Series Review: Kamen Rider Decade
Written on: 10月 09, 2019
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Title : Series Review: Kamen Rider Decade
link : Series Review: Kamen Rider Decade
And... and people who discover the existence of Decade through encountering the character in other, later series (I myself first encountered Decade in a Gaim movie, and later on in Wizard and the early episodes of Zi-O) might be fooled into thinking that Kamen Rider Decade might be a series that's worth watching. And... and it kind of is, just due to the sheer short length of the series. Unlike the other Heisei series, which ran in the ballpark of 40-50 episodes, Decade ran for 31 episodes and was infamous for being truncated and cancelled, ending on a cliffhanger that's barely resolved in a couple of hodgepodge movies later on. And the quality of Decade's own series is extremely... rocky. A lot of the buildup to the mysteries surrounding Decade and his supporting cast is well-done, but the truncated nature and the lack of any real resolution is going to frustrate anyone who enters this series expecting a whole meal.
A memetic line from the epilogue movie, after all, is "Decade has no story", and while that's a hilarious line to meme about considering the rocky nature of the show's story... it's more that "Decade spends all of its runtime building up to a final act that probably should've taken 10+ episodes to tell, but was forced to be crammed into two episodes and end at a cliffhanger".
And, honestly, it's testament to Decade's actor, Inoue Masahiro, who is easily the go-to legacy actor who keeps coming back every two years or so to have a cameo in a movie or even in the series itself. Hell, he essentially fulfills the role of a fourth Kamen Rider throughout the twentieth Heisei series, Kamen Rider Zi-O! And when given a decent script, or when he's written as a travelling, enigmatic Kamen Rider... Decade is awesome, and Inoue Masahiro portrays the traveling Kamen Rider just sort of... dicking around in his travels through dimensions. Masahiro clearly loves being Decade, and in his appearances outside his home series, Kamen Rider Decade tend to be pretty damn cool.
Of course... in his own series? Bluntly... it kinda sucks. And it's not just because of the truncated ending either. The concept of a dude who travels through worlds and just kind of wants to fit in (and maybe rescue his original dimension) but is rejected by all, only being able to introduce himself as "a travelling Kamen Rider, remember that!", while also being hailed as the horrifying Destroyer of Worlds... it's interesting, but the fact that a series that's supposed to be a celebration and a homage to the nine previous series that came before it ended up being the Decade cast travelling into "Alternate Worlds" (officially termed "Alternate Reality", or AR) vaguely based on one of the previous nine series ends up making the show genuinely feel more like a parody at times. Tsukasa is meant to go and attempt to find his 'role' in each of the nine worlds (and later a couple of extra ones based on Showa series), but the fact that some of the AR worlds barely resemble the series they're supposed to represent other than vaguely featuring the same suits and characters with slightly-different names to the ones we know and love is probably why the whole AR world nonsense was dropped entirely ten years later when we got to Zi-O. Which, one could argue, as messy as it was, is a far more cohesive and respectful homage series than Decade was.
Like, take the early Ryuki-based arc, for example, which ended up being honestly kind of a bizarre parody where the mysterious Rider War was a bizarre kangaroo court where lawyers transform into Kamen Riders and defend their clients through combat... when only a single character in the original Ryuki had a day-job of a lawyer. Or the practical farce of the Blade arc, where the entire premise of the show is reduced into what's essentially a parody of the competitive nature of a corporation. Or the Faiz arc, which ended up being... a school drama for some reason? Honestly, other than an excuse to reuse the suits, none of the story arcs really end up being particularly good tributes to the original series they're supposed to. And if Decade was meant to be a primarily comedic show like those Hyper Battle DVD's, it'd be one thing. But we go through these bizarre doppelgangers that have similar names to the Kamen Riders we know and love... but act completely differently. At that point, why not just make all-new characters?
(Confusingly, the characters seen in the Den-O arc are explicitly the "prime universe" Den-O characters, while Kamen Rider Black/Black RX's actor reprises his role while explicitly being AR versions. It's a headache.)
At least the core cast is decent. I'll go into slightly more detail after the break, but the main character, Kadoya Tsukasa, is kind of a dick -- not the first main character to be a dick, but at least his general frustration and tiredness isn't rewarded with lavished praises like some other previous protagonists that rubbed me the wrong way *coughkabutocough*. He does dickish things, but the writers are also pretty happy to toss some crap his way, and he's likable enough as a main lead, at least for what we see of him here. Of course, the inconsistent writing does mean that just as Tsukasa seems to about to have some depth, it gets wiped clean in time for the next arc, and honestly, the best of Tsukasa's characterization actually ends up happening in the two tie-in movies and not the series itself.
The supporting cast is a bit more problematic. Initially, Decade is accompanied by the grandfather/granddaughter pair of the camera shop he works in, Hikari Eijiro and Hikari Natsumi. Eijiro's just a kooky old grandpa you see in every other Japanese show, while Natsumi... she's around a lot, but she's mostly jut there to be a serious foil to Decade's fooling around, and struggles to really have a personality of her own. Shortly after the first couple of arcs, the AR Kamen Rider Kuuga, Onodera Yuusuke, tags along with them... and he has a massive reputation of being a gigantic loser among the fanbase. And I honestly have to agree. He's a whiny kid, which doesn't immediately mean he's a bad character, but for someone who's supposed to be a homage to one of the more important legacy characters out there, Yuusuke honestly only shows up to be beaten up -- either in human or in rider form -- by the enemy of the week so Decade can show up and win. Secondary riders tend to have a raw deal in these earlier shows, but man, I genuinely don't think Yuusuke even ever won a single fight.
Around the one-third mark, we're introduced to the real secondary rider, Daiki Kaito, Kamen Rider DiEnd, has a cool suit and a hilarious name, and his ability of summoning random obscure riders from previous shows is neat, but the character is mostly a one-note thief who's friends with our main cast because... uh... I'm genuinely not sure why. DiEnd sort of just went from a dickish rival who goes around stealing shit from every world into being basically bash-buddies-worthy-rival with Decade just because... show mandates, I guess? DiEnd's actor is pretty charismatic and makes it work, but ultimately it's kinda hard to buy his character development.
