[DreadBringer]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Androzani84

None of the characters are resonating with me at all. Shinji comes off as a very generic guy

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

There’s a little too much of Shinji coming off as a Shouichi-ish I’m Fighting To Protect People

Well, Ryuki now shows how it feels to....put Shouichi-like someone like Shinji to a world like Ryuki where it's not all about monsters. OK, didn't realize that for the spoilers.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

Yui is 100% the brains of this outfit. Nothing about Ren tells me he'd be safe running things solo.

Sorry, what do you mean by this?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

There’s a little too much of Shinji coming off as a Shouichi-ish I’m Fighting To Protect People And Don’t Understand Personal Boundaries, while Ren’s repping hard for Ryo’s team of Life Is Pain. Shinji’s aggression and suspicion is unique, as is Ren’s take-charge way of getting Shinji to quit, but it didn’t feel like more than the obligatory team-up to me. It played like Mean Rider and Nice Rider had to find some way to work together, and I felt like I just saw a bunch of that in the second half of Agito. Like, I knew the destination, and the journey didn’t feel personal enough.

Idiocy apart, I have to give it to Shinji for being a good learner this once and catches how Mirror Monsters work; like that they can be fed by killed monsters' essence, but as they're eating humans and they can be hungry too, they may eat other humans if they are starving and went out of control. It's used for him to make bad assumptions about Ren but still (even getting a bit of praise from Ren for this)...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

It completely doesn’t help that Shinji kind-of comes off like an asshole in this one. He immediately assumes that Ren is trying to kill children, despite only having a contract monster for a minute. And he dismisses the There Are Other Monsters theory with a certainty that feels radically unearned. (He’s supremely confident in his brand-new abilities. I’m a little shocked he doesn’t activate an Um Actually Vent during a fight!) Worse, he goes to Yui and tells her that the man she’s fought with is untrustworthy, according to a man she just met yesterday, and he’s stunned that she doesn’t just go along with it. There’s a… maybe there’s an innocence, a forthrightness that the show’s trying to imbue Shinji with, some way of contrasting him with the taciturn and withholding Ren, but it feels like the show shoots WAY past that to land on Shinji Knows Best About Everything. It’s not a good look!

Probably Shinji tries to repay the favor of her kindness to him previously (which includes saving him from Ren) by trying to "save" her from supposedly bad guy ("I'm worried about you too")...but obviously it wouldn't work out then that guy's been tagging along with her for untold amount of time and she not in danger so far apart from Ren being a dick, but that's to others not to her.

That feel when....your supposedly most morally upstanding character....gets called out by their misbehaving (though like how I elaborate from my post from yesterday, I also think Yui is also the most morally upstanding too in the series), like Kiriya lecturing Emu in Ex-Aid. So you also think Shinji's an asshole here for accusing Ren, well I'm kinda someone who will do what Shinji does if someone's that much asshole, like thuggish such as Ren. Also so this is what people mean about "balancing" for the trio, when Ren misbehaves, Yui acts, but when Shinji, the people she defended from him before also misbehaves, she also goes for him. No bias, perfectly balanced, as all things should be.

I will also bring out our discussion earlier from the Ghost watch thread which also corresponds well to this moment (as why Yui thinks Shinji is more untrustworthy). Ren's goal is more immediate and personal, while Shinji's seemed less so. With Ren, it's clear what he was fighting for and the lengths he'd go to, there was a clarity to his actions and an energy to the performance that really popped in those early days. Shinji was nice for the sake of being nice, but didn't have a clear agenda, which wasn't as easy to understand.

First time Shinji and Yui refer to each other by name, where did they learn that, they never introduced themselves to each other. Probably Shinji hearing Ren calls her, and I guess for Yui, when Shinji gave his ORE Journal card to Ren? Also speaking of hearing someone else's name, how did you miss the RON! RON! RON! moment?!! Another case of Shinji Knows Best About Everything, assumes what he hears is right and going along with it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

Things end fine, though. The scene with Ren and Shinji is the by-nowadays-standard What Are You Fighting For argument Riders have as, like, their way of saying hello. (They also do the Rider Handshake, aka A Punch In The Face.) Ren’s a character that has a mysterious but undoubtedly compelling reason to fight and die (and kill?) as a Kamen Rider, while Shinji’s still a bit in that questing phase, defining himself more in the moment with his choices, rather than a larger rock-solid ethos. Previously, he was swayed by Reiko and Yui’s desperation to get to the truth of all of the disappearances, to help heal the people left behind. Now, it’s Ren reminding Shinji that heroism isn’t his exclusively, that you can disagree with people who want the same things as you. They end in a good place, pissing each other off and making Yui question letting these two idiots get close to her.

Ryuki's theme is about mirrors; monster are coming from mirrors, and the new episode mark also has mirror motif. The end of this episode.....is also a mirror between them! Ren and Shinji walks in same pace, speed, to same place, says the same things (calling Yui to make tea, but Shinji uses honorifics), etc. Just that they're in mirrored position.

Also Yui already kinda did this in previous episode, just not with them both at once. I'm a bit confused, she says the restaurant is closed, but why they can get in and sip tea and/or eat (dunno if Atori has full lunches, the previous episode only gave cookies)?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fredbob392

Oh yeah, Shinji was definitely a bit stupid in that episode with being dead certain that Ren was trying to kill kids and refusing to accept other possibilities. Honestly, Shinji's a bit of an idiot overall. Like Ryuga though, he's a well meaning idiot, and he gets better over time. He's like a big dumb puppy

Well, I thought Shinji's supposed to be an idealist who sees the best in everyone? And he's totally not to Ren here. I think you need to specify which Ryuga you're talking about, especially that this is Ryuki.