I appologise for the size of this comment i just found myself full of things to say about this movie and the series in general.
Beginning of movie
(Followed by
for Denebs plan reveal)
First Yuuto and Airi scene
First rejection
Ending
When Den-o the series ended I was really sad for two reasons;
1) We would never see the Taro's being funny, Yutto or Deneb antics etc. ever again
2) ALOT of plot holes and storylines were left hanging that I thought would never get finished.
And I feel that way after seeing this movie. Id love them to do another special with as much of the cast as they can but at some point the actors are gona say no or they will just stop making them. And being as this was based on Yuuto and Airi I feel this may be their last appearence. its not completely concluded but its hints enough for it to stop their (but Please dont).
Its true there are still a few storylines from the series (not counting decades younger Ryutaro) that have not been answered but I was thrilled each time I heard they were gona do another den o movie thinking we might get some answers/closure. One big question that still puzzles me is how could Hana not have known Yuuto and Airi are her parents? In fact other than the fact Hana's time was gone we know nothing of her timeline. E.g. if Yuuto and Airi didn’t raise her who did? Clearly not Ryutaro because she would have known him the minute he told her his name. However Ryutaro obviously is not dead as he is part of Kotaro's life as we see at the end of final countdown.
One question that was finally answered was Airi’s memories and how Sakurai’s erasing from history, this time for real, affected them, along with what did she and Yuuto do next. Her final appearance in the series was of him disappearing and yet in the next three movies (kiva crossover, decade crossover and first cho den o movie) we only see her once and she is her usual bubbly self for all of the 5 minutes she was in the kiva crossover. I can see from that how alot of fans think she forgot about sakurai and everything again. But again shes her bubbly whimsical self at the beginning of this movie when surrounded by her friends, its only when she and Yuuto are together or she is alone and thinks of sakurai we see she is sad. She just hides how she really feels in front of others which explains the kiva scene.
I love how they didn’t make it easy for her to be won over by Yuuto as a possible replacement for her lost love, cause that is what sakurai is; lost/dead. Sure Yuuto has the same name and past but in the missing years between Yuuto and sakurai, they grew up very differently. Sakurai had different experiences, matured in different ways and became completely different to how Yuuto was when he first appeared in the series. Yuuto on the other hand was drafted by sakurai into saving a woman he didn’t know yet but would one day be his fiancé and bear his child (whether or not he knows that last part is unknown) and fighting a war against a crazy guy and his monsters. Knowing that you probably won’t have a choice in who you love and that your future might be written in stone would cause you to not be as upbeat and happy as sakurai was made to look in the flashbacks. Plus having to erase every loved ones memory of your existence, including family, friends, teachers etc. is going to give you allot of emotional baggage and explain why he hasn’t returned to his own time. What would be the point of that? There’s no one who will remember him and faking sakurai’s personality to win over Airi in the past would be wrong as it wouldn’t be himself that was winning Airi over. Personally I always thought Sakurai was pretty cold for putting all the pressure on Yuuto.
So I loved how neither of them really knew what to do, especially Yuuto who by now clearly loves Airi but realises hes not the man Airi fell in love with but the man he could have been. I’d like to think that the “cuddle” at the end on the bike and the fact that hana still exists or at the least hasn’t shrunk down to a baby means that they will get together someday, but she is a singularity point so maybe shell exist no matter what. After all her entire time disappeared in the series and she stayed about twenty odd for most of it. It was only when it looked like Yuuto instead of sakurai was going to be the father at a later date, causing a new timeline to appear, that she de-aged to her current state (least that’s my opinion why it happened instead of just killing the character off when the actress left). I don’t know why the actress playing “older” hana left but it took some balls to try and keep the character in, just wish they had explained more about why hana became a little girl instead of fans having to come up with theories.
i do hope they do more den o after the movie so we see if Airi and Yuuto do get together, and also just because den o is still by far my favourite kamen rider series. looking forward to blue but not expecting much of yellow as it has diend as the focus, and whilst the rider is cool the character is the most annoying from the series other than yusuke. it should be den o characters only, if they wana do a diend special do it in a decade series special.
Beneath this mask there is more than flesh, there is an idea and ideas are bulletproof!