Eventually, after moving through the nine worlds of the Heisei series (Kuuga, Kiva, Ryuki, Blade, Faiz, Agito, Den-O, Kabuto and Hibiki) and acquiring the forms of all nine original protagonists over the course of 20 episodes, we sort of start building up to something as Decade sort of tries to tread into some original territory. Two mysterious characters that follow our main cast throughout the series just to say cryptic things -- the trenchcoated prophet man Narutaki (onore dikeido!) and the enigmatic female bat toy Kiva-la -- seem to hint at something far grander about Decade's purpose. We get a relatively interesting storyline as we go through a couple of arcs involving the "World of the Dark Riders", a crossover with the Sentai show at the time, and the World of Diend... but then we randomly shoehorn tributes to Showa series Kamen Rider Black and Kamen Rider Amazon, before rushing a finale within two episodes to try and tie in to the huge prophetic rider war in the prologue of the first episode.
And... and to say that the plot of the final two episodes is convoluted is an understatement. The two Showa two-parters at least sort of try and introduce what passes for a main villain in Apollo Geist, himself hailing from the Showa series Kamen Rider X, but what Apollo Geist is, and how he relates to Decade's destiny as the Destroyer of Worlds, as well as Narutaki's hammy-but-cryptic warnings, or the vision Natsumi sees of Decade fighting against an army of Riders assembled from all of the designs from the various series and slaughtering them all. Then all the AR worlds collide, all the random minor characters keep fighting each other and seem to erase themselves from existence, and it's implied that the destruction of the world is due to Decade's presence... it's genuinely convoluted, and the genuinely random appearances of the real Kiva and Blade from their original series (especially for someone who haven't watched Kiva at the time of watching this show) to seemingly replace the AR versions and fight Decade... it's all convoluted and never really explained well. Considering the show ends with Decade being confronted with what's implied to be the original versions of the Kamen Riders (or evil, corrupted versions in the Director's Cut), it remains ambiguous just what the fuck is going on, and if these AR worlds are unnatural to begin with.
And... and honestly, as much as I do count Kadoya Tsukasa as one of my favourite Kamen Riders of all time, his actual series is a clusterfuck of a mess. And it's really hard to blame the series considering how obviously it was truncated, and how subsequent movies and other side material released afterwards hint at what Decade was meant to be, but with the series itself going back and forth between trying to play up the twists (are Kivala and grandpa Eijiro actually evil sleeper agents?) and just forcing a happy "everyone is happy and they are best friends forever huzzah!" theme down our throats.
It is practically essential to watch Movie War 2010 to get a properly satisfying ending to Decade, but even then the conclusion there is somewhat confusing and honestly feels like it's a rushed retelling of the cliffs' notes of what Decade's original final act is meant to be... before we rush into the typical crossover movie mishmash of gratuituous action scenes and team-ups. It's at least a conclusion, but not the most satisfying one due to how it's told.
At least the action scenes are pretty well-done, with a lot of fun action scenes due to the nature of "everything available in the past 10 years are toys for us to play." The music is great, with Gackt's Journey Through the Decade being one of the better Heisei phase 1 themes, and that little jingle that plays whenever Tsukasa gets serious is one of my favourite instrumental themes ever.
I've seen people tell me that Kamen Rider Decade is what happens when an amateur fanfiction writer writes his own series and inserts his super-awesome OC character, but only has a vague understanding of the series he's supposed to be homaging and ends up butchering everything else in his fanfiction, yet forces on through with a bizarre supposedly-epic plot that gets even more convoluted as the series goes along, before the writer gets tired and just concludes it randomly. Honestly... I did enjoy parts of watching Kamen Rider Decade. Tsukasa is charismatic and fun enough of a lead to see, and as someone who's watched parts of previous shows before touching Decade, I can kind of appreciate some of the homages like seeing the ridiculous fanwanky nature of Black and Black RX team up together. But honestly... Decade is a series that's perhaps best skipped until you've watched most of the other Heisei series, and even then, I'd argue that you would get a far, far better representation of Tsukasa's story by watching his cameo appearances in other series.
Kadoya Tsukasa, Kamen Rider Decade:
"I'm just a travelling Kamen Rider... remember that!"
I'm going to be a bit more brief about these characters because, well, I was kind of thorough in my main series review. Kadoya Tsukasa is... well, he's a dick with a heart of gold, travelling from world to world, and while acting aloof, it's clear that he's honestly longing for a place to belong, something that adds a bit of a melancholic tone to his "remember that!" catchphrase. I think the moral of the show is that where Tsukasa belongs is in the hearts of his friends, and this moral was hammered home in the (sadly messy) Movie War 2010 epilogue to the series. He's also a photographer, which in Movie War 2010 is noted to be him basically being obsessed with trying to preserve memories or something along those lines, which is neat.
And given a better writing team and a more consistent portrayal (something he arguably gets over his scattered movie appearances), Tsukasa could've been a far more interesting character. Granted, it's perhaps nothing new, but Inoue is clearly talented enough to switch between Tsukasa's exterior of a smarmy dick, and a genuinely protective person beneath, who's scared that all of this "you are destined to destroy worlds" fate is inescapable. There is definitely a running theme of finding where you belong, a running theme about memories and the bonds of the people you make, a theme of a travelling journey, a theme of rejecting (or blindly accepting) what fate has in store in you... but it's honestly pretty cluttered and due to how the show was treated, we never really ended up getting any real payoff to this. Which is honestly kind of a shame -- Decade's character, as a concept, is essentially the very original Kamen Rider, a man who rejects his original purpose as a terrorist cyborg soldier, enhanced multiple times over. But the lack of cohesion in storytelling really meant that a lot of it ends up falling on the wayside.
Daiki Kaito, Kamen Rider DiEnd
Kamen Rider DiEnd is meant to be a foil to Decade, kind of sort of? The show itself is kind of confusing. DiEnd was initially introduced as an asshole thief, showing up to the worlds Decade and his team are in, and instead of helping to put things back together and solve the problem, he goes around and steals important treasures or some shit. But then after the "World of Diend" two-parter where we learn his backstory, Diend is just... he's just there as a buddy of the main characters? Like most Japanese shows, Kamen Rider sometimes has a problem at transitioning between "practically nemesis" to "rivals that bicker", and I do feel that DiEnd's transformation into basically one of Tsukasa's best friends at the end was clunky. (and according to some interviews with the actor, Kaito was meant to be infatuated with Tsukasa? I'm not sure) The character's fun and charismatic, at least, and his gimmick of using a gun to summon random dudes like Psyga, Sasword, Riotroopers, Femme is pretty fun.
