Well, we've had ourselves a nice little break haven't we? Now it's back to work covering how this movie blows chunks, yay. After Sento states the obvious we cut back to Tiddlywinks's hide out where his Another Riders bring him Shingo. Next is the three stooges finding Kazumi's unconscious body in front of Ataru's house. Yet Ataru didn't think to call an ambulance for the guy bleeding out in front of his house who tried to save him and the little kid from the monster working for a psychopath?
But something seems wrong as when Sento asks where Shingo is Ataru thinks that they're talking about his older brother. Yet after Sougo clarifies that they were talking about the kid they still don't think that something is wrong. Look I'm done waiting for the movie to drop the other shoe and I'm not going to insult your intelligence by going along with their poorly constructed foreshadowing any longer, Shingo is Ataru's time displaced brother. For reasons that will be explained later Tiddlywinks abducted him before Ataru was born which was one day before the premiere of Kuuga. This explains why they both have the same name, why Shingo only knows about Kuuga and how he's never seen a smartphone before when this movie takes place in 2018 and every kid who has even heard of one has racked up at least $1000 dollars on their parents phone playing Angry Birds.
Now we get to the part where we learn how Ataru caused all of this in the first place, brace yourselves and have buckets on stand by for when you either have an aneurysm or your brains are reduced to Yogurt! He invites Sento and Sougo inside and shows them his room, which is full of Kamen Rider figurines and merchandise. You name it it's there, there's drivers, posters, festival masks, toys, figurines you name it it's most likely there. After the non reaction from our two heroes after they learn about how their lives are only fiction Ataru explains how they got to his world in the first place. See Ataru comes from the real world, where Kamen Rider is just a T.V show yet one day he gets possessed by an Imagin who grants his wish to be able to see real Kamen Riders.
I repeat, an Imagin, from Kamen Rider Den-O, shows up, in the real world, to grant Ataru's wish!
First off, if Kamen Riders are not real in your world, there's no way in hell that there should be an Imagin there to grant your wish. Second, Imagins are not that powerful. Sure they're based off of the Djinn which is the basis of Genies, but like the original Djinn, Imagins don't have the phenomenal cosmic power that was ascribed to them from works like the Disney version of Aladdin but are more depicted as they were originally portrayed, as spirits summoned by someone to carry out a task. In other words, they could only grant a wish that was within normal parameters such as "get revenge on this guy for me," "bring me millions of dollars," wishes like that, usually through twisted and violent ways. But this new Imagin (he goes unnamed through out the movie but the wiki says that he's named Futaros) is just somehow able to merge worlds together to grant this wish, even though no Imagin before this has that kind of reality merging power, not even the Death Imagin, the strongest Imagin in Den-O.
And then with Ataru telling them that none of this matters since this is all his dream and that once he wakes up nothing will have happened that's strike 3 and this guy is out. So why did he even do this in the first place? Because he just wants to forget his reality where his parents focused on his 7 year old older brother Shingo disappearing thanks to Tiddlywinks and thought that the Riders would help him. Sento, after rightfully chewing him out for thinking that this was just nothing but his delusions has had enough and walks out with Sougo not too far behind. Now, allow a clown to be serious for a few seconds, because there are several things I find wrong with this scene on both a storytelling level and philosophical level.
First let's get the storytelling out of the way because trust me the philosophical side can get pretty juicy. I mainly have issues with the revelations and the characters reaction, or in this case lack of reaction in the scene. We have a set up where people who thought that their lives were real turns out to be in fact, fictitious. There are many ways and stories that touch on and experiment with this concept whether it be for a deconstruction of the agency of viewers interaction with the work or creators commenting on the nature of the meta narrative. Such examples include The Stanley Parable, Princess Tutu or most prominently in my mind, Grant Morrisons run on Animal Man.
Each of these works touch on the agency of a creation in their fictional world. Now of course I'm not saying that every story that has these ideas has to be some grand philosophical treatise on the meta narrative and creation being ruled by the creator; this idea can also be used for poking fun at the 4th wall like Deadpool, the Rocky and Bullwinkle movie and Doki Doki Literature club. But what I'm getting at is that these works took this idea and actually did something with it. But in this movie, nothing is done with this concept. It's just casually tossed in as an afterthought explanation to justify the inconsistencies of the original setting, in. my opinion this is lazy, thoughtless and wasteful.
