Still the same trailer for Kamen Rider Double Forever: A to Z/ The Gaia Memories of Fate. There's a new one at the end of the movie which doesn't show a whole lot new aside from suggesting that Shroud's identity will be revealed (though I'd be shocked if it isn't a fake-out, since I can't believe they'd blow that in a trailer.) There's more of the baddies, including the resident sexy villainess kissing her Gaia Memory, Fang Joker vs. Eternal, and a lot of people looking like they're about to bust out dancing when they use the T2 Gaia Memories. Most importantly, we see Philip just plain losing his shit and punching out Shôtarô! Exciting stuff.
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
Synopsis
The movie opens with a pan of nighttime Tokyo. High atop it all, a mysterious man casts out sparkly sand out as he leaps from building to building. This has naturally attracted the attention of Momotaros, who is following his non-existent nose on the trail of an Imagin. He's dragged Urataros, Kintaros and Ryuutaros along with him, although all 3 of them would clearly rather be doing something else (sleeping, taking a bath, etc.) The crew confront the man, who Momotaros finds suspiciously familiar. As well he should: it's Kaitô Daiki, Kamen Rider Diend! Although it takes Momotaros longer to realize this than it does the audience.
He outwits and outfights the four, who end up punching each other silly. Daiki is sporting pinkish-purple strands in his hair, suggesting possession by an Imagin. It turns out to be a Spider Imagin (straight out of the TV series) who emerges once Ryôtarô arrives, as confirming his identity was apparently all the Spider Imagin needed to complete his contract. He opens up Daiki and goes into the past. Our heroes soon follow, with Ryôtarô noting the blank expression on Daiki's face as he puts a ticket to him and learns the date the Imagin fled back to: November 22nd, 2008.
The Den-Liner arrives back in time and Den-O Sword form appears on the Den-Bird ("Arriving... with the bike!" he shouts) and he attacks the seemingly-confused Spider Imagin, who is quickly destroyed with what I think is yet another new version of the Extreme Slash, but I've honestly lost track at this point. Basically Den-O does the "flying sword" bit then finishes it off by running into the monster, reattaching the blade, and slashing him again. Anyway, the rehashed monster blows up and Den-O reverts to Ryôtarô and Momotaros.
In one of the best jokes in the movie, Momotaros forces the others into helping him look for the Rider Pass. Yes, every time he just tosses it aside like that, he actually still has to go and find it after the battle. This time though, Daiki has found it first, and he's already on board the Den-Liner. As it turns out, he tricked everyone, allowing himself to get possessed by the Spider Imagin so that the Den-Liner would go back and he'd be able to take it over. If you think Daiki's plan is pretty crazy now, just you wait. Before the movie is over, you're going to find that Daiki is either a total genius, or the luckiest man in fiction.
After Daiki shoots at them a bit, Momotaros remembers him as "that robber guy". We never get any flashbacks to prior movies/episodes like in Episode Blue, but we can just assume he's talking about Decade #14 & 15, and any subsequent meeting they've had. At this point, don't even try to bring in the concept of alternate universe Den-O's any more. The Chô Den-O Trilogy has basically taken any hope of that, doused it in kerosene, and lit a match. Not that I mind though! It's all one big happy thing and it pulls in Decade, Kiva, Ryuki and whatever the hell else it feels like. You could probably go as far as to say that Dragon Knight and the stage shows are all viable ground too.
Daiki takes off in the Den-Liner, leaving Ryôtarô & company behind. Cue the same opening credits as the last two movies. It's kind of funny how some stuff featured so prominently in it was on screen for a few minutes, tops (like Mantis Imagin's masked dude persona.) In any case this is the last time we'll be seeing this credits variation anyway, since it's part 3 of the trilogy and any further movies/trilogies will likely have something new. And yes I'm just trying to fill space in this paragraph while I remember what the hell happened next.
