Still the same trailer for Kamen Rider Double Forever: A to Z/ The Gaia Memories of Fate. Futo must die!
Alright, it's time for the final part of the Chô Den-O Trilogy, this time starring a character not from Den-O, but from Decade: Kamen Rider Diend, alias Daiki! Is that enough "D"'s for you? This was probably the most anticipated part of the Trilogy for me, given my unabashed love of Decade and even more so, my love of Rider crossover team-ups. Not to mention Diend is a character with loads of storytelling potential still in him, but I'll get back to that. How does it stack up?
Kamen Rider × Kamen Rider × Kamen Rider The Movie: Chô Den-O Trilogy Episode Yellow: Treasure DE End Pirates
Review
Now that's what I'm talking about.
In a lot of ways, this is the Den-O movie that finally really delivers on a facet of the series that up until now has mostly gone unexplored: presumably, they can meet anybody in history, or at least Rider history. It's a trait shared with Decade, though while that show is built around the concept, Den-O's only briefly toyed with it in the past.
In the previous team-ups with Kiva and Decade, the guest Riders were basically doing cameo appearances. Here however, Diend is definitely integral to the plot and entrenched into the Den-O mythos. The movie simply wouldn't be the same without him. It's still a Den-O movie featuring Diend, but he's the first name in the credits and it's not hard to see why.
After all, the main selling point of the Trilogy, beyond the idea of 3 Rider movies spread out across 6 weeks, is that each one focuses on a Rider other than Den-O. Although so far, they've still been Riders to come out of the Den-O series/movies, whereas finally we have a character from a different series, albeit one that has crossed over with Den-O in the past and has the potential to cross over with it easily.
From this point on, it'd be interesting to see if Toei will up the ante with the next inevitable Den-O movie/series of movies. How about Episode Green featuring V3? Episode Black featuring BLACK? Episode Bluey-Purplish featurning Hibiki? The sky's the limit. Of course Diend, like Decade, is a unique case, given how steeped in Rider mythology the character is. It's practically his whole reason to exist.
Diend is a strange character; in many ways his inclusion made Decade's narrative infinitely more complex, as it added in another mystery man who knew about the hero's back story but refused to tell, and who had his own world-hopping abilities and motivation. We did find out a little about him along the way, but he's still largely an enigma by the end of the series and subsequent movies. What's more, he has some of the oddest characterization in Kamen Rider, appearing to regress with each appearance back to the core concept of "world-hopping treasure hunter" despite whatever he'd just been through in the previous episodes.
I'm mainly thinking of the one-two punches in #22-23 & 24-26, where we got some of Daiki's back story, learned about his inner demons and then saw him get taken down a few pegs when a Sentai villain swipes his weapon and goes hog-wild. It seemed like at that point the character might go from his earlier, more reckless and somewhat morally dubious self where he's not a bad guy (but he'll still shoot at Tsukasa and Yuusuke and heaven help them if they don't dodge) into something a little more conventionally heroic, and maybe even give us some of the answers we've been waiting to hear.
Instead we have Daiki at probably his all-time most head-scratching. In #26 & 27, he intentionally opposes Tsukasa to get his hands on Apollo Geist's Perfecter, which is already not a very smart idea as it is ("Yes, I'll just walk up to one of the most dangerous Rider villains in existence and take it! Treasure Hunting wooooooooo!") You gotta love how quickly he runs once he realizes he's up against an enemy who actually uses his shield like a shield. To be fair, he still proves in the end that he's a good guy by bringing in another Kurata Tetsuo for that moment every fan still gushes over. Also, Daiki drops some serious X-Rider continuity in these episodes, so he's all right by me.
In #28 & 29, he's even more bonkers, but I say that as an Amazon fan knowing that on their own, the Gigi and Gaga are basically just cool-looking jewelry; combined is where the real power lies. Not to mention that as long as you have one, pretty much anybody who knows the back story will be after you 'til the end of time. This arc also saw him getting his power-up card from Narutaki, a plot development that's still pretty hard to explain (and after this movie, nothing's changed there. I'm pretty sure Daiki's still using the old Kamen Ride Diend card anyway. My fan theory is that the card just gave him some new tricks, Illusion & Barrier, etc., but I dunno)
The last two are confusing enough as it is, and (along with the trip to his own world) another look into how emotionally unstable he can be at times; see his almost-teary-eye "only I can destroy you!" bit with Tsukasa. And then of course there's that ending, though with the re-aired episodes chopping out the face-shooting bit, it's hard to know what actually has happened anymore. On this one, I'll vote with my wallet, and say I still consider the original ending to be the real one until Toei's marketing department says otherwise. Given that books published post-re-airing still refer to it (Yuusuke turned bad; Diend's headshot, etc.) you gotta wonder.
To be honest, I don't remember Double & Decade Daiki much, other than a lot of standing around and being as confused as everyone else by Wataru's gibbering nonsense, and then joining in for the kick-ass fight at the end. But All Riders is where the character finally sort of hit his apex for me, despite a shaky start (he gets to be the top 3rd Heisei Rider in the tournament because he showed up late?)
That movie has Diend facing down some serious bad guys and joining with the rest of the Rider family at last; probably the two defining moments are his classic Shocker soldier reveal, and then escaping with Natsumi while having to fight off pretty much everybody after the Rider pow-wow goes bad (what'd he expect, hooking up with two nutbars though?) At last, Diend really felt like a proper hero here, as opposed to simply a thief with a heart of gold.
