|
Community Links |
Members List |
Search Forums |
Advanced Search |
Go to Page... |
dreamcastegirl Watched All of Kamen Rider Ryuki and Now Hates Herself
Cat on lap, I finally watched the entirety of Kobayashi Yasuko's Kamen Rider Ryuki, which is full of unnecessary grimness, punctuated only by moments of tiresome slapstick. Having re-watched Den-o last year, I find myself increasingly convinced that Kobayashi's better work is certainly on the other of Toei's big franchises, her Super Sentai shows; Ryuki is barely a Kamen Rider show, a conceit that it openly admits in the absurdity of its dream sequence Hyper Battle Video special, Kamen Rider Ryuki vs. Kamen Rider Agito. For much of what this show is, I understand the thinking behind why it happened, the Heisei shows were three series in and beginning to find their feet, to work out what kind of stories they wished to tell—it's just a shame that these stories are only really tangentially related to the idea of what a Kamen Rider represents and the kind of stories that had gone before them. Having said that, I'm not sure what is worse, the idea of these standalone shows as their own contained things where the term "Kamen Rider" is used but means something very different from the Showa era, or the later attempts by Toei to connect the dots in these shows and fashion a new multiverse of Heisei Riders. Perhaps I should not be too judgemental regarding this approach as the DCD and Zi-o arcs dealing with Ryuki's story are the only times I really enjoyed being in this world.
For the most part, Ryuki is a dry run for its successor, 555, another show that fails to present the audience with any traditional Rider characters but does a slightly better job of it. The story of Ryuki details the machinations of Kanzaki Shiro as, in order to address his personal loss, he opens the door to an alternate dimension glimpsed only through mirrors and offers a chance to thirteen different individuals to become "Kamen Riders" and compete in a battle royale against one another for the prize of reshaping reality. For 50 episodes, one movie, one TV special, and one video tape that came free with an issue of the magazine, Terebi-kun, Ryuki presents a number of iterations of the events that comprise its story, but none of them really add anything; in different versions, there are glimpses of different characters who each make their specific timelines notable—Sakakibara Koichi, the former Ryuki in 13 Riders, Kirishima Miho in Episode: Final—but for the most part, the story is a bland back and forth as main character, Kido Shinji, struggles to convince other Riders to not fight, and they ignore him. Every episode, there is also a considerable amount of time wasted on the supporting cast of Kido's workplace, a internet news site named Ore Journal; every character in these sequences could have been expunged from the narrative and it would have made no difference. I disliked the heroes of Ryuki so much that I actively began to sympathise with minor antagonist, Asakura Takeshi, and major antagonist, Kanzaki. For a Kamen Rider show, even after watching the whole thing, I find that I still don't actually know half of the official aliases of the Riders, and now they will forever be stuck in my mind with names such as Scissor-Man-Crab-Hands. Ah, you might be thinking, but dreamcastegirl, we know you of old, and we've long since learnt not to trust your opinions on things. Well, fear not friends, because Toei have just uploaded the first episode of Ryuki to youtube, which you can now watch to form your opinions of, safe in the knowledge that I specifically went out of my way to go and play that video and spitefully give it a thumbs down. Take that, you 19-year-old TV show (Jesus, really?). |
I had much the same reaction as you towards Ryuki, which you’ll see if you go back and find Die’s thread from when he was watching it (we were watching it at roughly the same time and pace). Since I’m watching Ryuki’s sister series for my own thread, expect more than a few unsubtle jabs at it (the first one is coming tomorrow, where we meet a scissors monster who was supposed to be themed after a crab, until Ryuki did their own scissors-themed crab villain, forcing them to change it to a rabbit).
|
Quote:
Again, I wouldn't wish to shame someone for liking it, I can even understand why someone would like it, and I think there are some genuinely tender moments in the development of Kitaoka's character throughout the series, but, like Kobayashi's later Amazons, to me the whole thing comes across as a joyless, soulless exercise in trying to make the franchise appeal to dead-eyed teenagers who have long since outgrown such things. |
You might be one of the few who prefers the US adaptation in Dragon Knight then. Maybe try checking that out for a "better version?"
