Remember Crisis Crossovers, those things that happen when a threat goes beyond just a singular series that requires numerous things to come together. Well you have likely seen one since comics have been doing one every year. These crisis's felt less like special events and more like something that was going to happen in a year like taxes, summer and the inevitable Christmas after Halloween. Toei had surprisingly avoided these kind of major epic crossovers for most of its toku existence, yeah sentai and they had an entire season worth of fanservice, but crossing over with sibling series, was untapped potential. But in 2012 that all changed with the release of Super hero Taisen, an epic crossover between Kamen Rider and Super sentai that fans enjoyed as much as a bad fanfic. The original Taisen feels like a bunch of action scenes stitched together with a thin plot that ends with one of the dumbest heel face turns I have ever seen. One year afterwards, Taisen Z was released and had the benefit of having a story of some kind for most of the film before devolving into action and some questionable power level. Then after that Kamen Rider Taisen came in, smacked fans across their face, pissed in their bathroom without flushing, and flipped the bird at them as they stole their car keys. It wasn't good. And like that in 2015 spring had sprung and it was time for yet another taisen film, and at this point they were less toei toku films and just another rider film, since Sentai had been relugated to just Giant Kaiju and robot fodder when they show up in the end, now they were relegated to showing up in a crossover with the current rider that served as a follow in to the film.
In the case of 2015, the then current series for rider and sentai were Kamen Rider Drive and Shuriken Sentai Ninninger, and the Taisen was Gp: Kamen Rider 3. Even though I thought Kamen Rider 3 was V3, but no now their is this true successor to the original Double rider's and he is part of the main part, If my writing has not come off as the most positive you'll have to forgive me, as stated before these feel less like a special event and more like taxes. So let's get to talking about this duo of existing.
While the Ninningers are fighting a Yokai, they are soon troubled by weird slowdown as the monster trounces them and takes his leave, not long after that Drive pulls in and begins to attack the group seeing them as potential roidmudes and also trounces them even as they try to explain and ends with Takaharu being arrested, meanwhile while this is going on Go has been photographing strange phenomenon in the sky and soon runs into a mysterious rider who just fights him... because we need to tease the upcoming movie and give kids a reason to be excited.
So remember how much people complain how much Ninninger is a red ranger fest with how Takaharu takes up so much screen time, well this special doesn't really do anything to undo that as the other ninningers could've been entirely in suit for their contribution to this story, its mostly the takaharu and the Shinnosuke show as the two end up going along with the standard buddy cop scenario as they start out not trusting each other and slowly learning to trust one another, while some of the drive cast does get it a bit better, they are mostly sidelined. Also for some reason this special is far too complicated for its own right, is their any reason as to why now all of a sudden the ninningers come from a different dimension to give some motivation for the heroes in the second half to get to figure out a way to send them back. Also the whole oh shocker also has a hand in this plan alongside the Yokai and the roidmudes because they are the villains of the film so they have to show up in this special since it is a tie-in to the film.
Shinnosuke and Takaharu preparing to meet shocker in a final climatic battle... oh and Go and the other Igasaki siblings are here too, you know, if you care.
That's not to say that the special doesn't have its moments. One notable moment is when a the midpoint when the ninningers pull out their mecha and after the fight their arrested for collateral damage they caused and that is a bit chuckle worthy alongside their escape, and when both cast do get some interactions it is actually kind of nice (even if after all of this time I am still not a fan of the grandpa.) But it is so little and really only Takaharu has any kind of meaningful interaction, the other ninningers and family are just their, the SIU does have a bit more and Go feels completely disassociated with the story itself, honestly the fact that it is a tie in also hurts it because it came out at the wrong time. Ninninger premiered on Japanese's televisions near the end of February, this special premiered close to a month after the premiere and only 5 episodes had premiered and the status quo barely established, if this was done later in the shows run rather than the beginning I think it would be fine. But you got to promote the film, its only in theatres for a limited time and that's what this is. Its a quick promotion for the film and nothing else, their are some glimmers of things going on, but as a crossover, it leaves a lot to be desired and is weaker than the last one, that one at least felt like it made better use of the full cast than this film and while not everyone got use, it felt like the cast was interacting. Though I guess the credit here is the film that these lead into is better than the other. Speaking of.
