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04-28-2020, 11:06 PM | #601 |
Kamen Ride Or Die
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MASKED RIDER RYUKI EPISODE 49
Oof. Oooooooffffff. Man. Scale of 1 to 10, how wrecked do you think kids were after seeing this episode when it aired? 10? 10,000? Just a brutal episode of Ryuki, both on an emotional level (Shinji! Yui!) and on an incoherent-premise level (Shiro! Also Yui!). It's collectively probably my favorite and least favorite Ryuki episode. Just to get it out of the way, oh my god did they shit the bed with the Mirror World explanation. Not only does the explanation make zero sense (a Mirror Yui came out to take the place of the dead real Yui who will arbitrarily die at age 20 oh and also the house exploded and I guess their parents left them to die????), it's a scene that, for me, mostly doesn't work dramatically. Shiro's great at telling people to Fight, he's decent at telling people to die, but WOW is he unable to match Yui's performance in that death scene. It's hammy, unconvincing acting. He's got no connection in the scene, there's no honesty to his performance...he, like, can't figure out what to do with his hands. It's a total disaster of a scene for me. I can't, for a second, get on board with whatever horseshit they've cobbled together to try and salvage a year-long plot that started at A Mirror Ghost Will Grant You A Wish If You Fight Well and somehow got less intelligible as it progressed, but even the emotional core of it felt hollow and forced. It's nice that Yui got to die on her own terms, and that actor sold the hell out of that choice, but that's the only compliment I can pay this part of the series. I never loved this storyline, and, Christ, the end of it? F-. (Also, so, is the amount of Riders necessary for the final battle as handwaved as the rest of this premise? We're consistently told that Riders Can't Quit, that they have to fight until there's one left, but, like, it doesn't matter that Asakura and Kitaoka aren't fighting? Kitaoka got to bail last episode, "withdraw”, like that was ever an option offered to literally any other character, but Asakura? He would definitely want to fight! He has not conceded! Just, why even have rules if Shiro's just making them all up.) The rest, though, holy shit, A+. There's a funereal feel to this episode, a pall over the proceedings. Mostly in silence, Shinji and Ren have barely begun to process Yui's death before Shiro declares that the Rider Battles will continue. And then, it's just, oh. There's no end to this. It's just misery until we die. There are no options, no one can be saved. It's more of that as the episode progresses. Kitaoka's out of the hospital, but clearly without much time left. Asakura is going to be killed by the police at dawn. And Shinji's at Ore Journal, confessing his secrets and adrift in confusion. Nothing he does seems to matter, and he doesn't know what he should even fight for at this point. That scene in Ore Journal, with Shinji and Okubo... I don't assume it's most people's favorite scene from the episode. The final scene, it's a killer. (Too soon?) I couldn't blame anyone who cited it as an all-time fave. This Ore Journal one, though. Man. Maybe my favorite dramatic scene in this show. Okubo's been a secret weapon on this show, maybe. There's the wacky hijinks and awkward comedy and whatnot, but there's a sense that he gets it. He gets people, and he gets how to help them. Shinji's torn up by indecision, and Okubo lets him know that there's nothing wrong with questioning yourself. That for Shinji, a character who leapt to conclusions like they were rampaging monsters, it's good to examine your motivations, to wonder if you're doing the right thing. But if you can believe in yourself, trust in yourself, you'll do the right thing. It's a journalist saying, Hey, we don't always know what the right thing to do is, but asking that question is the start of getting an answer we can live with. And at that moment, as Shinji's getting a little guidance from a friend, it gets brighter in the room. The sun comes up. The darkness recedes. A hero who lost his way starts to see a future. It's a beautifully shot scene, and it's probably the scene I'll remember most from these 49 episodes of Ryuki. I mean, that or Shinji dying. It's a toss up. So, yeah! Shinji dies! I was wondering what was going to come from those blue bug guys (mosquitos?), and the answer is City-Wide Rampage. Agito went pretty low-key (relatively!) with its finale, so it's nice to get back in the Kuuga vein of monsters everywhere, screaming civilians, and horrifically outmatched heroes. Shinji's skewered right out of the gate, before he can even Henshin, as he saves a little girl. It's a perfect capper to that Ore Journal scene, putting those lessons into practice. Shinji's not a... you know, a big picture guy. Plans, process, it's not exactly his specialty. The moment, jumping in and helping someone who's scared, that's where he lives. Doing that, saving a child from Shiro's madness and the rampaging monsters he commands, it's when Shinji knows what he'd wish for. An end to all of it, the pain and violence. An end to Mirror World. He wants to stop it, even if that means Eri can't be saved or Kitaoka can't live forever. (UNACCEPTABLE.) Keeping all these other people safe, it's something that's worth fighting for. Except he can't, because he just died. It's all up to Ren now.
