[Kamen Rider Die]

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Originally Posted by OmegaEclipse

Honestly, in my opinion ryuki is extremely unique in the fact that I can actually REMEMBER all the different riders. They all stand out so much and have unique personalities. Half of me wants each one to have a miniseries dedicated to them, then I remember I would start defending toujou and asakuras way of thinking.

I mean, Toujou's way of thinking, okay, maybe. He's someone who wants to feel like a tortured hero so much that he tortures himself. (Like, I think he's legitimately jazzed when he figures out that he cares enough about Professor that killing him would be a sacrifice.) I think there's some bit of most people that they'd like to be seen as a hero, that maybe they want to feel that resolve of having overcome something. Is that what running a marathon is? Pushing yourself to see what you can handle? So, Toujou, it's possible.

But Asakura?! His way of thinking is that he needs to be fighting people all the time! Don't think that way!

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Originally Posted by DreadBringer

Sure Morimoto asking for Asakura's rights not to be treated as animal is the job, but he (actually the reason he asked for the rights) also seemingly plans to treat Asakura as a complete good guy and free him. Lawyer's job is to ensure the client's rights, proportionally, not necessarily to give best defense (like freeing a blatantly quilty client).

I don't know about the Japanese legal system circa the early 2000s, but in America you can 100% get a retrial if your lawyer refuses to give you an adequate defense. If you can show bias or negligence, you can get a do-over. Morimoto absolutely needs to try to get the best outcome possible for his client.

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Originally Posted by DreadBringer

Between the collection of terrible men here, I want to know how's Sano compared to them? He doesn't seem to do as much atrocity as Kitaoka or Toujou, but it's clear that he can easily betray or kill others (unlike... Ren).

I don't feel like I know enough about Imperer to fit him into the moral spectrum the show established. In two episodes, he's been played mostly for laughs. Beyond that, there seems to be an effort to tag him as being worse than the villains because he's not fighting for anything deep. To quote The Wire, a man's got to have a code. Imperer doesn't, so even antiheroes like Ren and full-blown villains like Toujou despise him. That's a fun flipside to how goofy he is in the show, to make his actions feel more evil by how shallow his motivations are.

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Originally Posted by DreadBringer

You seem to never respond to this (also probably because you still tolerate Shinji here), but this is an Inoue stuff, his writing clashes with Kobayashi too much. He like, ignores character developments for more "drama", like Shinji here, doing the exact same mistake as the beginning part of the series, when Shinji trusts Sudo at ep. 5, putting Ren and Yui in jeopardy, although Sano isn't a pure evil person like Sudo. For your "growing out of that" question, didn't you complain about the status quo part of the series? But actually yes, Shinji did grow out of that. Though for those you mentioned except Asakura, they do have development, though their core character doesn't change. Shinji also grows up to gain some skeptical traits, some guarded traits, just recall episode 38 when he's being fishy about Toujou and act according to it! Doesn't mean his character core is changed like his take on the war, his ideals, or his care about people, but there's growth right there, he has matured. Those who are tired about Shinji making bad/dumb decisions are probably people who also has problems recognizing growth (never letting go of the beginning part of the series and treats everything in status quo), but those who do and follows Shinji should realize that Shinji's treatment is even worse in this one episode, he's not this dumb (like Ren's remark against him hiring Sano).

A lot here! Let's see if I can unpack it all.

-Saying one writer's style "clashes too much" with another's, that's super subjective. If you dislike the tone of non-Kobayashi episodes, I can't disagree that there's a difference, but I like both takes.

-I don't know that Inoue ignores that much character development for Shinji in this one? He's got a slightly different read on Shinji, maybe, but Shinji wanting to believe that he caused a dude to have a change of heart and then that dude took advantage of Shinji's trust... I think we've seen that move more often on this show than Ryuki's Final Vent? It's a pretty ingrained part of Shinji's character.

-My complaints about the endless status quo of certain episodes, I tried to emphasize when talking about this episode that there are core characteristics that you can't change about a character, and Shinji's gullibility is one of those. I wasn't trying to say that the show shouldn't change anything about the characters.

I hope this made some sense? I'm not totally clear on some of that paragraph. Sorry!

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Originally Posted by DreadBringer

Kagawa got an ironic death (as you already talked above) where he talks a big game about sacrificing others for the greater good, only to be killed by someone who bought what he was selling and saw him as a threat to the greater good. A testament of how much a lunatic Toujou is, he twisted all Kagawa's teachings in the worst way possible. Kagawa teaches that a hero must have courage to sacrifice something important to you for the greater good, and that a hero suffers... with Tiger only taking the sacrificing part, and Kagawa being the most important person in his life, combine those all, and by his mindset, Tiger should sacrifice Kagawa, where he would suffer by losing the most important person, and by suffering you would become a hero (and Alternative Zero was Final Vented in a facing-down position, the worst way to get Final Vented by Tiger, you can't fight back Destwilder at all).Toujou took it upon himself to create his own suffering by losing his mentor. Where was Ryuki or Imperer, did they even notice this betrayal?

I think what I found most interesting is that, it's not that Toujou corrupted his message and misunderstood his teachings, it's that his lesson was inherently flawed. It felt like the show was trying to deconstruct that sort of stoic heroism, the myth of the noble sacrifice. In reality, choosing to kill someone "for the greater good" is just killing someone. A person can choose to sacrifice themselves, but you can't choose to sacrifice them. The end result of Professor's ideology is a justification for murder, and that's going to allow murderers to feel justified.