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What are you watching? (Kamen Rider Edition)
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06-30-2019, 05:38 PM
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15427
Fish Sandwich
The Immortal King Tasty
Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: Every diner you've ever been to.
Posts: 3,833
Now that I've reached the endgame, I'm going to be taking things one at a time. I figure this will let me really dig into each show's ending better than if I tried to talk about them all at once. Also I'd probably be too busy crying to write anything if I tried watching all three of these finales together.
Ryuki 47-50:
Following on from the last episodes, Shinji is not doing so hot. He's actually ironically been put in the exact position Ren's been in the whole series. He's trying to convince himself to win the Rider Battle to save someone, but when it comes down to it, he'll never be able to take a life. It's honestly pretty unnerving seeing him the way he is here. He starts actively picking fights with the other Riders, something he explicitly promised Yui he would never do way back at the start, and his solution to his habit of thinking about things so hard he ends up doing nothing is to try and stop thinking entirely, going around essentially pretending to be himself as written by Inoue, totally carefree and stupid. Ren and even Kitaoka are actually worried about the poor guy, and the buildup to the finale here is great. Everything is coming apart at the seams, and the hordes of disgusting larva/dragonfly Monsters running around making creepy noises lends an almost apocalyptic vibe to things.
It all leads to a finale that does an absolutely incredible job at giving just about every main character a satisfying conclusion. It's that soap opera style of super heavy drama that Ryuki delivers in spades, and the emotional tension is at a peak throughout. Shinji ultimately makes his decision, Ren stays true to himself until the end, Kitaoka comes to realize what really matters to him, and Asakura goes out the only way he knows how. It's captivating stuff, and I couldn't wait to see how it was going to wrap up, and when it did...
I'll be honest, the first time I saw Ryuki's finale, it didn't totally sit right with me, but, and I don't even remember if there was a particular catalyst for this, not too long after I decided it was the best, most appropriate ending the show could have, and that's where my opinion has been ever since. The resolution to Shirou and Yui's plotline is perfect. The choice he makes in the end is a powerful resolution to his arc, and while I can't easily identify a singular, concrete main theme to Ryuki's story, a lot of the characters in it, like Ren, are driven by their inability to accept something that's happened in their life. So to see that story end with the man responsible for the entire plot finally learning to move on is honestly really poetic. As is the idea that the only way to truly win the Rider War was not to fight it. I don't know if this is still something people are that upset about, but I don't buy that Ryuki's ending invalidates the events of the show in any way. Or at least, it's not doing so just to force a happy ending in there. In a lot of ways, the atmosphere is very bittersweet, and at the end of the day, it doesn't change the fact that not everybody gets to survive.
Although the use of scientific research as a major plot point and the heavily mechanical looking designs of the Riders do a lot to cloak it, I've always seen Ryuki as more of a fairy tale than anything else, and it's a very good one. There are definitely a few rougher edges here and there, but overall it's a series that I think nailed everything it set out to do, telling a story that's never dull about a wide-ranging group of engaging characters fighting a life and death battle to gain something important to them.
It's as compelling as a show can be, and I couldn't have asked for a better formative experience with Kamen Rider. Mostly because I was probably already having one at the same time, but now I'm getting ahead of myself. Right now I'm talking about Ryuki, and if I weren't concerned with having some semblance of structure, I could go on for a long while yet. The layers to what I love about this show are virtually endless. But above all those things, it's always going to come back to two things no Rider show is complete without. Cool action, and a captivating cast. I can sit here trying to objectively justify this stuff all day, but when it comes down to it, the simple truth is that I like it because I do. I felt like I was right there with Shinji the whole way through, waiting in anticipation of what surprising turn would come next or who would show up to totally upend the status quo. I had never seen anything like Ryuki, and even with all the Rider shows that directly copy a lot of the ideas it introduced, I'm still not sure I ever have.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
AkibaSilver
Imagine having this bad an opinion and not realising Den-Liner version is the best version.
Honestly, I don't even mind the song by itself, and the full version has Kenichi Suzumura rapping, which is one obvious advantage over the original, but something about attaching it to the show's actual opening makes it seem so much worse to me.
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