted to give people a real choice.
Climax Deka:
Someday in the future turns out to be a lot sooner than you might think, as the Den-Liner crew gets back in action to spend an hour or so running around pretending to be cops. With some token appearances from Kiva. And also Kuuga. And also Chalice. And also Grease. Okay, I'm sort of lying about those last three, but there's only so much to say about this movie. It's the first actual team-up in Heisei Rider history, but just ignore that "& Kiva" in the title if you don't want to be disappointed on that front. He's only there because his show was on at the time and I think Toei wasn't 100% sure if milking Den-O after it was over was going to work out. Needless to say, it did, because this film is but the humble beginning of a long stretch of post-series Den-O movies.
As for Climax Deka itself, it's harmless fun. Everyone deciding to play police because Owner lost a Rider Pass seems just
barely
believable enough to scrape by as a premise, and while the way actual cops react to their presence like they've doing this for a while, Yuuto using Altair Form, and the Taros all having physical bodies outside of the Den-Liner throw the potential continuity into serious question (I blame Zi-O), it's just not a movie you should be using your brain for. It's strictly entertainment, and to that end I think Kobayashi's script is actually quite good in how it makes sure to get in all the stuff you'd want to see in a Den-O reunion. Each of the Imagin gets a full scene to posses Ryoutarou in. Deneb gets to be a master of disguise. There's the obligatory train battle. Literally every insert theme from the show plays. It's all here, and if you look at Kiva's inclusion as more of a bonus than anything else, all that plus having fun with a bunch of crime drama tropes (remember, W doesn't exist yet) is enough for a good time, as far as I'm concerned. During the big fight with Nega Den-O (who, for the record, I find extremely unmemorable despite evil repaints being an easy sell for me), there's a bit where Den-O Gun Form shoots off his finishing move in slow motion, and as the big energy ball travels toward the left side of the screen, the audio follows it along in a really pronounced way. I was honestly expecting to do more of a (lighthearted) roast of this movie, but that scene got me thinking how cool that actually would've been in a theater, and from there I thought, you know, maybe it's not actually that bad. Sure, as a movie, it feels pretty cheap, and the story is utterly unsubstantial, but as something to eat some popcorn while watching and enjoy yourself? I don't know. You could do better, but you could also do much, much worse.
Movie War Core:
Yeah, I watched this again too. The theme for this post is basically wasted potential and mediocrity. You know we're not doing great when Climax Deka was honestly the most fun I had.
Things start off strong for Core with Double's chunk of the movie. After his origin story was revealed in Movie War 2010, we essentially get Skull's very own Begins Night here, and it's quite good. Skull is a character I think pretty much everybody immediately fell in love with, and since this is about him and not Double himself, it goes full hardboiled, delivering a proper noir detective story that hits all the notes you could ask for. There are twists and turns, the action is pretty good, the atmosphere can be rather heavy (a couple of the scenes really push the Gaia Memories as drugs metaphor too), there's a solid emotional core to it, and, hey, who doesn't want to see Soukichi doing his thing? Learning the tragic secret history of things like where the "count up your sins" catchphrase came from is awesome, as are some other fun paralells with Double's present, like establishing shots of actual bookshelves in a real library that evoke Philip in the Gaia Library. There's also those sweet Showa shout-outs Riku Sanjou loves doing, such as the villain (who is retroactively the first Monster of the Week in Double, more or less) being the Spider Dopant. It's a great little slice of a great little show.
...
And then we get to OOO's chunk of the film. Let me just get something off my chest first, alright?
AARRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!
Okay, I feel a little better now. So, you know how for about a month now I've been whining about Inoue doesn't get Ryuki? Well, after politely staying completely away from Den-O, he decided it would be fun to
absolutely butcher OOO
. If you know my general upbeat attitude, you'll know how serious I am when I say this part of the movie is straight up trash. It sucked then, and it sucks now. It fails on its own merits as a self-contained story, and as something carrying OOO's name? Holy crap, how do you even f*** up this much? Did you know Kobayashi is actually credited with assisting on the script? Because I sure didn't, and I honestly can't believe it even now that I know.