In his very first appearance, DiEnd's summoned minions seem to be straight-up mind-controlled by him, even showing pain when DiEnd turned them back into cards, but all subsequent appearances just has them show up and disappear and it's ambiguous if DiEnd is summoning the real riders, a copy of the real riders or alternate-universe versions of the riders... basically, it depends on the writer.
At least his suit is cool, and his name is awesomely ridiculous.
Onodera Yuusuke, a.k.a. AR Kamen Rider Kuuga
Yeah, I've talked about AR Kuuga before. Yuusuke's actor isn't horrible, but man it does kind of suck to see someone who can transform into Kamen Rider Kuuga basically become a jobber that gets beaten up more times than Krillin does in any given DBZ arc. AR Kuuga basically sticks around throughout the entire series, and he basically is just there as the sorta-loser inexperienced rider figure, and... and honestly, it gets old pretty quickly. The character is barely allowed to grow, he doesn't really do much, and other than the gimmick of having a 'final form' that the original Kuuga doesn't (which only really shows up for five seconds in the show), he's honestly kinda shitty.
Hikari Natsumi, Kamen Rider Kivala
Natsumi... as I said before, she exists, and is just kinda there. She doesn't really have much of a point to her, and honestly, poor actress Mori Kanna mostly just stand around either being exasperated at Tsukasa (or Yuusuke, or Kaito), in danger, or just kind of reacting to things. She honestly probably had to do more acting in the entirety of the time where she got possessed by the 'Taros in the Den-O episode than the entirety of the rest of the series, because her character was honestly just kind of there. She's just "the Friend", and that's honestly about it as far as her character goes.
And, yes, she's technically "Kamen Rider Kivala", but that happens for all of five minutes in the final movie, just there to be the tragic always-supportive friend that ends up mercy-killing Tsukasa before he truly becomes something he hates. And, again, it's... just kinda there.
Hikari Eijiro, a.k.a. Professor Shinigami
So for the entirety of the series, Eijiro is just a kooky old uncle, not unlike many other kooky older figures in these Kamen Rider shows. He is completely forgettable, even if he does admittedly get a couple of nice lines.
The thing is though, he's apparently meant to be a villain in disguise or deep cover. Depending on which movie you subscribe to, he's either a deep cover agent that's working for Shocker and keeping tabs on the amnesiac Tsukasa (All Riders vs. Dai-Shocker) or being manipulated and given the memories of Shocker commander Professor Shinigami by Kamen Rider W's main villain, Sonozaki Ryubee (Movie War 2010). Either way, he's supposed to be a tragic enemy, someone who the hero once thought was on their side, but actually a villain... but his transformation into a villain is mostly ended up handwaved away at the end of Dai-Shocker with convenient amnesia, while in 2010 they sort of implied that every evil thing that Eijiro did was because of the plot device implanted within him. Either way... they sort of took the easy way out. I wonder if the show ran for 40+ episodes, how Eijiro would've been handled? Is he the real big bad? Or something?
Kiva-la
Likewise, Kiva-la basically shows up as a female version of Kamen Rider Kiva's Kivat, originally supposedly sent by Narutaki to do... something. Spy on the good guys? And she... kinda-sorta befriends them? Or tolerates them? She ends up being shown to be behind one of the monsters attacking our heroes in one of the story arcs, and in the ambiguously-canon non-Director's-Cut of the finale, she's definitely on the side of the anti-Decade squad, implied to have brainwashed Yuusuke and turned him 'evil'... but the actual post-Decade movies basically imply that Kivala is just one of the good guys and ends up allowing Natsumi to transform, so... I dunno.
Narutaki
Mostly known for his memetic "onore dikeido" (damn you, Decade!), Narutaki is an enigmatic man in a coat and a hat that sort of shows up and follows Team Decade in every world they show up in, give some enigmatic one-liner or two about how Decade is a Destroyer of Worlds, and how Decade's episodic victories is apparently 'dooming everyone', and blaming everything under the sun as Decade's fault. Narutaki's funny, but ultimately one-note and we kind of never learn what his deal was. He sort of assumes the role of random Showa villains in different Decade movies, the same way that Eijiro became Professor Shinigami, but always ends up reverting back to the enigmatic Narutaki. Plus, he's implied to be able to summon the real versions of some villainous Kamen Riders like the Hopper brothers, Kaixa and Ouja (all of which are voiced by their original actors), but, again, everything remains ambiguous.
He would later show up in the Gaim crossover episodes, I believe, introducing himself as an 'ally to Kamen Riders', and is a lot more benevolent, so maybe he's just a dick to Decade?
Apollo Geist
Again, basically what the series has to a proper traditional final villain, Apollo Geist fights Decade over the course of a couple of the final episodes, until the focus became less about 'beat the bad guys' and 'oh shit, the worlds are colliding, Decade seems to be at fault, what the shit'. Geist is... he's just there, y'know? He's just a villain, and not a terribly interesting one at that.
So if nothing else, Decade's design is probably one of the coolest out of the Heisei riders. As a barcode-themed rider, Decade's loud pink magenta colours bordered with white and black end up really striking a very distinctive and cool looking colour palette. Throw in those neat green eyes and the distinctive black barcodes on his helmet, and Decade does end up looking pretty cool, and, hell, honestly kinda tasty. He looks like ice cream. DiEnd is likewise similar, opting for the equally refreshing cyan. These two riders really do stand out compared to most other Kamen Riders in the franchise, most of which tend to opt for more basic primary colours.
