Kamen Rider Decade COMPLETE Review: Series Finale Special Ed.

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.

Kamen Rider Decade: All Riders vs. Dai Shocker DC Movie Review

To those wondering how did All Riders ended up sandwiched between Amazon’s World and World of Rider War (Which I will review the Special Edition), here’s the explanation. Remember Den-O’s World, the Kabuto backdrop was already dropped when Sieg appeared and showed the map to Tsukasa and co. same case with All Riders, the backdrop for World of Rider War was dropped when this movie takes place. Plus, official media states that it take place between those series and we can’t argue that much with official media! With no further ado, here is the review of All Riders DC!

Why I chose the Director’s Cut to be reviewed and not the theatrical version? There are contents coming to the DC that are relevant to the characteristics of our group. Plus, the DC of the film is easy to follow for those who forgot some details of the series and to those who never watched Decade… unless you are one of those people who only watched Decade because of the BLACK x BLACK RX Arc!

Note: I will italicize relevant contents added in the DC.

Tsukasa arrives in a different world and all his pictures are normal! By normal, it is not Photoshopped! Kiva-la remembered a photo similar to what Tsukasa is wearing (Remember the photo posted by Eijiro back in BLACK RX’s World?), Tsukasa feels the key and he thinks he knows where it fits. Along with Natsumi and Yusuke, they explored the new world. The world seems familiar to him, every nook and cranny. They arrived in the house and at first, he has doubts if he will open the door, after being convinced by Natsumi that it might be the key about his past, he opens the door and hears music from somewhere. It is a music being played by his sister, Sayo and she was explained about the situation of his brother that he has amnesia and they travelling in various Rider Worlds, helping Riders in various worlds as they try to help Tsukasa regain his memories.

Her butler, Tsukikage appeared and explained why Tsukasa travelled the worlds. After the clips of the world merging was seen, Tsukasa seems to remember and orders Tsukikage to gather all the Riders and start a tournament. Three days later, it began and at the end, Decade, Kuuga and Diend (WTF?!) being part of the final three versus BLACK, V3 and Super-1. At the end, Decade win and a castle beneath the arena rose.

Dai Shocker has risen up and Eijiro senses that something weird has happened and rushed to the scene. We met Ambassador Hell (Since that is the name most fans used) and Eijiro appeared. After being pushed away by Hell, he then revealed his true identity, he is Shocker’s master kaijin creator, Doctor Shinigami!

We are then introduced to their Great Leader, Tsukasa Kadoya who explains to us the purpose of his journey. He travelled to defeat the Riders so that he can create bridges to connect the worlds and save them and since they are saved, they will invade the worlds to create a perfect new world. Evil, yes. Fool proof? Almost since Tsukasa lost his Decadriver, along with it losing his memories. Tsukasa throws them out of the palace like he didn’t care about their relationship before.

The two went to Tsukasa’s old home in which we learned that Sayo knew about it for a long time and his butler is no other than Shadow Moon! Yusuke protected Natsumi and she ran away. At the end, Shadow Moon and Sayo, which is known by members of Dai Shocker as Priestess Bishium of Kamen Rider BLACK fame evicted Tsukasa out of the position as Great Leader. We then learned that Tsukasa is just a tool for them to create bridges around the worlds and it doesn’t stop the merging of the worlds.

Now without his organization, will his old friends still accept him? Dai Shocker’s world conquest begins can the Riders save the worlds now that they are defeated?

On to the review, even though all the Riders are part in this film, this is Decade’s show. Heck, why is Decade’s name on top of the film? Anyways, the film much focuses more on Tsukasa’s character. As Tsukasa, as the Great Leader and as the brother who left her sister in her nest.

As Tsukasa, he is the man who has no memory of his past and seeing that his pictures are normal-normal, it seems that this might be his real world. One of the things I noticed in the Director’s Cut is that it added additional layers in Tsukasa’s character. Unlike in most world’s that he is over confident of himself, it is rare to see him doubt. And yes, in the DC, we learned that he has doubts if after opening the door, he will learn some answers about his past.

