With no Kamen Rider Gavv this week, attention instead turns to a recent Kamen Rider Geats V-Cinema, Kamen Rider Geats: Jyamato Awaking. Join Ethan for a rundown of this post-series special!
Recap
For longtime readers, you’ll remember that I speculated in the promotional period for this movie that it was basically a cycle of violence/Terminator deal, and I was pretty much right. One thousand years from now, the time period where all the future people turn out to be from, plants have overtaken the world, so they digitized themselves escaping to a “metaverse” where everyone uses avatars as bodies. Somehow the God Jyamato invades and drives humanity almost to extinction so Niramu, who as it turns out is still alive because none of the future people died during Geats series, sends the future version of Ace back in time to end the God Jyamato before it awakens. You see what I mean about them doing a Terminator, right?
In the present, some guy has a child with a new kind of Jyamato. When it’s discovered in front of a police officer and the other tenants of the building, the cop shoots the human guy, killing him in front of his son and the Jyamato he fell in love with. He says to himself that “it was justified… self defense…”
This causes the mother Jyamato to lose it, awaking a new almost divine power and starting to lash out against the civilians. Tycoon, Na-go and Buffa transform to defeat this victim of police brutality, just for Dooms Geats to arrive, which creates a chance for her and her son to escape. Ace arrives and he and Dooms Geats have a battle. We don’t see the winner of this battle, on account of Dooms Geats opening a time gate and taking him and Ace to a pocket dimension. Here, he exposition dumps on Ace about the state of the future and ties him up in barbed wire again.
It also turns out the mother Jyamato was part of a pair. She, along with this other one that mutated, are the closest to human the Jyamato have gotten yet, with the ability to change their forms at will. He, along with two other mook Jyamato, were the ones that killed the mother Jyamato’s husband. It was a false flag, pinned on humans. Everyone except for Ace, who after breaking free shows up to let Buffa in his new form not get help up by Dooms Geats by keeping him busy, all Rider kick the Jyamato that took the form of the cop. Despite this, the mother Jyamato dies to to her injuries. Her son starts to awaken as the God Jyamato, and Buffa gives him a hug while reminding of the things his mother just told him. He says that he will always be here for him.
Did that seem a little rushed? This was the last five or so minutes of the film.
Dooms Geats thanks his past self for reminding him that a true god has faith in his followers, and tells him this has changed the future bringing the movie to a close.
The Bad
Now while this is probably not the place to really get into and I’m probably not the best person to get into this. “The police killing the husband in a mixed relationship, actually no it was a false flag to make her hate human” plot point just leaves a bad taste in my mouth, to be frank. I don’t think that it was the best inciting incident that could have been used in a “we need to be kind to each other, stop the cycle of violence” type of story ether, due to, you know, all the real world systemic aspects of police brutality.
“Okay, Ethan, you’re right that plot point was not handled well and it’s not great to try and unpack why and what exactly could have been meant by it, can we please move on to talking about the movie itself and less a thematic analysis?” You know what, reader? Sure, but mainly because that could easily be an article all on its own.
Something else in this movie that didn’t work for me was the twist reveal of the other special Jyamato being the cop. Mainly, and I can not stress this enough, whenever we see the Special Jyamato before the reveal, even in flashbacks he has his face bandaged up and just looks insanely evil. Since the Jyamato can change their appearance at will, this just raises more questions.
Additionally, for all the people from the future to be only a thousand years hence… Does that feel weirdly short to anyone else? The way they acted in the series there were from so far into the future now was their ancient past. It makes the reveal they are from the same year as the newest season of Futurama feel weird, to say the least. On the subject of things that feel weird, the retcon all the defeated future people getting kicked back to the future makes all the panic to get to the time gate before the grand end, with Beroba and Kekera using a wish to stay after it, really silly; not to mention all the dramatic attention Beroba and Kekera defeat were given.
It looked like Ploison Rage’s knee pads were about to fall off in this sequence and it was, honestly, quite distracting.
The Good
The acting and action are as amazing as you would expect from a modern Rider production. Out of all of the predictive speculating about the movie I did in the build up to it, I feel very happy I called Beroba being where Plosion Rage comes from. I was also surprised to learn that ‘plosion’ is a real word. It’s basically the term used for the kind of sounds that pop filters prevent. If anything, I’m sure any audio editors are familiar with Plosion Rage. Kidding aside, I fully expect it to come out at some point that they called the new form that by putting “poison” and “explosion” together with no clue that it’s actually a real word.
Buffa especially was great in this and I do quite like Plosion Rage as a form. I also really liked the stuff with Ace, him teaching his future self something he’s long forgotten. That was great stuff and kinda touches on what I was going on about in my Geats missing potential article, except keeping hard to the rule “any Geats content Yuya Takahashi writes the main villain must be from the future”.
Conclusion
Evidently I’m a lot less positive about this movie than I think I have been about anything else I’ve reviewed so far but, while it may not hold up to deeper introspection, the surface level film is quite fun. I you enjoyed it more than I did, more power to you. Maybe I will too on an eventually rewatch, one day.
What did you think? Did you enjoy the movie? Do you agree with my complaints? Do you also think Buffa’s going to be a great dad? As always I’ve been Ethan: Writer, reviewer and time traveling god from the future, here to fix the past’s issues for The Toku Source. I’ll see you next time.