Decade's gimmick is that with cards (he's the third, after Ryuki and Blade, to use cards) he can either activate attacks or transform into any previous Heisei Rider. In practice, he basically alternates between everything except for Hibiki (the studio's unfavourite child at this point in time; subsequent spinoffs make it a point to get Decade to turn into Hibiki more often) and Kuuga (because Yuusuke). Oh, and if he's standing next to the real Kamen Rider, he can force them to become a "Final Form Ride", transforming them into weapons through some horrifying CGI contortions. Blade becomes a giant blade; Kiva becomes a giant bow; Kuuga becomes a beetle, et cetera. It's bizarre and honestly slightly disturbing, and clearly meant to promote a line of transforming toys.
DiEnd, meanwhile, summons random non-main riders with his Diendriver. In the Decade series he mostly summons tertiary and movie-exclusive riders, giving them a chance to break out those old musty suits from storage, but in more modern material like Zi-O, this has sort of been changed into summoning secondary riders instead.
What else? Decade's "Complete Form" basically has all of the portraits of the 9 riders get pasted onto him and it looks ridiculously daft. Future forms that would do this, like Grand Zi-O or Ghost Grateful Damashii, at least do it more artistically as opposed to just doing whatever the hell Decade Complete Form did.
Cho Kamen Rider Den-O & Decade NEO Generations: The Onigashima Warship
A crossover with the ever-popular Kamen Rider Den-O, and the reason that the Den-O arc is kinda weird. In addition to explicitly showing the original Den-O cast from the original show, the Den-O arc basically acts as a prologue to this movie... which then features a minimal amount of Decade elements. We did get Tsukasa possesed by Momotaros, which is neat, but ultimately Decade and Diend basically only show up in the prologue and the third act as guest stars.
Kamen Rider Decade: All Riders vs. Dai Shocker
Chronologically supposedly taking place between the World of Amazon and the final two-parter, there are enough bizarre continuity snarls that make the canonicity of this episode ambiguous. Essentially, it reveals Tsukasa's real backstory as we enter the World of Decade, where it is revealed that Tsukasa is actually the long-missing and amnesiac Great Leader of Shocker, the main villain of the original Kamen Rider series. Or well, at least the successor. And Eijiro's actually the Shocker lieutenant Professor Shinigami in disguise. And Tsukasa sort of ends up enjoying his role as the evil leader, before it's revealed that Kamen Rider Black's main villain, Shadow Moon, is actually manipulating everything behind the scenes.
Oh, and there's a Kamen Rider versus Kamen Rider tournament that's mostly an excuse to show off the Showa riders in new HD, with gratuituous action scenes that really lead nowhere, a bunch of random cameos, Natsumi and Diend sort of just running around confused, Gackt as Riderman... and eventually after all the cacophany, we get a genuinely badass show of all of the Showa riders and the 10 Heisei riders assembled as they slow-march towards the assembled army of Dai-Shocker. And as messy as the movie is, that moment is genuinely chilling thanks to some great music and voice acting. Yuusuke manages to access his ultimate final form, and the final fight ends up being against Shadow Moon, featuring the hilariously overpowered first appearance of Kamen Rider Double (who beats up Shadow Moon in a single blow, which took on full-power Decade and Kuuga together).
Ultimately, though, other than the huge revelation that Tsukasa (might be) the amnesiac Great Leader of Dai Shocker, they sort of just apologize to the other Kamen Riders, before returning to their own adventures... and honestly, while it does kind of answer some questions, it ends up raising more, because... yeah, it honestly isn't brought up anywhere else ever, not in the TV show, not in the epilogue movie, and the only time it's ever mentioned was when Decade was using his Dai Shocker leader persona as a double agent cover in Super Hero Taisen.
The movie's pretty neat from a production standpoint, but hella confusing to watch. If I'm remembering correctly, this might actually be my very first exposure to the Decade series, which made me even more confused.
Kamen Rider x Kamen Rider: W & Decade: Movie War 2010
I'm not going to talk about the W storyline here (it's the amazing Begins' Night), which basically takes place independently of the Kamen Rider Decade storyline... but the Decade portion of Movie War 2010 essentially acts as what most people consider the canonical ending of Decade's cliffhanger, and is actually billed as "Decade: Final Chapter". So we get to see Decade basically murder every single Kamen Rider ever, including a pretty badass sequence of fighting the titanic Kamen Rider J, as well as a neat aerial battle against Skyrider, Super-1 and Kabuto. It's basically a Tsukasa that has accepted his fate as Destroyer of Worlds and is acting all emo, and it's up to his friends (well, mostly Natsumi and Yuusuke) to remind him of the memories and photographs that they spent together. There's also a bizarre subplot with an AR version of Tackle from Kamen Rider Stronger, which honestly kind of feels shoehorned in.
As Decade continues to slaughter and turn every other Kamen Rider into cards, Yuusuke and Natsumi eventually transform into their ultimate forms (or transform at all, in Natsumi's case) and Natsumi stabs Tsukasa to death... which turns out to be Tsukasa's gambit. The original, non-AR Kiva, apparently now god or some shit, explains that Tsukasa's role as the Destroyer and the Connector has been fulfilled, that all the dead riders both original and AR are returned to their worlds, restoring all the worlds at the cost of wiping himself out from existence... because "Decade has no story"... but by the power of photographs and memory, Decade's supporting cast essentially will Tsukasa back into existence, which is actually pretty sweet.
Of course, the rest of the movie is basically a huge, extended action scene as the AR worlds' Kamen Riders show up as one last hurrah, all to defend Decade from Super Shocker (led by a transformed Narutaki), and eventually we get a crossover with the cast of Kamen Rider W when the two movie villains combine, we get a lot of action scenes, and then Decade basically goes off to continue his journey on the road as a travelling Kamen Rider.
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Title : Series Review: Kamen Rider Decade
link : Series Review: Kamen Rider Decade
Series Review: Kamen Rider Decade
Kamen Rider Decade [2009]
"Final attack ride! D-D-D-Decade!"
