Greeting moviegoers! Grab your popcorn and buckle up because The Weekly Ride Review is going to the movies, screening the Kamen Rider Geats summer movie, 4 Aces and the Black Fox!
Spoiler Warning: Due to how Ace appears in the movie it’s very clear it takes place post series. Readers may want to make sure they caught up with Kamen Rider Geats before reading.
Summary
The movie opens with a short piece from Jiin who is quickly interrupted by Tsumuri. She explains that a weird Jyamato world tree appeared and is spawning tons of Jyamato, with whom we see Kamen Riders Tycoon, Na-Go and Buffa fighting. Ace shows up and Rider Kicks the tree, assuming his effort will destroy it. It is here we are introduced to our villains, Mela and Melo, two criminals from the future arrive (the potential subject of any follow up article to the “missed potential in geats” piece I did a while). They are in their base at the top of the Jyamato tree. Mela hits some buttons on a fighting game controller setup and the Geats Rider Kick fragments the world, and Ace, into four.
Our main Riders are split up, each with their own Ace. Buffa, who runs into Punkjack, is with the Ace who has his strength. Na-go is with his brains and Tycoon with a mysterious fourth thing. The third Ace is revealed when Tsumuri jumps out of the base and finds an Ace who represents his luck washed up on a beach, who joins up with Kamen Rider Lopo. Shortly, all of three of the known Aces who have his strength, brains and luck are taken by Mela and turned into the X-Geats buckle, allowing him to transform and take advantage of Geats God powers. With this, he reforms the world back into one leaving only the Ace of the unknown attribute with Tycoon, who quickly rejoins everyone else.
Mela and Melo then launch their attack on the present. Mela transforms into X-Geats to fight Buffa and, arriving late, Bujin Sword Tycoon. Meanwhile, Kamen Rider Keilow frees the mysterious Ace and takes off himself to fight the hordes of Jyamato. It is while focusing on Keilow we get our Kamen Rider Gotchard cameo. By now, we’re very familiar with Kamen Rider Gotchard. To find out what I think of Hotaro, check out past editions of The Weekly Ride Review.
The mysterious Ace joins the fight against X-Geats, refusing to stay down and showing as much heart as the original, complete Ace. Eventually, Mela gets frustrated, activates a finisher and destroys the world.
However, Tsumuri finds the mysterious Ace, having been protected by the hopes of all his allies and us, the audience. In addition, Tsumuri finds a new buckle that a blank Chemy Card Gotchard left behind works with. Armed with this and all of these hope resting on him, the Ace that has his Heart appears in Mela and Melo’s base and does battle with XGeats again. In a new form, Geats Oneness, he beats X-Geats with the power of his allies, who all reappear during the battle.
Melo, whom turned on Mela during the battle and turned him giant, leaves their base before it blows up and tries to kill both Geats and Mela with explosives, set to go off with a Looney Tunes style TNT switch. This cartoonish plan is stopped when Tsumuri jump kicks her into the sand, in a moment that made me clap. The movie ends with all our heroes standing around teasing the newly reformed, complete Ace, who gets frustrated and leaves, bringing the movie to a close.
Over the credits we see some small scenes in the remade world where Sae and Neon hang out, Ittetsu sees Win performing on the street and Michinaga passes Keiwa in the park. As Ace goes to walk off after looking over the world he rebuilt, he and Tsumuri deputise the Audience as Kamen Riders. Also, as like at the end of every episode of Kamen Rider Geats, we see one of the rules for the Desire Grand Prix.
My Take
Well, that was sure something! Let’s start with the positives. As always with Geats, the action was great, as well as the cinematography. The characters are just as fun as usual. Here’s the part where I trot out the classic line, “if you like X, you will like X the movie” but, let’s be honest, if you liked Geats will have been clamouring for the movie the moment it was available.
About the villains… this is the one part that really didn’t work for me and, frankly, I’m disappointed with their backstory. Firstly, the archetype of ‘evil streamer’ sucks, in general; not just specifically these two clowns. I can’t really get into why these two disappoint me so much without explaining their backstory somewhat, as detailed in a booklet that came with the Bluray. A red flag, if ever there was one, it explains that Mela and Melo worked for an organisation in the future that kept track of gods, then turned evil killed all the Norse gods and took their powers for themselves. Specifically, they began with Loki before setting their sights on others. The booklet even name drops “the man at the beginning” of Helheim. This was likely to explain away the plothole of X-Geats’ appearance. Mela needed the events of this movie to even make the buckle he uses to transform, using Loki’s imitation powers. At least this gives these two streaming clowns an actual reason to repeatedly reference themselves as “god killers,” but shouldn’t some of this, literally any of this, actually been mentioned in the movie? Anything at all, like a flashback to him killing Loki? The fact this was in supplemental material is terrible. Their backstory is easily a cool enough idea to fuel a movie of their own but without that context, it leaves them feeling very flat.
That said, even with my issues and disappointment at the hands of the villains, the film itself was still fun and enjoyable. There was enough heart in its other parts to win me over.
What did you think ? Did you enjoy the movie? Did you like the movie form, Geats Oneness? Are you also disappointed by the movie villains? Let me know in the comments. I look forward to reading them. As always, I’ve been Ethan: writer, reviewer, newly deputised Kamen rider and a secret fourth thing for The Toku Source.
