Here we are at last, I've been putting this off for as long as I possibly could but I just have to treat this like a bandage and rip it off as quickly as possible. But it has been a while so here's the links for Parts 1 and 2 to make sure you know exactly where I'm coming from.
Part 1 https://ondavidsbrain.blogspot.com/2019/06/tokusatsu-review-kamen-rider-heisei.html
Part 2 https://ondavidsbrain.blogspot.com/2019/06/tokusatsu-review-kamen-rider-heisei_24.html
So where were we? Oh right Woz just slapped Riku Sanjo right in the face by inexplicably using the Gaia Library to get the Rider Ticket for where Futaros went to; January 29th 2000, one day before the first episode of Kuuga. Sougo takes Ataru, for some reason back with him in the Time Mazin but are too late as Futaros managed to get there first, by jumping out of past Ataru, before he was delivered by his still pregnant mother. Now I'm just imagining what the father's reaction would be if he saw this big, red demon looking guy jump right out of his pregnant wife. "Um Honey, were you schtupping Satan behind my back?!"
But before they can make a joke about this weirdness Shingo (the one from before he was kidnapped) is about to be abducted by Another W when Futaros tries to fight the Another Rider off but to no avail. And it's here where Ataru finally learns what the audience did about half an hour or so ago. Now that he knows that the kid he was paling around with is his long lost brother he charges right at Another W and gets turned into Another Den-O for his trouble, in the words of Professor Farnsworth "Ah, Paradox resolved." With the two brothers under his masters power Another W makes his escape abroad the Another Den-Liner leaving Futaros and Sougo in the dust. Meanwhile we cut to the Kurougatake Mountains where Tiddlywinks uncovers the tomb of Riku, the original Kuuga and from his remains creates the Kuuga Anotherwatch.
Geiz manages to intercept him but it's too late as Tiddlywinks uses the watch on himself becoming Another Kuuga, thus creating a future where the Heisei Riders were never real, wiping himself and everyone else in this world from existence in the process, thus never executing this plan in the first place.
Now this is stupid for several reasons but I will give the writers credit for one thing, working around the fact that Joe Odagiri refuses to reprise the role of Yusuke Godai, the modern Kuuga by having Tiddlywinks taking the power from the remains of Riku, I have to admit that was a good workaround for the problem of creating Another Kuuga. But that's hampered by the fact that this makes no sense. According to the series' lore once an Another Rider is created in the same year that the rider was born in the Another Rider overlaps the history of said rider. Now since Tiddlywinks turned himself into Another Kuuga one day before the Grongi were released and Godai became Kuuga, his history should still be in tact. Which leads to my second problem, Tiddlywinks just became the Another Rider of Riku, not the modern Kuuga so Godai will still become Kuuga because his personal history as a Rider was not changed according to the logic we've been given.
Also, Kuuga may have been the origins of the Hesiei Riders in the meta sense; but in universe, no the Riders would have come about regardless of Kuuga so even in concept this plan makes absolutely no God Dan Kuroto sense! But this all leads back to one of the biggest problems of the film; Tid is a terrible villain. Answer me this one question audience, why does he do any of this crap? To erase the Heisei riders from existence? Ok, then why, why does he want to do this; creating a world without riders isn't a motivation it's a goal those are two completely different things.
We're never given a good reason why he wants to do this. Even Paradox from Yu-Gi-Oh Bonds Beyond time had a motivation for his actions, hell, even Harvest, the king of Dumbasses from the Culling had a better motivation than this idiot. Sure they were both just as hypocritical and made as little sense as Tid but at least they had a better reason for their actions other than "because I'm evil." This guy was so badly written and his motivation is quite literally non-existent that I'm just begging for the Great Leader of Shocker to show up and say that this was all a part of his plan. As overused as Shocker is (especially with Shirakura productions) at least they have the established history of wanting world conquest and have a long standing history of hatred for all Kamen Riders.
This isn't even the first time Shocker screwed around with time travel, that was their entire plan in Super Hero Taisen GP and Kamen Rider Yongou. Sure it's lazy but you don't have to replace lazy with another brand of lazy if the result is even worse! For that matter why did Schwartz even turn Tid into a Timejacker in the first place if he knew that he'd pull something like this. For that matter where are Schwartz and his little Harem anyway? Why didn't they try to stop this if they knew that Tid was screwing up their plans, whatever they are?
Moving on, Tiddlywinks finishes transforming into Another Kuuga and he looks like if Inferno from Beast Wars became a demon who devours the souls of the guilty and innocent alike.
