New Worlds Saga – Part 1 of 3
Tsukasa and co. thought that after their journey in Hibiki’s World, all the Rider Worlds are saved, and now they are back in the world back in episode 1… that is what they thought. Their journey is not yet over. This is the main plot of the second part of the franchise in which, in my opinion, started fans to start officially scratching their heads. As we all remember, the show’s original writer, Sho Aikawa left and now the show is left in the hands of Toshiki Inoue and Shoji Yonemura, yep, the dynamic screw-up duo who is responsible in watering Kamen Rider Hibiki’s tone to make it “toku” enough.
And for their first serving, its Inoue’s turn to give us his own writing style in the first two arcs of this saga: Nega and DiEnd’s World.
Nega World or otherwise known as the World of Negatives is the world Tsukasa and co. thought they have returned to the world back in episode 1. Natsumi’s high school friends are inviting her in a class reunion in which we learned that Natsumi is part of a club composed of kids who were bored in school and named it Taigaku Club (Which means Drop-out Club), or TG Club for short.
Meanwhile, Tsukasa’s photography skills are… normal, human normal. Yep, none of his photos look like badly photoshopped pictures being manipulated by a bored kid who just took summer classes about how to use Adobe Photoshop. Aside from that, it seems Tsukasa is having a really good time in this world considering that he became the owner of a restaurant, became a model and he has an army of fans.
The best thing about this world is that Otoya Kurenai is here! Yep, Wataru’s badass dad back in 1986 is here! In addition, he is still badass as ever. Even with all this pampering we learned this, this is the opposite of Natsumi’s World. We learned that most humans here are dead, and monsters are ruling in this world. Those who survive are into hiding. TG Club never existed in this world because it was never founded, because most of Natsumi’s friends died in the attacks of the Evil Riders, Ryuga, Orga and Dark Kabuto and took the appearances of his friends.
Meanwhile, Otoya is convincing Tsukasa to become the leader of this world and obtain this world’s ultimate treasure, which was hidden by Chinatsu, Natsumi’s friend somewhere in this world.
Sorry for the long summary because I feel it is necessary. Anyways, Nega World was… weird. I mean, if they want to make a world filled with monsters, at least put some thrill into it. To be honest, I love the premise that you thought everything seems to be fine, so fine that they are treating you like a king. It was a simple premise but humans running in the forest from humanoid monsters that are attacking them ruined it. I mean, it was a perfect premise in this plot. Heck, why the hell they would call this world, the World of Negatives if there are some humans are alive and didn’t do anything to survive?
If they want this arc to be really good, here’s how they should do it in my opinion. Retain the premise, retain the humans and make them an underground resistance and AU Natsumi will be leading them to fight against those monsters. Gave the arc a Terminator feel with Otoya acting like SkyNet and the Evil Riders act like Terminators with Tsukasa and co. stuck in the middle with the arc ending with a bang, AU Natsumi turned out to be the bad guy after all and Otoya was just her puppet. That would be exciting for the kids.
About the AU Evil Riders, minus Otoya, they lack personality or any distinguishing marks they felt like Arnie back in Terminator minus the accent and the attitude, they are bland, too bland that I was disappointed that AU Ryuga wasn’t that terrifying. About AU Otoya, Otoya was the good ol’ Otoya back in Kiva except he transforms into Dark Kiva which was awesome!
For the biggest surprise in this arc, we have this, Decade Complete Form. To be honest, I find it weird in sense that why give Decade a final form if in Natsumi’s dream we saw Decade defeating every single Rider in his classic magenta appearance. To be honest, it felt like this form is useless. It would be logical if the treasure turned out to be an upgrade card of Decade’s Henshin Card in which once he used it, he will retain in the same form but he has all the access of all the other nine Rider’s respective forms and arsenal. Aside that it is logical, it would not look like cheesy, and Toei can save money for not creating an ugly new suit!
Decade Complete Form’s appearance has all nine Heisei Rider Cards in Decade’s chest and on top of the mask is Decade’s card. The ability of this form is to summon the Rider in any of his forms, his regular form and his final form and the summoned Rider will do what Decade will do. See, useless. Sure, we have stronger slashes and stronger attacks but it ruined the point that Decade should be the ultimate destroyer at the end of the series. We already have DiEnd as the guy who summons Riders, we add Decade to the list? The only answer that I can think of right now is to sell more toys.
Overall, this arc was weird. I love the concept of that finally it is all over… or so we thought kinda thing but it was ruined due to the bad writing, and bad pacing of the story. Tsukasa concludes that they are more Rider Worlds aside from the main nine Rider Worlds, and next, we are unveiled on the next background, Wanted: DiEnd.
DiEnd’s World in which like the previous world, everything seems to be alright, everyone are helpful, everyone seems to be nice, no evil in sight… or so they thought. The world is governed by a man known as The Fourteen, and the rule of this world is this, if you don’t do good deeds to others, your freewill will be removed and become one of Fourteen’s lackeys, like Daiki’s brother, Junichi.
Junichi is Rider along with Shin and Natsumi, I mean Haruka and they transform into Kamen Rider Blade Missing Ace’s BOARD Ace Riders. Yep, respectively, they are Glaive, Lance and Larc. If you watched the Missing Ace film, you know that Junichi is definitely the bad guy. I mean, with that creepy smile that causes some fans to scream in horror!
Anyways, we learned that Daiki is once part of The Fourteen’s troops and is the one responsible in hunting down the Riders that leads him in learning that the program he develop is not what causes the citizens of this world to become loyal followers of the Fourteen but because the Fourteen removed their freewill. Now, he is back and ironically, he is one of the Riders and he wants his brother to be back to normal.
DiEnd’s World has this good concept of removing someone’s will which was great, I love the fact that the humans in this world hate the ones who are suppose to protect them from the Fourteen but there is something missing. It felt like most of the humans are forced to hate the Riders so that their freewill will not be removed from them, the concept was there but the proper execution was there. Later on, we will see this concept via Amazon’s World with Yonemura perfecting it. I will go on that later.
This world is definitely Daiki’s world. I mean, we have wanted posters of him being seen in every corner of this world, we learned a little of his past and why he started to steal, I mean treasure hunt and start trolling around in the entire show. I love the fact that the Ace Riders that died in the film had more screen time in which we got their personalities squeezed more. Haruka is the one who first believed that Daiki changed for the better while Shin is the one who still does not trust Junichi’s younger brother for what he did prior to the series.
The best thing in this arc is the twist in the end. He is serving the Fourteen from the very beginning with his own freewill. It was surprising and dramatic at the same time. Surprising, because he was leading a ragtag group of rebels prior to the removal of his will and dramatic, because Daiki’s effort in saving his brother was useless.
I love the fact that Inoue squeezed more on Daiki’s psychology and personality. I mean, why he started stealing? I wondered why back then until this arc gave us the answer, he wants to run away from the fact that he was the reason why his brother became a puppet, which it later evolved into a hobby. We saw some points of his personality that will be significant in his later appearance. In his latest appearance on Kamen Rider Raised to the 3rd Power The Movie: Cho Den-O Trilogy – Episode Yellow: Treasure of De End Pirates, we learned on the trailer that Daiki doesn’t want his freedom to be removed, one of the central plots that this arc focused on, freewill and freedom.
Overall, from the three original worlds that was created, this is one of my favorites. Asides that we saw the original cast of the Ace Riders from Missing Ace, we saw Daiki’s other side just like in Hibiki’s World, but since this is Daiki we are talking about, he will just ignored that we saw his life story and forget that it never happened because he got an Ika Origami to steal. Yes, next up, Shinkenger’s World which we be more of a special arc analysis next time.