|
Quote:
|
I think I have a similar outlook to you when it comes to Kamen Rider -- I might not have seen much Showa, but the ideals and themes within are not just core to the franchise to me but what drew me to Kamen Rider in the first place. I have a big soft spot for how they often frame heroes, and how it tends to run with the assumption that people are ultimately good and how it's neck-deep in The Power Of Friendship. It's why I love shows like OOO, Hibiki and Kuuga, why I'm extremely turned off from the likes of Kiva, Amazons and Gaim, why I was confused about why I didn't like Saber beyond the toy deluge, why I like Ghost a lot more than others and why I'm giving it another shot with my rewatch at the moment... and why I couldn't get into Ryuki at all at first.
And in many ways it's still not quite my thing. I'm not entirely turned off from seasons about Riders fighting each other - Build and Blade are shows I find it difficult to shut up about - but the battle royale style is certainly something I don't associate with what I see as Kamen Rider. The constant belittling of the wide-eyed protagonist, the only one who's a decent person; is something I found a little untenable at times, as was quickly killing off the Rider who was my favourite character (Raia), and I to this day do not understand what a lot of people see in Zolda. You're right in saying that it's a very un-Kamen Rider show, but... But what sets it apart for me is that the more I interrogated it, the more intentional I found it. For all the fun every character and the series in general makes of Shinji, how he's made out to be a complete idiot, how the only person really carrying the ideal of Kamen Rider is one that's a fool for not getting with the real world and participating in a killing game? For all of that, the season makes clear by the end that make fun of the dork all you want; he's right! He's right that Riders shouldn't be fighting each other, he's right in his naive ideals of heroism, he's right in everything he tries to do, and that's what sets this show apart for me from other shows that try something similar. The story of Ryuki in general is a fantasy concocted by a broken man, a completely wrong series of events he's forced into reality but which cannot help but be undone into a better world in the show's ending; perfectly foreshadowed by Shinji breaking through his Time Vent just enough to deliver a single punch to Kanzaki. Other characters like Ren hide behind a veneer of cynicism and 'reality', despite the fact that the one time he does finally take a life - of a person he doesn't even know, of a person he believes is the mastermind behind the entire killing game - he breaks down in tears because for all his talk, the act of actually taking a life is too much for him to take. Which isn't even going into the intention behind Ryuki yet, which... well, to quote you: Quote:
"Children sometimes envision themselves as the heroes and think they might also be justice. There is also the idea that people often don’t accept themselves as being wrong, because in one’s mind “I am myself, so I’m not wrong” is the prevailing thought process. These thoughts lead to selfish patterns because kids might not see themselves as themselves but as the heroes. Mr. Ishinomori had fears that too many people would think this way when working on his creations." (source: https://dot.asahi.com/aera/2018081000056.html?page=2 ) That last bit sticks out to me in particular: Ishinomori was a man who was very intentional in what he was portraying in his works, and would constantly embed his ideals into it: there's many infamous lines I could quote from Kamen Rider, but the one that comes to mind the most here is "Human Life is more important than justice". To me, if you consider the way Ishinomori viewed life and what he held as most important; even going so far as to say that human life should always be prioritised over one's ideals of justice in a show about one man fighting for justice against an evil, fascist conglomerate... to respond to a society effected by 9/11 with "we need to show justice", to me, is maybe the worst thing one could do with Ishinomori's creations. And this is what spawned Ryuki: as is perhaps obvious from the quote there, it turns Kamen Rider on its head because as an icon of justice, Kamen Rider taking this sharp a turn both from the Showa Era and from Kuuga and Agito is a statement on what ideals we hold dear and why; and really interrogating the concept of Kamen Rider in an uncertain age and how those ideals really hold up today. It's not like this hadn't been done before - again, trying very hard here not to go on and on about Kuuga - but Ryuki really drives it home with everything it does. The concept of most