Overall Series Review:
Kamen Rider Decade is the tenth Kamen Rider series in the Heisei era... and is perhaps one of the most infamous ones. Kamen Rider Decade is styled as a "Crisis on Infinite Earths" style crossover, where this tenth Kamen Rider, the titular Decade, travels through the various worlds of the previous Kamen Rider series and tries to unravel some sort of cosmic mystery while also looking for his own destiny. It's unapologetically fan-wanky, and given that the main character is an amnesiac man with the ability to transform into the previous nine main Kamen Riders, definitely will raise some eyebrows. Throw in the fact that this enigmatic world-walker is also the "Destroyer of Worlds", able to go to every world but being rejected by all of them, is also an interesting (if, again, fanwanky) story.And... and people who discover the existence of Decade through encountering the character in other, later series (I myself first encountered Decade in a Gaim movie, and later on in Wizard and the early episodes of Zi-O) might be fooled into thinking that Kamen Rider Decade might be a series that's worth watching. And... and it kind of is, just due to the sheer short length of the series. Unlike the other Heisei series, which ran in the ballpark of 40-50 episodes, Decade ran for 31 episodes and was infamous for being truncated and cancelled, ending on a cliffhanger that's barely resolved in a couple of hodgepodge movies later on. And the quality of Decade's own series is extremely... rocky. A lot of the buildup to the mysteries surrounding Decade and his supporting cast is well-done, but the truncated nature and the lack of any real resolution is going to frustrate anyone who enters this series expecting a whole meal.
A memetic line from the epilogue movie, after all, is "Decade has no story", and while that's a hilarious line to meme about considering the rocky nature of the show's story... it's more that "Decade spends all of its runtime building up to a final act that probably should've taken 10+ episodes to tell, but was forced to be crammed into two episodes and end at a cliffhanger".
And, honestly, it's testament to Decade's actor, Inoue Masahiro, who is easily the go-to legacy actor who keeps coming back every two years or so to have a cameo in a movie or even in the series itself. Hell, he essentially fulfills the role of a fourth Kamen Rider throughout the twentieth Heisei series, Kamen Rider Zi-O! And when given a decent script, or when he's written as a travelling, enigmatic Kamen Rider... Decade is awesome, and Inoue Masahiro portrays the traveling Kamen Rider just sort of... dicking around in his travels through dimensions. Masahiro clearly loves being Decade, and in his appearances outside his home series, Kamen Rider Decade tend to be pretty damn cool.
Of course... in his own series? Bluntly... it kinda sucks. And it's not just because of the truncated ending either. The concept of a dude who travels through worlds and just kind of wants to fit in (and maybe rescue his original dimension) but is rejected by all, only being able to introduce himself as "a travelling Kamen Rider, remember that!", while also being hailed as the horrifying Destroyer of Worlds... it's interesting, but the fact that a series that's supposed to be a celebration and a homage to the nine previous series that came before it ended up being the Decade cast travelling into "Alternate Worlds" (officially termed "Alternate Reality", or AR) vaguely based on one of the previous nine series ends up making the show genuinely feel more like a parody at times. Tsukasa is meant to go and attempt to find his 'role' in each of the nine worlds (and later a couple of extra ones based on Showa series), but the fact that some of the AR worlds barely resemble the series they're supposed to represent other than vaguely featuring the same suits and characters with slightly-different names to the ones we know and love is probably why the whole AR world nonsense was dropped entirely ten years later when we got to Zi-O. Which, one could argue, as messy as it was, is a far more cohesive and respectful homage series than Decade was.
Like, take the early Ryuki-based arc, for example, which ended up being honestly kind of a bizarre parody where the mysterious Rider War was a bizarre kangaroo court where lawyers transform into Kamen Riders and defend their clients through combat... when only a single character in the original Ryuki had a day-job of a lawyer. Or the practical farce of the Blade arc, where the entire premise of the show is reduced into what's essentially a parody of the competitive nature of a corporation. Or the Faiz arc, which ended up being... a school drama for some reason? Honestly, other than an excuse to reuse the suits, none of the story arcs really end up being particularly good tributes to the original series they're supposed to. And if Decade was meant to be a primarily comedic show like those Hyper Battle DVD's, it'd be one thing. But we go through these bizarre doppelgangers that have similar names to the Kamen Riders we know and love... but act completely differently. At that point, why not just make all-new characters?
(Confusingly, the characters seen in the Den-O arc are explicitly the "prime universe" Den-O characters, while Kamen Rider Black/Black RX's actor reprises his role while explicitly being AR versions. It's a headache.)
At least the core cast is decent. I'll go into slightly more detail after the break, but the main character, Kadoya Tsukasa, is kind of a dick -- not the first main character to be a dick, but at least his general frustration and tiredness isn't rewarded with lavished praises like some other previous protagonists that rubbed me the wrong way *coughkabutocough*. He does dickish things, but the writers are also pretty happy to toss some crap his way, and he's likable enough as a main lead, at least for what we see of him here. Of course, the inconsistent writing does mean that just as Tsukasa seems to about to have some depth, it gets wiped clean in time for the next arc, and honestly, the best of Tsukasa's characterization actually ends up happening in the two tie-in movies and not the series itself.
The supporting cast is a bit more problematic. Initially, Decade is accompanied by the grandfather/granddaughter pair of the camera shop he works in, Hikari Eijiro and Hikari Natsumi. Eijiro's just a kooky old grandpa you see in every other Japanese show, while Natsumi... she's around a lot, but she's mostly jut there to be a serious foil to Decade's fooling around, and struggles to really have a personality of her own. Shortly after the first couple of arcs, the AR Kamen Rider Kuuga, Onodera Yuusuke, tags along with them... and he has a massive reputation of being a gigantic loser among the fanbase. And I honestly have to agree. He's a whiny kid, which doesn't immediately mean he's a bad character, but for someone who's supposed to be a homage to one of the more important legacy characters out there, Yuusuke honestly only shows up to be beaten up -- either in human or in rider form -- by the enemy of the week so Decade can show up and win. Secondary riders tend to have a raw deal in these earlier shows, but man, I genuinely don't think Yuusuke even ever won a single fight.
Around the one-third mark, we're introduced to the real secondary rider, Daiki Kaito, Kamen Rider DiEnd, has a cool suit and a hilarious name, and his ability of summoning random obscure riders from previous shows is neat, but the character is mostly a one-note thief who's friends with our main cast because... uh... I'm genuinely not sure why. DiEnd sort of just went from a dickish rival who goes around stealing shit from every world into being basically bash-buddies-worthy-rival with Decade just because... show mandates, I guess? DiEnd's actor is pretty charismatic and makes it work, but ultimately it's kinda hard to buy his character development.
