*pulled from my LB review*

I think I’m being awfully generous for this, maybe I’m fixating too much on Inoue’s credit, not wanting to give this a lower score than Kiva, but god, this is so lame.

The storytelling is just completely apathetic - slow pacing, low energy mood, almost no suspense, barely any plot build-up, unfeeling editing, sparse, weak action, every actor looks bored out of their minds, shallow characterization, just totally sleep-inducing.

I wouldn’t be so upset if this wasn’t intended to be a celebration and reimagining of the original Kamen Rider series, because it doesn’t seem like a single person here cares about what they’re doing, like it’s mind-boggling the degree of how passive this thing is, everything just “happens” almost completely drained of any emotional or dramatic inclinations. It just makes it all the more damning when it’s meant as a reimagining the very first Kamen Rider and everything, if it was just some weak original entry doing its own thing, it could just be ignored, but one has to wonder how anyone would possibly think this was an acceptable homage when seeing this.

The biggest thing this movie cares about is talking about WATER CRYSTALS, it’s mentioned repeatedly as seemingly the only thing that matters, not the leads as characters, not Shocker’s background and plan, not the romance, they seem to give the most care to talking about that of all things; it is kind of meant to be symbolic for evolution in life and love within an individual or something, but it’s brought up a lot and seems completely unimportant when every other element of the story here is so lacking.

This movie filled me with a weird aggravation at how something could be so fundamentally disinterested in even “being”, the visceral response I got here felt similar to the sensation I would get from something with a lower score, but yet there’s little that’s noticeably egregious about the writing to legitimately upset me, it was just baffling how boring it was is all, so for the time being I feel like I can go easy on it for not constructing something legitimately stupid like Kiva or anything, and the movie is strangely a bit relaxing with some of the settings, mild tone, aesthetics and all if you try and tune out the stuff that’s actually about Kamen Rider in here, probably best to have it with no subtitles and with some tranquil music playing as you watch, with the movie muted even maybe.

Unfathomably dull, hollow white noise as a Kamen Rider movie, but inoffensive and potentially soothing if you just kinda gloss over the narrative and just watch the visuals, otherwise entirely skippable.