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| INFERNO, TERRORIZE!!!! |
But our heroes are now stranded back in 2000 and unless they want to do what Captain America did at the end of Endgame and take the long way back they're screwed. Later that night Futaros explains to Sougo why Tiddlywinks even targeted Shingo in the first place. According to him he's a Fixed/Singularity Point whichever one you want to call them I don't give a crap. For those who don't know, Singularity Points are people who are immune to the effects of time alteration, like Den-O himself Ryotaro Nogami and his descendants. Which explains why the creep has been stalking the kid since this whole thing got started, as long as Shingo exists and remembers Kamen Riders Tiddlywinks' plan to create a world without them will never come to pass.
But this begs the question of why Futaros even wants to help Shingo and Ataru in the first place, maybe because he's just one of the rare good Imagin, good enough for me I guess. Back in 2018 Sento and Banjo fight their way though the fortress and confront Tiddlywinks in his throne room but he just sics some grunts on them. The Zi-O team nearly get lost in the time stream due to their slapdash repairs but get a lift from the real Den-Liner which dumps them off into the Fortress, conveniently next to the throne room. Sougo, Geiz and Futaros get their turn but Tiddlywinks just has Another Den-O deal with them instead. The three try to snap Ataru from his brainwashing but they're not getting through.
Just as he's about to kill the three everyone except Tiddlywinks are teleported to presumably the Station of the King-Liner terminal. This is where we get the return of the original Kamen Rider Den-O (my very first rider series I finished from start to end btw so, yay) who solos dealing with the grunts and after switching between the rest of the Taros defeats Another Den-O, saving Ataru from Tiddlywinks' control. And yes, Takeru Sato returns as Ryotaro Nogami one last time to give his farewell to the Zi-O crew before warping back to the fight (while possessed by Urataros sure but we know that Ryotaro's the one doing the talking.) Also of note this scene was supervised and written by Den-O's creator Yasuko Kobayashi. While I may have a lot of issues with her original work during her overworked, burnout phase of her carrier, this was still a nice touch and shows that somewhere deep down she still cares enough about Den-O to make sure Toei doesn't do it dirty; despite Toei milking the show like the cash cow that it sadly is.
Back to the crap, Tiddlywinks' blowing his top because these stupid Riders just won't die! But after we get some flowery bullcrap from our heroes we get a scene that is simultaneously heartfelt and dumb as all hell. See, there was another reason why we got the Den-O reunion scene, it was for Owner to re-establish the whole "as long as you live on in someones memory you'll never die" crap so that the Kamen Riders can come back thanks to the fans who remember them. This is dumb for three reasons. One, in this timeline Kamen Riders are not real so how are the fan's memories bringing them to life if they were just T.V in this world?
Two, Gokaiger did this much better during the Gokaiger VS Goseiger 199 Hero Battle, and no it's not because its Gokaiger its because it was established much better and constant with the setting of the show/movie because it took place in a world where Super Sentai was real so it didn't seem like something out of Akibaranger like this sequence does. Lastly, this is the exact same plot point that was used to bring back the Riders in Lets Go Kamen Rider and we all know how that turned out. Regardless of my gripes, the sequence that shows all of the Kamen Riders kicking ass is pretty cool, even if Ghost does look like he's standing on a Roomba during his fight sequence. After that Sougo finally gets it into his head to use the W Ridewatch to finally destroy Another W. Tiddlywinks has lost any sanity he's had left and transforms into Another Kuuga to just kill everyone.
Build fixes the Time Mazins and arrives to help Zi-O fight the giant Another Rider. But before he jumps into the Time Mazin Geiz gives him the Kuuga Ridewatch that he created by doing the same thing that Tiddlywinks did in Riku's tomb. So with the power of Kuuga Zi-O and Build defeat Another Kuuga, but he's not done yet as he pulls out his trump card.
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| No, no, no guys it's not what you think. He's just forcing himself inside of the little boy and pulling out something he never knew he had, Jesus Christ! |
All of the phrasing! After getting himself on a government watchlist Demon Jared Fogle reaches his final form, Another Ultimate Kuuga.
