[Switchblade]

I've been saving my thoughts on Rider Time Ryuki because it's hard for me to really separate them from the ending.

I wanted to like this. Massive reunion of Ryuki characters, including most of the major Riders and that asshole who got punked by Asakura? That premise had a lot of potential. The result, though, was just so disappointing.

I don't necessarily mind that the tone was as dark as it is, in concept. Ryuki was a show that definitely had some bleak elements to it, and a lot of them were probably things that got accentuated when consigned to long-term memory, too. I can definitely see how Inoue, always a lover of intense pathos, would want to do something that really called back to the darker and more emotional moments of Ryuki. This is a miniseries that took Imperor's death as its tonal cornerstone, basically. And that's fair; probably more accurate than basing itself off of Kitaoka stealth-transforming in a canoe as far as memorable Ryuki moments go. It still doesn't feel very good, though.

My core problem with the miniseries is that it seems like the whole thing is predicated on taking Ryuki's sad, bittersweet ending and deciding that the characters forgetting everything - good and bad - wasn't miserable enough. So we get stuff like evil Tezuka, which is easily the most misguided take on a returning character that I've ever seen in this medium. And we get Ren turning his back on Eri, the love of his love and main motivation on the show, for 17 freaking years because he vaguely feels like something is missing (besides the original actress). And, of course, then everybody just fucking dies at the end. Again, but without the reset. It's just so relentlessly and needlessly bleak, even by Ryuki standards.

The fact that the show held off on Ren and Shinji's reunion so long, and then made it so short, also felt like a massive misjudgment. You get these two characters back and the audience is going to want to see them together. That's the highlight of the entire miniseries and the two reconnecting and remembering their time together or even becoming friends again under new circumstances would have been a much more enjoyable use of the show's time. The final moment itself was still good, but we could have had so much more of them together.

And that's Rider Time Ryuki for me: a lot of wasted potential that had a really bad read on what parts of the show really made it good.

If only Zi-O could find a way to take a show's original characters and use them in a manner that felt organic, true to the show's spirit, and like it really built off of the original story. That's something I would be much happier to Turn Up for.