After 29 episodes, 2 movies (a crossover with Den-O and his summer film), we now reached this show’s epic conclusion. If you haven’t watched the original finale, I guess I need to break this to you but, you need to watch the next film. Yep, this finale is just a lame excuse to sell more movie tickets! Anyways, After All Riders, we are now back in the world in which we had a quick stop over after Amazon’s World, the World of Rider War… and I will review the Special Edition. By the way, what is the difference between the two? Just read on to find out!
Natsumi dreams the show’s opening sequence, no seriously, that is what she dreamed. To be exact, the scene in which the Riders are charging against each other. In this version, Natsumi narrates while we see the Rider’s fight. It seems that this version we are given Natsumi’s perspective of the finale! After Diend shoots Decade, Natsumi wakes up and they left the studio.
Otoya's IXA arm reference!
Tsukasa and co. saw the battle between two Rider worlds for their own survival, Blade’s World vs. Kiva’s World. Blade and co. is fighting alongside with the Undead while Kiva and co. (?!) are fighting alongside the Fangire in which our casualties are Rising IXA and Leangle (two jerks has just died, continue). After this really brief scene, Wataru, along with the Fangire Queen (MIOOOO!) are trying to convince Tsukasa and co. to join their side, but Tsukasa declines and leaves along with everyone… but first, he easily defeats the Fangire ordered by the Queen to attack him since he is in neutral corner.
On the studio, this is when we learned that Apollo Geist is hastening the fusion of worlds and Narutaki now asks Tsukasa’s help to stop Geist. Meanwhile, Hibiki, Amaki and Todoroki is fighting Saga in which we Amaki (NOOOO!) and Todoroki died. During the fight, Kazuma Kenzaki appears and tells that the real enemy is not Dai Shocker. Who is the real enemy anyway, Kenzaki? Will Tsukasa and co. stop the fighting of the two worlds? That is for you to find out.
On to the review, the first part of the arc was good. It properly establishes two things, all the Rider Worlds that they visited are almost near to its destruction and they must fight for their own world to be saved. This episode’s title really deserved it, Rider War: Prologue.
One of the fascinating things in this episode is that they tried as much as possible to close as many unfinished stories as possible (one thing that I wish they did before introduced Dai Shocker). To start with, they try tried to answer the question on why Apollo Geist is still here in the series considering that most of Dai Shocker’s executives are dead (less Doctor Shinigami of course). Well you might say that since his organization is almost gone, and since he now lacks proper support, his last option is to hasten the merging of the Rider Worlds and then, he could re-establish Dai Shocker.
Saga dies. Yeah.
Even if they tried to try to end Apollo Geist’s story, they opened some questions such as why is it that we have IXA and Saga in Kiva’s World? Just for them to even up with Blade’s World? Sure, it would be epic that way but it doesn’t make sense! I mean, they weren’t introduced at the first place! I am fine if they decided to use Garulu, Bashaa and Dogga as substitutes for the said Riders and have Dogga or Bashaa dead, but having two Riders that didn’t have any use in the AU world doesn’t make sense! Can’t help it but to say this: ONORE YONEMURA!!!
Another question is about why Kenzaki is here. When this episode was first aired in back then, I was surprised that Kenzaki made an appearance and it seems that he has this cold aura surrounding him. The first thing that comes to my mind was this: is this the effect of becoming a Joker Undead and leaving civilization for more than 4 years? Since Kenzaki appeared, does this mean original Riders has just finished observing Decade and now will take action? Most likely, that is the case.
To honest, I was expecting that they will resolve all the plots in this episode alone and that the following episode will be the conclusion of the series. Back then, I was actually waiting on the same scene that we first saw in the first episode but it never happened, instead we have Blade and Garren fading and Kenzaki making his brief appearance a few meters away from the Riders who are about to fight Super Apollo Geist.
Overall, this episode is somewhat between really good and not that bad. Really good because the fights seen in this episode are really convincing to tell us that the Rider Worlds are fighting for their own survival and most especially, Kiva’s World in which Saga alone eliminated Amaki and Todoroki. Bad because it failed what most fans expected that most of the plots introduced in the first episode will be given proper answers but they failed to deliver it. Oh well, we still have the next episode to answer those questions.
This is it, the final episode of the series. Will the series end in an epic manner like how it opened or it will end up differently? Well, let’s find out! To begin with, most Heisei Kamen Rider series most of the time, cuts the opening sequence in their finales but this isn’t the case with Decade, is this episode the ending of this series?
To sum the entire events of the episode, Natsumi is now abducted by Super Apollo Geist and will her his bride and finally, Kenzaki takes action and directly transforms into Kamen Rider Blade King Form and beats Decade! I was surprised when it happened; he broke the basics of transforming into that form! Is it me, or this is the result of being a Joker?
