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01-23-2021, 12:39 PM | #11 |
Yodonna oshi
Join Date: Jan 2021
Posts: 748
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I was surprised by what elements are the ones that the franchise returns to, and I was surprised by how many of those elements come from Episode: Final, but you're right, I guess this is an example of the oversimplification present in looking back. |
01-23-2021, 01:20 PM | #12 |
Kamen Ride Or Die
Join Date: Aug 2019
Location: Chicago, IL
Posts: 6,159
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Ryuki's a tough show, for sure. Shinji's idealism and certitude taking a beating for a year is sometimes hard to invest in. There's a real sense of fatalism to its arc, where it's less about heroism and more about self-interest/martyrdom. I'd be lying if I said it was one of my faves.
But it's a show that, for me, really improves in my memory. I respect more what it was trying to talk about: the difficulties in empathizing with others; the hard but necessary work of getting to know people; the value in taking on someone else's burden; and the idea that we can never, should never feel certain about anything, so always ask questions, always be inquisitive. It's a show that has a bunch of flaws (Shiro had some of my least-favorite acting in a Kamen Rider ever), but there's some thematic stuff it's getting after that I keep rolling around in my brain. The execution may not be flawless, but there's a ton to unpack from what Ryuki wanted to discuss. Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts!
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01-23-2021, 01:42 PM | #13 |
Member
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Posts: 320
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Funny enough, that quote really reminds me of how I always saw Shinji:
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"Children sometimes envision themselves as the heroes and think they might also be justice. There is also the idea that people often don’t accept themselves as being wrong, because in one’s mind “I am myself, so I’m not wrong” is the prevailing thought process. These thoughts lead to selfish patterns because kids might not see themselves as themselves but as the heroes. Mr. Ishinomori had fears that too many people would think this way when working on his creations."
He felt like the dark side of idealism. Uncompromising even when it caused more harm in the long run, like with Oujia. In the end, Shinji more or less lead the world to ruin and someone else had to pick up his mess. To me the final message of the show was a "heroes don't exist and they should never exist". I'm just glad Faiz managed to do a far better job at getting Rider right again through the lense of a fallen hero regaining his ideals.
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01-23-2021, 02:06 PM | #14 |
Yodonna oshi
Join Date: Jan 2021
Posts: 748
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I'm not sure I follow your reading of Shinji being responsible for the woes of his world, I think the world in which Ryuki takes place is fundamentally broken, and he can't truly be held responsible for the fact that the toast always falls butter side down. I would agree that perhaps he lacks the capacity to adapt his views to a changing world, but that could be said of all the characters of the show. Quote:
あ! You're too kind! Thank you for letting me waffle at you all! |
01-23-2021, 02:10 PM | #15 |
TokuKnight89
Join Date: May 2013
Location: Central Louisiana (Cenla)
Posts: 2,557
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Quote:
I think I have a similar outlook to you when it comes to Kamen Rider -- I might not have seen much Showa, but the ideals and themes within are not just core to the franchise to me but what drew me to Kamen Rider in the first place. I have a big soft spot for how they often frame heroes, and how it tends to run with the assumption that people are ultimately good and how it's neck-deep in The Power Of Friendship. It's why I love shows like OOO, Hibiki and Kuuga, why I'm extremely turned off from the likes of Kiva, Amazons and Gaim, why I was confused about why I didn't like Saber beyond the toy deluge, why I like Ghost a lot more than others and why I'm giving it another shot with my rewatch at the moment... and why I couldn't get into Ryuki at all at first.
And in many ways it's still not quite my thing. I'm not entirely turned off from seasons about Riders fighting each other - Build and Blade are shows I find it difficult to shut up about - but the battle royale style is certainly something I don't associate with what I see as Kamen Rider. The constant belittling of the wide-eyed protagonist, the only one who's a decent person; is something I found a little untenable at times, as was quickly killing off the Rider who was my favourite character (Raia), and I to this day do not understand what a lot of people see in Zolda. You're right in saying that it's a very un-Kamen Rider show, but... But what sets it apart for me is that the more I interrogated it, the more intentional I found it. For all the fun every character and the series in general makes of Shinji, how he's made out to be a complete idiot, how the only person really carrying the ideal of Kamen Rider is one that's a fool for not getting with the real world and participating in a killing game? For all of that, the season makes clear by the end that make fun of the dork all you want; he's right! He's right that Riders shouldn't be fighting each other, he's right in his naive ideals of heroism, he's right in everything he tries to do, and that's what sets this show apart for me from other shows that try something similar. The story of Ryuki in general is a fantasy concocted by a broken man, a completely wrong series of events he's forced into reality but which cannot help but be undone into a better world in the show's ending; perfectly foreshadowed by Shinji breaking through his Time Vent just enough to deliver a single punch to Kanzaki. Other characters like Ren hide behind a veneer of cynicism and 'reality', despite the fact that the one time he does finally take a life - of a person he doesn't even know, of a person he believes is the mastermind behind the entire killing game - he breaks down in tears