35 and 40 years, very few things can claim to have lived that long especially in the realm of entertainment, but both Super Sentai and Kamen Rider were some of those exceptions, yet despite both shows being created by toei, they had really no major crossovers, with the first real crossover between the two shows happening during Decade and the Shinkenger era for a two-parter. But as both shows entered their 36th and 41st years, Producer Shirakura stated their was no intention of slowing down, they were going to one up what they had done prior. And so at the end of Movie War Megamax, a teaser for a new movie was shown that was mind blowing for the age, all 40 kamen riders and the 199 sentai heroes in the same teaser, this wasn't just crossing over the current season but would see a major crossover between both worlds, how could this go wrong... I've already reviewed every other taisen besides Chou and Superhero Senki how do you think.
The world is facing it's biggest crisis, as Captain Marvelous and Tsukasa Kadoya have proclaimed that they will annihilate both Rider's and Sentai respectively, having revived both the Zangyack empire and Dai shocker respectively, as the two go on their spree of eliminating both, their closest allies, Joe and Daiki must figure out what has drove both of their friends to this point.
Sheesh Tsukasa, I don't know who told you that hairstyle was in but I would fire your stylist at Daishocker
And that is the plot though I would barely call this a plot and more outright just a bunch of action sequences loosely connected by our quartet trying to figure out what is going on. And honestly big crisis crossover feels rather lying because this really feels like a gokaigerxdecade movie that happens to feature the rest of both franchises. From the sentai side the main focus is Joe and Doc and on Rider side it's Daiki paired with of all people Hina Izumi from OOO's as they try to uncover what is happening and why their friends have fallen.
And I mean it takes a good long while to get to that, as we have fight scene upon fight scene which do actually look nice but it feels like we are just going around in circles for about 90% of this movie, the quartet just move about interact barely with Marvelous and Tsukasa and that's it, their no real major bones to this outside of the fight scenes of hey both rider and sentai are fighting one another, as if that is meant to get you through the 90 minute runtime and to remind you hey Den-o is a thing still you remember Den-o well here they are again for a quick cameo
. Don't get me wrong, action is not intrinsically boring but when it makes up much of something your mind just turns off like it did for me, I found myself clocking out about the midway point just because I was bored and that is sort of this film's biggest issue it's boring. Heck even some of the fights are just inconsistent, the film opens with Marvelous trouncing the original Seven Showa riders but when he fights Fourze he struggles a bit, and later we see Tsukasa struggle against the go-busters but easily trounce the Goseigers.
Behold, the most complete coalition of Toei superheros, by 2012 standards and not counting Toei's massive back catalog of other toku's
And it is mostly just that up until the ending decides to do just have the most insane twists imaginable. So shocker (No pun intended.) Marvelous and Tsukasa are not evil and merely did all of this to destroy the remnants of both organizations. All heroes from both faction are still alive and come out to fight the newly combined Zangyack and Dai shocker forces and in the middle of all of this, Daiki just decides he's a bad guy now. Why, well Tsukasa lied to him and did you see how these two acted earlier, so he takes control of the big machine and intends to destroy everyone so now the go-busters and fourze (sorry, let me rephrase that, Red buster, blue buster and fourze, since Yoko get's kicked out to make room for him.) have to fight him. You know having not watched Decade before this, it was not a great introduction to this guy that he did that it comes off as petty and makes the guy look like a total a-hole, and the heroes don't even reprimand him, he leaves just as quickly forgiven and that's the end, also good thing that the state's worked with Go-busterOh or that would've been a serious issue.
I would do some snarky comment, but uh no, screw this guy, he legitimately is the worst.
Though on the flipside of this whole blue ally thing, the big praise I can at least give this movie is Yuki Yamada's time as Joe Gibken, playing the stoic isn't often the best way to show of acting, but he really give's the best performance of the film especially his interactions with Marvelous though the stuff between him and Daiki was fine, until the end obviously
CONCLUSION
Despite Joe and the fight scenes, the first Taisen movie, is not that great, it's a collection of rather cool looking fights throughout with what can barely be considered a plot as the heroes just jump around to new locations as the plot demands of them. I still would consider Rider Taisen the worse film just because of the story being that much more infuriating and just less special. Don't get me wrong, if I were ranking these, this would definitely come in second to last and they can be viewed as terrible in two different ways, Superhero Taisen is incoherent but pretty while rider Taisen is sort of coherent but has a much worse plot.
FINAL VERDICT: ABSOLUTE TRASH
Comments