The Weekly Ride Review with Ethan Legendary Feature: Kamen Rider Gotchard Legend Arc Episodes 32-35

Gorgeous greetings, one and all! That’s right, that man is making his legendary show debut! Will he stick around or is he just showing up to shill his new toys? Let’s jump in and find out!

Welcome, Riders, to a bumper edition of The Weekly Ride Review. In this edition, we’re taking a look at the four episode arc featuring the return of Kamen Rider Legend as well as his transformation into Kamen Rider Legendary Legend. Make yourself gorgeous and strap in!

Unsure who Kamen Rider Legend is? Check out the links below for my coverage of the two part special where he first met Hotaro! Part One and Part Two. Additionally, unlike normal where I would review each episode one at a time, this time we will be altering the format slightly and only the recap will be split up by episode.  

Recaps 

Episode 32

While out beating another Malgam, Sabi, Renge and Hotaro are attacked by Clotho. While they are fighting, some goons from the evil supergroup, Hundred, show up, searching for a new interdimensional superweapon that looks… suspiciously like Legend’s face. 

The Abyssal King sends them to the Backrooms… if the Backrooms were a parking lot. Clotho and Hotaro team up, beating the guys from Hundred and returning them to the real world. The Abyssal King and Atropos arrive and the King gives Clotho a powerup. 

Meanwhile, during all of this, Kyoka, Spanner and Lachesis meet with Rinne and Minato. Rinne asks Lachesis about her sister, as she really wants to save Atropos. Lachesis reveals that all of the sisters are all Homunculus. To this revelation, Kyoka asks to examine Lachesis, believing they should be up to the challenge of being able to make them fully human. All of this comes to an end when Renge reports in to base on what happened with Hotaro. They all arrive just in time to see Clotho get her power up. Just after everyone leaves, three commanders from Hundred arrive on the scene, ending this episode.        

Episode 33

This episode sees the three Hundred commanders transforming into three legendary Dark Riders: Eternal, Dark Kiva and Glare. These are three Riders that, I don’t believe, have any hard restrictions on who can use them, other then the Vision Driver’s fingerprint lock system. Regardless, this homage to Decade’s Complete Form debut continues with the trio deciding that, to draw out Hotaro and the gang, they should just start causing destruction and go on a rampage. 

While they are deciding this Butler visits Hotaro. Not remembering the details of the Legend crossover due to a issue with the Aurora Curtain, Hotaro takes him to the Academy. When there, Butler catches everyone up on Hundred – that they are an evil multiverse invading force that Legend has been fighting alone all this time. Hopper1 detects the Aurora Curtain that Hundred are using to bring in more troops.

When everyone goes to investigate, the three commanders greet them and explain that they are here to find a super weapon and that, while they have transported some mooks here already, when the giant Aurora Curtain opens, the rest of their forces will be teleported here instantly. The non Riders leave to tend to the civilians and we get a cool civilian fight before everyone transforms. Lachesis arrives transforming into Valvarad with Repli Madwheel Chemy and helps keep civilians safe. From here, the fighting splits; we have Gotchard vs. Eternal and Dark Kiva, and the two Valvarads and Majade fighting Glare. We are going to start with the shortest of the two, the latter one. 

After Spanner and Rinne force Glare into a warehouse (you all know the one), Glare hijacks Majade who starts working Spanner. Lachesis arrives to help making this now a two vs. two. Just as Spanner gives a speech about how Rinne would tell him to just smack Glare’s control outta her, Clotho, who had been lurking in the shadows, is overcome with her desire to fight and equips her Abyssal gear turning into her new form and jumping in the fight as well. Clotho starts working everyone, hitting Rinne so hard she detransforms, giving the two Valvarads a chance to land a double finisher on Glare. Untransformed, Glare runs away. Clotho, still battle hungry, attacks a now untransformed Spanner and Lachesis pulling her kick just before it hits her sister, then she leaves. 

The commander that ran away encounters Kamen Rider Zein from Kamen Rider Outsiders (coming soon to The Weekly Ride Review!) who shreds their Super-1 card to do Super-1’s Riderkick. The kick hits Glare so hard she detransforms, again, and turns to dust like the MCU’s Thanos just snapped his fingers. While walking out of the show, Zein calls her weak and a fraud. Thank you, Zein, for the new reaction image.   

