[DreadBringer]

Well, very late reply due to all the busy time I got... It just got over though, so let's do this if you don't mind. Still you're not wrong to have this reaction but want to convey my thoughts. I'm feeling bad over this, but I want to promote an extremely deep analysis of Ryuki, deeper than anything else I've read on Internet, the link's on my signature. I think they can catch anything people missed about Ryuki. They also had OOO as another complete deep analysis.

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Originally Posted by dreamcastegirl

For the most part, Ryuki is a dry run for its successor, 555, another show that fails to present the audience with any traditional Rider characters but does a slightly better job of it. The story of Ryuki details the machinations of Kanzaki Shiro as, in order to address his personal loss, he opens the door to an alternate dimension glimpsed only through mirrors and offers a chance to thirteen different individuals to become "Kamen Riders" and compete in a battle royale against one another for the prize of reshaping reality. For 50 episodes, one movie, one TV special, and one video tape that came free with an issue of the magazine, Terebi-kun, Ryuki presents a number of iterations of the events that comprise its story, but none of them really add anything; in different versions, there are glimpses of different characters who each make their specific timelines notable—Sakakibara Koichi, the former Ryuki in 13 Riders, Kirishima Miho in Episode: Final—but for the most part, the story is a bland back and forth as main character, Kido Shinji, struggles to convince other Riders to not fight, and they ignore him. Every episode, there is also a considerable amount of time wasted on the supporting cast of Kido's workplace, a internet news site named Ore Journal; every character in these sequences could have been expunged from the narrative and it would have made no difference.

I don't think that it's dark for the sake of being dark. Ryuki had tons of morally ambiguous and outright morally black characters for sure, I think the setting guarantees that kind of cast due to the nature of battle royale. Kanzaki created the battle royale, and ironically that you think you sympathise with him, he's also the reason why the cast is mostly filled with terrible people. Kanzaki of course will choose deranged, rotten people to fight in his game so that they have little to no restraint to kill others. And of course deranged people won't listen to the likes of Shinji's pleas which is about keeping the bodycounts thin and the world around safe, either Riders or civilians, as they are selfish and sees caring for others as weakness, doing what they want to others won't benefit them, but of course none of them realized that they will never get their wish anyway, Kanzaki creates the game where the winner can be granted 1 wish, just so that he can win it himself with Odin as his representative, he needs other 12 Riders to grant the wish.

And actually he may fail at the first glance, but Shinji does eventually succeed in ending the war, y'know. His contribution hasn't been given enough credit. He may not affect every Rider, but the Riders do get slowly softened by Shinji's innocence and determination, the exact opposite of what Shiro wanted (this is brought up in example, Ren and Kitaoka's interaction), like what Switchblade pointed out. By that he manages to get the Riders to delay or even stop their fighting, preventing Shiro from completing the war before the war's deadline, the birthday (Shiro tried to support Ouja as the way to kill off Riders quickly though), as he needs every other Riders to die as the wish fodder, and him talking some sense to Kanzaki that his sister wants the war to end too, broke Shiro's obsession, that the war well, just caused all the suffering and despair, the "dark and edgy" & "dangerous" thing you hate here, which is probably the real point of the show that "war is hell", and thus the way to make up for it series-wise is to move on and make the war don't exist at all, which is resetting it, which is already established to be able to be done in ep. 28 or the other iterations where Kanzaki resets the war if it's not going his way.

It has a fate going on it, where by destiny Shinji will always become Ryuki, which is probably the point of the other iterations, for the answer who asks why Shiro didn't keep Shinji out of the war or kill him (13 Riders is that), but probably otherwise are just bonuses (13 Riders is really an abridged version of Ryuki, and many movies in Phase 1 also have it set in alternate timeline). He even remembers when Shiro rewinded the time at ep. 28. The analysis I gave do question it itself the reason why ORE Journal exists, where they're investigating things that the characters already knew, but to answer the question the analysis asked in their character analysis.

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Originally Posted by dreamcastegirl

I disliked the heroes of Ryuki so much that I actively began to sympathise with minor antagonist, Asakura Takeshi, and major antagonist, Kanzaki. For a Kamen Rider show, even after watching the whole thing, I find that I still don't actually know half of the official aliases of the Riders, and now they will forever be stuck in my mind with names such as Scissor-Man-Crab-Hands.

Well to each of your own, but I hope that you won't downplay or cut out his evilness, with you talking about the complexity. Of all the characters you talk about being rotten, Asakura is the worst of them, who is overall just a sadist psychopath who exists to harm and maim others. Also, probably the one that you refer as complex part, where it's the fire in his house and sympathy to his brother and about his interactions with a girl? It's all only done to make Asakura even more evil than he already is, giving the hook to the audience about his redeeming quality, only to fake it. The former being that Asakura is the one who started the fire that killed his parents and the latter is that he only used her as a bait for 3 pack monster to feed all his Contract Beasts at once, he didn't even flinch when Venosnaker (Ouja's snake) attacked her to get him. Probably to me he would be more complex, but not about morality, but about that he's someone who isn't completely insane because he's able to not fight to accomplish certain goals, and he has cunning mind to trick others or to free himself from captive. Kanzaki is already detailed above, he's the reason behind not only the war but also Ryuki getting that kind of cast, and he himself is a darker, evil counterpart of Ren.

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Originally Posted by dreamcastegirl

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.

Well this is double standard. You talk about Shinji struggling to convince other Riders to not fight, and they ignore him. Tezuka is also like that. While he may've gotten through Ren, he also got the same reaction from others like Shibaura, of him convinving other Riders not to fight. But Tezuka got praised for doing this while Shinji got mocked? (Tezuka may present calmer demeanor, but the result is just the same) And Zi-O part had them turning Tezuka into a psychopath who will kill others in his way by feeding them into Contract Monsters, something only Riders like Scissors and Ouja did in the original series and I hate that, with the excuse of him forgetting his memories? That takes away the said "true" Rider of the series? And I hate that, don't get me wrong.