Eventually, after moving through the nine worlds of the Heisei series (Kuuga, Kiva, Ryuki, Blade, Faiz, Agito, Den-O, Kabuto and Hibiki) and acquiring the forms of all nine original protagonists over the course of 20 episodes, we sort of start building up to something as Decade sort of tries to tread into some original territory. Two mysterious characters that follow our main cast throughout the series just to say cryptic things -- the trenchcoated prophet man Narutaki (onore dikeido!) and the enigmatic female bat toy Kiva-la -- seem to hint at something far grander about Decade's purpose. We get a relatively interesting storyline as we go through a couple of arcs involving the "World of the Dark Riders", a crossover with the Sentai show at the time, and the World of Diend... but then we randomly shoehorn tributes to Showa series Kamen Rider Black and Kamen Rider Amazon, before rushing a finale within two episodes to try and tie in to the huge prophetic rider war in the prologue of the first episode.
And... and to say that the plot of the final two episodes is convoluted is an understatement. The two Showa two-parters at least sort of try and introduce what passes for a main villain in Apollo Geist, himself hailing from the Showa series Kamen Rider X, but what Apollo Geist is, and how he relates to Decade's destiny as the Destroyer of Worlds, as well as Narutaki's hammy-but-cryptic warnings, or the vision Natsumi sees of Decade fighting against an army of Riders assembled from all of the designs from the various series and slaughtering them all. Then all the AR worlds collide, all the random minor characters keep fighting each other and seem to erase themselves from existence, and it's implied that the destruction of the world is due to Decade's presence... it's genuinely convoluted, and the genuinely random appearances of the real Kiva and Blade from their original series (especially for someone who haven't watched Kiva at the time of watching this show) to seemingly replace the AR versions and fight Decade... it's all convoluted and never really explained well. Considering the show ends with Decade being confronted with what's implied to be the original versions of the Kamen Riders (or evil, corrupted versions in the Director's Cut), it remains ambiguous just what the fuck is going on, and if these AR worlds are unnatural to begin with.
And... and honestly, as much as I do count Kadoya Tsukasa as one of my favourite Kamen Riders of all time, his actual series is a clusterfuck of a mess. And it's really hard to blame the series considering how obviously it was truncated, and how subsequent movies and other side material released afterwards hint at what Decade was meant to be, but with the series itself going back and forth between trying to play up the twists (are Kivala and grandpa Eijiro actually evil sleeper agents?) and just forcing a happy "everyone is happy and they are best friends forever huzzah!" theme down our throats.
It is practically essential to watch Movie War 2010 to get a properly satisfying ending to Decade, but even then the conclusion there is somewhat confusing and honestly feels like it's a rushed retelling of the cliffs' notes of what Decade's original final act is meant to be... before we rush into the typical crossover movie mishmash of gratuituous action scenes and team-ups. It's at least a conclusion, but not the most satisfying one due to how it's told.
At least the action scenes are pretty well-done, with a lot of fun action scenes due to the nature of "everything available in the past 10 years are toys for us to play." The music is great, with Gackt's Journey Through the Decade being one of the better Heisei phase 1 themes, and that little jingle that plays whenever Tsukasa gets serious is one of my favourite instrumental themes ever.
I've seen people tell me that Kamen Rider Decade is what happens when an amateur fanfiction writer writes his own series and inserts his super-awesome OC character, but only has a vague understanding of the series he's supposed to be homaging and ends up butchering everything else in his fanfiction, yet forces on through with a bizarre supposedly-epic plot that gets even more convoluted as the series goes along, before the writer gets tired and just concludes it randomly. Honestly... I did enjoy parts of watching Kamen Rider Decade. Tsukasa is charismatic and fun enough of a lead to see, and as someone who's watched parts of previous shows before touching Decade, I can kind of appreciate some of the homages like seeing the ridiculous fanwanky nature of Black and Black RX team up together. But honestly... Decade is a series that's perhaps best skipped until you've watched most of the other Heisei series, and even then, I'd argue that you would get a far, far better representation of Tsukasa's story by watching his cameo appearances in other series.
Characters
Kadoya Tsukasa, Kamen Rider Decade:
"I'm just a travelling Kamen Rider... remember that!"
I'm going to be a bit more brief about these characters because, well, I was kind of thorough in my main series review. Kadoya Tsukasa is... well, he's a dick with a heart of gold, travelling from world to world, and while acting aloof, it's clear that he's honestly longing for a place to belong, something that adds a bit of a melancholic tone to his "remember that!" catchphrase. I think the moral of the show is that where Tsukasa belongs is in the hearts of his friends, and this moral was hammered home in the (sadly messy) Movie War 2010 epilogue to the series. He's also a photographer, which in Movie War 2010 is noted to be him basically being obsessed with trying to preserve memories or something along those lines, which is neat.
And given a better writing team and a more consistent portrayal (something he arguably gets over his scattered movie appearances), Tsukasa could've been a far more interesting character. Granted, it's perhaps nothing new, but Inoue is clearly talented enough to switch between Tsukasa's exterior of a smarmy dick, and a genuinely protective person beneath, who's scared that all of this "you are destined to destroy worlds" fate is inescapable. There is definitely a running theme of finding where you belong, a running theme about memories and the bonds of the people you make, a theme of a travelling journey, a theme of rejecting (or blindly accepting) what fate has in store in you... but it's honestly pretty cluttered and due to how the show was treated, we never really ended up getting any real payoff to this. Which is honestly kind of a shame -- Decade's character, as a concept, is essentially the very original Kamen Rider, a man who rejects his original purpose as a terrorist cyborg soldier, enhanced multiple times over. But the lack of cohesion in storytelling really meant that a lot of it ends up falling on the wayside.