As the 'Liner careens through
Owner explains how, despite the Imagin being destroyed, the date on the stolen Rider Pass remains, so the Den-Liner will return there because, after all, that's where whatever Daiki wants is. You gotta wonder why he bothered stealing the Den-Liner then; my guess is that Daiki doesn't really know how it works, despite coveting it back in Decade, which fits in with his "ho ho ho, this must be precious" personality. Ryôtarô & the guys see the Den-Liner returning and hoof it. On the way Ryôtarô spots Daiki and decides to follow him. Guy sure gets around fast! So what is Daiki after, anyway?
Apparently, he wants to kill himself. No really, he finds his past self, and shoots him dead, much to Ryôtarô's shock. To Daiki's shock, he doesn't die! I mean either version. The bloody wound vanishes and past Daiki gets up and runs without asking any questions. Daiki tries to shoot himself some more, but the bullets (or whatever the Diendriver fires) just seem to disintegrate into some kind of force field. So basically, Daiki is like the Borg. The other Imagin show up to chase the Daiki who is also chasing a Daiki.
As if things couldn't get more ridiculous, a man teleports in, Terminator-style, though thankfully wearing more clothes. This is Kurosaki Reiji, and almost every time he shows up in a scene, this guitar riff comes on to remind us that this is some serious @#$% we're dealing with here. Kurosaki is a Time Cop... there's really no other way to describe it, that's what he says. He's armed with a golden revolver and a badge that talks. This badge holds the face of Eve, an artificial Imagin who is basically Deneb and Teddy combined, but without either's charm or morality. His eyes light up whenever he talks, and he talks a lot of trash. Kurosaki's also wearing a Den-O belt, but with a big chunky golden circle on the front (the time police's logo.)
Daiki is under arrest for wanting to erase his own existence, causing a time paradox; such actions are illegal. Kurosaki throws in an odd comment about feeling the same way, and brings up his mom (!) This will come into play later. Anyway, the other Imagin are impressed with the new guy, who proceeds to transform into Kamen Rider G Den-O! He tells Daiki that if he wants to be erased from history so badly, he'll be more than happy to oblige.
It's a similar process to the other Den-Os, although with different armor on the body of course and it's a police car-looking thing that drives down his head and forms his mask. It's... weird. There's also a tune before he swipes the pass over his belt, but it's just like someone mucking around with a synthesizer, and not as elaborate as some of the others. Eve's face also takes a place on his chest, sort of like the Vega Forms.
G Den-O starts to form his Den-Gasher pieces into a knife-like weapon. Of course, our star treasure hunter isn't taking this well. If there's one thing that Daiki (the future... er, present version) hates, it's being deprived of freedom, so he transforms into Kamen Rider Diend. And before anyone worries, no, it's the same as ever. No continuity-busting "why-is-it-moving-towards-them-like-Leangle!?" changes made here.
Unfortunately Diend brought a gun to a knife fight. You'd think he would just shoot the other guy and be done with it, but G Den-O gets in quickly and starts thrashing him good. So he naturally resorts to Diend Combat Procedure #1 and summons a bunch of Riotroopers. G Den-O changes his weapon to a gun, and with help from Eve (who knows everything, including where they all are in relation to him even from behind) kicks their butts.
Diend uses his Final Attack Ride, but G Den-O counters with his "Perfect Weapon", a confusing attack that the creates an unbreakable force field which the Riotroopers suddenly decide it would be a good idea to run into. It stops Diend's blast and sends off all these red and blue lasers... it's one of the messier final attacks I've seen, I'll need to rewatch that one on DVD a few times to figure out what's going on. I think the Riotroopers try to get in the way to save Diend, but it doesn't do much good. They all get destroyed and Diend is knocked back to Daiki.
G Den-O zaps Daiki with some laser handcuff thingies. Momotaros and the others are impressed by how he apprehended the thief, and his ability to time-travel without a Den-Liner. There's some plot exposition about Eve, the first of the manmade Imagin, who apparently has near-infinite knowledge and has made G Den-O the ultimate crime-fighting machine. He's also tiresomely by the book. Kurosaki is just kind of a smug bastard; considering he's in a movie with Daiki, that's saying something.