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Originally Posted by Sh Ranger

Ryuki is the ninth and most recent Phase 1 show I've watched. However, I had put off watching it until a few years ago after hearing how the ending rendered everything that came before it irrelevant, but I was surprised to learn later that it might not actually Kobayashi's fault. 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.

Well, I had bigger and more open disdain to throw to adaptations. RT Ryuki veers close to the unrestrained Inoue usually more seen in the side media, with him doing things like turning Tezuka into murderous psychopath with the excuse of him forgetting his memories (and it's undone by him remembering that he's Shinji's friend, and I don't think that it solves the thing, why he was Shinji's friend again? Because both are the Riders that want to stop the war? He didn't express regret over those that he had killed here or what he had done? Only to Shinji as he's his friend. If that's to show that he's good all along, that can veer into protagonist centered morality to me, that it portrayed him as good merely because he helped Shinji), and some stuff that is seen on his side medias.

Also the ending, it's about the war finally being stopped. So Shinji accomplished his goals (yeah you said that he prevents it from being too dark and edgy, and I also want to give credit for what he does too, which is the ending). The ending shows about how terrible everything was as a result of the Rider War (every single Rider died, not to mention all those countless civilians). Yeah, every single character's story was wrapped up (all with their ironic deaths); Kitaoka got his date and succumbed to his illness, Goro served him one last time, Asakura was finally taken down by the cops, Kido died saving people like he'd always wanted to, and Ren achieved his goal albeit succumbs to his death. But...that also means everyone's dead and nobody gained anything. Probably the real point about Ryuki, and all of its darkness, was that there was no point, to war or any of the conflict. The point that war is bad, war only creates cycle of suffering and despair. But for this series, it has been established that, the war can be reset, in ep. 28 (and overall, Ryuki is a loop where Kanzaki resets the war if it's not going his way, and it always does because by destiny Shinji always becomes Rider and screws up his plan, by well, the reason you say about something being dragged on, Shinji drags out the war so Shiro fails to make it in time). So the tragedies in war can be fixed by doing the reset one last time, but instead to restart, it's to make everything that causes the war nonexistent instead (branched Mirror World, Rider Decks, Mirror Monsters, the bodycounts). This also does something like indirectly grants Ren's wish, which is Eri being safe.

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Originally Posted by Layton13

Funny enough, that quote really reminds me of how I always saw Shinji:

I couldn't stand the guy, ever. He always felt like someone too stuck in his ways, following a few rules, like, "killing is bad" or "Riders don't fight each other". And while I generally agreed with these statements, they always felt hollow. Shinji's biggest character flaw is that he doesn't think he could be wrong. More often than not it's his way or the high way. And as a consequence, his beliefs aren't hardent and reforged when they are challenged. He never listens and so never convinces others of his opinion.

He felt like the dark side of idealism. Uncompromising even when it caused more harm in the long run, like with Oujia. In the end, Shinji more or less lead the world to ruin and someone else had to pick up his mess.

To me the final message of the show was a "heroes don't exist and they should never exist". I'm just glad Faiz managed to do a far better job at getting Rider right again through the lense of a fallen hero regaining his ideals.

Shinji's biggest dilemma is choosing between saving the civilians and Riders, and also denying the Rider's wishes if it's done which is stopping the war, so by that he actually knows about being wrong? Also, what benefits will be gain from the other's beliefs? They're all only self-serving, where Ren boasts about his cynicism to get only what he wants (killing to win the war, and he only prioritizing his loved one's wellbeing, which also gets him in a dilemma), Kitaoka is about hedonism; to only do anything that satisfies yourself, Shibaura is about treating life as a game, Tezuka is similar to Shinji's, about doing the right thing even if it won't benefit you otherwise (coming from Yuichi who wouldn't fight even if he can restore his fingers) and also run by fate, and that's the one which inspired Shinji's (and Tezuka's run of it has similar outcome to Shinji's) to try changing the Rider by person, Sano is the happiness is money belief and that people can be bought, etc. All of them except Tezuka's are moral flaws that can be slapped some lessons to it, like Kitaoka realizing that he doesn't need to live immortal as he already had enjoyable one (Shinji of course is still shaken too after finally learning his wish). His belief is reforged when challenged where at the end he finally chooses to end the war over the Rider's wishes.

His idiocy and naivete did cause a harm at first (Scissors part), but he does mature later, contrast when he finds it suspicious when Tiger works at . If you bring up the Imperer arc to argue for this, then, it's Inoue screwing up his writing at that part by ignoring his development there.

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Originally Posted by Kurona

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...

Not understanding what people see in Zolda? I mean many scumbags are fan favorites right? Also like you too in Yaguruma and Tsurugi on Kabuto. To people toxic characters are more entertaining characters because they're usually stylish, ballsy and confident. They do outlandish things normal people wouldn't think or dare. And/or that characters with negative qualities like that are personal and relates to those audiences. And/or that people tend to think that development is about reducing your negative traits to be a better person, which Zolda do have. And/or probably the variation of the things that can be done in morally grey characters, like caring and nurturing (to Goro), or banters (to Shinji/Ren), or apathy (to Sano), or dislike (to Megumi), or hatred (to Asakura). And/or the new type of comedy these people can provide, like making crude jokes without the fear of avoiding anything morally dubious. Overall those are viewed as multi-faceted and complex.

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Originally Posted by Kurona

"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."

And then Ryuki has Takuya.