the Riders being evil, for instance; that's not a coincidence or just something they done because "it's cool and edgy" - it's something that is incredibly significant in a franchise where you didn't really have any evil riders before! You had a few one-offs like the Shocker Riders or Fake Amazon, and Another Agito was absolutely an antagonist but he still ended up joining up with the heroes and getting some kind of redemption; and Black very smartly never, ever called Shadow Moon a Kamen Rider. But Scissors is the first time someone is explicitly called a Kamen Rider, is framed as what a Kamen Rider is, and begins and ends life as a terrible person - and that's the norm. That to me represents what Ryuki's doing: it twists ideas of justice we previously thought of as pure and immovable, and completely turns them on their heads to make its audience question what justice is and why we hold it to our hearts, in an era where that couldn't be more important. I'm not saying all this to try and convince you that you're wrong, or anything like that; at the end of the day, the show had an effect on you and the effect clearly wasn't positive. If you don't like it, obviously, you don't like it. But I guess just since the day I finished it, my feelings on Ryuki as a show have constantly been complex, and so this topic was one I really couldn't help but comment on with how my own feelings have developed on the series and what truly inspired Ryuki in the first place, and how that makes me feel about the series as a whole. |
Quote:
Your post helped me appreciate the context, which I really appreciate, but it also makes me mildly sad in a way that I haven't been able to enjoy the show without that additional context, and I feel as if that says something about both the show and sadly about me. I hark on a lot about Death of the Author whenever it comes to media, possibly because I am all too aware of my "problematic faves" when it comes to music, literature et al., and I absolutely believe that such a thing is super important, that a story should live and die by what is in the "text" of the narrative, but at the same time it's difficult when we begin discussing stuff outside of the time in which it was made, the events that the work was a reaction to, and I think that Ryuki maybe suffers from that. Possibly there is no greater example of Death of the Author than in the way some/many of us, during the early post-internet boom of file-sharing discovered Japanese media as more than just, say, dubbed cartoons from childhood, and fill-in animation studios, and certainly I remember encountering Ryuki absolutely outside of context of everything, and whilst my understanding of what defined a Kamen Rider was still tenuous, the show still felt strongly anachronistic when contrasted with what I knew. I wish now, having read your post, that I had known a little more then, that my Japanese had been more proficient, as I'm really a lot more interested in this context now that I am in the show! Ugh, anyway, thank you so much for your post, I really enjoyed reading it, and it really helped my consider the show differently, even if it didn't make me feel any warmer towards it. :p |
Quote:
And... yeah, fully agree on the death of the author part! I don't think you actually need to know what was going through the heads of the producers and writers when they were making Ryuki, but it's always such a fascinating story for me to think about and it's what brought me around to respecting what this show was attempting (and I think in many way succeeded) to do. Glad to share; Ryuki if not one of my favourites is a show I'm always happy to talk about :p Have a good one! |
Quote:
It's nice to talk about this in such a way despite not having been a fan of it, so thank you for putting up with me rambling about it! |
Quote:
Something I do like seeing with post-series Ryuki content, though, is Shinji finally getting to stand and fight alongside other Kamen Riders against evil. Even though it's usually just another silent suit in a crowd, it's just nice to see Shinji being able to beat up a monster with Faiz or Zi-O or Shinkenblue; where he can finally fight alongside fellow heroes. It feels earned. |
Quote:
I was surprised by what elements are the ones that the franchise returns to, and I was surprised by how many of those elements come from Episode: Final, but you're right, I guess this is an example of the oversimplification present in looking back. |
Ryuki's a tough show, for sure. Shinji's idealism and certitude taking a beating for a year is sometimes hard to invest in. There's a real sense of fatalism to its arc, where it's less about heroism and more about self-interest/martyrdom. I'd be lying if I said it was one of my faves.
