Fic Reviews: A Passing Through Kamen Rider (Revised Edition) · 10:13pm Mar 25th, 2019
Trying a new style...
Okay, I’m the first to admit I’m not the biggest fan of Decade, at least story wise. (Tsukasa is fine as a character when used properly by writers) Nor am I the biggest fan of the Displaced genre as a whole really. However, that’s neither here nor there. Okay, maybe I should explain what Kamen Rider Decade is about. It’s a tribute to the first half of the Heisei Era of Kamen Rider. Follows a man named Tsukasa on his travels through the nine worlds and beyond. Here, it’s sorta a slight revision of the original concept. Here, our hero, Wyatt is placed into a anthro MLP world that happens to be threatened by Dai-Shocker, a collection of the worst of the worst from Kamen Rider, and beyond eventually.
So, for a tribute to Decade, well… This story sorta works and sorta doesn’t. I’ll get into what doesn’t work in a moment, okay? As a Toku story, it works. It captures the action perfectly, and does deliver a good amount of wit and humor along the way. It’s actually sorta hard to believe the comedy tag isn’t on this story, as it’s drop dead funny at times. Such as when Wyatt gets turned into a Sailor Moon parody. That’s when I almost burst a gut laughing.
The love and care for the source material shown is astounding, and requires at times an immense amount of Kamen Rider nerdiness to understand at times.
Story: 7/10
There are a few things I'm not a fan of, and I admit I'm somewhat of a hypocrite here on this but anthro ponies? Seems a bit cliche. And pairing of Wyatt/Twilight is just overdone. I mean, pairing your OC with Twilight? Another problem I have is the pacing. Its well over 350k words by this point and the story does have a tendency to meander. By the end of the story, the heroes have barely made a dent in Dai-Shocker, the villainous empire. Yes I get it’s supposed to be split up into multiple volumes but still! I'm of the mind you could chop this story in half and be better for it. Seriously, 350K words for one volume and we’re not even halfway done yet. That just screams of trying to fit everything you want into one story, without considering maybe there’s a bit too much for readers to take in all at once, and having the plot move at a meandering pace. That said, when the story succeeds boy does it succeed. Seriously, the adaption of Magic Duel is one massive tribute to Kamen Rider Wizard, with liberties taken to make it fit into the world established. Each character is given a defined arc for instance, but that leads me to my next point...
Characters: 6/10
Loads and loads of characters here. Yes it's a MLP and Kamen Rider Decade story so that means lots of Riders and villainous characters. So many in fact it's hard to keep track of who does and wants what. And I thought Kamen Rider Gaim was bad in this aspect. There's one character I do want to highlight really. Two actually. Daring Do and Agito. The latter spends so long out of suit -for tragic reasons mind you given that his brother gave up his life- that you wonder when he's going to get up off his ass and defend the world like a Rider is supposed to. And Daring’s sideplot is so long, you do at times wonder what the point of it is and how it contributes to the main story. Ryuki, as much as I hate it did manage it’s characters well enough, even if that meant killing off quite a few. ...Guess that’s why it’s an official production and this is just fanfic.
Action: 8/10
Yes. The most important part of a Toku story in some ways. And this story is far from short on it let me tell you. Plenty of quiet character moments so it doesn't keep you from not breathing if you will. Mind you, there are moments where the action is a bit much. Surprisingly, Its when it crosses over with other stories does it start to choke you. The crossover with this story? The Queen of Blades...and her sister, Blackarachnia. Prime example as when Lord Drakkon with a mutilated Goldar in tow first appears its wall to wall action and it simply becomes a mess.
Final Points:
AKA the part nobody likes.
Okay, this story is by no means terrible by any margain, but it does need some work here and there. I mean, the author himself mentioned to me that this story is only 1/3 of what he and his co-writer has planned and this is already 350K words in length! This is like Project Horizons levels of insanity. And here we get to the zeitgeist of the issue. If there weren’t so many characters to keep track of, and so many plot points and so much story to read through, it might be a truly great piece. Sadly, it isn’t, and so therefore I must score it a 7/10.
Kamen Ride: Decade!
"I'm just a passing through Kamen Rider... Remember That!"