because for all his talk, the act of actually taking a life is too much for him to take. Which isn't even going into the intention behind Ryuki yet, which... well, to quote you: This is what inspired me to leave a reply here, because - aside from the deep urge to go on yet another rant about the perfection that is Kuuga - this actually wasn't the thinking behind Ryuki at all. It wasn't taking the stage of Kamen Rider and using it to tell a random unconnected story that would be as much as out of place in Super Sentai or Ultraman or Metal Heroes as it would here; but instead, Ryuki is very emphatically about Kamen Rider. The inspiration for the show at the time was what the effects of 9/11 had had on society, the deep unsettlement it brought and the way it forced people to view their ideals. As such, the producer of the third Heisei Kamen Rider, Shirakura; was tasked on high with the memo "now more than ever, we need to teach children about justice". And I'm sure to many that sounds noble, but for Shirakura he couldn't help but relent. To quote him - and this is Google Translate, so, naturally; it's a bit more like paraphrasing, but: "Children sometimes envision themselves as the heroes and think they might also be justice. There is also the idea that people often don’t accept themselves as being wrong, because in one’s mind “I am myself, so I’m not wrong” is the prevailing thought process. These thoughts lead to selfish patterns because kids might not see themselves as themselves but as the heroes. Mr. Ishinomori had fears that too many people would think this way when working on his creations." (source: https://dot.asahi.com/aera/2018081000056.html?page=2 ) That last bit sticks out to me in particular: Ishinomori was a man who was very intentional in what he was portraying in his works, and would constantly embed his ideals into it: there's many infamous lines I could quote from Kamen Rider, but the one that comes to mind the most here is "Human Life is more important than justice". To me, if you consider the way Ishinomori viewed life and what he held as most important; even going so far as to say that human life should always be prioritised over one's ideals of justice in a show about one man fighting for justice against an evil, fascist conglomerate... to respond to a society effected by 9/11 with "we need to show justice", to me, is maybe the worst thing one could do with Ishinomori's creations. And this is what spawned Ryuki: as is perhaps obvious from the quote there, it turns Kamen Rider on its head because as an icon of justice, Kamen Rider taking this sharp a turn both from the Showa Era and from Kuuga and Agito is a statement on what ideals we hold dear and why; and really interrogating the concept of Kamen Rider in an uncertain age and how those ideals really hold up today. It's not like this hadn't been done before - again, trying very hard here not to go on and on about Kuuga - but Ryuki really drives it home with everything it does. The concept of most the Riders being evil, for instance; that's not a coincidence or just something they done because "it's cool and edgy" - it's something that is incredibly significant in a franchise where you didn't really have any evil riders before! You had a few one-offs like the Shocker Riders or Fake Amazon, and Another Agito was absolutely an antagonist but he still ended up joining up with the heroes and getting some kind of redemption; and Black very smartly never, ever called Shadow Moon a Kamen Rider. But Scissors is the first time someone is explicitly called a Kamen Rider, is framed as what a Kamen Rider is, and begins and ends life as a terrible person - and that's the norm. That to me represents what Ryuki's doing: it twists ideas of justice we previously thought of as pure and immovable, and completely turns them on their heads to make its audience question what justice is and why we hold it to our hearts, in an era where that couldn't be more important. I'm not saying all this to try and convince you that you're wrong, or anything like that; at the end of the day, the show had an effect on you and the effect clearly wasn't positive. If you don't like it, obviously, you don't like it. But I guess just since the day I finished it, my feelings on Ryuki as a show have constantly been complex, and so this topic was one I really couldn't help but comment on with how my own feelings have developed on the series and what truly inspired Ryuki in the first place, and how that makes me feel about the series as a whole. https://tokusatsunetwork.com/2018/08...ction-to-9-11/ Shirakura also refers to the three "Ishinomori-isms": "fight against the self", "parricide", and "denial of the self". Oh, and in case you were wondering, Ryuki had cards as a way to capitalize on the popularity of card games like Yu-Gi-Oh at the time. https://tokusatsunetwork.com/2018/08...inomoris-ideas |
01-23-2021, 02:20 PM | #16 |
I have a problematic type
Join Date: Jan 2012
Posts: 10,427
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Ryuki is a show that left me fairly cold the first time through, but that I appreciated more on the rewatch. I think the part of it that I appreciate the most is a moment that comes near the end of the show when Shinji is trying to get the other Riders to fight him so he can save Yui and they all refuse, even Asakura. I really liked the idea that a big part of the show was the way that his idealism actually did inspire the others and it was something about him that they all respected, something that even motivated some of them to be better people. I thought that was a pretty neat development.
Also, I freaking love the Rideshooter and would 100% drive one if they were released to the public. |
01-23-2021, 02:26 PM | #17 |
Standing By
Join Date: Feb 2020
Location: USA
Posts: 2,108
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Ryuki is the ninth and most recent Phase 1 show I've watched. However, I had put off watching it until a few years ago after hearing how the ending rendered everything that came before it irrelevant, but I was surprised to learn later that it might not actually Kobayashi's fault. Apparently, she wanted to end it with all the Riders and Kanzakis dead but was overruled by executives. Fortunately, Inoue later wrote Rider Time Ryuki which comes pretty close to her original intention.