But it's a show that, for me, really improves in my memory. I respect more what it was trying to talk about: the difficulties in empathizing with others; the hard but necessary work of getting to know people; the value in taking on someone else's burden; and the idea that we can never, should never feel certain about anything, so always ask questions, always be inquisitive. It's a show that has a bunch of flaws (Shiro had some of my least-favorite acting in a Kamen Rider ever), but there's some thematic stuff it's getting after that I keep rolling around in my brain. The execution may not be flawless, but there's a ton to unpack from what Ryuki wanted to discuss. Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts! |
Funny enough, that quote really reminds me of how I always saw Shinji:
Quote:
He felt like the dark side of idealism. Uncompromising even when it caused more harm in the long run, like with Oujia. In the end, Shinji more or less lead the world to ruin and someone else had to pick up his mess. To me the final message of the show was a "heroes don't exist and they should never exist". I'm just glad Faiz managed to do a far better job at getting Rider right again through the lense of a fallen hero regaining his ideals. |
Quote:
I'm not sure I follow your reading of Shinji being responsible for the woes of his world, I think the world in which Ryuki takes place is fundamentally broken, and he can't truly be held responsible for the fact that the toast always falls butter side down. I would agree that perhaps he lacks the capacity to adapt his views to a changing world, but that could be said of all the characters of the show. Quote:
Quote:
|
Quote:
https://tokusatsunetwork.com/2018/08...ction-to-9-11/ Shirakura also refers to the three "Ishinomori-isms": "fight against the self", "parricide", and "denial of the self". Oh, and in case you were wondering, Ryuki had cards as a way to capitalize on the popularity of card games like Yu-Gi-Oh at the time. https://tokusatsunetwork.com/2018/08...inomoris-ideas |
Ryuki is a show that left me fairly cold the first time through, but that I appreciated more on the rewatch. I think the part of it that I appreciate the most is a moment that comes near the end of the show when Shinji is trying to get the other Riders to fight him so he can save Yui and they all refuse, even Asakura. I really liked the idea that a big part of the show was the way that his idealism actually did inspire the others and it was something about him that they all respected, something that even motivated some of them to be better people. I thought that was a pretty neat development.
Also, I freaking love the Rideshooter and would 100% drive one if they were released to the public. |
Ryuki is the ninth and most recent Phase 1 show I've watched. However, I had put off watching it until a few years ago after hearing how the ending rendered everything that came before it irrelevant, but I was surprised to learn later that it might not actually Kobayashi's fault. Apparently, she wanted to end it with all the Riders and Kanzakis dead but was overruled by executives. Fortunately, Inoue later wrote Rider Time Ryuki which comes pretty close to her original intention.
Kobayashi isn't without her flaws though. There's usually a subplot in her shows that's critically important to the overall story and yet very boring compared to the more spectacular parts. In Ryuki, the Kanzaki plot is the reason for the Rider War but it feels detached from all the clashing philosophies of the Riders and suffers from a lot of dragging to make it last until the end. In Den-O, the Zeronos memory plot feels intrusive to the comedic character interactions that made the show popular. She also wrote ToQGer.... Uh, anyway, I agree that Ryuki is the darkest Phase 1 show but I think it's saved from being too dark and edgy by its heroic characters like Shinji, Tezuka and eventually Ren. Amazons is the bloodiest Rider show I've watched but the darkest overall is Gaim since the most archetypal heroic Rider is Zack but he's also the second weakest. With Ryuki, there's a feeling that Shinji is stuck in a hopeless situation, which he is, all the Riders are, they're all doomed. But in the face of abundant cynicism and at least 10 people who want to murder him, his persistent heroism eventually finds a way to save Ren's soul. It's a moral that doing only what's logical or pragmatic in a hopeless situation will never be good enough and a true hero will always do the right thing. Quote:
|
I feel like I should instantly be able to contribute something to this topic, but I'm finding that surprisingly hard when I consider what a conflicting series of opinions I have here.
