[Kamen Rider Die]

Ryuki's a fascinating show.

It succeeds because of the impeccable job done with casting, and the stellar character-focused writing. Any Kamen Rider would be lucky to have one or two characters like the Riders of this show, and Ryuki has a half-dozen. (Also Scissors.) It's a show that interrogated the very idea of being a Rider in a way that took nothing for granted. It's smart about motivation in ways that are almost showy, boastful. It's so smart about characters.

It fails because good lord is it dumb about plot. It starts with a clean, catchy premise: Rider versus Rider, to the death. Using that framework to explore concepts like sacrifice, survival, desire, cooperation, and heroism, it can lead to some outstanding stories. But this show constantly got in its own way, focusing on subplots that were distractions, piling on arbitrary and convoluted obstacles, and generally giving the impression that it wasn't clear who this show was supposed to be about.

It's a show that makes it equally easy to focus on what it's doing right as what it's doing wrong.

We've talked a lot already about the characters as the main strength of Ryuki in this thread. I wouldn't disagree with that, but the other aspect I thought was incredibly engaging was its thematic work.

I'll always respect a show that wanted to interrogate the concept of heroism, that refused to take it as a given. Kamen Riders aren't innately heroic, this show argued, but they choose heroism. Why? What does that mean to them? What's the nature of their heroism?

Ryuki's a show that valued argument, disagreement. Every character got to have a view on heroism, got to define the terms of being a hero. It allowed for different viewers to root for different characters. Some viewers could find heroism in Ren's desire to fight and kill to save Eri, while others could root for Shinji, a character who resolutely refused to end a life to save a life. Even Kitaoka got to represent a form of burgeoning heroism, the value in finding peace and deciding to step away from selfishness and vanity. There are a ton of takes on heroism in Ryuki, and they all feel equally valid. The goal wasn't to define heroism, it was to get people to define their own heroism.

That said, you can feel the show building out its own thesis on heroism as the final episodes rolled. It's in Shinji's dying appeal to Ren, that the Rider Battles cause too much suffering. A lot of Kamen Rider is about harnessing evil to fight for good. It's inherent in the premise of Ryuki, as Shinji and Ren (and everyone else) make a life-or-death contract with a monster to achieve their goals. But while the show agrees that evil can be used to fight for good, it draws the line at finding heroism in causing suffering. That any plan that allows or ignores suffering, at any level, isn't heroic. That there's no such thing as a justifiable sacrifice of others. That damning others is a fundamentally evil act. Heroism isn't about trading lives, or about saving someone at the cost of their happiness. It's about fighting to reduce suffering, to increase happiness, as much as possible. If there's a definition of heroism to be found in Ryuki, I think that's it.

That's the character and thematic stuff, which for me was the whole reason to watch Ryuki. I loved them. The plot and premise, though? Those parts were less of a success.

For its DNA, there are a bunch of different things it seems to be referencing. Trading card games, for sure. Yu-Gi-Oh and Pokemon were already huge hits in Japan by the time Ryuki aired, so the idea of two people fighting through monsters, it's an easy way in to the show. Battle Royale was also a huge hit by this point, although (hopefully!) to an older audience than watched Kamen Rider. But you can see how the conflicts in that book/movie could sneak into this kids' show, a broad mix of characters with singular motivations and all the reasons in the world to distrust one another. There's also Highlander, with the prize at the end.

The thing that struck me most about Ryuki, when it worked, was that it seemed to be drawing not from any of those references, or from Kamen Rider as a franchise, but from the workplace drama. It feels as much in a line with Grey's Anatomy or Mad Men as it does Agito or Kuuga.

Ryuki's a show that has a lead actor, but not really a primary Rider. Shinji's not the originator of the story. At the end, it's not even a story really about him. He's not the most powerful. He's not really in charge of the other Riders, either through leadership or friendship. It's what you'd call a flat management structure. Everyone's ostensibly working towards a singular goal (winning the Rider Battles), and teamwork is more about moments when individual pursuits overlap. They aren't really friends of enemies, they're co-workers. Shiro isn't some all-powerful mastermind, he's a shitty, mercurial boss.

This was a show that seemed obsessed with workplaces as a drama generator. With the Rider Battles, there are three different workplaces, covering nearly all types of TV bosses. Atori has the motherly figure, ready to dispense wisdom and a wisecrack. Ore has the fatherly figure, pushing hard but only because he knows you can handle it. And the Rider Battles have the dick boss, someone who'd fire you in a heartbeat if he felt like it.

Still, three workplaces? It's too much. It's a glut of characters and concepts. The strength of Ryuki is how great its characters are. The weakness is that there are too damn many of them.

The biggest problem I had with the construction of this show is how rarely it seemed like everything in it was valuable. The Rider Battles alone could carry a show, but we still had Reiko's investigation, Ore Journal as a business, Atori as a cafe, Yui's story, Shiro's appearances, and however many Riders' personal lives. It's way too much to make relevant at one time, and too little of it overlapped regularly. Reiko's story was great, but it was usually just Reiko's story. Same with Yui's story, or whatever was going on at Atori. It rarely all felt tied together, and that led to this feeling of three different shows occupying the same episode sometimes.

And, man, the Mirror World story is total nonsense. It's hard to care about any action's consequences when Shiro could introduce a new stipulation, or change a rule, whenever he felt like it. It's hard to invest in a contest when the rules are arbitrary. We're constantly told that there need to be thirteen Riders, but we never see all thirteen on the show. We're told that there needs to be one Rider left at the end to fight Odin, but Asakura dies after Knight is declared the final fighter. There's no time limit, then suddenly there's a time limit. Shiro's actions could come off as whimsical or mysterious, but it mostly felt to me like the function of plot. He wasn't a character, he was how the producers interfered in the characters lives.

The problem spilled over, irrevocably, into the Yui and Shiro plots. A ton of the conclusion is about Shiro and Yui's relationship, and that story largely didn't work for me. Yui was rarely the most important character in any Yui plot, and the actor was given one or two notes to play for the entire series. And she's so funny in a few scenes when she's given the chance! But the character is sad all the time, and that's about it. Well, occasionally she's also confused. Those are the two emotions she gets to play for an entire series. It makes for an inert resolution to this series, where I'm asked to care about the two most underwritten and unsympathetic characters on the show. If this was where it was all leading, why didn't they work harder to make you care about them? Why pin your resolution on them, and not the raft of memorable characters in your cast?

But that cast! So great. Shinji is a new take on a Rider, tempering the sweetness of Shouichi with righteous anger. Ren is a brooding asshole who never stops being a brooding asshole, refusing to give up on his dim view of humanity even as he fights for the people he loves. Asakura is all rage, a fighter who sees the Rider Battles as their own reward. (My favorite Ryuki trope is the way Ouja rotates his neck after he Henshins. He relaxes after he Henshins. Perfect.) Toujou is heroism as an intellectual concept instead of an emotional one, a rigid worldview that feels antiquated. Professor is someone who sees sacrifice as regrettable, but never tries to see it as avoidable. Reiko is the ideal of journalism, a quest for answers that can't be stopped. Megumi is a hilarious ditz. Shimada is a judgmental genius. Kitaoka is perfect.

It's nuts. This cast was amazing, and a story about what heroism even means, it's brilliant. But the construction was sloppy, and it rarely felt like everything in an episode was pulling in the same direction. There's some excellent raw material here, but the sculpting needed a lot more attention.