Their admiration soon turns to dismay when he shoots at Ryuutaros trying to retrieve the stolen Rider Pass, and announces that they're under arrest too! They're in violation of the rules with all that unlicensed altering of history and being rogue Imagin and all. This is actually a kind of interesting bit: G Den-O talks of the Imagin like they're extinct, despite Spider appearing earlier in the movie and Piggies and Mantis in the previous installments. Is he just clueless, or is there something bigger being seeded here? Am I just hoping there's more to this than there actually is? Will Jiro ever find happiness?
G Den-O traps Momotaros, Kintaros and Ryuutaros in a net blast from his gun, though allows Ryôtarô to go free, since he's no threat to the time stream without them. However, one has slipped away... as a side note, the spiderweb-like design of the net is a funny choice, considering the movie just had a Spider Monster a few minutes earlier. You almost have to wonder if somebody read the memo wrong.
Urataros has trailed the past Daiki, who I should mention here wears a hat and dresses similarly to Daiki at the beginning of Decade, although it's questionable if it is supposed to be a pre-series Daiki, given what happens later. Then again, Daiki stomps all over his own time line in this movie and doesn't end up as his own grandfather or anything (I think) so it all works out, somehow.
Anyway, he's breaking into... the Kurosaki estate! To steal a wooden chest containing the same golden revolver Kurosaki was seen with before. On the way out, he is confronted by a boy who tries to stop him. Daiki shoves him aside and leaps over the perimeter fence, and tells the kid that it's nothing personal, yadda yadda treasures blah blah justification!1! talky-talky. Urataros witnesses all this, but is found by G Den-O, and soon proves to be a pretty lousy escape artist.
We see the time police headquarters in the time-desert place, which looks like a clock tower over a bunch of King-Liners. Actually, it might be the Terminal, since they reuse the heck out of that set here. Speaking of clocks, Kurosaki is often seen carrying around a pocket watch; it's mostly just a little character detail since the other thing he's always seen with, the golden gun, is the important thing. So no, he's not secretly Sakurai or anything. Speaking of which, where is Yuuto anyway? Kôtarô's back in the future I guess, but Yuuto and Deneb must be having one hell of an adventure to miss out on this.
Momotaros and co. are tossed in a cell, and Daiki is in the cell across from them. He laments the amount of noise he must put up with as the Imagin do nothing but demand to be released.
The actors for Airi, Ozaki & Miura were apparently all under contract to appear in all 3 movies, so here they are. They don't do a whole lot, other than Airi making some disgusting-looking dish (which she tells Ryôtarô to eat so he can grow up to be big like he "used to be", which I guess means she knows about the whole de-aging thing?) Ozaki and Miura forget all about Episode Red and continue to pine over her. Ryôtarô and Kohana try to work out what Kurosaki's deal is and what exactly Daiki was trying to accomplish with that whole "killing my past self" thing. The name reminds Ozaki of an incident on November 22nd, 2008 when a valuable item was stolen from the Kurosaki household. And that item was... the golden gun! The kids formulate a plan...
Kurosaki and some guards confronts Daiki and they have a little chat, with Daiki mentioning how Kurosaki's pleased that he's taken away the ultimate treasure— his freedom. Kurosaki paraphrases a line that Urataros finds familiar: the last thing past Daiki said to that kid when he stole the gun from the Kurosaki house. I think you can make the obvious connection. Kurosaki points his gun at Daiki and we see that the handle is damaged...
The Imagin are told they will be put on trial, but suddenly Owner appears, trying to use his street cred to get them out of jail. Eve pipes in that Owner is guilty of harboring renegade Imagin and generally screwing with the laws of time himself, so he's placed under arrest! As Owner comically resists, Daiki grabs a guard through the bars and begs to be released, claiming he'll renounce his thieving ways. Kurosaki doesn't buy it and decks him before leaving, but anybody who knows Daiki knows that he snatched the keys off of the guard. He lets himself out, then throws them to the Imagin... where they land just out of reach.
The Den-Liner is now under the jurisdiction of the time police. Kurosaki boards, but is informed by Naomi that Daiki has escaped. He senses something though, and pulls his gun on Naomi, who he insists is actually Daiki! Sure enough, it is. Yes, Daiki is wearing a rubber Naomi suit. No, I have no idea how that works, and I'm not sure I want to know. After unmasking, the two have a stare down.