I'm in a similar boat to Kurona in that I have a ton of love for both the Showa ideal of what "Kamen Rider" meant, despite not having a ton of direct exposure to those shows, and for the very heartfelt optimism at the core of many of the later shows. Ghost is my favorite Rider series because of how unflinching it is in that, and Yasuko Kobayashi is my favorite toku writers for how great she is at finding the warmth and humanity in her characters. I might even go so far agree that I prefer her work on Sentai, in a lot of ways. Certainly, they're also favorites of mine. Naturally, I've also long been against the view that anything is somehow made better or more respectable simply by being grim and edgy, although that's probably a given to be a fan of hero tokusatsu. But at the same time, Ryuki is a major part of my roots as a Rider fan, and I've just never gotten that vibe from it? I don't think I could put it in any real objective way – and that's fine, because we react personally to things – but I've always found that Ryuki is a show where the usual Kobayashi warmth shines through specifically because of how much its challenged. Shinji is belittled constantly by the characters, sure, but it always seemed clear to me the show treats his belief in the sanctity of life with respect, and wants the viewer to see it that way too. There's a line he has in episode 40 that's always stuck with me: "I just wanted to save them, so I saved them", or however else you want to translate it. He's someone who does what he feels is right not because he thinks the world will reward him for it (and it almost never does), but because those actions hold value to him in of themselves, and that's a take on heroism that resonates with me a ton. Now, whether Shinji's values are "correct" or not is something the show of course interrogates quite a bit, and he doesn't always come out looking great, but that's true of everyone in the show. This is especially evident in Shinji's oddball relationship with Ren that's at the core of much of the story. Shinji's life sucks because people aren't as nice as he thinks they are, and, paradoxically, Ren's sucks because he's a far kinder person at heart than he wants to admit. It's a series all about how people's differing perceptions of the world can clash, often messily, and that acknowledgement of how uncertain things can feel is yet another thing that draws me to it. It was very hard for me to see Ryuki as being dark for the sake of it, even before I knew how it was conceived, and I never liked it because it was dark. I think it's a fascinating show with a lot that can be taken out of it, and while it's unfortunate your experience was unpleasant, it was fun reading your thoughts. It's always interesting to see how subjective these things can be, so I'm glad to get such a wildly different take on a show I love. Quote:
|
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Stop me now. I'm on the verge of going into an Evangelion flavoured reminiscence on the notion of the division between "self" and "other." |
Shinji has been the true Kamen Rider from the start with Ren gradually becoming one. And the rest were wolves in sheep's clothing; they may bear the title and fight for their ideals and desires but in terms of what is ideally considered a Kamen Rider by us the rest were just monsters in essence.
|
Quote:
|
Quote:
|
Quote:
|
Quote:
|
All I will say is that if you found Ryuki's dark tone pretentious or unwarranted, Kamen Rider Dragon Knight is not exactly the better of the two in that regard, I remember reading a long review on another forum(unsure if I should say) describing how it kind of gave off an immature ''grimdark'' impression! I have seen all of both and I have to say, whatever defence you might have for Dragon Knight I still don't see how you could find it the better of the two. And also as for a typical controversial opinion from me(Never!) I know Ryuki was very different to Kuuga and Agito but for me it was actually a similar level of enjoyment and equally memorable whereas Faiz and Blade were more just sort of average! Granted it is like 10 years+ since I finished most 2000s shows (though mostly still after the 2000s) and of course some of my life in that period was personally bad so maybe now my view would be different.
|
Quote:
Quote:
|
Quote:
|
Quote:
|
Quote:
Especially with today's current political climate, you need that guy who will stand for morality when nobody else is seemingly doing so, against the grain of a world of people acting in their own self interest or with their own distorted view of justice. This is what Ryuki is at its core. I love reading the excerpt you quoted from the producer of the show explaining how one can think they are right because they see themselves as heroes and are just, because "I am myself, so I'm not wrong". People on both sides of the aisle will justify their actions based on their own world view, or what trendy conspiracy theory they've bought into, or when their identity is being threatened. |
Quote:
Also, welcome to Tokunation! |
I think you might like Dragon Knight better than Ryuki. Since imo it has some more traditional Heisei Rider tropes baked into it. Plus the creators are huge tokusatsu fans. So if nothing else you can at least feel the respect the people behind the show have for the franchise. Since with Masked Rider it feels kind of haphazardly put together in regard with the usage of stock footage and the the very little money put into the actual shoe. Dragon Knight has tons of original footage and effects to tell the story it wants. So they get pick choose what they want from Ryuki and what they want to shoot instead.