From what I understand, I think the production schedules for winter films mean they're basically being written before the show has even started airing, which gives Inoue something of an out here, but surely with Kobayashi's help, they could've come up with something at least
a little
true to the series? It'd honestly be quicker to list things that didn't go wrong. The central conceit of the plot, Kougami deciding to resurrect f***ing Oda Nobunaga with a body made of Cell Medals, is this weird mad scientist kind of concept that always struck me as not really being the kind of thing that would happen in OOO's world, which is generally more grounded than it looks like. Kougami deciding to give Nobunaga the Birth Driver to "see what he'll do with its power" is even more questionable, because Birth was designed for the specific purpose of gathering his Foundation more Cell Medals. It was never some set of regal armor like OOO. Eiji's character is completely out of whack, running around doing a bunch of different part-time jobs in a way that suggests somebody thought that would be his gimmick in the show, and then giving out all the money he makes to random greedy people who ask for it, displaying an absent-minded, naive kind of attitude that is
massively
at odds with how his character was portrayed on TV from the very start. This is why I can't believe Kobayashi actually provided any significant amount of help. Presumably, Inoue would've at least had scripts for the first few episodes to get a feel for the series anyway, but with direct advice from its writer, it's especially questionable how you could get something this important this wrong. The overall theme of the plot is likewise about Nobu learning to appreciate how much nicer life can be when you don't desire things, which is the kind of black-and-white take on the subject that OOO built its identity around avoiding at all costs. Again, right from the start. Things like the odd premise, I can forgive, but I had completely forgotten how much worse the story here is than that. It's missing everything that was at the heart of OOO. Including Ankh, who is inexplicably barely in this, leaving Eiji to awkwardly fumble around with the Medal Holder whenever a fight scene starts.
And as a story taken on its own? It's still terrible. You're expected to be emotionally invested in Eiji's relationship with Nobu after about one scene of them wearing matching underpants, before he immediately becomes a huge jerk to everyone, shooting what's obviously meant to be the dramatic hook in the foot right away. There's nothing even remotely endearing about Nobu, so it's impossible to empathize with Eiji's sadness beyond that you don't want to see Eiji sad. And since we're taking the story on its own right now, you're not even going to care that much how sad "Eiji" is, because all you know about him is that he's nice, yes, but also a huge airhead, which counteracts the first part. The action isn't as good as it is in the rest of the movie either. I'm not exactly standing in awe of GataKiriBa's amazing ability to form a totem pole.
It honestly feels like being held hostage watching this part. Like you've been tricked by the cool part with Skull, and now you're trapped here for another 40 minutes because the emotional payoff to the Skull plot doesn't happen until the very end. It sucks.
Fortunately, the team-up part was written by Sanjou, so it's actually a lot of fun. Fun that still contradicts OOO's continuity, but his version of Eiji doesn't come off like a dork, and I think this movie was the very first time we got a team-up between two Heisei Riders where they just get along and fight evil, which is awesome. The big dumb CG climax also looks surprisingly solid. The way TaJaDor is shot makes it look even cooler than normal, which I didn't know was possible until I saw it. It's just a shame you have to suffer through a trip to the Inoue Zone to get there. My biggest takeaway from Movie War Core, then and now, is honestly that I would've rather just had a third Double Returns movie about Skull instead of it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Switchblade
Taikawa did such a great job playing Fourze as this kind of aggressive but clumsy brawler.
The thing I always remember the most fondly about Takaiwa as Fourze is those scenes of him testing out new Switches. There aren't a lot of Riders you get to see out of a fight that often, and without having to do any real stunts it was a great chance for him to show off how great he is at embodying a character. There's no disconnect at all between Gentarou in and out of the suit, and it's amazing. Whether he's in a fight or not, too, Fourze moves his limbs in this super forceful way that I love.
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