As the Great Leader, his job is to subdue the Riders to stop the merging of the worlds and form bridges to connect those worlds and later, invade them. As seen in his tenure in the film as the Great Leader, he is cold and manipulative. After his memories returned, he never tells his friends about it because it is part of his grand scheme. Aside from that, he being defected by his own men in the position simply means that he was maybe, given the responsibility as the Great Leader. And that guy who gave it has quite an amount of trust to him and being pulled out of that responsibility made gave him that he failed the one who gave him the responsibility and lost everything that he has even if he tried his best to reclaim what he have lost.

And as the brother who has just returned to his nest, he is someone who has her sister, thinking that he left because he doesn’t care about her. Tsukasa needs to prove to his sister that he cares about her, that she can walk with her own feet and she can leave the bird’s nest as her own.

Since I started talking about Sayo, I will talk about her. Sayo is Tsukasa’s sister and his brother has just returned after his journey. Sayo, based on what is established thinks that his brother has forgotten about her and now thinks that his butler, Tsukikage cares more about her. Because of this, she becomes Priestess Bishium, one of Gorgom’s High Priest back in Kamen Rider BLACK, much trapped to the shadow of her butler, Shadow Moon. She is a likable character but as a BLACK fan, I am disappointed that they ditched Bishium’s mask, which is the charm to her character.

AU Shadow Moon, Tsukikage is pure evil, unlike the original Shadow Moon. Manipulative and scheming that he was able to turn his Great Leader’s sister into his own ally. Even with that, I am not that happy with this Shadow Moon, this Shadow Moon lacked backbone as the main villain. The reason why the original Shadow Moon was loved by fans because he is the sure fate of most Riders created by the bad guys if he wasn’t able to escape their base. Plus, add the fact that the original Shadow Moon still has his own memories except that he thinks that the person that he once treated as his own brother is now his rival to the position of Creation King, the title of the Leader of Gorgom. What makes it disappointing is the fact that W easily beat him because he doesn’t know much about him!

One of the biggest questions that are bothering fans is how W easily beat Shadow Moon if Decade and Rising Ultimate Kuuga had a hard time beating him. My answer is based on Shadow Moon’s expression, like I said he doesn’t know much about him. Second, he appeared out of nowhere, hence the element of surprise and lastly, Philip did some research on him before they beat him up.

Rising Ultimate Kuuga is probably one of the most senseless forms I have ever seen. If you watched Kuuga, Yusuke Godai died before he acquired the Rising forms! Did Onodera died when Bishium is firing him with the Earth Stone? Nope. Granted that the Earth Stone unlocked the Arcle’s untapped potential, based on what I remembered, Godai had a hard time controlling his Ultimate form and he only used it once against Daguva, then why the hell Onodera was able to wield such strong power without exerting much effort after the spell was broke?! And one thing, the design for the Rising Ultimate form is butt ugly due to the amount of gold seen in the armor.

AU Joji Yuki aka Gacktman/RiderGackt/AU Riderman is once a Dai Shocker scientist who defected the group and according to extended material, created the Decadriver and Diendriver. It still bothers me in what way he defected Dai Shocker. Knowing that he created those Drivers, maybe he was the one responsible in creating the K-Touch and he hide it to Tsukasa due to its power. That is the only explanation on why he defected the group and got his arm cut by Tsukasa (It is given considering his actions and the origin story of the original Riderman!).

The fight scenes of the film were really good. Asides that it fulfills some of the fans dream matches, the final battle scene of the film was really good, especially when Rider 1, Rider 2 and V3 entered in the scene with their motorcycles FLYING out from the dimension wall while their comrades are walking in slow motion! The group fights of each Rider cell in the final battle stand out. Add the fact that the first one which involves Rider 1, Rider 2, Kabby and BLACK RX fought Garangaranda and the second one involves Decade, Diend and Momo using the FFR’ed Blade (Poor Kenzaki), Faiz (Poor Takumi) and Kiva (Poor Wataru) to defeat Ikadevil! The weakness of the climatic battle is that not all Riders in the theatrical version were given the chance to shine, good thing that in the DC, some of the Riders that they never highlighted were given the chance to shine. Another weakness that I can see in the individual battles is that there are only a few Riders whom we can see them use their special moves.