|
Quote:
I just finished rewatching Ryuki last week for the first time since I saw it around 2012. I defintely enjoyed it a lot more this time. Not sure why, but I could more clearly see what this show was trying to do. Maybe because I'm older, I could enjoy the characters of this show since they do skew older for Kamen Rider standards, or it could be the themes of justice which I can draw parallels to the current world. I still have issues with the show not explaining its setting very well and everything around Shiro, but I can look past that and enjoy the characters. |
Regardless of how well the show was made or how it concluded though, it was a totally different league of its own at the time and I remember loving it solely for that. 13 kamen riders in one show was shocking enough(though excluding the TV special and movie we actually got 10, 12 if you include the two psuedo riders Alternative and Alternative Zero), they are gonna fight each other? At the time when the movie Battle Royale still had some residual hype going for it? It was sensory overload. :lolol
|
Quote:
As an aside: I love your sig, btw. |
Well, very late reply due to all the busy time I got... It just got over though, so let's do this if you don't mind. Still you're not wrong to have this reaction but want to convey my thoughts. I'm feeling bad over this, but I want to promote an extremely deep analysis of Ryuki, deeper than anything else I've read on Internet, the link's on my signature. I think they can catch anything people missed about Ryuki. They also had OOO as another complete deep analysis.
Quote:
And actually he may fail at the first glance, but Shinji does eventually succeed in ending the war, y'know. His contribution hasn't been given enough credit. He may not affect every Rider, but the Riders do get slowly softened by Shinji's innocence and determination, the exact opposite of what Shiro wanted (this is brought up in example, Ren and Kitaoka's interaction), like what Switchblade pointed out. By that he manages to get the Riders to delay or even stop their fighting, preventing Shiro from completing the war before the war's deadline, the birthday (Shiro tried to support Ouja as the way to kill off Riders quickly though), as he needs every other Riders to die as the wish fodder, and him talking some sense to Kanzaki that his sister wants the war to end too, broke Shiro's obsession, that the war well, just caused all the suffering and despair, the "dark and edgy" & "dangerous" thing you hate here, which is probably the real point of the show that "war is hell", and thus the way to make up for it series-wise is to move on and make the war don't exist at all, which is resetting it, which is already established to be able to be done in ep. 28 or the other iterations where Kanzaki resets the war if it's not going his way. It has a fate going on it, where by destiny Shinji will always become Ryuki, which is probably the point of the other iterations, for the answer who asks why Shiro didn't keep Shinji out of the war or kill him (13 Riders is that), but probably otherwise are just bonuses (13 Riders is really an abridged version of Ryuki, and many movies in Phase 1 also have it set in alternate timeline). He even remembers when Shiro rewinded the time at ep. 28. The analysis I gave do question it itself the reason why ORE Journal exists, where they're investigating things that the characters already knew, but to answer the question the analysis asked in their character analysis. Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Also the ending, it's about the war finally being stopped. So Shinji accomplished his goals (yeah you said that he prevents it from being too dark and edgy, and I also want to give credit for what he does too, which is the ending). The ending shows about how terrible everything was as a result of the Rider War (every single Rider died, not to mention all those countless civilians). Yeah, every single character's story was wrapped up (all with their ironic deaths); Kitaoka got his date and succumbed to his illness, Goro served him one last time, Asakura was finally taken down by the cops, Kido died saving people like he'd always wanted to, and Ren achieved his goal albeit succumbs to his death. But...that also means everyone's dead and nobody gained anything. Probably the real point about Ryuki, and all of its darkness, was that there was no point, to war or any of the conflict. The point that war is bad, war only creates cycle of suffering and despair. But for this series, it has been established that, the war can be reset, in ep. 28 (and overall, Ryuki is a loop where Kanzaki resets the war if it's not going his way, and it always does because by destiny Shinji always becomes Rider and screws up his plan, by well, the reason you say about something being dragged on, Shinji drags out the war so Shiro fails to make it in time). So the tragedies in war can be fixed by doing the reset one last time, but instead to restart, it's to make everything that causes the war nonexistent instead (branched Mirror World, Rider Decks, Mirror Monsters, the bodycounts). This also does something like indirectly grants Ren's wish, which is Eri being safe. Quote:
His idiocy and naivete did cause a harm at first (Scissors part), but he does mature later, contrast when he finds it suspicious when Tiger works at . If you bring up the Imperer arc to argue for this, then, it's Inoue screwing up his writing at that part by ignoring his development there. Quote:
Quote:
|
Quote:
And thank you also for your lengthy reply!! Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
|
Likewise for the response in a good number of the parts here. Like to talk long about something to try getting it full.