Meanwhile, Hotaro, after getting beat on while in X-Rex form, busts out the Gotcharignitor and starts getting some quick hits in, quick changing into Fire AntWrestler before turning into Iron Gotchard. After eating a Rider Kick from Eternal, Hotaro is forced out of his transformation in front of a crowd of onlookers. Injured, he dives to protect a little girl from getting caught in Dark Kiva’s Rider Kick. Eternal chastises him but Hotaro responds with a small speech about how there’s no such thing as a small life, they all matter. The little girl starts cheering him on to get back up and to keep going and the crowd follows suit. Hotaro gets back up, transforming into Platinum Gotchard.      

Eternal activates Zone and goes for a Rider Kick and Hotaro does the same. The two kicks clash, with Hotaro winning. A now detransformed Eternal turns to dust like Thanos got him, too. You can see why I didn’t bother with the commanders’ names.

FUN FACT: During this sequence, twenty six Chemies, one for each letter of the alphabet, appear beside Hotaro, paralleling Eternal’s Zone power.

The remaining commander, Saigetsu, congratulates Hotaro on being stronger than they assumed. Just as he’s about to gloat more that the Aurora Curtain is fully open and the remainder of their forces can come in, Kaguya arrives in a golden beam and reveals that he was offscreen beating the rest of their forces. He transforms and proceeds to form rush though Gorgeous Kuuga to Decade, taking care of the remaining mooks. 

As the episodes credits roll, Saigetsu goes to use Dark Kiva’s ultimate world destroying move, the King’s World End but is knocked out of it by Kaguya, who summons the Legend Kamen Riser, the ultimate weapon they were looking for. Kaguya uses it to transform into his final form, Legendary Legend, ending the episode.

RELATED: New and Final Forms for Kamen Rider Gotchard and Kamen Rider Legend Revealed

A Quick Tangent and Posters an Upcoming Gotchard Movie 

You may remember I mentioned a leak, months ago, which included Hotaro’s final form, Rainbow Gotchard. After episode 35 aired, we got conformation of this in the form of two posters for Gotchard’s summer movie, also featuring the return of Gotchard Daybreak, who will be played by DAIGO. We’ll see him detransformed, as well. 

Episode 34

This episode opens with Kaguya beating Saigetsu like it’s nothing and he goes to greet Hotaro. Kaguya is clearly saddened to see that Hotaro doesn’t remember him. Saigetsu stumbles through an Aurora Curtain and is met by three floating shapes… well, actually, three of that one angle from Evangelion. The shapes are the ones running Hundred and they give Saigetsu one more chance. As they leave, Saigetsu pulls out the Ark Driver from Kamen Rider Zero-One. Back with the Gotchard gang, as Hotaro watches the Legend special on a visor VR headset while Kaguya dresses everyone up gorgeously. It turns out, due to Hundred’s attack on their world to get the Legend Kamen Riser, Kaguya and Butler are stuck in Hotaro’s world for the time being, while they fix the damage. 

We get some fish out of water scenes with Kaguya. He tries to transform in front of news cameras, takes  over Hotaro’s catchup classes, mistaking Kajiki for Butler, and also shows us that everyone that saw Hotaro transform last episode had their mind wiped. On their way home from school, Kaguya and Hotaro are attacked by Hundred’s mooks. Transforming into Legend and Fire Gotchard, respectively, Kaguya snatches the Chemies out of Hotaro’s driver, much to his annoyance, and turns him into Fire ExceedMighty, using the Kuuga and Faiz Legend Chemy Cards. With Kaguya transforming into Legendary Legend, then Legendary Build Genius, the two make quick work of the mooks. Hotaro mildly chastises Kaguya for snatching his Chemies and reminds him they are his friends too. Kaguya takes this as personal attack and leaves, upset. Hotaro talks to Butler, who had been following them, and he explains that Kaguya is very awkward as a person, not knowing how to act in a non gorgeous manner. He adds that Kaguya does this to pull Hundred’s attention away from everyone else and battles all on his own in his own world. Deciding to go talk to Kaguya again, he asks a favour of Butler. Meanwhile, Kaguya runs into Saigetsu. 

Saigetsu transforms into Ark-Zero and Kaguya into Legendary Legend, then Legendary Decade. The two fight and, just after Kaguya lands a decisive finisher, Saigetsu transforms into Ark-One, having learned Kaguya’s fighting style. Hotaro lands a strong hit as Iron Gotchard and, having knocked Saigetsu away, the two take a moment to make up. Hotaro apologises for not considering what it’s like to be forgotten. The pair then transform into Legendary Zero-Two and Platinum Hopper, in some form finally giving us Ark-One vs. Zero-Two that we were shown in that magazine way back when Zero-One was airing.  