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| AND LOOK AT HOW MUCH TEETH I HAVE TO SMILE WITH, WHILE I CHEW ON ALL OF YOUR BONES!!! |
Oh and Shingo totally survived that blast and wasn't reduced to a pile of chunky salsa like Tiddlywinks, because otherwise there'd be a nice big ol NC-17 rating on this sucker. And just like Freddy Got Fingered this whole movie comes off as one of Tom Green's troll projects. After an actually nice, heartfelt sequence of Ataru and Shingo's revised history of the two brothers growing up loving Kamen Rider we end with Futaros walking off to parts unknown and Sento and Sougo just shrugging off the fact that their lives are nothing more then fiction. Roll credits with a horrible mash up of the previous Kamen Rider's opening themes and we're finally done. So that was Heisei Generations Forever and it's a Taisen movie in Heisei Generations clothing.
While nowhere near as bad as a proper Taisen movie this still sucks hard if you stop and think about it for even a second. The villain has no motivation for his actions and is more than a tad uncomfortable with the excessive amount of physical contact he has with most of his co-stars. I get what they were trying to go for but I think that Sonic can sum up my feelings towards this character.
Also Build really got the short end of the stick in this movie, most of it was focused on Sougo and all Sento did though out this movie were two things, jack and shit and jack left town! But another rider that got dumped on even worse was W, we never learn who Another W was, why he was working with Tiddlywinks and hell we didn't even see any of the main W cast to give Sougo the Ridewatch. Hell at the time of this review we're almost to the end of Zi-O and W and Drive got nothing in terms of a tribute arc. Though considering how most of them turned out that's a blessing in disguise as far as I'm concerned but it just seems to confirm my suspicions that Shirakura hates Riku Sanjo and is taking it out on his three series. Sure there was Fourze but his tribute arc got completely overshadowed by Faiz.
Now my theory behind this is because Riku Sanjo's approach to Kamen Rider proves that everything that Shirakura thinks about the franchise is complete horse-shit and is being a spiteful bastard about it by throwing shade at the three series Sanjo worked on. Hell that might explain how Toqger Vs Kyoryuger turned out as bad as it did. Shirakura hates Sanjo so he put Kobayashi, someone whose political ideologies are the exact opposite of Kyoryuger and she dragged the Koyryugers through the dirt out of spite as Shirakura calculated. Bit of a stretch to be sure but given what we know about the guy it would not surprise me if that was Shirakura's mindset going into this production. Going back to the W Ridewatch for a second it being the Deus Ex Machina that brings Sento and Sougo back to the "real world" is completely unrelated to W.
W at no point had anything to do with inter dimensional travel so it being the key to going back makes no sense. What would have worked better is that instead of Another W we have Another Build instead. Build's series ends with Sento, Banjo and the others traveling to the main Rider Earth to escape Evolt, hell Interdiminsional travel is the main plot point of Heisei Generations Final. But no, like a horny teenager the braintrusts behind Zi-O blew their load too early with Another Build being the first Another Rider fought in the series instead of W. And don't you dare give me the "Build's show was just wrapping up so they had to get the cameo done while they were still on the payroll" card, they knew the team up movie was coming, they knew that it was going to be a crossover between Build and Zi-O, they could have waited but no, like I said, blew their load too soon and now we have a big, narrative mess all over our pants, phrasing boom!
Like anything that Shirakura is involved with the problems could have been solved if the people in charge just stopped and thought for more then 5 seconds (but lets face it, even 5 years would be far too generous for these clowns) they could have been fixed and we could have had a much better movie. Especially since this is the capstone of the Heisei Era, the last 20 years of Kamen Rider, that just makes this all the worse. This is the way your era ends, not with a bang, but with a spiteful, disinterested sneer by someone who doesn't even know what heroism is. They say that catharsis is bad for you, and I can see why. I'll be back next week with the long awaited continuation of my review of Madoka Magica Homura's Revenge, a much better story than this one despite the sudden tone shift I assure you.
Special thanks to my Patreon backer Jesse for his support.
Kamen Rider is owned by Ishinomori Productions, Toei Productions, and Bandai.
Dragon Ball, Dragonball Z, Dragonball GT and Dragonball Super is owned by Funnimation, Toei animation, Fuji TV and Akira Toriyama.
Dragon ball Z abridged and Hellsing Ultimate Abridged is owned by Team Four Star.
Batman Forever is owned by Warner Brothers Pictures and Joel Schumacher Based off the Character created by Bob Kane and Bill Finger.
Archer is owned by Adam Reed, Floyd County Productions, Radical Axis and FX Productions.
Jontron is owned by Jon Jaffri.
The Adventured of Sonic the Hedgehog is owned by DIC Animation City, SEGA of America, Hong YIng Animation, Tokyo Movie Shinsha and Rainbow Animation.
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