Originally Posted by Kurona (Post 787866)

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.

Originally Posted by Layton13 (Post 787877)

He felt like the dark side of idealism. Uncompromising even when it caused more harm in the long run, like with Oujia.

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die (Post 787873)

The execution may not be flawless, but there's a ton to unpack from what Ryuki wanted to discuss.

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die (Post 787873)

Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts!

Originally Posted by Kurona (Post 787855)

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:



This is what inspired me to leave a reply here, because - aside from the deep urge to go on yet another rant about the perfection that is Kuuga - this actually wasn't the thinking behind Ryuki at all. It wasn't taking the stage of Kamen Rider and using it to tell a random unconnected story that would be as much as out of place in Super Sentai or Ultraman or Metal Heroes as it would here; but instead, Ryuki is very emphatically about Kamen Rider. The inspiration for the show at the time was what the effects of 9/11 had had on society, the deep unsettlement it brought and the way it forced people to view their ideals. As such, the producer of the third Heisei Kamen Rider, Shirakura; was tasked on high with the memo "now more than ever, we need to teach children about justice". And I'm sure to many that sounds noble, but for Shirakura he couldn't help but relent. To quote him - and this is Google Translate, so, naturally; it's a bit more like paraphrasing, but:

"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.

Originally Posted by Kurona (Post 787855)

I like Ghost a lot more than others and why I'm giving it another shot with my rewatch at the moment

Originally Posted by dreamcastegirl (Post 787881)

Oh! Kamen Rider Cobra Commander!

Originally Posted by Switchblade (Post 787886)

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.

Originally Posted by TokuKnight89 (Post 787884)

Shirakura also refers to the three "Ishinomori-isms": "fight against the self", "parricide", and "denial of the self"

Originally Posted by Sh Ranger (Post 787888)

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.

Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich (Post 787889)

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.

Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich (Post 787889)

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"

Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich (Post 787889)

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.