Ryôtarô & Kohana have gotten themselves arrested somehow (probably for claiming to be Satô and Shiratori since they're going to be old enough in a few more years) and are being placed in the jail adjacent to the Imagin, who have been trying desperately to get the keys. Ryôtarô tells Momotaros to "Come over here", and after being slightly puzzled, the big red one gets the hint and merges with Ryôtarô. M-Ryôtarô beats up the guards. Kohana busts loose and performs a "Matrix"-y flying kick that's about a decade out of date. Okay, I think they were also going for some Bruce Lee homage or something.
It turns out Owner had no trouble taking care of himself either, and joins the kids as they release the Imagin. Ryôtarô concludes that they need to get to the Den-Liner and figure out just what's going on so that they can clear their names and settle all this. Owner tells them that he has important business with the Station Master (I guess it is the Terminal after all) so he hands Ryôtarô the Infinity card and tells him to look after the Den-Liner. This is a great moment, really showing just how far Owner has come to trust Ryôtarô and his friends.
As if this escape couldn't get any cooler, our heroes then jump out of the tower with parachutes, though Momotaros' fails on him. He's had worse.
Kurosaki forces Daiki out of the Den-Liner at gunpoint. Daiki tries to distract him by telling him Ryôtarô & co. are escaping... which they actually are! They board the Den-Liner, taunting Kurosaki after Urataros uses the Den-Gasher (Fishing) Rod Mode to steal back the Rider Pass. Momotaros has a really evil laugh here. The train leaves, and Daiki uses the distraction to escape, firing a laser grappling hood into the end of the Den-Liner and being pulled along with it. So that's how he does it. Kurosaki is ticked off and so is Eve, who says that all their judgments have already been passed. Total elimination.
On the Den-Liner, Diend appears in the front to hold Den-O Sword Form (who's driving) at gunpoint. There's then a big exposition info dump, where Daiki explains (sort of) what he was up to on November 22nd, 2008. After stealing the chest from the Kurosaki house, he paused on a bridge to examine the prize... and noticed something else beneath the gun. Pulling away the felt, he finds something that shocks him, but the gun and chest are shot out of his hands by some trigger-happy cops. Yes, cops actually chasing Daiki! The gun is damaged as a result, and Daiki escapes. Also, a whole lot of papers flutter around everywhere...
Our heroes speculate that Daiki wanted to go back to that day so he could try stealing it again and get it right this time. Daiki does confirm that he likes his treasures in mint condition, though it still seems there's more to the story yet to be told. Despite everyone else just about ready to dump Daiki in the middle of the desert, Ryôtarô decides to go along with his demand to take them back to November 22nd, 2008 (after which the thief will turn control of the Den-Liner back over to them, he claims.)
Ryôtarô, Daiki & the Imagin disembark, but are ambushed by G Den-O teleporting in. Eve instructs him to issue them the maximum penalty, and the police Rider assembles his weapon and attacks. Momotaros takes a blow to protect Ryôtarô, who becomes Den-O, though Kintaros pushes out Momotaros so he changes to Ax Form. After a brief fight, Ax uses the Dynamic Chop. There's a great nod back to the beginning of the movie when he takes out the Rider Pass, swipes it... then after a moment, carefully puts it behind his back where he got it from rather than tossing it aside. G Den-O is able to block the attack with his force field.
Ryuutaros takes command and Gun Form goes up against G Den-O. Despite being well-matched shots, Eve's targeting skills are superior and Ryuuta gets blasted clear. Momotaros takes control once again. G Den-O fires at Daiki, but Urataros covers him and possesses him, transforming (much to Daiki's disapproval.) U-Diend uses his rod weapon to deflect G Den-O's bullets and attack him directly. He changes back to the Diendriver and uses the Invisible card... but surprisingly, not to run away! Den-O does his Extreme Slash on G Den-O, who blocks it with his force field... then Diend comes out of cloaking and blasts him away point-blank. This is probably the best use of that power yet!