The other big thing about Diend, apart from his characterization, is the fact that he's kind of indirectly responsible for making Narutaki into such a worthless character, given how he took his one cool ability (summon in old Riders to fight Decade) and put a more marketable spin on it. Thus we go from feeling like the real Hoppers and Kaixa have come into he show, to just a bunch of grunting digital copies. To be fair, Diend does it far more over the course of the series than Narutaki, who could conceivably still do it later if he wanted to (re: Hibiki World) so it's more the writing's fault than it is Daiki's.
And yet... I honestly can't say I dislike him. Yes, his character has qualities I don't (and still don't) understand. Yes, he looks like the super heroic equivalent of a PS2. Yes, we still know so little about how he travels between worlds that the "he journeys through the plot holes" theory actually makes complete sense (that said, Episode Yellow does offer up a pretty good explanation of how he gets around Den-O's world, anyway.)
But at the end of the day, he's a cool concept both as a character and as a Rider: A world-hopping guy who wants valuable bits of fan service and fights by bringing in anybody from the past 10 years, and even beyond. It's another case of Decade's high concepts rising above how effective/ineffective they might have actually been realized.
And really? It's just so good to see him back. Decade's barely over a year old and for all the ups and downs it has, I love that show, and bringing elements of it back gets the nostalgia gears grinding. That there's still so much untapped potential in it is only a bonus.
So that brings us to the main man. It's a good outing for him. I'm not sure if you'll have a lot of your questions answered about him, but you'll still get a good handle on who he is and where he might be going. The movie does some brave things with its lead.
It's got bold ideas, and kind of makes me feel like the Chô Den-O Trilogy stars really should have been all non-Den-O Riders. I enjoyed Episode Red and Episode Blue (the latter particularly so) but they've inarguable got a Den-O-centric appeal to them. If you didn't like the series and movies before, those probably won't make you like it now. With Episode Yellow, it's a bit more tricky. If you liked Decade and mainly Diend, you'll probably like this, because even with the Den-O cast appearing, he's still front in center.
As for characterization... well, it's Daiki. Written by Yonemura, the man who probably handles him the best. Although I brought up his wacky turns earlier, if you just sit down and examine the Yonemura-written episodes with Diend, there's at least some consistency among them. Under the other writers, I always felt he seemed just a bit too antagonistic, as if they all expected he'd wind up a villain by the end, and it's up to the actor to keep you liking him. But Yonemura seemed to get it. He writes Daiki as a magnificent bastard who always seems to have a plan, or at least is good at making it up while he goes, and beneath the bluster there is a good guy in there.
If it at first looks like he's doing something really stupid (going after treasures that happen to be attached to Daishocker leaders, etc.) then usually there's some twist or trick to it, a method to the madness. Hibiki World Daiki is one of my favorite depictions of the character, who up until then had seemed a lot more sinister than he really is. It's also the best-ever use of him as a rival to Tsukasa I think, with each backed up by an opposing school in that killer confrontation which quickly descends into unabashed lunacy.
Such is the case here. Daiki's at the center of a great crazy plan. You'll have to see the movie for yourself to get it, but there's a lot of time-trickery involved. The plot's bonkers, but I liked it and it all works out in a weird sorta way.
For a Diend fan, this is really a pretty solid outing, giving him a chance to exhibit all his trademarks. He uses some of his usual tricks, although probably better than ever before. He of course gets one particular new one that you probably already know about. Needless to say I liked it. Its introduction is a bit odd, but if you're used to how some past Heisei Riders got their new toys, it's pretty much in-line with what we've come to expect. You'll like that final attack, no doubt.
The movie's other main star is an interesting character, or maybe I should say characters? There's a pretty good storyline going on with him and you might be surprised at who the actual villain turns out to be. It's signposted, but the way the movie went about it was interesting and not what I expected.
The new Rider, G Den-O, is okay. As a costume it's pretty much what we've come to expect from movie Riders in Den-O, that being they took the basic Den-O Plat Form look and changed around the armor here and there, new helmet there, etc.
As for the rest of the cast: at this point I've just run out of things to say about the regulars. We had them in the last two movies, we've had them before that, etc. Mizoguchi is still amazing, Momotaros is still hilarious, with one scene that's become one of my favorites ever involving the character. And everybody else is about what you'd expect.
Actually, one of the other regulars fares pretty well in this one too, coming to have a special kind of role in the story since given what he gets to see. If you think he's been sidelined in the past few films, you might like this.
There isn't a whole lot else to say beyond the characters (as the Trilogy has been pretty character-centric.) The plot's crazy and goes all over the place, but like I said, it somehow all works. Good action, good music and all that. The song as the end's a funny mishmash; I'd have liked a new version of Treasure Sniper or something, but it's cool. If I had any complaints, and it's a smaller complaint: I would have liked a small cameo from a particular series, but I'll live. We do get a nice little shout-out to it in the form of something that's in almost all the episodes, and always seems to be changing.
How does it stack up to the others? It might be my favorite, though Episode Blue was pretty good too. At some point soon I'll do a final Trilogy wrap-up with my thoughts on the whole shebang and all that. Although I might need to watch this one again. Also, that'll be loaded with spoilers most likely so you might want to pass on it for now.
So that's it for the Chô Den-O Trilogy. Given the box office success of each installment, I'd say we're due for more Den-O in the future, though I'll speculate on that another time.
Di-End!
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