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04-28-2020, 11:35 PM | #602 |
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And, it's a small thing in the episode, but I love that Reiko figured everything out herself. Mirror World, Shiro, Kamen Riders... she just figured it out. No one had to tell her. She just spent a year chasing down leads, interviewing subjects, having occasional eye injuries, and doing research. That's it. And she got it all.
For a show that had a female lead who never felt in control of her own story, it's awesome that Reiko never for a minute ceded control of hers. From episode 1 she was going to get to the truth behind the mysterious disappearances, and by episode 49 she had. I really, really love that.
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04-29-2020, 12:30 AM | #603 |
take me to space
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As someone who watched this show on TV dubbed as a kid, I can confirm it did wreck me with a score of 10000. I also decided to re-watch the episode a moment ago and guess what, I teared up! The context of it all came rushing back to me, combined with Shinji and Ren's performances just destroyed me on the spot in the best way.
Before I got to this point, I figured the only way the show would end is with Shinji and Ren beating Odin and stopping the Mirror World for good, which I still think would have been a perfectly satisfying conclusion. Now that that's out of the window, it feels like you go into the last episode with a sense of doom about everyone's fate. Your words about it feeling like a funeral is really apt, because it's like all the remaining characters and the viewers can only walk resignedly into whatever final fate awaits them. |
04-29-2020, 10:10 AM | #604 |
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As someone who watched this show on TV dubbed as a kid, I can confirm it did wreck me with a score of 10000. I also decided to re-watch the episode a moment ago and guess what, I teared up! The context of it all came rushing back to me, combined with Shinji and Ren's performances just destroyed me on the spot in the best way.
Before I got to this point, I figured the only way the show would end is with Shinji and Ren beating Odin and stopping the Mirror World for good, which I still think would have been a perfectly satisfying conclusion. Now that that's out of the window, it feels like you go into the last episode with a sense of doom about everyone's fate. Your words about it feeling like a funeral is really apt, because it's like all the remaining characters and the viewers can only walk resignedly into whatever final fate awaits them. Even Kitoka, whose storyline is that his death is imminent, somehow finds an even sadder fate, doing the most Kamen Rider thing he'll maybe ever do by blowing off his lunch date with Reiko to enter a final conflict with his nemesis. This episode is just packed, scene by scene, with depressing outcomes. But, yeah, that death scene for Shinji. It's shot a little weird (the camera keeps floating up and down, sometimes missing some of the person who's talking), but I love that they just gave Shinji space to have a whole speech. They really draw it out, and of course they should do that. It's a real series highlight. It got me thinking. Ryuki has maybe the most main character death scenes, or it's at least in the top 5, but are they also the best? Some real corkers in this series: Tezuka, Imperer, Toujou, Professor, Angry Man, Yui, goddamn Scissors... I don't even know if I got them all! There're a lot! And they're pretty great!
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04-29-2020, 10:21 AM | #605 |
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> Main Character
> Scissors Please choose one.
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04-29-2020, 10:24 AM | #606 |
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I ain't gonna count it up, but I would guarantee you that Scissors has more Posts Per Appearance on this thread than probably anyone other than Ren and Shinji. Folks got feelings about Scissors!
