Well Ryuki, is the series that made Dragon Knight possible, and Dragon Knight proved to me that 4kids isnt all trash

TMNT proved that in 2003. Dragon Knight (along with TMNT at the time) just proves that 4Kids treats anything that's not trash like trash.

I'm kind of having trouble finding the right words to describe it, so I'm glad you're at least sort of understanding what I'm saying. :o

I guess I'm just a bit too confused about what exactly the question this thread is asking even is at this point. I never was good with speculation like this. I understand that a lot of the stuff in Ryuki was influenced by the times and/or derived from existing base concepts, but my whole perspective here is all of that is why Ryuki HAS to exist.

Like, we're pretending Ryuki didn't happen and then...? A show that's basically the same thing takes its place? Because that's just calling a rose by another name, right? I feel like every Kamen Rider show was directly inspired by something or another but does that mean they're not special?

Think about how often the concept/style/hero of a show is directly made to contrast with the last one in some way. Like, Gaim was a very deconstructive kind of show that tried really hard to gray its morality and they immediately followed it up with Drive, a show that played up the idea of Kamen Riders as real heroes in a way we hadn't seen in a while. It was even said in interviews they were going for a more Showa kind of flavor, as I remember.

There's a whole meta narrative going on with Kamen Rider and I think you could argue a lot of things in it were "inevitable" in some way or another.

The premise of the thread is if Ryuki didn't happen. Kuuga to Agito to Faiz. There is no replacement, there wasn't just a "Kamen Rider not-Ryuki" in it's place. It's as simple as that.

That's my whole point though. Ryuki is the connective tissue between Agito and Faiz. I'm sure they could've gone straight to Faiz from Agito, the possiblility is there, but I doubt they would've felt the impetus to without Ryuki testing the waters the way it did. At the very least, I feel Faiz and Blade would've been pretty different without it.

I'm not so sure this is the case.


I mean, you have to consider that Agito and Faiz were both written by Inoue and he LOVES to have at least one total jerkass character that is "technically" heroic. In Agito, it was Hojo who was actually a part-time Rider in that show. In Faiz, it was Kaixa. In Blade, the 3 non-main riders took turns being jerks.

As such, the progression to having a full-time Rider that is also a jerkass was pretty much expected. I mean, maybe the Ryuki influence is there, but it's probably a stretch to say Faiz would be drastically different if Ouja and Knight never existed.

Yep. They hadn't yet figured out: More Riders = More Genkin!

I think it's overstating a bit to call Hojo a "part-time Rider" (pot calling the kettle black, I know). He was G3 for about an episode or two, and then a Metal Hero that one time. And once again, he's fighting monsters, not other Riders.

And just like everyone else, his problems are strictly with "Agito", the weird monster guy who keeps picking fights with other monsters, and not Shouichi, the guy selflessly fighting monsters to protect people.

This is what I keep trying to get at about the relationships between Riders being so different. In Ryuki, Shinji doesn't get along with so many of the other Riders because their personalities are so different. Takumi and Kusaka don't get along for the same reasons. Kenzaki and Hajime don't get along for the reasons. Tendou and Kagami have a rocky relationship for the same reasons. In Agito, the other guys all have problems with Agito specifically because they know nothing about him. He's just another mysterious creature in their minds.

The way you're talking about it you could pull out pretty much any one show without it affecting "the big picture", but I think it'd be easier to make the case that isn't true for Ryuki than it would be for most other shows. It was the result of the brand being in kind of a weird place and I don't think you can just "skip" to Faiz because without that year spent experimenting they might not have felt comfortable doing a lot of the stuff they did and calling it Kamen Rider.

Oh trust me, I'm not trying to say he had any significance as a Kamen Rider. I'm just saying that the idea was already sort of there with Agito.

Not necessarily true. Hojo was a jerkass to pretty much everyone, rider or not because he had a massive ego and hero complex (something that also came up again with Another Agito later in the series). Plus one of the big conflicts in Agito was his rivalry with Hikawa, which was very much the type of conflict you described earlier.

I can see this being true of Knight and Zolda, but Shinji clashes with the other Riders, not because they're strong personalities, but because all of the other Riders are genuinely evil and are actively trying to kill him on behalf of the big bad. They clash because he's the protagonist, and they're all antagonists, not simply as a result of them not being able to get along.

Compare that with your other examples. The other Riders actually DO bicker with each other because they're different personalities, not just because one Rider happens to be on the villain's side (well, except for Hajime).

That's because there's very few series that I would say have a huge impact on the big picture to begin with. Some might disagree, but I've found that many Rider series introduce some very interesting and unique things, but it doesn't really spill over into other series like that (which I'm perfectly fine with, since it just gives me something to love about each show).

If anything, I'd argue that Faiz itself was the experiment here, at least in regards to what you're talking about. That's when the franchise started edging into J-Drama territory.

Would Kamen Rider be any different if Ryuki never existed?

No. Due to the simple fact that something of it's kind would have eventually been made. Something like Ryuki was a inevitability in some form or fashion. Short, sweet, and simple. No need for long over drawn debates over reasons as to why. The answer is simply "inevitability".