[REVIEW] Kamen Rider THE NEXT

Today I’m reviewing Kamen Rider THE NEXT. It is basically a remake of Kamen Rider V3 for modern day but is also a sequel to the earlier 2005 film, Kamen Rider THE FIRST. I actually liked KR The First and so I was looking forward to watching this. So I watched it the other night. I’m attempting to make this as spoiler-free as possible.

The basic gist of the story is 2 different stories. First we have a horror movie like story in which people who listen to famous idol’s Chiharu’s song, “Platinum Smile” end up dying, pretty gruesomely might I add. The story converges into the main Kamen Rider story when we meet Hongo Takeshi, who is now a science teacher at a high school. He takes an interest on one of his students who is always cutting class and the such and as a result we learn that she was Chiharu’s best friend. She becomes resolved to find out what happened to her and Hongo joins the chase. In the midst of said chase they find out Shocker is up to something with the appearance of Kamen Rider V3 and other Inhumanoids.

I don’t want to write those long essays I normally end up doing so I want to try and make this a pictorial review. Here goes nothing.

That’s right. Kamen Rider THE NEXT has another seemingly bogus sidestory like THE FIRST did. Although I will admit this one tied up and converged to the main story much better than THE FIRST’s. By the way that is Kamen Rider 1 aka Hongo Takeshi.

Hmm… our main female lead, Kotomi, she kinda reminds me of Abe Natsumi. Just a little…

See we’re watching a horror movie not Kamen Rider…

Oh wait, I guess we are… Here’s Hongo “fighting” (losing) to 5 fake Kamen Riders. There’s even a fake Rider Kick tossed in there!

But once he henshins… He still gets beaten up most of the fight and ends up running. But not too bad for a first fight. I like the movie Kamen Rider fights.

Boy that would hurt like hell… You’d never see this on on a normal Kamen Rider TV series, but in a movie, anything goes I guess. As you can see the movie is much darker than the TV series.

“Which Morning Musume girl do you like?”
Apparently, Kamen Rider 2 is alive and likes all of them.

It’s Kamen Rider Drake! Wait… where’s Gon? I gotta say, that Kamen Rider V3 looks much more impressive than Drake.

It wouldn’t be Kamen Rider without a motorcycle chase/fight scene. This one had more explosions and stuff compared to THE FIRST. But THE FIRST had more fighting overall and a Rider Kick. So in my opinion, this motorcycle fight was more impressive visually just not fight-wise.

I want to point out that Hongo gets beaten a lot. And the cracks that appear are missing in the next cut of the scene. Of course you can tell how fake that first picture looks.

Alas! It’s Kamen Rider 2 to the rescue!

Here we then receive some backstory as to how Kamen Rider V3 was created. Drake and his … secretary? were the only ones that survived the Shocker experiment, hence the congratulations (this scene is rather amusing with the flowers).

Take what you want from that. But Ichimonji has problems as you can see.

The only worthwhile Chiharu scene to be capped. You see they figured they’d give her a broken leg and instead her face gets Shocked.

The last part of the story I don’t really want to spoil but it is quite action packed. And I have to admit that the Rider costumes look really nice.

The three Kamen Riders doing cool poses and light-up eyes. Too cool.

Some of the cooler moments of the final scenes. The movie ends on a happy note although there are a couple of things that aren’t really that happy. But I’m not going to ruin that for you. It’s a pretty good movie with lots of action and a kinda… weird but in the end not too shabby storyline.

Kamen Rider THE NEXT

7 out of 10 Rider Kicks (possibly… I didn’t really count how many there were anyway)