Hey, you know what people like, crossovers between certain things that go together, and the more franchises we have crossing over the more awesome it ends up being. Following the previous Super Hero Taisen, 1 year earlier, Toei released Super hero Taisen Z, a crossover between Super Sentai, Kamen Riders, and new for this crossover was Space Sheriff, a group of series from Toei's Metal Heroes Meta series that lasted from the early 1980s through the late 90's. Now I didn't watch the first Taisen at the time of this review so some may be wondering why I am not talking about that first, well, despite being a sequel, there is really no major connection between that film and this one outside of the title. So without the baggage of its previous outing, is this a satisfying crossover, or just something you can look at as...neat but nothing more.
The world finds itself in a panic as magical circles start popping up all over and teleport's people and objects into rather bad locations. As Haruto Soma is investigating why this is happening, he is approached by a man who after confirming he is Kamen Rider Wizard, dons a metal suit and begins attacking. He is a member of the Galaxy Federation Police who has been sent to eliminate not only Haruto, but Kousuke Nitou due to being magicians as they have been happening all across the universe. But after seeing Haruto risk his life to save some people, the space sheriff, Geki Jumonji proceeds to leave and ends up off the case because of it. Meanwhile while all of this is going on, Yoko Usami, who is Yellow buster is camping out alongside her Buddy Roid Usada Lettuce when a little robot crashes nearby and is soon attack by a group who has come for the robot. What is this robot relation to a once again revived shocker, can the riders clear their names before they are destroyed and can they save the earth before the GFP destroys the earth because...because we needed major stakes for the finale.
Now you may have noticed in the synopsis I didn't bring up a certain group of dinosaur heroes who if you are looking at the poster for the movie has their red ranger appear right near the front with both wizard and space sheriff Gavan. Well, the Kyoryugers really don't have much to do with this film. They show up near the beginning and Daigo, Kyoryu Red, fights with Haruto a little bit. Then the group dissapears until the end when they all of a sudden show up to help in the big climatic fight. Come to think of it, I can't even call Haruto the main rider focus in the movie, because like the kyoryugers he kind of disappear's from the movie part way in and the main rider focus is now on the show's secondary rider beast. Which I don't mind, yeah one could call the poster false advertising as one could considered two thirds of the poster more secondary than main, but having a focus on fewer characters here is a good thing as the story could've been easily muddled with the amount of characters that their were.
That being said, the story is not with out its odd moments. So in order to give some form of conflict, the galactic union acts sort of like this as they threaten to blow up the planet if they cannot deal with the threat of space shocker, and how much do these people do to help, send a couple of their men and that's about it. It also seems so odd that in the few scenes that we get of the previous Gavan, Retsu Ichijoji, argue to help more than trying to just blow it up considering his history with the planet, maybe it is the fact that he is now a commander but he is rather cold about the whole thing. But speaking of the Gavan portion, one thing this movie really got me interested in seeing was a modern Space sheriff series. I know following this they are mostly reserved for movies and that is disappointing, this cast has great chemistry together, they all play their parts pretty well, and they do make up a good chunk of some of the more emotional scenes of the film. That's not to say that the other two thirds of this crossover were lacking in any means, Gai and Yoko are perfectly fine here and the scene's between Yoko and her little Robot ball friend are heartwarming and harsh considering what needs to happen to it. While the riders portion is the most lacking considering the only real major returning actors are from wizard which was running at the time at a little humorous scene near the end with the big climax where Fourze ends up being teleported away and ends up being saved by Inazuman, which is in reference to the previous movie war film.
Space Shocker itself is not particularly very interesting, its made up of a bunch of old sentai, rider and Space sheriff monsters and villains, so don't expect the film to introduce them to people who haven't seen those series which can be confusing as characters show up with some fan fair and again, if you have no knowledge of who some of these's characters are, then they are just their.
The action here is pretty fine, their is a decent mix of out of suit fights, though their are some disappointments throw in their, some examples include the fight between Haruto and Daigo which ends up being cut short by Gai, then their's Moon Shadow, who throughout the film as being someone very dangerous and the one person to be careful of, is rather quickly handled by the kyoryugers. Their is also frustrating wasted potential in the terms of how we are given returning Metal heroes suits (Space sheriff was a sub series to that) and they are used by the gokaigers just to use their big cannon to fire at a group of monsters and nothing else, laaaaaaaame. The later half does have a good amount of action scenes including a big amount of returning suits, not actors, suits, so if you were hoping for specific characters to come back may be disappointing. Arguably the biggest waste of returning characters is despite the fact that we are dealing with magic, Toei's previous magic tokusatsu, Mahou sentai Magirangers don't really have any actor's returning, I know, series from 2005 it would've been hard to get the five or 6 rangers back together, but you could've at least gotten some of them, Magi yellow's actor played a major part in Go-busters so there were people who could've reprise their roles.
CONCLUSION
Super Hero Taisen Z is perfectly fine, the story is fairly coherent, the interactions we get are decent, and I found something that I would enjoy visiting in the form of the space sheriff franchises. That being said, certain aspects are disappointing to say the least and the GFP come's off a little unlikable in the treatment of earth. Its not going to blow anyone away, but I didn't feel like my time was completely wasted with this. Though I do recommend watching a bit of all three series before coming into this as it is heavy on knowing certain characters from those series.
FINAL GRADE:C-
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