I don't know much about Hibiki's cast, but, as far as Den-O goes, they brought back two kids, a girl who has been working in toku for years and an older actor. They couldn't even bring Yuuto's actor for more than a cameo in Den-O's own movie. Even in these new 3 Chou Den-O movies, Yuuto apparently just appears in his own movie and is completely absent afterwards. It's pretty obvious that it IS harder to bring younger active actors rather than lower profile ones. There are matters involving not only money, but also time allocation (because everything had to follow a very specific timing).
Couldn't or
wouldn't? The Imajin VAs were clearly at their disposal. Do we know for a fact that Yuichi Nakamura was unavailable? Even if it was supposedly impossible to bring back Sato or Nakamura, the Chou Den-O movies could have easily been done another way. If Toei wasn't just obsessed with waving the bloody shirt that is the Taros, these movies could just as well be about new characters and side stories, maybe something like Ultraman does often. There are always a way. But Toei is clearly bereft of ideas.
I remember your idea... but, really, how would that fix any of the complaints? You'd still get people complaining about how ridiculous it is an anniversary without the actual Riders. Rather than complain about the AU counterparts, people would just complain about Tsukasa being a bad replacement and Toei wanting to make people believe that he'd better than everyone else together.
That's why I said that if you couldn't get the alumni for the show itself (and is it really so hard to bring back actors for only one or two episodes?) there is always the movie. You could have the show feature Tsukasa traveling the worlds, acting as the Rider of that world (Wouldn't that be a better endorsement of the Ganbaride game anyway? I thought Toei and Bandai love product placement, a Rider who is essentially RP-ing as other Riders would have been perfect), trying to fix things, and then in the movie team-up with the real nine Riders to fight the boss villain.
It'd also make almost every character found in those worlds just minor supporting material, rather than actual active protagonists of the stories.
How? All you'd have to do is replace the AU Riders' roles in those stories with Tsukasa. Actually, I wonder if they couldn't just bring back one or two supporting characters from the previous shows into each World as they did Hibiki and Den-O. I could easily imagine Tsukasa trying to fill Shinji's shoes in stopping Kanzaki Shiro's Game only to be rebuffed by Ren.
On the other hand though, that would probably mean no Hiroko Sato. What a conundrum >>
Again...
Was it NOT explained in Decade why the Riders were played by different actors/characters... The worlds colliding/combining was changing everything around. I still don't get why people don't accept this.
So because Toei gives an explanation we're supposed to just take it? "Oh Toei gave a lame explanation, so I guess I can't be ticked that they didn't bother to get back the nine star alumni. Heck I have no right to be annoyed about anything, because I'm not a Japanese rugrat. Of course they're never annoyed about anything either, as long as they get a bunch of shiny toys >>