I mean, the reason for the part of Shinji and Tezuka is because the first post talks about how Shinji convinces anyone and gets ignored as complaint, so I want to point out that Tezuka also received the same treatment. But if this is about Tezuka being given motive explanation then ok (I mean, "true" Kamen Rider depends on morality not how much story etc. though). Well yeah Shinji doesn't have backstory or something, but that's made as him being the Everyman character type (the more normal guy compared to fantasized ones, these types are often working or middle class and deal with everyday problems, may also be placed in extraordinary circumstances): Riders before and after Shinji had something to do with the forces that moved the story onward or had some tragic past that defined them, but Shinji was just a normal guy who accidentally stumbled into the Rider War. Because and despite the fact that he had nothing to lose or gain by entering, he gave his all to stop the fighting. This is also partially justified for Shinji's entire place in the war: A completely normal guy with no wish and no desire to fight somehow managed to find an Advent Deck and become a Kamen Rider. All the other Riders were picked specifically because they would have a reason to fight (and it has benefit on Shinji where he resisted Time Vent). This also extends to his powers where he's a jack in all stats; with balanced deck having two shields, a sword, and a projectile, and also reflected in Ryuki Survive: Drag-Visor Zwei is a gunblade that can be used as a sword or a marker for Meteor Bullet, and Strange Vent can copy cards. Actually Ren only take his original wish of curing Eri, which is seen when Eri woke up. Seems that the wish is automatically granted when there's only 1 Rider left. Kanzaki is the one that ends the war directly, being the only one who is able to do so (and had done before to restart the war), at the behest of his sister who finally knows the war is meant to save her, by hearing directly from her (as he won't listen to anyone else, albeit Shinji reaffirms this too shortly after) that she doesn't want the new life that comes from countless bodycounts, due to Shinji dragging on the war to the birthday, forcing the secrets and lies (the truth about the war) to uncover, by supernatural means (body fading away). Shinji indirectly makes Kanzaki end the war though he didn't know, but it's still his doing and Ren also got better outcome at the end with the reset which is him and Eri just being safe and can live together. Villains can do good things just to benefit them, I ought not to commend those acts. That's called pragmatic villainy. Talking about past the point of redemption like him baiting others to kill Akira, this part is a reharsh of that for Asakura, where he seems to save a child, but only to use her as a bait with him not having any real compassion to her (when Venosnaker attacks her), once again showing him as beyond redemption. Other example of pragmatic villainy is Masamune in Ex-Aid who presents himself as an amicable boss to Genm Corp's employers. This will also benefit his employees after they suffer under bosses like Kuroto and Lovelica, getting more comfortable atmosphere, but this is nothing good on Masamune, he just does that to benefit himself. Or in other media, Red Skull who doesn't appreciate anyone on his payroll doing similar sadistic villainy, due to villainy committed on his dime has to have some kind of profit for him, which also had him foiled Madam Hydra's plan. |
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
(I can't really comment on your Ex-Aid or Captain America comparisons, I'm afraid, as I've never seen the former nor read an issue of the latter.) |
Quote:
|
Quote:
Although, having said that, the only other character I really liked in Amazons was Iyu, so maybe I am actually broken inside. |
All times are GMT -5. The time now is 01:39 AM. |
Powered by vBulletin®
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.
TokuNation News & Rumors |
Ultraman X Avengers |
Memorial Edition GoPhone Announced |
Kakuranger: 30 Years After |
ToyRise RyuKenDo |
Alternative Cut of "Day Of The Dumpster" Released |
All times are GMT -5. The time now is 01:39 AM.
|