[DreadBringer]

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Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

I’m only 2/3rds of the way done with Ryuki, and even that much of the show couldn’t get crammed into what’s basically a two-episode story. Trying to do an entire season’s worth of plot was out the window, I get that. Stuff was going to have to get cut to make room. Dropping the whole idea of the Contract Monsters, it’s not a huge loss. It’s a level of complexity that you need to strip out to keep this story humming. Card Decks That Give Magic Powers is, like, it’s fine. It’s enough of the core concept to make an hour-long story still feel like Ryuki.

Probably dropping the Contract Monsters idea is the thing that made Ryuki safe at the end when Odin crushes his Deck (it's explicitly shown otherwise for Scissors in the series)? Other than that yeah, this feels like a "prologue" to watch for Ryuki that it crams various plot points from the series into just 1 hour; like:

• Shinji (still) living at ORE Journal and wacky antics of him (especially the soccer part) with Okubo, Reiko, and Shimada (who imitates a treatment to computer to teach others about taking care of their computers).
• Shinji inheriting Ryuki Deck from Sakakibara (who becomes an actual Rider, another heroic one), meeting Yui (who for some reason is made hostile here) and Ren, later gaining some explanation for Mirror World.
• Kitaoka keeping an eye on Asakura on prison who eventually escapes.
• Kitaoka being sick and has Goro drive him.
• Riders mindset of ditching humanity, one done by Shibaura who plays ordinary games (Soulcalibur) and mocks Shinji for it while Tezuka voices his disapprovement of Rider War.
• Ren working at Atori.
• Sudo exploiting Shinji's gullibility.
• Ren's inability to kill and subsequent breakdown (done by having him fell from his bike).
• Asakura's hatred of cops, extending to even Sudo.
• Mirror World time limit to save Riders.
• Ren and Shinji growing closer.
• Both ending shows how impossible the Rider War situation is.

But that's it (and Shiro is only the narrator). It makes sense that it debuted between ep. 33 & 34, it only tells about 2/3rds of Ryuki actually. Tiger and Imperer doesn't even get an identity here, and because you watched it now, I can't talk further about it other than the 13 Riders version of them may have different identity from the main series one. And for important note; this is probably how the Rider War goes if Shiro just sends a Mirror Monster to the biggest obstacle in Rider War, Shinji, before he becomes a Rider, but as seen here, Shinji still becomes Ryuki.

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Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

Stripping down the Ren/Shinji relationship to just a couple beats, that’s harder to forgive. The Ren/Shinji frenemy thing, it’s maybe the best part of Ryuki, and reducing that to the most basic We Aren’t Friends/You’re Too Naive/I’m Weak/Avenge Me arc for Ren… it’s the most boring way you could approach their story. I mean, at least Ren gets an arc, it’s more than you could say for anyone else, but it’s still a shitty arc. There’s no room to let the performance help out the dialogue, so it plays pretty unconvincing to me. I’ve spent 30-odd episodes watching Ren start to believe in Shinji, and for Shinji to start to understand Ren, but I didn’t buy their decisions in this one at all. It’s all echoes of more interesting stuff from Ryuki, but without the valuable connective tissue of why the characters make these decisions. Here, it’s just hitting marks. Dull. Predictable.

(Also, I forgot to mention it before, but I really liked that Shinji does Ren's Henshin when he uses Ren's Deck to become Knight. A great touch.)

I agree here, Ren and Shinji has a bunch of episodes to build their relationship in the main series, but here the buildup is also crammed into only 1 hour. T̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶m̶e̶a̶n̶s̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶R̶e̶n̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶S̶h̶i̶n̶j̶i̶ ̶a̶r̶e̶ ̶c̶l̶o̶s̶e̶r̶ ̶h̶e̶r̶e̶ ̶b̶e̶c̶a̶u̶s̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶y̶ ̶g̶e̶t̶ ̶a̶l̶o̶n̶g̶ ̶m̶u̶c̶h̶ ̶q̶u̶i̶c̶k̶e̶r̶ Shinji here is merely an extension for the other characters, he just continues the wishes of killed people; first Sakakibara's to stop the Rider War, and then Ren's to save Eri, where the ending is the conflict between the 2. Shinji using Ren's henshin pose is also probably a little nuance that he's an extension of him; and also that Riders' henshin pose are determined not by the human form, but the Rider type.