With G Den-O temporarily down for the count, Diend reverts to Daiki and hoofs it. For much of the movie Daiki has been checking his wrist watch; we get a full-on countdown here, and he rushes to find his past self and prevent the gun from being damaged... seemingly. As the countdown hits 0, Daiki finds himself cornered by Kurosaki, who Eve eggs on to just get it over with and put one right between his eyes. Ryôtarô arrives and watches on, shocked.
Daiki reaches for his gun, so Kurosaki shoots, and the bullet pierces right through Daiki and out the other side, where the past Daiki is running by with the suitcase. The bullet his the case, knocks past-Daiki over a railing. The papers from before scatter everywhere, and the present, shot-up Daiki catches the gun in his hand. As a result, the gun disappears from a shocked Kurosaki's grip, and Daiki seems to be just fine.
Let me try and explain what's basically happened here.
Daiki made contract with a Spider Imagin and let it go back in time to November 22nd, 2008. He used the intervention of Ryôtarô & friends to steal the Den-Liner, which after a brief joyride returned to that time anyway. He then attempts to shoot himself several times, eventually giving up (he admits "I thought it would be like that" upon failing to kill himself the first time.) As it turns out, this was all really to lure Kurosaki into coming after him (Daiki already knows who he is when he first appears.) After a fight, he gets arrested, but breaks out, commandeers the Den-Liner again, goes back to the same point in time and ends up getting "killed" himself.
Except that since the stolen gun from the past falls into his future hands, it never would have been damaged and later retrieved by Kurosaki (which is why his future, adult self has had it all this time.) So basically, Daiki saves his own ass by getting shot, having his past self lose the gun to his future self, who then would have always had it from that moment on. And as a result, Kurosaki never could have gotten it back, and never could have shot it, so it disappears from his hand. And since he never could have shot Daiki with it... Daiki's now okay.
Just wait, it gets even better.
The papers are in fact letters from Kurosaki's mom. Remember the mommy issues he hinted at earlier? They seem to run pretty deep, but the truth is Kurosaki's mother loved him even if he never realized it. Kohana arrives to spell it all out for us, though I must confess this is the part of the movie where my memory fails. It actually is fairly adequately explained, I just forget the exact reasoning behind it all so if it seems contrived, it's actually pretty well foreshadowed and you can chalk this one up to reviewer brain degradation.
Either they divorced, or she died early, or something like that. Probably none of the above! I also *think* that Kurosaki got the letters as a kid, and just never read them/forgot about them, burying them under the gun. Seeing them now though, he comes to realize what he's been missing out on. It explains his cold, clinical personality so far (seeing Eve as his only true partner in life) and as part of the Daiki Master Plan™ (unintentionally turn hapless child into future arch enemy, then show him he's actually been a dick all along!) it oddly works.
Truth be told, I was also kind of distracted during this scene by some nearby graffiti (unnoticed by the characters but visible to the audience) which looks like it says 井斗... as in (Sakura)i (Yuu)to. Simple coincidence, reference to a Den-O story I totally forgot about, or the most subtle foreshadowing to a future Den-O adventure yet? Is Yuuto the Bad Wolf? Did I just read it wrong? (Probably)
Daiki tells Kurosaki that these letters are a great treasure, but one that he has no need for, so he hands them back to the man himself. Eve has been getting constantly irritated by the emotional stuff of the last few minutes, and orders Kurosaki to uphold the law and take down Daiki. The man is too overcome with emotion though, which ticks off the logic-minded Imagin to no end.
So of course he has the very natural reaction of forcing himself to split from Kurosaki's badge, manifesting into the corporal form of G Den-O, and declaring that artificial Imagin must rule the world and humans are weak, emotional wrecks! You couldn't make it up if you tried.
To be fair, Eve's heel turn is signposted early on enough. You know he's by-the-book, but in this case is psychotically so. I'll talk more about that later though. Now split from Kurosaki, Eve/G Den-O goes nuts and our heroes scatter.