Now that the worlds have merged, he starts to think that his journey is useless and Eijiro talks about that no journey is useless and this is when Kivala appears and tells that his guest are waiting for him, instead, we have Asumu and Wataru waiting with Kenzaki on the side and the two transforms into their respective forms.
This is when we heard Kenzaki said that they shouldn’t have left Decade alone. Wow. It is confirmed that these guys only supervised Decade and they can appear anytime and now that Decade has screwed up, they decided for Kenzaki to appear first to give him a pep talk. I guess I figured out why from all Riders, Blade was chosen to provoke Decade.
Now alone, Tsukasa walks alone and meets Daiki along the way and give Tsukasa an invitation coming from Geist about a one-by-one battle, which is obviously, a lie. This is when we saw Daiki breaking his own mold and starts talking that he doesn’t want the ultimate treasure gone and tries to prevent Tsukasa in meeting Geist but he failed.
Natsumi is now tied on a cross wearing the clothes that she wore back in her dream from episode one, yep, it seems that this series is going for a full circle. Tsukasa arrives, saves Natsumi, friendship speech ensues, Daiki, Yusuke appears, group transformation sequence begins and fights Geist and his back-up that he revived (Yep, he now has no support from somewhere) and later, Asumu and Wataru appeared.
At the end, Geist dies and everyone thought they have saved the world… buuuut, the scenery becomes darker and Natsumi remembers that they are now at the same place in her dream. Kiva and Hibiki disappears and Decade was transported into the world the original Wataru lived. Wataru then talks about that Decade has failed to do the mission given to him and now, his comrades will destroy him. Yep, Decade is totally screwed with Yusuke arising (!) as Ultimate Kuuga. Natsumi’s dream came true and at the end, Decade dominates all the Riders. At the end, Natsumi with a calm face says, “Decade.” The Decadriver closes. This is the end of the series.
The review: This is the ending I wish to see in Decade, in which at the end, he follows his destiny as the Destroyer of Worlds and starts to defeat every Rider. One of the things that I liked about this ending is that it makes perfect sense (if you consider a couple of factors) once you will watch Movie Wars 2010, heck; I guess this ending was made to those who don’t want to watch the film! Why? Because they remove the unnecessary detail known as Diend shooting Decade in point blank range, making his friendship speech earlier more authentic.
Even they removed some minor details, they also removed an important scene, Yusuke being bitten by Kivala and transforms into Ultimate Kuuga. In this ending, he only rises as Ultimate Kuuga and that’s it. This scene raises a couple of questions. First off, if you haven’t watched Kuuga or the All Riders, it is pretty vague on how he ended up into Kuuga’s Ultimate form. If you watched All Riders, you might say that it is the result of Sayo releasing the full power of the Arcle. I mean, if you put it in a logical manner, If Kuuga can go Rising Ultimate, then he could go into Ultimate with ease. Simple. But for those who haven’t watched All Riders, you will have trouble in understanding this scene if you decided to watch the Special Edition instead of watching the original one.
Since Apollo Geist is still here, one of the questions left is why he didn’t summon more monsters or disposable soldiers instead of reviving the strongest monsters that he can revive? Like I said, since the main Dai Shocker forces were destroyed earlier, it is impossible for Geist to call backup coming from the higher officers. In short, Geist is one of the surviving forces from Dai Shocker. To put this simply if I will place references on older shows, Super Apollo Geist’s group is like Destron while Dai Shocker is like GelShocker.
One of the best part in the last episode of the series is that Wataru appears at the end and tells Tsukasa that he failed to do the job that Wataru asked him to do, and so, they must eliminate him. You can see this seen in two different ways, it is either they are just provoking Decade to do his job to destroy the Riders or they are also AU versions that looked like the original Riders who really want Decade to be dead. Anyhow, I prefer the first way of seeing the last scene, they knew that once Decade fail, they must provoke him so that he can do his job properly causing the original Riders doing their own heroic sacrifice. If you find this sad, let me tell you bud; this is how a Kamen Rider suppose to roll.
Overall, the last episode of the special is good, if not, better on how the original ended with Diend trolling Decade at the end. For those who didn’t watched All Riders this special might cause you to scratch your head due to Yusuke turning into Ultimate Kuuga or Apollo Geist not calling for backup via dimension walls. Natsumi’s narration in the entire special kinda gives you an urge to watch Movie Wars 2010 especially on how she ended the last few minutes of the special about that Decade’s true motive in fighting the Riders lies beyond on the story known as “Decade.” It really gives you an impression to either rent the DVD or download it from TV-Nihon or W-Time.
Because of this, the end of this series of reviews with the of Kamen Rider x Kamen Rider W & Decade: Movie Wars 2010 Director’s Cut. Unlike what I said last year, I will treat Begins Night as part of this bunch considering that if I will separate Begins Night in a separate review, it will feel like this film lost something. After this, I will make my final thoughts about this series and its films.