Kobayashi isn't without her flaws though. There's usually a subplot in her shows that's critically important to the overall story and yet very boring compared to the more spectacular parts. In Ryuki, the Kanzaki plot is the reason for the Rider War but it feels detached from all the clashing philosophies of the Riders and suffers from a lot of dragging to make it last until the end. In Den-O, the Zeronos memory plot feels intrusive to the comedic character interactions that made the show popular. She also wrote ToQGer.... Uh, anyway, I agree that Ryuki is the darkest Phase 1 show but I think it's saved from being too dark and edgy by its heroic characters like Shinji, Tezuka and eventually Ren. Amazons is the bloodiest Rider show I've watched but the darkest overall is Gaim since the most archetypal heroic Rider is Zack but he's also the second weakest. With Ryuki, there's a feeling that Shinji is stuck in a hopeless situation, which he is, all the Riders are, they're all doomed. But in the face of abundant cynicism and at least 10 people who want to murder him, his persistent heroism eventually finds a way to save Ren's soul. It's a moral that doing only what's logical or pragmatic in a hopeless situation will never be good enough and a true hero will always do the right thing. Ditto! It's super weird rewatching it back-to-back with Kiramager with Kudo Mio playing two completely different characters.
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01-23-2021, 02:30 PM | #18 |
The Immortal King Tasty
Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: Every diner you've ever been to.
Posts: 3,833
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I feel like I should instantly be able to contribute something to this topic, but I'm finding that surprisingly hard when I consider what a conflicting series of opinions I have here.
I'm in a similar boat to Kurona in that I have a ton of love for both the Showa ideal of what "Kamen Rider" meant, despite not having a ton of direct exposure to those shows, and for the very heartfelt optimism at the core of many of the later shows. Ghost is my favorite Rider series because of how unflinching it is in that, and Yasuko Kobayashi is my favorite toku writers for how great she is at finding the warmth and humanity in her characters. I might even go so far agree that I prefer her work on Sentai, in a lot of ways. Certainly, they're also favorites of mine. Naturally, I've also long been against the view that anything is somehow made better or more respectable simply by being grim and edgy, although that's probably a given to be a fan of hero tokusatsu. But at the same time, Ryuki is a major part of my roots as a Rider fan, and I've just never gotten that vibe from it? I don't think I could put it in any real objective way – and that's fine, because we react personally to things – but I've always found that Ryuki is a show where the usual Kobayashi warmth shines through specifically because of how much its challenged. Shinji is belittled constantly by the characters, sure, but it always seemed clear to me the show treats his belief in the sanctity of life with respect, and wants the viewer to see it that way too. There's a line he has in episode 40 that's always stuck with me: "I just wanted to save them, so I saved them", or however else you want to translate it. He's someone who does what he feels is right not because he thinks the world will reward him for it (and it almost never does), but because those actions hold value to him in of themselves, and that's a take on heroism that resonates with me a ton. Now, whether Shinji's values are "correct" or not is something the show of course interrogates quite a bit, and he doesn't always come out looking great, but that's true of everyone in the show. This is especially evident in Shinji's oddball relationship with Ren that's at the core of much of the story. Shinji's life sucks because people aren't as nice as he thinks they are, and, paradoxically, Ren's sucks because he's a far kinder person at heart than he wants to admit. It's a series all about how people's differing perceptions of the world can clash, often messily, and that acknowledgement of how uncertain things can feel is yet another thing that draws me to it. It was very hard for me to see Ryuki as being dark for the sake of it, even before I knew how it was conceived, and I never liked it because it was dark. I think it's a fascinating show with a lot that can be taken out of it, and while it's unfortunate your experience was unpleasant, it was fun reading your thoughts. It's always interesting to see how subjective these things can be, so I'm glad to get such a wildly different take on a show I love. Also, this is literally exactly what I called Ohja back when I was watching the show not having looked up the (barely mentioned on-screen) Rider names. Nice to know someone else shares my taste in nicknames.
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01-23-2021, 02:40 PM | #19 |
Yodonna oshi
Join Date: Jan 2021
Posts: 748
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Shinji's life sucks because people aren't as nice as he thinks they are, and, paradoxically, Ren's sucks because he's a far kinder person at heart than he wants to admit. It's a series all about how people's differing perceptions of the world can clash, often messily, and that acknowledgement of how uncertain things can feel is yet another thing that draws me to it.
Stop me now. I'm on the verge of going into an Evangelion flavoured reminiscence on the notion of the division between "self" and "other." Last edited by dreamcastegirl; 01-23-2021 at 03:18 PM.. |
01-23-2021, 02:57 PM | #20 |
Ex-Weather Three leader
Join Date: Jan 2012
Posts: 10,563
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Shinji has been the true Kamen Rider from the start with Ren gradually becoming one. And the rest were wolves in sheep's clothing; they may bear the title and fight for their ideals and desires but in terms of what is ideally considered a Kamen Rider by us the rest were just monsters in essence.
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