I watched a bunch of the Revice specials, so I decided to review two of those today.
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"The Movie"
I was originally combine this with one of the episodes since it's a pretty short movie, but I couldn't really do it because this movie's continuity places it between episodes 3 and 4, and slotting it into any of the episodes afterwards kind of just seems awkward. And then I was waiting for another special from Revice that I could latch this onto, but it never came. So hey, instead, you guys get a short mini-review.
Anyway, this one is a short 20-minute movie that is more or less in the same vein as the Bacht movie for Kamen Rider Saber, except Revice: The Movie is a lot more low-stakes... which works a lot better for the format, I feel. Trying to pretend that a villain that's irrelevant to the series as a whole is going to destroy the world might work for a 60 minute movie, but for a 20-minute bonus episode? Not so much.
The plot is honestly pretty simple -- the episode starts off with a prequel where the Deadmans attack a Fenix lab with a giant army of Giff Juniors and two attack helicopters... which is kind of hilarious considering they never really show that kind of resources in the show proper. A nightclub, a CGI UFO, individual monsters, sure, but seeing them with attack helicopters just feels bizarre. Anyway, it's just an excuse for George to pull out the driver.
We then cut to a Deadmans attack on that one theme park that has shown up a couple of times in Rider shows (I think it's the place where Goriders was filmed?) and Olteca gives this pretty cool rant about awakening and penance and stuff -- pretty standard supervillain stuff. And... there's a huge feel of this being intended as an 'episode zero' (except that'd be Saber's final episode) with Vice breaking the fourth wall to introduce himself and Ikki/Revi. The action scenes are pretty nice and makes use of the theme park surroundings, but the banter and what thin excuse of a story... well, isn't.
There's a bit of a throughline about how Vice is super-duper destructive (hey, the movie has a bigger action budget) and Ikki waxing lyrical about the importance of hot baths, but, again, it's pretty much intended to just be a mini-pilot so we get into action and simplistic dialogue -- even for the standards of the show -- pretty quickly. The middle portion of the movie is just fluff that really is just our heroes messing around.
It does show Daiji showing up to deliver the Megalodon Vistamp, and our heroes beat up the Spider Deadman to recover the Spider Vistamp, explaining the appearance of these two vistamps in the show. Again, pretty neat stuff and I've always had a short spot for the Decade-inspired Megalodon form... though as always, the remix scenes leave much to be desired. When it's just hand-to-hand stuff, the action scenes are neat, but ultimately this 'movie' really ends up feeling like a fun but completely unessential part of your Revice watching experience.
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Hyper Battle DVD
The Hyper Battle DVD's always tend to just be wacky one-offs with simplified plots, and this one is no exception. Like most Hyper Battle DVD's in the later Heisei era, this one also comes with a kangaroo-based form, which... I guess the kangaroo is the mascot of Televi-kun, the magazine that this DVD is packaged in? Eh.
Anyway, this one starts of with some wacky hijinks as Ikki gets married, before George goes off to introduce the brand-new Kangaroo Vistamp... which is based very heavily on Kamen Rider Build. I like Build! And like most Televi-Kun related material, this particular form has a comedic twist to it. In this case, Vice gets reduced to a keychain. There's also a bit of a weird rapid-fire sequence of action scenes that didn't actually happen, with Ikki and Sakura describing how they took care of a demon stamp contractor and a Koala Deadman. I guess they just want to show a bunch of additional action scenes without having the setup? It's kind of weird. There's also a fair amount of intentional overacting on Ikki's part where he and the guest star gets a bit too worked up in protecting the guest star's sister's wedding.
I did really like the comedy bit where Vice imagines various scenarios where Sakura would marry Hiromi, George or Vice, themed after different cultural weddings. It's funny.
Obviously, since the villain of the week is targeting weddings, the only possible way for them to do anything is to stage a fake wedding, with George officiating with a fake mustache. Honestly, this Hyper Battle DVD is just an excuse for all the actors to ham it up with fancy costumes. We get Ikki as the groom and Daiji as the bride instead of Sakura, Ikki's acting as an overprotective brother who refuses to see Sakura in a wedding dress, and it's just... it's just wackiness, I guess? Either Daiji or Sakura would be creepy as the bride since the groom is their brother, so... eh.
The Deadman shows up and fights Kamen Rider Jeanne, while Daiji and Ikki trip and accidentally kiss. The... the whole kissing bit just makes me roll my eyes, honestly, although I really do like just how much George over-acts with how much he wants to see the two brothers kiss. Okay, George. I do like the fight between Jeanne and the Koala -- I actually do appreciate some of these just suit-actor fights that don't have too much CGI explosions all around. I do like my CGI explosions, but those tend to make the fights actually kind of short, so...
Jeanne blows up the Koala with her kujaku blades, Kagerou takes over Daiji and causes George and Papa Igarashi to toss around his belt to keep it away from him, and then we get Ikki finding out the true identity of the constantly-reviving Koala Deadmen -- it's a tiny... clay doll thing? That hides in the pockets of the larger Koala Deadman? So after a brief base-form fight, we get a marsupial fight as Ikki and Vice transform into the kangaroo form. They immediately remix into basically just Revi holding Vice in a pocket, and we get a comedic fight between him and the Koala Deadman. It's cute enough, actually. I liked the cleverness of them remembering that koalas are also marsupials, and going all-in with the 'turn Vice into a cute little doll' gimmick.
The actual fight between baby-Vice and baby-Koala doesn't even try to hide how ridiculous it is, with both of them being puppets with very visible muppet-controlling rods from below. With the background being Australia's Ayers Rock. We get more comedic 'haha guys kissing are funny' jokes to close out the ending. It's... I don't know. Sometimes the showmakers just go all in with the zaniness? I did enjoy the sheer bizarreness of this one, if nothing else.
Random Notes:
- This is a movie, so on-screen deaths are apparently okay as Olteca casually murders a Fenix scientist in the opening scene.
- Also, Olteca being treated with such gravitas as he menacingly acts as the villain of this movie does foreshadow his greater role in the story.
- The two people from episode 4 that bother the Igarashis and demand they sell the building to them show up here, and get screwed over by Ikki and Viec's pranking.
- George shows off a bunch of Vistamps -- like the giraffe, chicken and dung beetle -- on his iPad. These are apparently based on Build's secondary riders. We don't really get a good look at these other than the Kirin (giraffe) one, and that one's based on Grease.
- I didn't look at the credits when I first reviewed this, and apparently they show all the concept art for all of these -- the common theme is that Vice always gets something super-weird with all the designs. Revi looks cool, though, with the Grease themed giraffe form, the Cross-Z themed chicken form, and the Rogue-themed dung beetle form.
- Vice's ghost form does Sento's Fleming's right-hand-rule pose, and says 'we're the best match' with his chibified voice.
- I know it's just a joke, but Vice propositioning Lovekov for marriage is kind of creepy considering that they're both essentially also siblings.
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