Daiki Kaito, Kamen Rider DiEnd
Kamen Rider DiEnd is meant to be a foil to Decade, kind of sort of? The show itself is kind of confusing. DiEnd was initially introduced as an asshole thief, showing up to the worlds Decade and his team are in, and instead of helping to put things back together and solve the problem, he goes around and steals important treasures or some shit. But then after the "World of Diend" two-parter where we learn his backstory, Diend is just... he's just there as a buddy of the main characters? Like most Japanese shows, Kamen Rider sometimes has a problem at transitioning between "practically nemesis" to "rivals that bicker", and I do feel that DiEnd's transformation into basically one of Tsukasa's best friends at the end was clunky. (and according to some interviews with the actor, Kaito was meant to be infatuated with Tsukasa? I'm not sure) The character's fun and charismatic, at least, and his gimmick of using a gun to summon random dudes like Psyga, Sasword, Riotroopers, Femme is pretty fun.
In his very first appearance, DiEnd's summoned minions seem to be straight-up mind-controlled by him, even showing pain when DiEnd turned them back into cards, but all subsequent appearances just has them show up and disappear and it's ambiguous if DiEnd is summoning the real riders, a copy of the real riders or alternate-universe versions of the riders... basically, it depends on the writer.
At least his suit is cool, and his name is awesomely ridiculous.
Onodera Yuusuke, a.k.a. AR Kamen Rider Kuuga
Yeah, I've talked about AR Kuuga before. Yuusuke's actor isn't horrible, but man it does kind of suck to see someone who can transform into Kamen Rider Kuuga basically become a jobber that gets beaten up more times than Krillin does in any given DBZ arc. AR Kuuga basically sticks around throughout the entire series, and he basically is just there as the sorta-loser inexperienced rider figure, and... and honestly, it gets old pretty quickly. The character is barely allowed to grow, he doesn't really do much, and other than the gimmick of having a 'final form' that the original Kuuga doesn't (which only really shows up for five seconds in the show), he's honestly kinda shitty.
Hikari Natsumi, Kamen Rider Kivala
Natsumi... as I said before, she exists, and is just kinda there. She doesn't really have much of a point to her, and honestly, poor actress Mori Kanna mostly just stand around either being exasperated at Tsukasa (or Yuusuke, or Kaito), in danger, or just kind of reacting to things. She honestly probably had to do more acting in the entirety of the time where she got possessed by the 'Taros in the Den-O episode than the entirety of the rest of the series, because her character was honestly just kind of there. She's just "the Friend", and that's honestly about it as far as her character goes.
And, yes, she's technically "Kamen Rider Kivala", but that happens for all of five minutes in the final movie, just there to be the tragic always-supportive friend that ends up mercy-killing Tsukasa before he truly becomes something he hates. And, again, it's... just kinda there.
Hikari Eijiro, a.k.a. Professor Shinigami
So for the entirety of the series, Eijiro is just a kooky old uncle, not unlike many other kooky older figures in these Kamen Rider shows. He is completely forgettable, even if he does admittedly get a couple of nice lines.
The thing is though, he's apparently meant to be a villain in disguise or deep cover. Depending on which movie you subscribe to, he's either a deep cover agent that's working for Shocker and keeping tabs on the amnesiac Tsukasa (All Riders vs. Dai-Shocker) or being manipulated and given the memories of Shocker commander Professor Shinigami by Kamen Rider W's main villain, Sonozaki Ryubee (Movie War 2010). Either way, he's supposed to be a tragic enemy, someone who the hero once thought was on their side, but actually a villain... but his transformation into a villain is mostly ended up handwaved away at the end of Dai-Shocker with convenient amnesia, while in 2010 they sort of implied that every evil thing that Eijiro did was because of the plot device implanted within him. Either way... they sort of took the easy way out. I wonder if the show ran for 40+ episodes, how Eijiro would've been handled? Is he the real big bad? Or something?
Kiva-la
Likewise, Kiva-la basically shows up as a female version of Kamen Rider Kiva's Kivat, originally supposedly sent by Narutaki to do... something. Spy on the good guys? And she... kinda-sorta befriends them? Or tolerates them? She ends up being shown to be behind one of the monsters attacking our heroes in one of the story arcs, and in the ambiguously-canon non-Director's-Cut of the finale, she's definitely on the side of the anti-Decade squad, implied to have brainwashed Yuusuke and turned him 'evil'... but the actual post-Decade movies basically imply that Kivala is just one of the good guys and ends up allowing Natsumi to transform, so... I dunno.
Narutaki
Mostly known for his memetic "onore dikeido" (damn you, Decade!), Narutaki is an enigmatic man in a coat and a hat that sort of shows up and follows Team Decade in every world they show up in, give some enigmatic one-liner or two about how Decade is a Destroyer of Worlds, and how Decade's episodic victories is apparently 'dooming everyone', and blaming everything under the sun as Decade's fault. Narutaki's funny, but ultimately one-note and we kind of never learn what his deal was. He sort of assumes the role of random Showa villains in different Decade movies, the same way that Eijiro became Professor Shinigami, but always ends up reverting back to the enigmatic Narutaki. Plus, he's implied to be able to summon the real versions of some villainous Kamen Riders like the Hopper brothers, Kaixa and Ouja (all of which are voiced by their original actors), but, again, everything remains ambiguous.
He would later show up in the Gaim crossover episodes, I believe, introducing himself as an 'ally to Kamen Riders', and is a lot more benevolent, so maybe he's just a dick to Decade?
Apollo Geist
Again, basically what the series has to a proper traditional final villain, Apollo Geist fights Decade over the course of a couple of the final episodes, until the focus became less about 'beat the bad guys' and 'oh shit, the worlds are colliding, Decade seems to be at fault, what the shit'. Geist is... he's just there, y'know? He's just a villain, and not a terribly interesting one at that.
Gimmicks, Costumes & Power-Ups
Decade's gimmick is that with cards (he's the third, after Ryuki and Blade, to use cards) he can either activate attacks or transform into any previous Heisei Rider. In practice, he basically alternates between everything except for Hibiki (the studio's unfavourite child at this point in time; subsequent spinoffs make it a point to get Decade to turn into Hibiki more often) and Kuuga (because Yuusuke). Oh, and if he's standing next to the real Kamen Rider, he can force them to become a "Final Form Ride", transforming them into weapons through some horrifying CGI contortions. Blade becomes a giant blade; Kiva becomes a giant bow; Kuuga becomes a beetle, et cetera. It's bizarre and honestly slightly disturbing, and clearly meant to promote a line of transforming toys.