But now we come to the probable intent of this scene, why the creators thought to include this in the first place. Now, after thinking long and hard about this scene I'm actually reminded of something. Back in the 200th Episode of Atop the 4th Wall Linkara reviewed Spider-Man One More Day, in issue three of that story Peter encounters an overweight alternate universe version of himself who went on a tirade deriding the entire concept of escapist fiction. Considering who was involved in the creation of that story, combined with the fact that issues 3 and 4 of that story were heavily rewritten he incorrectly assumed that Joe Quesada was responsible for that scene. It was later revealed that while the rewrites were a thing, most of issue 3 was written as intended by J Michael Straczynski.
How it was written could easily be seen as a message of contempt to people who indulge in escapist fiction. The overweight Peter could easily be seen as a stand-in for JMS calling the audience failures for ignoring the real world, or him venting his frustration of having to toss all of his years of work on Spider-Man out the window to appease Quesada. But having gone through the scene and given the context of the story I could see this as the overweight Peter telling Spider-Man that while he never got the spider bite and couldn't be a hero in the spandex and cape sense, 616 Peter, as Spider-Man can do so much more good. Though Tubby is ignoring the fact that there's more ways of being someone's hero then the cape and cowl routine, like working in a soup kitchen, helping a homeless person get back on their feet, or even just giving someone reassurance, comfort and hope when all seems hopeless. So yeah like most versions of Peter Parker, he's kind of a fucking idiot.
But back on track, unlike Quesada and JMS the two working on this movie; Shinichiro Shirakura and Kento Shimoyama have constant track records consisting of critically paned work, and in Shirakura's case; excessive meddling and distain towards the Tokusatsu fandom. Given this and Shirakura's hands on approach towards the productions he helms I can safely assume that he's responsible for this scene.
And he's clearly telling the fans of Kamen Rider that they're delusional, sociopathic cowards for indulging in this series. You know, the series that is a long standing Japanese cultural icon for decades, the series that he's a producer of, one of the properties that is responsible for the roof over his head, the food in his gut and the clothes on his back?! He's basically saying "the people who watch this franchise and buy my crap are losers so keep buying my crap losers!" Now while I don't have a clip of Linkara giving that spiteful ramble towards JMS (accidentally to the guy who didn't even want to do that story in the first place) I do have a clip that hopefully conveys the message to Shirakura all the same.
I honestly should end this review right here, but sadly no, there's still much more to come. Anyway, after Sento's departure Futaros asks whether this is enough since he's draining himself to keep the Riders here and apparently this is the reason why they are losing their memories. Now that Tiddlywinks has Shingo he gets started on both creating his perfect world and his perfect Kefka impression. First by doing an insane laugh that would make Mark Hamel blush, then he summons a giant castle out of nowhere in the middle of Tokyo.
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| And he can do all of this because don't question it or else you'll be kicked in the head by a horse! |
After he explains everything to Woz, Sento finds him and tells him about the photo he found at Ataru's house and the two twits finally figure out what anyone who was watching this movie and didn't huff paint as a kid figured out half an hour ago. But now that they know the score how are they getting back to stop Tiddlywinks? They use the W Ridewatch that's how! I'll get into my thoughts about that later right now it's BS time. After the trio travel though Hypertime apparently they land back in the "real world" where the minions are racking up a major kill count.
Sougo and Woz manage to find Ataru, Woz then oh lord give me strength, accesses the Gaia Library to fill Sougo in on how the Imagin operate and then pulls out a Rider Ticket out of nowhere to figure out where Futaros went!?
That's it, I need a break there's only so much I can take. See you next week for my final thoughts on the movie and even more things wrong with it. Someone get me a Diet Coke!!!
Special thanks to my Patreon backer Jesse for his support.
Kamen Rider is owned by Ishinomori Productions, Toei Productions, and Bandai.
Back to the Future is owned by Robbert Zebecks, Bob Gale, Stephen Spielberg, Ambling Entertainment and Universal Studios.
See no Evil, Hear no Evil is owned by Tristar Pictures and Arthur Hiller.
Half Baked is owned by Universal Pictures, Robert Simonds Productions and Tamra Davis.
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