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Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

But, man, the greatest sin of this thing is taking the entrenched ambiguity of Ryuki and making it Good Guy Versus Bad Guys. That’s… ugh. You’ve got all these different motivations and goals and schemes in Ryuki, and you just have Shinji plus Ren versus Everyone Else. Why? When you have a blank canvas to paint on, why do a monochrome version of a rainbow? It’s literally the thing that makes Ryuki special. It’s not the Rider Battle, it’s the why of the Rider Battle. With this, you just get a bunch of Riders fighting, and I could not have cared less about it.

Just like Asakura being the 1st antithesis of Shinji in the main series, the scene of their faceoff with their Contract Monsters possibly empashizing it, Takamizawa (main antagonist here) is like the 2nd antithesis of Shinji. The plot is mainly Shinji and Takamizawa faceoff. While Shinji works to persuade other people to stop the Rider War (though in this special, he does it mainly by looking for partners) and fight for justice, Takamizawa (with Shibaura as main partner) works to persuade other people to bring their worst side and ditch humanity as Riders, and fight those against that. Takamizawa wins easily by being much more charismatic, and just that most other Riders appeal more to evil with their selfish desires. By that Takamizawa succeeded to persuade every Rider to gang up on Shinji, and eventually Ren when he also still has his humanity, before they continue their battle to the death. I also have to note that Takamizawa likely doesn't underestimate Shinji, that he primarily focuses to remove him because he may deny everyone their wishes by stopping the war, and persuades other Riders to do the same.

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Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

There’s a few interesting changes to the plotting, though. Nothing that makes up for what was taken out, but I did enjoy Kamen Rider Geico and his insane finishing move. (Being swung like a pendulum by his monster, and then doing a spinning piledriver? Amazing! And the legs of his victim sticking up out of frame is the cherry on top.) It’s fun to have a successful businessman as a Rider, a dude who feels like his business accomplishments mean nothing next to the visceral thrill of proving his dominance in combat. That’s clever, and I hope he shows up in the main series. Also, hey, nice to see Tezuka and Shibaura, even under diluted circumstances. (The changes to Tezuka’s character… why?! Why rip away his interesting motivation to give him a thinner version of Ren’s?)

Verde (spanish for green) is one of the most unique Riders here, having some traits not other Riders have like Clear Vent, and that his Final Vent is a wrestling move. Also his business accomplishments obviously mean nothing; his wish for winning is to rule the world after all. As for Tezuka, I think it's just Inoue stuff ._. (Inoue writes this special), where you gotta add love triangles everywhere. At the very least Tezuka still has his sense of justice, that he thinks killing others to gain your wish is wrong. Tezuka here is still much better than what Rider Time Ryuki (also by Inoue) does. The other change here is that Tezuka is Ren's best friend (and calls him "Ren"), and he dies in Ren's arms instead of Shinji's. Ren also denies that Tezuka was his friend, but he still clearly considers him such, with his visceral rage towards Takamizawa and eventually being the one to finish him off. Verde also has an ironic death, in a totally cool way where Knight immediately getting up after being Final Vented and Final Vents him back, ironically makes him the first victim of his master plan, which was to team up with other Riders and kill Ren and Shinji so that the Rider War can continue.

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Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

This whole thing just felt like a fool’s errand to me. In order to tell a semi-coherent version of Ryuki’s story in under an hour, you’ve got to strip out all of the nuance, all of the ambiguity, all of the interesting moral dilemmas and hard-earned warmth and questions and grit… so that all you’re left with is a lot of suits and a lot of fighting. I… I don’t want that to be what Kamen Rider is? I want someone to use masked superheroes and rubber monsters to say something worth hearing. With this, it didn’t feel like anything I hadn’t heard a better version of before. This was like a bar band cover song of Ryuki.

Unfortunately there are probably some who dislikes the "boring" drama of philosophy clashes between the characters, moral dilemmas, etc. and wants to follow Ryuki only for the battle royale part (it's like... those that only care about the action part but also with the added nuance of heavy fan of battle royale games like Shibaura), to watch Riders ganging up, fighting and killing each other, and is probably disappointed that the main series isn't into that much and treating 13 Riders as jumping straight into the point for Ryuki premise. Probably also the reason fans voted for a more violent ending.