DiEnd, meanwhile, summons random non-main riders with his Diendriver. In the Decade series he mostly summons tertiary and movie-exclusive riders, giving them a chance to break out those old musty suits from storage, but in more modern material like Zi-O, this has sort of been changed into summoning secondary riders instead.
What else? Decade's "Complete Form" basically has all of the portraits of the 9 riders get pasted onto him and it looks ridiculously daft. Future forms that would do this, like Grand Zi-O or Ghost Grateful Damashii, at least do it more artistically as opposed to just doing whatever the hell Decade Complete Form did.
Movies & Specials:
Cho Kamen Rider Den-O & Decade NEO Generations: The Onigashima Warship
A crossover with the ever-popular Kamen Rider Den-O, and the reason that the Den-O arc is kinda weird. In addition to explicitly showing the original Den-O cast from the original show, the Den-O arc basically acts as a prologue to this movie... which then features a minimal amount of Decade elements. We did get Tsukasa possesed by Momotaros, which is neat, but ultimately Decade and Diend basically only show up in the prologue and the third act as guest stars.
Kamen Rider Decade: All Riders vs. Dai Shocker
Chronologically supposedly taking place between the World of Amazon and the final two-parter, there are enough bizarre continuity snarls that make the canonicity of this episode ambiguous. Essentially, it reveals Tsukasa's real backstory as we enter the World of Decade, where it is revealed that Tsukasa is actually the long-missing and amnesiac Great Leader of Shocker, the main villain of the original Kamen Rider series. Or well, at least the successor. And Eijiro's actually the Shocker lieutenant Professor Shinigami in disguise. And Tsukasa sort of ends up enjoying his role as the evil leader, before it's revealed that Kamen Rider Black's main villain, Shadow Moon, is actually manipulating everything behind the scenes.
Oh, and there's a Kamen Rider versus Kamen Rider tournament that's mostly an excuse to show off the Showa riders in new HD, with gratuituous action scenes that really lead nowhere, a bunch of random cameos, Natsumi and Diend sort of just running around confused, Gackt as Riderman... and eventually after all the cacophany, we get a genuinely badass show of all of the Showa riders and the 10 Heisei riders assembled as they slow-march towards the assembled army of Dai-Shocker. And as messy as the movie is, that moment is genuinely chilling thanks to some great music and voice acting. Yuusuke manages to access his ultimate final form, and the final fight ends up being against Shadow Moon, featuring the hilariously overpowered first appearance of Kamen Rider Double (who beats up Shadow Moon in a single blow, which took on full-power Decade and Kuuga together).
Ultimately, though, other than the huge revelation that Tsukasa (might be) the amnesiac Great Leader of Dai Shocker, they sort of just apologize to the other Kamen Riders, before returning to their own adventures... and honestly, while it does kind of answer some questions, it ends up raising more, because... yeah, it honestly isn't brought up anywhere else ever, not in the TV show, not in the epilogue movie, and the only time it's ever mentioned was when Decade was using his Dai Shocker leader persona as a double agent cover in Super Hero Taisen.
The movie's pretty neat from a production standpoint, but hella confusing to watch. If I'm remembering correctly, this might actually be my very first exposure to the Decade series, which made me even more confused.
Kamen Rider x Kamen Rider: W & Decade: Movie War 2010
I'm not going to talk about the W storyline here (it's the amazing Begins' Night), which basically takes place independently of the Kamen Rider Decade storyline... but the Decade portion of Movie War 2010 essentially acts as what most people consider the canonical ending of Decade's cliffhanger, and is actually billed as "Decade: Final Chapter". So we get to see Decade basically murder every single Kamen Rider ever, including a pretty badass sequence of fighting the titanic Kamen Rider J, as well as a neat aerial battle against Skyrider, Super-1 and Kabuto. It's basically a Tsukasa that has accepted his fate as Destroyer of Worlds and is acting all emo, and it's up to his friends (well, mostly Natsumi and Yuusuke) to remind him of the memories and photographs that they spent together. There's also a bizarre subplot with an AR version of Tackle from Kamen Rider Stronger, which honestly kind of feels shoehorned in.
As Decade continues to slaughter and turn every other Kamen Rider into cards, Yuusuke and Natsumi eventually transform into their ultimate forms (or transform at all, in Natsumi's case) and Natsumi stabs Tsukasa to death... which turns out to be Tsukasa's gambit. The original, non-AR Kiva, apparently now god or some shit, explains that Tsukasa's role as the Destroyer and the Connector has been fulfilled, that all the dead riders both original and AR are returned to their worlds, restoring all the worlds at the cost of wiping himself out from existence... because "Decade has no story"... but by the power of photographs and memory, Decade's supporting cast essentially will Tsukasa back into existence, which is actually pretty sweet.
Of course, the rest of the movie is basically a huge, extended action scene as the AR worlds' Kamen Riders show up as one last hurrah, all to defend Decade from Super Shocker (led by a transformed Narutaki), and eventually we get a crossover with the cast of Kamen Rider W when the two movie villains combine, we get a lot of action scenes, and then Decade basically goes off to continue his journey on the road as a travelling Kamen Rider.
Other Tie-in Stuff:
- There's also a tongue-in-cheek Hyper Battle DVD (Protect the World of Televi-kun) which is mostly just fluff and a comedy skit.
- Kamen Rider Decade's final two episodes had a Director's Cut with several changes, which seem to be the one that Movie War 2010 takes as canon. The original aired cut had Kiva-la transforming Yuusuke into a brainwashed Ultimate Kuuga, and instead of ending with just Decade fighting the army of Riders, the final shot is Diend shooting Decade in the head, seemingly mercy-killing Decade. Of course, Movie War 2010's conclusion basically changes this so that Decade's mercy-kill happened in the course of the movie.
- Kamen Rider Decade's cast also appear in Den-O's Cho Den-O Trilogy: Episode Yellow (mostly just DiEnd); Fourze's Super Hero Taisen (where Tsukasa is the main antagonist!); Gaim's Heisei Rider vs. Showa Rider: Kamen Rider Taisen; the final arc of Kamen Rider Wizard and as major supporting characters in Kamen Rider Zi-O.
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