Or if you want a longer title, Kamen Rider Decade the Movie Special: Opening Commemoration – From Showa Era to Heisei Era! The Great Meeting! Last December, Henshin OrganizatioN (HON) has released this side project, which is a talk between four Rider fans and Masahiro Inoue talking about Kamen Rider Decade’s film, All Riders vs. Dai Shocker, and the talk about which is better, Showa or Heisei? That is for us to find out in this review!
The four guest are and since I don’t have time taking names, they are: Miho (!) aka Kamen Rider Femme, the first official female Kamen Rider in history, a comedian who is this special’s Kamen Rider otaku, the lead host that wears an Adidas shirt, and some guy who claimed to be normal, and of course, Masahiro Inoue aka Tsukasa Kadoya!
The special is divided in three parts: The introduction, the first round of the Showa vs. Heisei Battle and the last round of the Showa vs. Heisei battle. The first part introduces to us Kamen Rider Decade and All Riders vs. Dai Shocker is the “final touches” of the said show. Now I understand why All Riders is originally called the “true ending” of the series in which we learn later, thanks to external media that it happened after BLACK RX and Amazon’s Arc.
One of the best things in the intro is that the scene when Decade first appeared, greeted the hosts and returned to the dressing room to revert into Tsukasa! And normal guy here claims that he changed outfits with the other three host here correcting him that he “un-henshined” and telling him that this is a noon show and kids are watching and he is destroying their dreams to be a Rider! Caused me to wish that normal guy will scream, “ONORE DIKEIDO!”
The intro also noted a couple of things regarding the Heisei era about the good-looking Riders and that the newer Riders never had the same feel of the Showa Era Riders and thus, the Talent Based, Kamen Rider Talk Battle Begins!
Team Heisei is composed of Adidas wearing guy, Tsukasa and Miho while as for Team Showa is composed of normal guy and the comedian. The first round is about the designs of the Riders in each era… which ended up talking about Kamen Rider Shin about his design! Which later, Tsukasa noted that in one scene in the film, Shin is the odd one out and Miho noted that if this guy would come in her house, she would slap her with a slipper like what people do if they saw a cockroach! Watching them commenting much on Shin makes me pity the guy.
The Shin hate part ended and continued with strange henshin devices such as Kivat, and the barcodes found in Decade’s card in which one guy noted that if Decade will have a sequel, they will use the square barcode thing! After the henshin device talk, they started talking about henshin poses and yes, one guest asked Shin’s pose. Yes, that is Shin’s pose, he chokes himself with some SFX coming out later. Poor Shin…
After the Shin hate ended, the second round of the talk is about merchandise. This is when I notice the evolution of the Rider merchandise from the Showa Era till now. Back then, they are selling cards, picture storybooks and chips (which in one BLACK film, we saw some of those) and how the Rider Belts evolved, from those extremely skinny belt into an adjustable belt.
The merchandise talk is one of the fun parts of the special, in my opinion asides from the laugh out loud Shin hate segment. My only problem with the merchandise talk is the lack of featured merchandise; they only featured the FFR Toyline and Decade’s Belt. No love for figures that’s not vinyl ones?
At the end, the talk ended with the tie… which is good decision by the Toei guy in my opinion. Admit it, every era has its own good parts and bad parts, Showa’s bad part is the effects and the amount of filler (I am looking at you, BLACK, I slept in some of those fillers) while the Heisei’s bad part is some show’s are more merchandise driven than story driven. Only a few shows where able to mix the story and merchandise aspect well (I am looking at you W).
Overall, the special is one fun special to watch. It’s not like the Net Movies, but it is still entertaining since it is a talk about Rider fans with two Rider actors in it! If there are problems with the special is probably, the amount of Shin “hate” that the talk about Decade was not given much proper focus. At the end of the day, even Miho wonders, is she really a Rider? Or a Dai Shocker member?
In case you are wondering when will the Movie Wars 2010 review will come out, don’t worry, I will do it this week. Look forward to it along with my overall thoughts with the entire series and its films!