Kamen Rider Decade
Posted on March 9th, 2010
Kamen Rider Decade
[Rating: 7.5/10]
Genre: tokusatsu, action, drama
Tsukasa Kadoya is a wandering photographer who suffers from memory loss. He cannot remember his past or where he comes from, but he holds the power to transform into the masked rider known as Decade, who is apparently fated to be the destroyer of worlds. As he traverses through the many alternate worlds and eliminates the foes within each, each step seems to take him closer to what has been foretold…
If there were such a thing as a visual encyclopedia for the Kamen Rider series, this would be the movie version of it. Kamen Riders from present and yesterday ‘reuniting’ in this series will probably be either something you love or not. One thing I must say, it certainly opened my eyes to the whole rider universe and led me to seek out some older series I have missed, since I am relatively new to this franchise (my firsts being Kabuto and Den-O). One thing I liked was that each world and main rider(s) had a fair amount of screen time (at least 2-3 episodes each), and I was surprised to see fairly decent developed back stories to what has been happening in each world since the end of the various series. The only sad thing was that the original actors of the different are obviously either too busy or old to reprise their roles, which will disappoint the hardcore fans a little, but does not detract too much from show. I enjoyed watching Tsukasa grow as a character and find his ‘home’, and I think his friendship with Natsumi and Yusuke was pretty well developed. However the villain Narutaki was a bit of a disappointment, because in the end he didn’t really do much and he had so much omnimous build up compared to Apollo Geist and co. My favourite universes in the show were Blade, Hibiki, Kuuga, Ryuuki. While I liked the Samurai Shinkenger episode, I found it to be unnecessary (they probably just had it since the two shows were going on at the same time), and I saw not much point for the Amazon storyline – plus the guy who’s Amazon is rather annoying. There was quite a bit of Kiva crossover as Wataru was a bit of a messenger/advisor, but at that point I didn’t really understand as I had never watched Kiva before, so maybe I may have to rewatch decade now that I have. Daiki is another character I could’ve done without as he didn’t serve much purpose.
I have also watched the movie All Riders vs. Dai-Shocker. While it answered the questions left in the series’s cliffhanger ending, I felt it could have been much more developed character and plotwise, as it was basically just a battlefest of Decade vs. everyone else, and then vs. the main baddies. The movie was also a tad too short and felt rushed throughout. That said, I guess we should take into consideration that most of the target audience are children, but why is it that the opinion is that children can’t have an attention span longer than a certain amount of time? I would think if it’s something they really enjoy, they could sit there a bit longer.
Overall, Kamen Rider Decade is a solid tokusatsu series and is something I would recommend as a taster to someone who would like somewhere to start with, since there have been so many seasons out already. It’s really like an overview of everything that has happened so far, as it is the commerative 10th Kamen Rider series. It an example of the possibility of a successful crossovers. The soundtrack is also quite decent.
You’re also probably going to remember this quote after watching 31 episodes~ “I’m just a passing by Kamen Rider.”
Filed under: action, jdrama, tokusatsu