Wh-- least known part?! I swear it's like his main thing! It makes up at least 90% of Kiva!

Huh, I... I honestly totally forgot Kiva existed while I was writing that somehow.

If only I could...

I don't know nothing about Kiva other than it's The Vampire One, and I should hope that The Vampire One is at least moderately sexy.

I'll probably touch on it in the series overview (tomorrow at this point, had to watch that Parks and Rec special which killed, those kids still got it), but, yeah. It's a letdown. For a variety of reasons: some plot deficiencies, some expectation-related. It's not a fatal flaw, but part of a larger trend of sloppiness.

Verde, Femme and Ryuga died on the way back to their home planet :(

It... this isn't something I'd put in the overview, since it references another series, but it's similar to how the amount of Zodiarts in Fourze wasn't paced super great. They gave themselves a hard number, plot-wise, in-show, and then they forgot how many episodes it would take to establish that number of characters onscreen. So you get, in Fourze, this rush of new lieutenants late in the run because there's only so many episodes left until the end of the series. You can almost feel the tension of the writing team to cram in some predetermined amount of characters.

Ryuki has a similar thing, where there's a middle section of real character-driven storytelling, an interest in doing more with the superb cast they've got, and then it's like Why Did You Keep Saying Thirteen If You Didn't Have Ideas For Thirteen.

Pacing out these season-long stories... it's got to be the hardest part of writing these shows. It's usually the most visible problem on less-good iterations.

I think it's especially weird to me because... while I just joked about it, the nature of the Rider Battle is such that you could easily say some other Riders died before Scissors, or maybe even by Asakura off-screen. It might come off as a little odd, especially when part of the excitement in the moment is seeing a lot of new Riders turn up... but you've made specials and movies for these guys! It's okay!

Though, like, admittedly; while Verde and Femme are isolated enough for that idea, it'd definitely stick out as pretty weird for "by the way, uh, Mirror World Evil Shinji is something that existed, and he's dead now". Frankly it's what made it especially weird for me when he turned up in the 13 Riders Special; he's treated as just another random Rider when like-- no! He's so clearly visually linked to Ryuki, that's- weird! You can't just not comment on it!


I do want to say though, just while it's on my mind and while I remember that I said earlier I wanted to talk about it later: Alternative not being classed officially as a Rider is fine to me because, well, in the context of his own series, that is very explicitly the case. In terms of other definitions including franchise-wide ones, scientist who creates his own system based on evil to fight for justice and the sake of the world? That's... uh... the plot of Build, actually, and I think Sento'd be pretty happy to talk things out with Kamen Rider Alternative. But by Ryuki's definition of what a Kamen Rider is, it makes sense to me that he's not considered one. ... even if he is one of three masked heroes that gets their own bike.

It's something I've thought a little about, because you have such a built-in solution of starting the series through Shinji's eyes, when the Rider Battles have already been running. We see Shinji get a Card Deck and form a Contract, but him and Asakura are the only ones. Everyone else, who knows how long they've been active, who they've fought? One line of dialogue of Shibaura saying he'd killed a few Riders, or Tezuka lamenting that he couldn't save X amount of other Riders, boom, sewn up. Super weird to have that sitting right there and never use it.

Yeah, I think Alternative and Tackle get to exist as Rider-adjacent because Toei knows how much doing so will infuriate fans, keep them engaged. I certainly enjoy riling people up on occasion, so I can't really fault them for it.

Miho is still possibly my favorite female Rider. It's a real toss-up between her and Marika. that's about 50% the strength of the character and 50% the small pool of competitors.

Anyway, now that you've gotten through everything, time to discuss the Great Unifying Ryuki Fan Theory. It's been a reasonably popular piece of fanon over the years that Episode Final and 13 Riders are in continuity with the TV show as two (or 2.5, counting the alternate ending of 13 Riders) of Shiro's previous failed attempts to save Yui that got Time Vented. The series itself is the latest attempt and Shiro's acceptance of Yui's death at the end means that the final time reset was, indeed, the final reset.

Good work as always. Now, OPEN YOUR EYES FOR THE NEXT FAIZ.