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01-23-2021, 06:22 PM | #31 |
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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.
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Last edited by GrandComplete; 01-23-2021 at 06:25 PM.. |
01-23-2021, 06:33 PM | #32 |
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Oh no, I completely agree with that; I'm not saying that I don't like a character like Shinji being basically good -- it's in fact the opposite; characters like Eiji Hino, Sento Kiryu and Fuwa Isamu are my favourites for a reason. What I meant is that those ideals being questioned was a bit hard to take in 2021 when you've got certain bad-faith people driving discussion down by essentially saying things like "well, is killing bad?", and seeing these sorts of things said while watching Ryuki before I later interrogated it rubbed me the wrong way. I won't say much further than that, just saying that I do in fact agree with everything you posted there and saying the opposite was not the intention of what I said.
Also, welcome to Tokunation! 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. |
01-23-2021, 08:44 PM | #33 |
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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.
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01-24-2021, 07:29 AM | #34 |
Yodonna oshi
Join Date: Jan 2021
Posts: 748
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That definitely counts for something—I mean, that's why I read so much fanfic, after all. I'll certainly add this to my list for after I finish catching up with some of the Heisei shows I initially skipped over.
As an aside: I love your sig, btw. |
02-04-2021, 12:29 PM | #35 |
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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.
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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.
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:
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.
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I'm not sure I can agree there, I feel as if Shinji lacks a lot of the conviction that I would associate with someone of that title. Not that conviction alone is enough to fulfil the criteria, and I should note here that I'm probably a lot less generous with who I would be willing to accept than others, but if I absolutely, absolutely had to pick someone who was the "true" Rider of the show, it would probably be Tezuka.
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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.
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:
Funny enough, that quote really reminds me of how I always saw Shinji:
I couldn't stand the guy, ever. He always felt like someone too stuck in his ways, following a few rules, like, "killing is bad" or "Riders don't fight each other". And while I generally agreed with these statements, they always felt hollow. Shinji's biggest character flaw is that he doesn't think he could be wrong. More often than not it's his way or the high way. And as a consequence, his beliefs aren't hardent and reforged when they are challenged. He never listens and so never convinces others of his opinion. 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. 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:
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...
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"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."
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The most complete non-wiki encyclopedias for Kamen Rider series (currently only found Ryuki and OOO's). Last edited by DreadBringer; 02-04-2021 at 02:59 PM.. |
02-04-2021, 01:24 PM | #36 |
Yodonna oshi
Join Date: Jan 2021
Posts: 748
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And thank you also for your lengthy reply!! Quote:
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Well to each of your own, but I hope that you won't downplay or cut out his evilness, with you talking about the complexity. Of all the characters you talk about being rotten, Asakura is the worst of them, who is overall just a sadist psychopath who exists to harm and maim others.
You make it sound so serious, DreadBringer, as I'm trying to smear the good name of Shinji in national media! All I'm trying to say is that I understood where Tezuka was coming from, the story explained his motive, and communicated his desires, whereas I did not have the same impression of Shinji. Not, of course, that the failing is entirely the piece of media, both I and the context I watched it in are also to blame, but also... my feelings haven't changed. Having had a while to ruminate on the series, I still can't say that I enjoyed it. I liked aspects of it, but still, it felt to me a significant reminder of much that I dislike of the Heisei era shows. |
02-05-2021, 03:28 PM | #37 |
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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.
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The most complete non-wiki encyclopedias for Kamen Rider series (currently only found Ryuki and OOO's). Last edited by DreadBringer; 02-05-2021 at 03:31 PM.. |
02-05-2021, 03:56 PM | #38 |
Yodonna oshi
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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)
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(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.) |
02-05-2021, 06:34 PM | #39 |
Kamen Ride Or Die
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Location: Chicago, IL
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Not to derail anything, but Jin is maybe my favorite series-long villain for a Kamen Rider show? It's this bizarre arc of him telling you, upfront, what his genocidal scheme is, and then literally the rest of the show is used to illuminate how unheroic it is.
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Currently working on: Go-Busters is next! Archive of previous shows on KamenRiderDie.com! |
02-05-2021, 06:41 PM | #40 |
Yodonna oshi
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Although, having said that, the only other character I really liked in Amazons was Iyu, so maybe I am actually broken inside. |
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