Daiki ends up running into his past self. They have a brief Mexican standoff, since even Daiki loves pointing his gun at himself. G Den-O shows up growling like a feral dog, so they transform together. Things get a little confusing here but I think the present Daiki that we've been following for most of the movie proceeds to escape with the golden gun, outwitting his other self (who is of course impressed: "I'm really great!") and leaving things up to him. Or maybe it's the past one. Well, there's now just one Diend in the fight, we'll leave it at that.
Ryôtarô/Den-O and co. join in the fight, though the out-of-control G Den-O easily holds his own against 2 Riders and the Imagin. Kurosaki is still around to watch the ensuing chaos. An attempt to finish G Den-O results in him using that force field/laser thing attack, and a stray one goes towards Kurosaki. Diend pushes him out of the way though, saving him, and the grateful man takes out his badge and pushes some buttons on it. It changes into a metal briefcase with Diend's logo on it, inside of which contains Diend's own K-Touch.
Alright, I'm not too sure what the story is with this... the dialogue implies that Kurosaki has always had it, waiting for the right person to give it to. Considering it's meant for Diend, you've got to wonder about the implications there. Anyway, Diend is impressed by this "true treasure" and uses it to change to...
Diend Complete Form! He uses the special Attack Ride Gekijôban card to summon an array of familiar faces...
Kamen Rider G4!
Kamen Rider Ryuga!
Kamen Rider Orga!
Kamen Rider Glaive!
Kamen Rider Kabuki!
Kamen Rider Caucasus!
Kamen Rider Arc!
Kamen Rider Skull!
Somewhere in here Den-O becomes Den-O Climax Form too. The Movie Riders and Diend perform their finishing moves, overwhelming Eve/G Den-O. The rampaging Imagin's cry of anger fades into nothingness as he explodes.
Then comes the multi-part ending similar to Episode Blue. Daiki parts ways with the Den-O crew, and we get a nice little cameo of the exterior of the Hikari Photo Studio! Nobody else, but at least we know they're all still around and Daiki's traveling with them. Kurosaki goes to visit his mom (in 2008 or 2010, I'm not sure) who works at a flower shop and it's a well-done, touching scene on par with Blue's original character wrap-up. I'm going to need to see the movie again because I think I missed out what exactly caused such a rift between them. Well hey, time-travel made it all un-happen anyway so it's cool!
There's then a scene on the Den-Liner that... look, you're just going to have to see this one for yourselves. It's got Owner and Station Master facing off, using spoons as golf clubs to throw chahan rice onto plates from the Den-Liner's Holodeck. No really, that's pretty much exactly what it is. I suppose this ties back to the spoon-polishing stuff from Episode Blue and maaaaybe the tape measure from Episode Red, I dunno.
And of course to top it all off, when everybody gets served coffee, Ryôtarô realizes his mug is missing. It turns out Daiki did steal something from the Den-Liner after all, though the main man (or boy) isn't too bothered by it, because they'll most likely meet again...
The End
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. As you've probably sussed, this movie doesn't do a whole lot for explaining where Diend came from, though it might serve as a good indication of where he's going. The reason for this is one that's both a little disappointing, but also rather brave: Decade is nowhere to be seen or even mentioned; outside of the Hikari Studio cameo at the end (and even that's just a building.) This is Diend striking it out on his own, almost divorced from the series from which he came. It's like that episode of New Kamen Rider where Riderman guest stars solo and holds his own as well as anybody. You know you've hit the big time when you can do that.
It's a bold idea, and it kind of lends credence to the idea that 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. In fact I'd say that unlike Episode Red, where Zeronos felt sidelined by his own movie, Diend is all over the place here (sometimes twice) and gets the big hero moments at the end. To be honest, I can barely even remember what Climax Form did!
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 time-travel scheme is unbelievable, some of the most insane plotting ever inflicted upon Rider... and yet it completely works. I mean that both in the literal sense (it all works out) and that as far as the story goes, it's logical in its own mind-melting way. I mean think about it: how can he have been shot by the other guy if the other guy never had the gun at that time in the first place? Admittedly if you've seen anything else involving time-travel, including other Den-O movies, it may break your brain, but hey.
