[Kamen Rider Die]

MASKED RIDER RYUKI EPISODE 21



The Shinji and Ren stuff in this episode... fantastic. Smart and nuanced. A storyline that gives weight to seeing other perspectives, to allowing your mind to change. It's pretty much all I want to talk about from this one.

A few non-Shinji/Ren bullet points, first.

-Two contract monsters for Asakura?! I love it. I love how that dude makes it look like he's playing on Easy Mode compared to everyone else. I guess it shouldn't be a surprise that a Homicidal Lunatic would perform better in battling than, if I can remember them all, a Dying Lawyer, a Fortune Teller, a Programming Student, a Corrupt Cop, a Journalist, and Whatever Ren Does, but it's really not looking good for the other Riders. The most violent dude is now twice as powerful.

-I super don't want to be that guy, and I ain't gonna dwell on it, but I'll mention that once Tezuka gets involved in the search for Shiro, Yui literally has to wait outside of her own goddamn plotline, doubled over in fear. Just... this show! It's doing it to me on purpose!

It's all the Shinji and Ren stuff that works so good, though. Real smart writing.

A lot of it is based around Shinji, and his struggle with the weight of the Rider Battles. With the reveal to him of Eri's predicament, and Ren's vow to save her, his whole Riders Shouldn't Fight thing comes off as myopic and insensitive. Even Tezuka's like, People got problems! You don't know, Shinji! It's something Shinji spends the rest of the episode puzzling over. How can he ask Ren to stop fighting if it's to save a life? But how can he support Ren, knowing that's endorsing murder? (Including, y'know, his own!) It's to the show's credit that it doesn't give an easy answer. Moreover, it reframes some of Shinji's earlier declarations of Rider's Shouldn't Fight as naive and condescending. In a very Shinji way, he jumped in, quickly made up his mind, and then forcefully stuck to his guns. Even as it drove Ren away, he felt sure of his principles, and safe in his views. He spends a lot of time in this episode feeling uncertain, and it's smart to have Shinji lean into that uncertainty, to suggest he doesn't know enough, to try and understand Ren's point-of-view better.

And, weirdly, that becomes the key to (maybe?) redeeming Ren. There's a great scene with Ren and Asakura, where Ren sort-of serves up Shinji, telling Asakura to fight him first. When Asakura wonders if it's because Ren has a beef with him, Ren admits it's because he doesn't that he needs Shinji gone. I love that. I love that Ren thinks his problem is that people like Shinji want him to be better, and that's holding him back. They've got a view of him that he doesn't want to be, and the more he tries to be the person they want, the less likely he is to save Eri. With Shinji gone, it's pure self-negation for Ren. No one judging him, not one wanting him to be safe, to be kind. He can just fight.

But Shinji nails the big hero move by meeting with Ren and saying that he was wrong. He doesn't have all the answers, he didn't know what Ren was going through, he didn't know why he was fighting. He thought the Rider Battles were some cruel decision Ren was making, not the only hope of a dying woman. He doesn't have that in his life, that kind of relationship, so he can't really know what Ren's going through. He can't judge him, but he can try to understand him. He'll fight him, to try and see what Ren sees, to understand why he's fighting.

It's a huge swing for the show, what with Ren 100% throwing in with a murderous fugitive last episode, but I think it works beautifully. It starts episodes back with Tezuka forcing Ren to be honest with himself, with who he is and what he wants, and then it sticks the landing by making Shinji acknowledge who Ren is and what Ren wants.

Some of my favorite Rider stories are ones that refuse to be didactic, that aren't about clear right and wrong, that value the idea of understanding, of empathy, of suggesting that sometimes people disagree and that's okay. It's refreshing to have a hero realize he acted rashly, and in doing so hurt a friend. And to have the emotional climax of a storyline be I Didn't Understand What You Were Going Through But I'd Like To Try... that is 1000% my jam.

All of that arc, it's perfect to me. I get the decisions Ren and Shinji made, and I love that the show took its time resolving their conflict. I like that it needed time, you know? That it wasn't a one episode Ren Is Bad followed by Ren Is Good Again. It's fulfilling. I feel good about how this plotline went.