The Weekly Ride Review Special with Ethan: Kamen Rider Gotchard VS Kamen Rider Legend Part 1

Gorgeous greetings one and all, join Ethan for the first Weekly Ride Review special, featuring Legends, multiverses, Chemy Card collections and some familiar faces!

Summary

The episode starts with Houou Kaguya Quartz watching the fight from Gotchard episode one on his multiverse viewing device, the Aurora Curtain System. He declares that Gotchard will be his and looking at the Gotchard Rider Chemy Card. We cut to outside the building, revealing it to be a large tower that’s shooting a golden sky beam. This takes us into the title card for this special episode. 

We come back to Hotaro at his parent’s cafe making a meal for Kajiki, who goes to talk about a secret group he’s been hearing rumours about. During this short moment, Hotaro is swept away in an Aurora Curtain into a small cell where he meets Butler, an version of Kajiki from a parallel world, who serves Kaguya. Introducing his lord, who comes in from an outside gem bath, Butler instructs Hotaro to put on VR glasses and explains the backstory for this world, confirming to him he is, in fact, in a parallel world. 

From Butler’s PowerPoint presentation, we know this world used the Aurora Curtain System and its ability to travel to parallel worlds to flourish but, one day, an organization called Hundred attacked. The only person to fight back against the destruction was Kaguya, who appeared in a ray of light and built the Houou Tower they are currently in to help this world shine more gorgeously than before. 

Kaguya then reveals his Legend Rider Chemy Card collection, including his promo Kamen Rider Gotchard card (available in Phase 00 of the card releases). Hotaro is shocked to see Rider Chemy Cards but Butler quickly points out that these are not Chemy Cards, they contain the powers of Riders from other worlds. Kaguya then explains that every Rider is gorgeous in their own way, except Hotaro, which is why he was summoned here, so Kaguya can help him become more gorgeous. It’s at this point Kaguya revealed he has Hotaro’s Gotchardriver. 

RELATED: Kamen Rider Gotchard Rider Chemy Card Phase 00 Booster Pack

Just then, Butler gets a notification on his pad that Hundred have infiltrated the Tower. Freeing Hotaro from his cell, the trio head off to confront them. Kaguya transforms into Kamen Rider Legend quickly dispatching of two of the mooks and using one of them as a seat. He then pulls out his Legend Ride Magnum and some Legend Rider Chemy Cards. With them, he summons, Kamen Rider Gaim, Hibiki, Kiva and Kaixa, all of whom dispatch a number of the invading mooks with ease. Dispatching his makeshift chair, Legend gets up and puts Hotaro’s driver on him. Hotaro insists he can transform just fine on his own and not to touch his cards, transforming into Steamhopper to fight with the remaining underlings.

Remarking how Hotaro is demonstrating an adequate level of brilliance but could be better, Legend gives two of his cards to Butler who approaches Hotaro as he is fighting, puts the cards in the Gotchardriver and activates it, causing Hotaro to transform into the Legend Rider Form, ExceedMighty. In this form, he finishes off almost all the remaining mooks with ease.

Legend transforms again, using the Den-O Legend Rider Chemy Card, into Gorgeous Den-O and finishes off the leader of the mooks with a finisher, kicking him out of the tower. Landing back on the ground, Hotaro runs up to Kaguya and has his Gotchardriver taken again, with Legend claiming it to belong to him. We then cut to the leader of Hundred looking on saying, “the time has come, every world shall belong to hundred.” This brought the episode to a close.     

My Take

Another week and, while not technically a normal episode, it was a Gorgeous one indeed! I have to say, I enjoyed it quite a lot. Legend is cool and Hotaro is as enjoyable as ever. Before I get too far into this, I would like to give a shout out to the choreography and suit acting in this special. There were a lot of nice small visual callbacks, especially in Hotaro’s Legend rider form that were extremely fun to see. Eitoku did a great job, as usual. 

On that note, I need to say the Aurora Curtain System being a comically large Decadriver is amazing and a nice way to further pay tribute to Decade.

Now I can’t not bring it up that I was right about a bunch of things in my articles leading up to this, from Legend being a Twokaizer situation, a new character paying homage an older anniversary hero and the connections to Zi-O from reusing mooks to the boss of Hundred being revealed in promo material and the next part preview to turn into Kamen Rider Barlckxs.

I get the impression from Legend that he’s doing this to teach Hotaro and, much like Decade himself, his style of teaching appears to be ‘being difficult to deal with until the person being helped steps up,’ which is very fitting. With the use of the Aurora Curtain System just being technology Legend has, this opens the door to him being just as easy a cameo to write in as Decade. Based on this first instalment, I wouldn’t be upset to see Kamen Rider Legend appear in the main series, showing up Spanner and showing off to the gang. All in all, if I had to use one word to describe these episodes I would use… 

But what about you? What did you think of the special? Would you like to see Kamen Rider Legend appear in the main Gotchard series? Do you think the Marvelous vs. Decade beef should pass on to their respective gorgeous golden guys? Who do you think would win a fight, Legend or Twokaizer? Be sure to let me know in the comments below!

Come back after November 26th for part two of Kamen Rider Gotchard VS Kamen Rider Legend!

Until next time, this, as always, has been Ethan – writer, reviewer and gorgeous golden world hopper for The Toku Source and I’ll see you next time for episode 11 of Gotchard.