With quick work made of Saigetsu, he stumbles back though an Aurora Curtain and the heads of Hundred turn him into a big floating clock called the Dooms Clock. Sensing this Kaguya turns to transform and fight Hotaro bringing this episode to a close. 

Episode 35

Picking up right from the last episode, Hotaro and Kaguya fight until Spanner shows up to break them up. Cutting to the quick with it, the Dooms Clock is Hundred’s ultimate world destroying weapon and is the thing that destroyed Butler and Kaguya’s original world. They believe that they are targeting this world because Hotaro and co. are his friends he’s trying to distance himself from them to keep them safe. Our boy, Hotaro, is having none of that and helps him out regardless. 

Acting alone, Kaguya tries to destroy the Dooms Clock but is stopped by Saigetsu, revived by the Abyssal King. He transforms into Ark-One and the Abyssal King fuses into him the following Chemies: Sayzombie, Gigalodon, Nammonite and Gokigenmeteon, to form what I’m going to call Ark-Malgam. Ark-Malgam handedly and soundly defeats Legend in his base form. Everyone else shows up and help him retreat. We get a scene of Kaguya having a gem bath to prep for battle and Spanner comes up to him and tells him to give up trying to push Hotaro away because he won’t give up on him, which I really liked. 

With one hour remaining on the Dooms Clock, Hotaro and Kaguya make their way to it, with Spanner and Rinne clearing a path for them by taking on mooks that were guarding the Clock. Together, after seeing Hotaro summon three Chemies to counter Ark-Malgam’s powers, Kaguya turns into Legendary Zero-Two and summons two Zero-One’s – one in his base form and another in Metal Cluster. This seems to follow the logic that Kaguya will work with the Riders he can summon, much like Hotaro does with his Chemies. The three Zero-Ones speed blitz Ark-Malgam, before Kaguya turns into Legendary Grand Zi-O, summoning Blade and Hibiki to attack, as well as a weapon from Gaim. Kaguya follows this up summoning Zi-O’s base form and Zi-O II, and the three of them join Hotaro in Rider Kicking the Ark-Malgam though the Dooms Clock, saving the day.

Back at Hotaro’s family restaurant, we see the favour Hotaro asked Butler for: a party! After this celebration, Kaguya and Butler leave back for their own world but, on the walk back though Aurora Curtain, they catch a brief glimpse of Gotchard Daybreak fighting. It turns out that he didn’t disappear when he altered the timeline, he created a branching timeline instead. This foreshadowing brings this arc to a close.             

The Bad

The things I didn’t like about this batch of episodes… For starters, I’m torn on Clotho’s powerup. On one hand, it lets the actor get in on all the sick stunt fight work. Anyone that’s watched Amazons knows she can do them. On the other hand, I don’t like how it looks. I’m sure I’ll get over it the more cool fights it’s in. We shall have to see. My next biggest issue is, as much as I enjoyed episode 33, god damn do I hate the muted colour filter on the episode. I assume its to better hide the aging on the older suits but, honestly, I would rather not see certain older suits if it means they have to mute the colours like that. It’s hardly gorgeous. 

Personally, I don’t really like the Legendary Legend suit, either. The Elizabethan-esque Legend Rider Chemy ruff around the neck clearly stops the suit actor from being able to raise their arms. When he goes to do his finisher at the start of episode 34, it just looks really awkward. I will say one thing, though, Kaguya managed to make a true successor to all of Decades’ awful looking powerups with this. It’s not beating Complete 21 in that regard, but it’s up there for sure.   

The Good

This arc does a good job of moving the needle forward giving us a number of important main character plot beats, like Lachesis transforming and Clotho’s powerup, while also being accessible for people that didn’t watch the Legend special. My complaints aside, it was great to see. I would be happy to see Kaguya return in the future, outside of Gotchard. 

The Conclusion

To bring this to an end, Gotchard continues to be delightful. It was great seeing all these past suits, the untransformed fights, the transformed fights… and all of this is without mentioning how happy I am that all of the rumours that Legend would come in and steal the show away, replacing Hotaro as the main character, turned out to be ‘cope’ from people that hate fun. Everything was truly Gorgeous and I, for one, can not wait to see where we go from here now that the Abyssal King is on the move. Into the endgame, we ride. 

What do you think? Did you enjoy this batch of episodes? What do you think of Rainbow Gotchard? What do you think of Kaguya’s new form, Legendary Legend? As always, I’ve been Ethan: Writer, reviewer and Gorgeous Legend for The Toku Source. I will see you next time!