Totani is having a ball as usual. He even makes for a convincing action hero at times, fighting G Den-O untransformed and running around with the Den-O regulars like part of the gang. Of all the Rider worlds out there, he fits into the Den-Oniverse one quite well. For a Diend fan, this is really a pretty solid outing, giving him a chance to exhibit all his trademarks: the smugness, the greed, the cockiness, and the layers beneath all that where we see that Daiki really is a good guy beneath it all, if more than a little cracked. I'd like to think that maybe traversing the worlds and seeing things like Kamen Rider THE NEXT World has taken its toll and kind of driven him a little bit batty.
Diend uses his usual tricks, although probably better than ever before. The Riotroopers are always great to see and I maintain that this movie might be the best use of "Invisible!" yet. And as for Diend Complete...
Well, honestly? I'm fine with the suit, because Diend is already such a strange, unorthodox design that throwing a bunch of cards on there and some silver paint works about as well as anything. The whole process by which he gets his K-Touch is a little out of left field, but considering some of the stuff Kamen Rider's pulled in the past (power-ups in the mail, power-ups hidden in the walls, power-ups brought by Fuse Akira, etc.) I can roll with it.
The assemblage of movie Riders is the highlight of the whole movie and elicited the most audience response in the theater. Any time you throw together a bunch of different Riders, people are always going to eat it up. Granted they're basically just there for a final attack, but it lasts long enough that you get to see everything clearly and remember who's involved. And hey, this is like the first Decade-related thing where Ryuga doesn't die! Also, this is Skull's second movie appearance with another one apparently on the way. Okay Toei we get it! He's cool! The hat thing was a good idea after all! Sorry we ever doubted you!
Also, you've got to love the commentary of having a movie Rider killed by movie Riders with a card that flat-out announces they're movie Riders. Only in the (Rider) movies.
Moving onto the movie's other main star, that being Kurosaki/G Den-O, although I should say Kurosaki and Eve/G Den-O. Kurosaki's good. He's pretty much what you'd expect from what the trailers have shown: time-traveling by-the-book cop guy. He's a great foil for Daiki and the implied twist that Daiki is sort of responsible for his creation (as a time cop) is a neat one. It adds another layer, as does the whole mom thing. I gotta rewatch the movie to get what that was all about, but it was pretty good. As far as movie-Riders-being-bastards go, he's got good enough reasoning behind him.
I also liked that in the end, he's not really evil, and he's not even just doing his job; he's misguided and really being egged on by a voice actor. It's a funny blend, reminding me of something like combining G3-X with G4, having him teamed up with an evil Deneb, then turn out to not be a bad guy at all really.
G Den-O's okay. As a costume it's pretty much what we've come to expect from "bad" 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. I have to applaud them for having an actually pretty heroic-looking design be used for a villain. G Den-O looks like he could easily be a good guy suit, or even a not-so-bad guy suit, but he's straight-up bad news from start to finish. While Kurosaki might ultimately be a good guy, G Den-O as a character in himself never is.
Which brings us to Eve, and his revelation as the movie's true villain. To be honest, I did not see that coming. Or I mean I did, but not the way they went about it. I thought that maybe he'd take control at the end, force-changing Kurosaki into G Den-O, or that Kurosaki would reject Daiki's kindness and turn out to really just be beyond help in the end. Or something. The whole "Eve flies off of him and manifests as G Den-O himself" bit is weird... until you consider that it's a natural extension of what we've seen elsewhere. Negataros turned into Nega Den-O directly; the other Imagin all got to go Den-O in Final Countdown. It's basically the same idea, just that we never see Eve as anything other than a face on a badge/G Den-O's chest, with the exception of the splitting-off-of-Kurosaki process (there's a brief outline of what he might look like if he had a full bipedal form like the others.)
As for the character, Eve is kind of fascinating. It'd be easy to just say that him going bad and becoming this nutter who rants about taking over the world and how all humans must be put on trial is just some wonky characterization, but I actually have a different reading of it. I think Eve might be one of the few truly insane villains to come out of Kamen Rider. The franchise has had a lot of crazy guys, but more often than not they're either half-putting up an act or only nuts to a certain degree.
