Masked Rider Den-O & Kiva The Movie: Climax Deka Review

So like I said in my last review, Masked Rider Den-O spawned several movies, and still does to this day, though I forgot to mention that it was the first series after the Kamen Rider revival to ever have more than one movie, and for a little while was the only Heisei Rider show to have more than one. Now this movie really took people by surpirse. Den-O was popular during it's run, but the international fanbase had no idea that the series would last longer than just its TV run. This movie stands out a lot among the others, because not only was it the first ever Heisei Kamen Rider team-up, a long time tradition for it's brother show, Super Sentai, and doesn't exactly fit into Den-O canon. the film was originally planned to be a V-Cinema release, AKA direct-to-DVD, so they took some creative leeway and as such, the events are somewhat standalone, since they are never mentioned in any further movies, and the movie directly afterwards contradicts this movie's events. Does that make it a bad movie? Not at all!

Before the movie, we get a nice little animated feature with the Taros and Kivat Bat III(Kiva's partner/Henshin device voiced by Tomokazu Sugita) called Momotaros's Let's Go Kiva, though it's strange in how the characters(at least the Taros) are photo-still heads of the acutal characters, on diproportionate bodies, while kivat is a rather choppier version of himself. It starts with Kivat explaining the history of movies, similar to how he give a mini-history lesson during the recaps to the Kiva TV series, usually with some relevance to the plot of that week's episode, though Kivat here is interupted by the Taros, who take turns saying what they think a movie should feel like, but Kivat gets back in charge, and seems to tell the story of how he met the person who would become Kiva, but the credits stop him from doing so. The short is a fun little way of starting off the feature.

So this movie starts with a couple of bank robbers driving away from the scene of the crime, with the police in hot pursuit. Things look sticky, when from out of the blue comes a guy on the Machine DenBird. It's M-Ryotaro(Ryotaro still played by Takeru Sato, Momotaros voiced be Toshihiko Seki), and he's got a shotgun! While he fires some shots to shake up the robbers, a van drives in front of them, and the back opens up to reveal Urataros(Voiced by Koji Yusa), Kintaros(Voiced by Masaki Terasoma), Ryutaros(Voiced by Ken'ichi Suzumura), and a little girl. Said girl blasts the getaway car with a bazooka flipping it over. The group gets out of the van, joining up with M-Ryotaro as a narrator explains that they are the DenLiner Police, who take on the jobs the regular cops can't handle, and the group introduces themselves with Momo's signature pose and catchphrase, though modified to include "we" instead of "I".

Heres where this can be classified as AU: the Den-O TV series ended with Ryotaro turning in his Rider Pass in, since he no longer needed to be Den-O, and the DenLiner, with it's crew and the Taros in tow, left to once again wander time. In this movie, we have a situation where the DenLiner gang, Ryotaro included, became a sort of Imagin-capturing police group, and as such, the movie plays out like a Police Drama, with plenty of guns to match.

Getting back to the plot: Ryotaro, the one in the group with the most sense, boots Momo out of his body, berating them for wasting time with posing, including the little girl, who he refers to as Hana. This is actually Hana, though a de-aged, 10-year-old version of her former self nicknamed Kohana(Played by Tamaki Matsumoto) who first appeared in episode 33, as a path to the future when Hana came from started to form. The real cause of this is that the original actress for Hana, Yuriko Shiratori, dropped out of the show due to unclear circumstances, so they had to replace her. So after the spat, the two robbers reveal that one of them is contracted to the Pink Rabbit Imagin, who hops out of his host's body(no pun intended), and the other turns into the Horse Fangire, one of the monsters from Kiva. Ryotaro and Momotaros get down to business, transforming into Den-O Sword Form, and the group goes charges into action.

After that, we get an opening credits sequence similar to the second opening to Den-O, with the same song, and features clips from the movies, the original openings to Den-O and Kiva, as well as clips from the PV(Promotional Video, the Japanese equivalent of a Music Video) to Climax Jump Den-Liner Form, the song being played.

After the opening credits, we get back to the action. The group has moved to an abandoned field, and while the others take on the Imagin, Momotaros squares off with the Fangire, who's pretty tough. It isn't too long, though, before Momotaros finishes off the orse with an Extreme Slash, and Ryutaros blows the Imagin out of the sky with his Ryuvolver. Getting back to the DenLiner, we see that the dining car has been renovated into a detective office, and we meet Kazuya Suzuzi(Played by Ryota Murai, who would later got on to play Yusuke Onodera/Masked Rider Kuuga on Masked Rider Decade), a detective sent to help with the DenLiner Police's investigation of a stolen Rider Pass, one belonging to Owner(Kenjiro Ishimaru), though Suzuki is extremely scared of the Imagin. We're also treated to a scene where Naomi(Rina Akiyama) warns everyone of a sharp turn and we see why it's not a great idea to have an office inside a moving train.

In the next scene, we meet our villains, wanted criminal Seiya Kuroki(Played by Kenjii Takechi) and the evil Imagin Negataros(Voiced by Hikaru Midorikawa). While we don't find out much about Kuroki, Negataros is physically an inverted-colors Momotaros with a different belt buckle, hence the name. He's the one who's stolen Owner's Rider Pass, and plans to create an evil orginazation ala Shocker from teh original Masked Rider, under the name Negataros Corps, and wants Kuroki and his men to join him. He has with him several Fangire, all of whom never reveal their true forms, while Kuroki has a bunch of henchmen and his right hand woman, Sarah, who's also the contract holder for the Clown Imagin. With them are Yuto Sakurai(Yuichi Nakamura) and Deneb(Voiced by Hochu Otsuka), who are posing as bodyguards for Negataros.

