Kamen Rider Zero-One: REAL×TIME (2020)

Adequate but inessential Zero-One coda film.

*pulled from my LB review*

Honestly, aside from the opening 15 minutes and maybe parts of the last 15, I thought this was kinda dull.

After an initially confusing yet somewhat captivating opener throwing you right into the action and with a countdown framing device to seemingly add some more (artificially created) immediacy to the events, the film instead turns into this low energy, very passive mystery trying to figure out the situation with Es’ sudden appearance and motivations and everything, but none of it feels particularly captivating. Aruto wanders through a virtual consciousness space with some enigmatic woman slowly learning what Es is trying to accomplish on the surface level before trying to recover and get back to fighting Es with a bunch of weird stops and starts, MetsubouJinrai, Isamu and Yua kinda just scramble around trying to do some hacking and research and Gai interrogates one of Es’ subordinates to get some clues, but the action really dies down and the Paradiso group just kinda drifts around for a while.

Everything feels more lax and low stakes than it should be, and Es’ backstory is sympathetic but kinda familiar and unfelt with all this clumsy structural juggling and boring events going on throughout the film, unable to keep tensions high, so it feels pretty inert, especially with how brief and uneventful the ending is. I was hoping with Zero One’s abridged episode count due to COVID, they might try to make up for some of the shortened arcs and cut developments as best they could with these supplementary materials (this very movie even given more time in a double bill Toei hero film mashup than usual (shaving off 10-20 minutes that could’ve been given to the Saber movie to add to this) but it just does more damage to the film by making it feel like more of a drag.

With the Zero One TV series’ frustrating rollercoaster of quality, at least I was pretty captivated with it most of the time, this is just fairly boring, definitely one of the weaker stories to come out of this Kamen Rider iteration imo, but it’s still fine.

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Real Clever, No Time to Deliver

This one has a fun concept - a movie with a looming threat that is literally counting down in real time with the movie's duration. I really like that concept! Unfortunately, it means that we don't really get much of a chance to get to know about the villain in any way that isn't uninteresting or rushed. This is also the movie where Zero Two makes its appearance, which I think is a really neat suit. Action is fine, story is a bit rushed but that's to keep it in time with its original concept so I kinda forgive it? Overall with an interesting concept it didn't really have the time to grip me or keep me thinking about it after I was done with it.

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