For example... Asakura's got some loose screws, but I never found him as truly mad, because he's shown to be able to exercise reason, he can decide when and when not to be a megabastard (those episodes with the girl on the boat) and while he clearly enjoys inflicting pain on others, I think the writing paints it as that being because he's a bad apple rather than because he can't help himself. He's a sadist, but he's also a schemer, and he often uses manipulation and deception to get one over on others, usually only flying into homicidal rages when he's actually legitimately mad at something. He's dangerous, but you could still have a conversation with him, as often happened later in the series. In other words, you can still talk him down, though given that it's Ryuki it'd much easier to just blow him away with a giant bull mech thing.
Tôjô on the other hand always did strike me as someone who is literally is incapable of stopping himself, which makes him a far more frightening character. Asakura knows he's bad to the bone, but Tôjô's truly convinced what he's doing is good, even when it involves him murdering the people who he respects and trusts. His ending is one of the most powerful in the show; yeah you can say it's typical Inoue where a nigh-unstoppable character dies of some small thing after his big last battle in an attempt at irony or the like, but with Tiger I thought it worked since the character wasn't really a hero before that except in his own mind, but his last act is heroic... if almost unintentionally so.
Another example is Kagami Riku. Now I love Riku, and he is off-the-wall craziness at times. But much like Owner, it always struck me more as a cover; they play the goofs to hide that beneath it, they're actually very smart and completely in control; the silliness and eccentricity is just there to distract everyone. When it hits the fan at the end of the show, Riku steps up to the plate, even if he goes through what can only be called a breakdown when Mishima turns on him. In the end though, I always felt like he's mostly just doing the "lemmings! Mozart!" thing to cover up his real intentions. Dunno about God Speed Love though!
With Eve however, I could actually buy it that the character is completely out of his gourd, because of how irrational and illogical his actions are. It's one thing to get ticked off at Kurosaki for putting personal feelings over duty, but Eve pretty much loses it at that moment, and this is after the movie showing that for all his by-the-book follow-the-rules logic-conquers all mentality, he really just plain hates Daiki and co. and wants them removed because they're simply wrong.
They don't fit into Eve's version of how the world should work, and you get the feeling that trying to convince him otherwise will only end with him wanting to shoot you in the face. Speaking of which, isn't amazing how they're still finding new ways to combine the Den-Gasher?
Ultimately it's a pretty fascinating idea. We've had evil Imagin by the boatload, and even an evil-taros, though this might be the first one who's also just plain psychotic. In a way it's kind of the culmination of the whole time police idea, because if you stop and think about it it really doesn't make much sense. Protecting time is like, the whole reason for Den-O and the Den-Liner; these future cop guys just do more harm than good.
I'm not really clear on what happens with them at the end, other than that the Den-Liner team is cleared and everything ends happily. I'm going to throw it out there that maybe Kurosaki meeting his mom had some effect on his relationship with her as a kid in 2008/2010, and as a result maybe they got erased from history or something. Hey, it's easier than having to explain why they haven't been going after Wataru for ensuring that he actually gets born.
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 (the parachuting scene is one of my favorites ever involving the character) and everybody else is about what you'd expect, with Owner really coming out of this one well, perhaps to make up for last time.
Actually, Urataros fares pretty well in this one too, coming to have a special kind of role in the story since he's the one who witnesses how it all started. U-Daiki is great of course, and along with Spider-Daiki continues to further my theory that Kamen Riders = Singularity Points. Seriously, with maybe one or two exceptions, every person who's gotten possessed by the Imagin with the hair and eyes and all either is a Rider (Ryôtarô, Yuuto, Kôtarô, Wataru, Tsukasa, Daiki, Yuusuke, the Diend dupes) or eventually becomes one (Natsumi.) Maybe there's another one in there I'm forgetting, but it's an interesting idea.
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 unannounced cameo from someone else from Decade. Maybe Eijirô or even Kivaara. I'll live, but these movies really need more total surprises. Everything's so advertised these days, and it kind of builds expectations too high. I think Kiva's appearance in Climax Deka would have gone over much better had it been a complete surprise, small but welcome, rather than being promoted as like half the movie.
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.
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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Just testing
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