[GoldenXtreme]

Wrapped up my Ryuki rewatch! It was... neat I guess. I'd give it a C+ grade, so I definitely liked it more than last time at least. The biggest point of improvement this rewatch?: I think Shinji and Ren are both actually really interesting characters, which is nice since I just thought Shinji was okay before and I absolutely hated Ren the first time I watched. The new subs did a lot better at conveying the kind of people they were, with Shinji being a nosy, loserish guy who means well and talks roughly and Ren acting rude and confrontational as a mask in order to try and seem like a tough guy who could win the fight. I particularly liked how clearly it came across that Shinji and Ren were ultimately not so different deep down, with the primary difference being Shinji was up-front about his conflicted feelings about the battle. Good stuff, I really came around to both of them this time! I also think a lot of the general themes of the show, about people desperately fighting for what they believe in, works very nicely.

In spite of getting a lot more out of the show as a whole this time, it is still ultimately Ryuki, which means that if I ever stop to think too long about the plot I remember how silly it is. I'm sorry guys, but there is absolutely no salvaging things like "abused children drew a monster dimension into existence and when one of them died their mirror counterpart replaced them but will die when she turns 20 for... reasons?" I think Ryuki is a show that has to be approached purely on an emotional level because of all the daft stuff like this, which I can't help but feel undermines the story. Even beyond that, the show's pacing can be very messy, with some parts dragging and others feeling very rushed, and this negatively impacts some characters too. I genuinely couldn't remember anything about Imperer before rewatching since he is THAT forgettable. On top of that, I definitely feel like the whole "wow, this Rider is also completely psychotic" shtick really wears out its welcome as the show goes on.

As a closing note, I decided to pay attention to which episodes Inoue wrote this time, and he wrote almost every single episode where the story spontaneously took a turn for the dumb. I feel like his style of writing was a particularly bad fit for the story, unlike something like Kabuto, which already has an anything goes attitude.