The only bothered me is that BLACK RX was defeated by Decade... same case with Amazon and the other Riders later. My theory? Since they knew about Tsukasa is the Great Leader, they decided to purposely defeat in the tournament so that Tsukasa will have his memories back and hopefully, will learn the error of his ways and defeat Dai Shocker in the process.

About the Riders that appeared in the film, I can say less J and BLACK, all of them are the real ones. As pointed by the miraculous appearance of Agito reverting into Shouichi! As he mentioned when he leave that this is only the beginning of his journey. Based on what the Riders did, they first forget that Tsukasa is the Destroyer of Worlds, Decade and his actions of befriending the AU Riders instead of killing them in order to defeat a greater enemy, Dai Shocker.

Extra Scene!

About the story, even if you don’t have background knowledge about the show, you can easily follow the film, especially the Director’s Cut version. The bits added in the film such as the clips of the worlds merging and Natsumi finding the Decadriver back in episode 1 felt like it was added for the sake of those who never watched the series! For the plot, they tried to revive the classic Kamen Rider origin story, bad guys created the good guy… and it worked. The plot itself is a regular TV arc except they added something to spice it up: fan service. Even though they never had most of the original actors back, but just seeing them in action once again was fun to watch.

The remake versions of Doctor Shinigami and Ambassador Hell were fun to watch and because of this, I am much more interested on watching the original Kamen Rider series. My only problem with the remake versions is that General Jark was ignored in the entire film! So after he was pissed with cockroaches back in SD Kamen Rider (In which he destroyed the Shocker based twice just to kill a single roach), he only speaks once (Which sounds like the original Jark) and was easily killed by Decade without him going Midora!

Our Great Leader, ladies and gentlemen before Gackt slaps his face!

The only thing that bothered me is the Great Leader position. It felt that this position is more of a rank and not the classic the bad guy behind the bad guy and the one who laughs at the end in most series saying that the Riders haven’t defeated him yet. Heck, after reading Igadevil’s tribute to the Great Leader, I was surprised that he is responsible in all the organizations! Just a theory about why the Great Leader title felt more like a rank in Dai Shocker, maybe because the original Great Leader is now called, Greater Leader! Yeah, that could be it and right now he is laughing at the Rider secretly because they only killed one of his stand-ins and he will back in the 40th anniversary show.

The only question that this film has left unanswered is when did Tsukasa joined Dai Shocker and who recruited him and how he ended up being Great Leader still bothers me right now. If they will explain it in some extended material, to be exact a film, it might fill in some holes that it left in the story.

As for the acting, the actors went out of their classic TV episode acting. You can feel the emotions expressed by the actors as they acted their parts. It was highlighted at the scene in which after Tsukasa was kicked out by Shadow Moon, he returns to the studio and Natsumi is having doubts if she can still trust Tsukasa. What makes it memorable is the fact that it is raining outside and Natsumi doesn’t want him to enter the studio.

Overall, the film is probably one of the best Heisei Kamen Rider films to date in terms of the quality of effects and the intensity of the story. The actors gave their all for this film and the amount of love given to the franchise with all the Riders appearing at the near end at the film was one of the best things that this film offered. The only weakness the film has is that it left some questions regarding on how Tsukasa ended up being the Great Leader and how Dai Shocker was formed but it is fine if you are just an old fan and just want to see how the franchise evolved through all these years.

Tsukasa and co. opens a new backdrop that we never know at the end of the film. According to Eijiro’s reaction, it is the World of Rider War. Decade’s journey ends with the prophecy of the Destroyer of Worlds being fulfilled. Next up, the final TV series arc, World of Rider War, the prologue to Decade’s Final Story in which we will see fulfill his mission as the Destroyer of Worlds.

Since this is the Director's Cut, I will place some screenshots that I loved coming from the film!

Now you know why he cooperated!

Sayo enters the magic wardrobe to Narnia!