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04-29-2020, 11:15 AM | #607 |
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Same for Shiro, his wish is to extend Yui's existing life with a new life created from the wish, not reviving her, which is why he gives time limit for the war, the time limit is Yui's birthday, her death (though at ep. 49, she disintegrates before her birthday, so Shiro thinks there's still time to save her). If Yui dies (there's also him against Alternatives and likely keeping Shinji and Ren around to protect her from those), Shiro cannot use the wish on her to extend her life as she's already dead, and he needs other Riders dying to fulfill that wish, so he persuades them to more actively fight so they all die quicker before Yui dies. Riders are also all, at the end, just pawns to Shiro to gain his own wish (In TVTropes, Asakura is the god of "Big Bad Wannabe" for Pantheons!) with his own last standing Rider Odin. If he truly can save Yui regardless of her condition like reviving her dead self, Shiro wouldn't need time limit at all, or ensuring her staying alive between the Riders. If this part of series is already figured out completely (not vaguely like "Shiro's doing all of this for the sake of Yui"; doing what? and what benefit he would give for her?) by everyone back at much earlier part of the series, the series will be all about Yui's repeated attempt to commit suicide (done much earlier than this episode), so that Shiro's wish won't work on her, while also telling Shiro she rejected it. Where Shiro's plan is foiled, he cannot save the now-dead Yui, giving him no reason to continue the war with a wish out of his reach, ending Ryuki very quickly. After that, either that Shiro hears her, relents and stop, or not and rewinds time to start the war again (and it also depends on how long it takes to figure this out quickly in his next takes of the war that it ends just as quickly, or lasting as long as this series). I guess she'll quickly die that way being a normal human physically-wise. And even if Shiro locks her up to prevent that like here, history will repeat with their parents locking them up, she also dies by being sick or starving like her as a child. So the conclusion is, the truth regarding Mirror World, it's not only the "ON button" (Yui eventually dying due to abusive parents and getting only a short second living chance spurs Shiro creating 13 Decks and utilize the monsters to start a Rider War and win the game/wish himself to save her) for the series, it's also an instant "OFF button" (Yui eventually dying due to abusive parents and getting only a short second living chance lets her fully know about Shiro's true nature of his plan to reject his attempt, and if he doesn't hear, there's committing suicide as a solution for the war) for the series. So it has to be unknown for a long time to let the series run for this long to tell enough stories. I know this is talking about the moment happening in this episode, but like, if everyone figures it out at ep. 12, Yui will pull this exact stunt at ep. 12, ending Ryuki at 12 episodes (or a bit more if Shiro locks her up but won't extend it very far like likely 15 episodes or something), for example. Last edited by DreadBringer; 04-29-2020 at 11:20 AM.. |
04-29-2020, 11:42 AM | #608 |
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04-29-2020, 11:46 AM | #609 |
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One of my biggest problems with Yui's story is how little agency she has in it. It's mostly people (Shinji, Ren, Shiro, Auntie, Tezuka) deciding things for her, discussing her fate amongst themselves. It's a great moment for the show to finally consider what Yui wants in a serious, actionable way.
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For me, though, I think they had other options? Like, everything about how the series needed its mystery to stay obscured until late in the series or the heroes would've circumvented it... I'd hope the writers would've had other ideas? I don't want to game out how I'd've written Ryuki or anything, but there've got to be ways to create obstacles for the heroes. That's what writers do! As a job! These things are only problems in the story because of how the story was written, so maybe they could've written something without those problems? Like, and this is something I'll talk about at greater length when the series is over, maybe, but the weird inconsistencies and vagaries, that's something someone decided to put in this story! If it's a bad solution to a problem, but any other solution would be worse, maybe write a different problem? If I'm building a house, and I don't have the glass to fill a window, I've got a few options. Maybe don't put a window there. Maybe move the glass from a different window, and don't build that other window. Maybe board it up until I can get the glass. But if I decide to shove a refrigerator in the opening, I don't get to shrug and say, "Well, that refrigerator is keeping the gap sealed. What, was I supposed to just leave a huge hole in my wall?" There's a point at which these things stop being unavoidable and start being poor choices.
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04-29-2020, 11:47 AM | #610 |
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Hey, I have feelings about my boy Knuckle, that doesn't make him a main character!
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