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.

Yes Tezuka certainly is one as well. I was too focused on the main two that I forgot.

He definitely had his heart in the right place. I would have liked more discussion of the relationship between Tezuka, Eri, and Ren in 13 Riders.

It's funny you should mention that! It's way more unrestrained gushing than deep analysis (I say as though that doesn't describe everything I post...), but I did do a rewatch of all three of her Rider shows where I wrote a little something about them episode-by-episode on here. Not sure how much use that is to you, but it seems worth bringing up. Either way, thank you for the kind words!

All I will say is that if you found Ryuki's dark tone pretentious or unwarranted, Kamen Rider Dragon Knight is not exactly the better of the two in that regard, I remember reading a long review on another forum(unsure if I should say) describing how it kind of gave off an immature ''grimdark'' impression! I have seen all of both and I have to say, whatever defence you might have for Dragon Knight I still don't see how you could find it the better of the two. And also as for a typical controversial opinion from me(Never!) I know Ryuki was very different to Kuuga and Agito but for me it was actually a similar level of enjoyment and equally memorable whereas Faiz and Blade were more just sort of average! Granted it is like 10 years+ since I finished most 2000s shows (though mostly still after the 2000s) and of course some of my life in that period was personally bad so maybe now my view would be different.

My gosh! I laughed out loud when I saw the scope of your ambition! Absolute admiration! I might wait until I've watched OOO, which I initially skipped first time around as I found the protagonist to be, ah, grating, but I'm excited to read this! Again, thank you for being so dedicated as to do something like this, haha.

Oh no! I mean, I know nothing about Dragon Knight or how it came to be, or why it came to be, so I can't really comment, but that sounds a shame. Perhaps they should have introduced a sidekick like Ferbus into the show. :p

While I personally find Dragon Knight to be far more pretentious than Ryuki, in my experience, the people who don't like one tend to like the other, hence why I recommended it.

Either way, I'll still give it a shot sooner or later, I should imagine. I just need a bit of time to put Ryuki behind me.

Justice is very complex and it's one of the reasons I love Kamen Rider, and Ryuki handles this very well. However I disagree that Shinji's basic ideals of justice are outdated in 2021. Yes Shinji comes across as shallow in his ideals of justice but by definition he is the baseline of justice. Not to get biblical, but "thou shall not kill" is one of the foundations of morality in western society, and I feel Shinji is the emodiment of basic human morality.

Especially with today's current political climate, you need that guy who will stand for morality when nobody else is seemingly doing so, against the grain of a world of people acting in their own self interest or with their own distorted view of justice. This is what Ryuki is at its core. I love reading the excerpt you quoted from the producer of the show explaining how one can think they are right because they see themselves as heroes and are just, because "I am myself, so I'm not wrong". People on both sides of the aisle will justify their actions based on their own world view, or what trendy conspiracy theory they've bought into, or when their identity is being threatened.

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!