In a flashback to the early 70's, we see the original double riders defeating shocker's great leader and riding off into the sunset, a scene that looks familiar to any 70's kid. But as they ride out they are intercepted by a mysterious rider in a car. The rider identifies himself as Kamen Rider 3, and he was designed to destroy the two riders and does exactly that, killing the two riders. Flash forward to the present year and a mysterious green wave covers the world and converts the world to one ruled by shocker. In this world every rider now has been defeated and brainwashed to be shocker riders and that of course includes Shinnosuke, however Kiriko thanks to a signal bike is able to remember the old world and after a chance encounter with Kamen rider black and Kamen rider 3, Shinnosuke reawakens his heroic heart rather quickly and now joins the few remaining heroic riders to travel to rider town to join the resistance to save the world from shocker.
Okay stop me if you have heard this one, Shocker has taken over the world thanks to some timey-wimey BS
Now tell which film I am talking about, a change in the past allows Shocker to conquer the modern era and know the heroes must find the source of the change and remove it. If your answer is Let's go Kamen Rider your right, but if you also say GP 3, you'd also be right. Now that's not to say that their are differences, unlike Let's go we do spend the entire film in the new reality rather than in the past showing the world and giving some riders a bit more presence. But the whole work feels derivative, with Shoji Yonemura just slapping elements from the previous films into this one with an honest care in regards to time travel and paradoxes of a sledgehammer to your head. You can already tell their are going to be issues going forward when you take into account the fact that V3 came about because of 1 and 2 in the original timeline, kind of hard to rectify that point since those two are dead in the water. Though to be fair its not like Yonemura has cared for those, he has always had two blacks running about so its likely the same he... or their is only one who starts as Black but evolves into Black RX because consistent rulings is B.S. The most Ridiculous one has to happen right at the end But we will save that for the end. But when you introduce time travel like this, their is no playing loose with it, you set rules and FOLLOW them, it makes the story more enjoyable when a viewer is not pausing every 5 minutes to question things.
But of course the big draw of the film is the new rider, the true sucessor to Riders 1 and 2, Kyoichiro Kuroi, and he is... fine. I state that in the term's of movie introduced rider he is league's better the Kamen Rider Taisen's Kamen Rider Fifthteen (though that's a rather low bar.) He get's his moments in the entire film, staightfoward arc that one can follow from beginning. He's not the most groundbreaking character but he makes the film a bit more interesting in a rather bingo style film.
The Triple riders ready to fight... oh how are Ichigo and Nigo still alive if they were killed in the early 70's. Oh you see their soul's survived in the history modifying machine and have bided their time until they revived... because asspulls are the theme of the day with these films
Honestly that probably is the most interesting thing of listing of the obvious beats that we have seen. The return of a showa era evil organization, check. the main rider is basically gone for much of the film and shows up right at the end, check. A whole bunch of suddenly this happens to move the plot along, check. The current sentai team shows up for a giant mecha vs mecha fight, that is a super check and they just show up, considering that they are from a different dimension, are these this universes ninninger, do they exist in this dimension, did shocker also convert the sentai's into being part of their army, I know that the first sentai was a few years after kamen rider, but does that also entail that the black cross army was absorbed into shocker, I am having these questions because this film offers so little that I am asking these things outside of being bored out of my mind, even doing the big race that this film is named after I was bored out of my mind thinking about other things, and I was this way until the ending decides to be this complete mind screw.
So spoiler the riders defeat shocker's great leader who is now a giant robot and Kuroi becomes a good guy to assist the heroes and when tie is restored he goes back to who he used to be. Seems normal right, well you see during the big climatic, but really standard final fight in a gorge sees Go killed by one of the monsters during the fight. Okay, he will likely be revived afterwards.... yeah he should be but as we head towards the credits, Kiriko reveals that Go was not revived by when time was fixed and we end that way... yeah, that's a thing. Kind of hard to end on that considering the show still has Go appearing alive and well, so how does the film explain this... well, remember how movie war full throttle came with a dvd that had episode 0 on it, yeah, they did the same with Taisen GP was a 4 episode mini series titled Kamen Rider 4, but that is a story for another day.
No really, this is how we are ending. One of our main characters dead.
Kamen Rider Taisen GP 3 may not be the worst of these, but its the one that feels the most tired, most redundant, and least inventive for a series that already has a very low bar. Nothing about the film feels unique and just feels like we are retreading all past 4 films. Arguably Kamen Rider Taisen had much more infuriating things about it but it got a reaction out of me, this... this feels like its here because we need to do a spring movie but since no one really wanted to do it. Yonemura just did a best of his previous films, and honesstly if it weren't for the rather ridiculous ending, it would just be another meh toku movie. But it kind of gets you to watch that mini series, and considering how good the mini series is, I guess their is some merit to it... yeah not much.
FINAL GRADE: No
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