Opinionated Sailor Moon Super S Retrospective: An Introduction

No, the name totally wasn't taken from SF Debris! Whatever gave you that idea?

I love Sailor Moon more than life itself. Well, not really; if I had to choose between living another day, and never getting to watch/ read anything SM-related ever again, I probably would choose the former, though how wide the margin is is uncertain. Of course, being a fairly big and massively popular franchise, there were moments that many fans would like to forget, or at the very least accept somewhat grudgingly.

Kamen Rider Taisen Part 3: When You Wish Upon a Doomsday Machine

Last time: A boy acted like a jerk to his mother. His father acted like a jerk to his son. The writers acted like jerks to pretty much everybody. And there were explosions. Lots and lots of explosions. Moving on.

Shu's really starting to regret joining Willy Wonka in the glass elevator.

Kamen Rider Taisen Part 2: A Soap Opera with Some Riders in It

I'd really like to announce "Now updated every Friday!" but that would imply actual commitment, and I could never do that. But what's a little white lie, anyway?

Now updated every Friday!

Last time: Some stuff happened to Kouta, a wild Takeshi Hongo appeared, there's a kid who can turn things inside out, potentially being able to kill people in ways too gruesome for Toei to consider acknowledging it, and there are scenes between Takumi Inui and Keisuke Jin that are Oscar-worthy. During all of this, strawberries are eaten and no worlds are destroyed. And now, the continuation.

It's Kamen Rider, where girls don't talk about serious things.

Kamen Rider Taisen featuring Boredom and Confusion

I don't want to recap this movie. Not because it's bad (actually, I think it kind of is, but 100 Years After was worse), but because talking about this movie will basically reveal how little of the Kamen Rider franchise I actually know. As an Asian child to immigrant parents, I didn't exactly have assloads of spare time as a kid, and most of the things I follow currently I started in late high school, which is a BAD time to start becoming a fan of anything. It's kinda deflating to see people having discussions about which Rider suits looked the coolest, bitching about Kamen Rider Decade or the Chou Den-O movies, or debating whether the Showa or Heisei Riders were more badass, while I have to frantically try to catch up in addition to school work. Fortunately, from what I've seen, the fandom seems friendly enough, though I suspect that's partly because the Toku fandom in general is nowhere near big enough to have a huge supply of bigoted vocal minorities.

Anyway, now that I've gotten confession time out of the way, this is Heisei Rider vs. Showa Rider: Kamen Rider Taisen feat. Super Sentai, a movie in which the titular showdown is shoehorned into the last three minutes, and barely features that other franchise that a couple of people may have heard of. After years yelling at each other about how the Showa Riders did actual stunt work with no CGI, or how the Heisei Rider attacks look way cooler, finally the fans get a movie which answers all of their questions about who would win in a fight.

Actually, no it fucking doesn't! What it does do is meander around, trying to tie up loose ends from previous series, and piss all over the legacy of the Showa Riders, without which the Heisei Riders would never have even existed! And I haven't even watched most of the Showa era! Or the Hesei era! How do you try to make a movie to pay tribute to a long-running massively popular franchise, and piss off a relative newcomer like me? That's a pretty big crime for any anniversary movie.