After a crazy scene where R-Ryotaro and his hip-hop dance posse, another thing pulled straight from the series, go on an arresting spree of anyone who looks suspicious, we see that Ryotaro's sister Airi(Played by Wakana Matsumoto, no relation to Tamaki) as well as her two constant stalkers, journalist Seigi Ozaki(Akira Nagata) and spiritualist Isse Miura(Ryo Ueno), come along with her as she pays a visit to where her brother works(it's basically established here that the DenLiner Police's existence is public knowledge). We get a sweet scene where Ryutaros gets a boxed lunch from Airi, who he's always had a major crush on, as well as a cool part where Owner knocks everyone out with his own DenGasher Gun Mode shat shoots flags. Then after a big commotion involving Ryotaro and Suzuki meeting Wataru Kurenai,(Played by Koji Seto) AKA Masked Rider Kiva, and his friend Shizuka Nomura(Played by Rina Koike), the two go undercover and discover who thir enemies are, and we get some wild scenes where the DenLiner Police storm the hideout following Suzuki's one man assault, we learn of Suzuki's backstory and his desire to follow in his father's footsteps, and so it's up to Den-O, Zeronos, and the rest of them to stop Negataros, who later turns into Masked Rider Nega Den-O


As far as Den-O movies go, this one really stands out for a lot of reasons. In this story, Ryotaro is a lot more proactive and less timid than he used to be, suggesting that this is an alternare timeline to the series ending, and really once again shines as a character. Yuto takes something of a backseat, though we do get to see U-Yuto, which doesn't work quite as much as U-Ryotaro. Kohana and the Taros are really in the supporting roles, and don't steal the spotlight all too much. Suzuki is given a good deal of focus, and really gets his time to shine in a face-off against Kuroki, who is significantly less detailed.

Negataros is a subject all his own. In all honesty, while he is cool in action, conceptually, he is one of the most lazily desinged villains in all of Den-O. Dark versions of main riders has been done before with Heisei riders like Ryuga from Ryuki and Dark Kabuto from Kabuto, and the idea of that was always done lazily. In the case of Negataros, Nega Den-O, it doesn't help that he's stuck with an identical Den-O Belt to the regular in appearance, but with a voice and sound mod to be lower pitched. He's also stuck with a single "Nega Form" that is just Den-O Sword Form with recolored armor, and yet is given the ability to use any mode of the "Nega DenGasher", which is only different in having a recolored Aura Sword(the blade to Sword Mode). The Nega DenLiner is not much better, though it's oddly filled to the brim with Gigandeaths(giant reincarnated Imagin) rather than normal weaponry. So conclusively, Nega Den-O is pretty good in execution, but kind of ruined by lazy concepts.

The action is not quite typical Den-O fare. It has a lot of gunplay, plus the whole bazooka thing, which was used twice, the second time to not-so-great results. It features a lot more untransformed fighting than a typical episode of Den-O, so what little transformed fighting we do get is greatly appreciated, though it's not too little that it doesn't feel like a Den-O movie. Not to say that the fighting is perfect. There are two occasions that heavily stand out: One is when Den-O's Climax Form(a combiantion of his first four forms) does his rider kick, the suit doesn't go into its Kick Mode as it would in the show, as if the crew forgot, and the other is a painfully obvious instance of wire fighting, that, if it didn't look obvious enough, was show to be wire fighting in front of a green screen during the end credits, which play over a bunch of behind-the-scenes clips. Though we do get another train battle, this time with an appearance Kiva and Castle Dran, his giant dragon mixed together with a castle. Though since the battle takes place in the world between time, that raises a lot of questions that further place this in AU Territory

The music this time around is a lot more like the series, featuring a lot of familiar BGM pieces, as well as all 6 Insert Songs from the show played within the movie, and not all of them were even put into battles, making it seem a bit forced. But it does capture the Den-O spirit to a fair degree

Though it is supposed to play out like a police drama, it somewhat lacks in the drama, since at a little an hour in running time, they don't quite have the time to do so, though it is a pretty typical run time for a KR movie. It does add drama mainly from Suzuki, though the police thing mostly seems to be a theme, and not too integral to the course of the movie. Other than how Suzuki was involved, the cosmetic changes made to seem more police like, and having the antogonists be criminals, it plays like an episode of Den-O for the most part, with more action and humor than drama, though there was drama in Den-O, it wasn't used too often.

If you're wondering why I'm taking so long to get to Kiva, it's because he wasn't all that important. If you watch the trailers and other promotional materials, you'll see most of his involvement. Wataru appears 3 times, and Kiva only twice. Kiva as a whole is only is around 10% of the entire movie, so It's not so much Den-O & Kiva as it is Den-O featuring Kiva, and since this was released very early into Kiva's TV run, we got nothing really new, since the only Fangire we saw in its true form was the one that was used in Kiva's first episode, and Kiva didn't do all that much fighting himself. So while this film was advertised as a rider team-up, that is only minimally true.

Overall, whilst "Ore, Tanjo!" could appeal to Den-O fans as well as people who like action movies in general and even fans of Kamen Rider movies, this one is for Den-O fans only. It won't satisfy fans of police dramas or fans of Kiva, but Den-O fans will absolutely adore it for how much it's like the series, although it interstingly enough features no time travel, but that doesn't hinder it. If you've watched past episode 33 of Den-O, then feel free to watch it at any time, since after that point, it sdoesn't spoil anything from the show. It's a great Den-O movie, but that's the only front where it truly succeeds.

My Rating: 4.5 out of 5 Stars