Back in the days of Cohost, a now defunct social media platform that cared more about posting than engagement metrics, I wrote a series of liveblogs covering my time watching Kamen Rider Ryuki, with each post covering 10 episodes of the show. Unfortunately, I never got around to publishing my thoughts on the final stretch of the show before the site was unceremoniously shut down thanks to the money drying up. I’m generally quite proud of the analysis I put forward in those posts, so I’ve compiled them all into one place for the sake of keeping it all somewhere.

10-episode check-in

I started watching Kamen Rider Ryuki on a whim a few days ago. I’ve been aware of its outsized influence on both Kamen Rider generally, as well as like, the entirety of anime, but I’ve never actually bothered to go in and experience it. Hell, Ryuki actually fits in with my long-standing tradition of experiencing popular media through fighting game adaptations before the actual main property itself. I’m now done with episode 10, so I’m just going to log a pretty loose collection of thoughts here.

I can’t speak for the specific tones of the shows that immediately preceded Ryuki - Kuuga and Agito - but I get the feeling that Ryuki must have immediately struck audiences as something really different. It even strikes me as different, being someone who first started watching Kamen Rider right in the middle of the post-Decade Heisei era of the show. That’s not just because Ryuki was produced in a time where television shows were all getting shot at 60fps rather than the standard 24fps, though - it’s also just so tonally different from everything I’ve seen from the franchise, including the other seasons that were very directly influenced by it.

Obviously, as a Kamen Rider show, it’s not afraid to be goofy with its characters, and there have been plenty of comedic moments that work well enough, but what really struck me right from the start of episode 1 was just how committed the show is to this almost horror-like tonality. The Mirror Monsters are already attacking people in visually disturbing ways, and one thing that really marks the show out from a lot of the other seasons I’ve seen is that these attacks have very real consequences. So often, you see the monster of the week/fortnight being defeated, and everyone who was victimised is back to normal. Not so with Ryuki - those people are actually just dead, because they have literally been eaten. I suppose this is also part of the legacy of Ryuki - a lot of the shows immediately after it tended to play around with much darker tones and themes (especially Faiz, but also Blade and even Kabuto to a certain extent).

The whole conceit of the Rider Fight is almost kind of cute at this point, given just how often it’s appeared throughout the Kamen Rider franchise’s history, but there’s certainly a sense that it’s a little bit taboo in Ryuki. Fights between Riders are treated as genuinely shocking, with everyone except Ryuki himself fighting with a kind of calculated brutality that really sells the violence inherent to whatever the hell it is that everyone has gotten themselves involved in.

Speaking of Ryuki, I can’t say for certain, but surely Shinji Kido must be Kamen Rider’s first loser protagonist? Like, you can see a lot of Shinji in future main characters like Fourze’s Gentaro Kisaragi or even Revice’s Ikki Igarashi, but I can’t think of any other season of the show where the protagonist is explicitly depicted to be an extremely incompetent fighter. This isn’t a knock against the show, of course - Ryuki, at least at this early stage of the show, really wants to hammer home the point that Shinji is absolutely, 100 per cent out of his depth, with zero understanding of what is actually happening around him. There’s a tension - one very well-explored by future seasons - between the desire for Shinji’s ideals to be realised and the sinking feeling that at some point, he’s going to have to face reality and fight despite his moral objections. It poses a fairly simple question pretty early on: “Why do us Riders have to fight?” But compared to a similar show, Geats, not only does it ask this question explicitly, it also subtly signals that that might not even be a useful question. When Geats asks why the Riders have to fight, it does so to draw attention to the nature of its world, who is in charge of it and for what purpose the decisions are made. When Ryuki asks that same question, you can’t help but get a sinking feeling that the Riders have to fight because there is simply no other option. 戦わなければ、生き残れない。Those who do not fight do not survive.

Show seems cool. I’m looking forward to seeing where it goes from here.

Also Ren is a total jackass, so I can’t wait for him and Shinji to make out sloppy style before the final episode (READ: non-transformed fistfight in a body of water)

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20-episode check-in

Dude. This show is fucking awesome.

By this point, the show has started to move away from the “fighting mirror monsters attacking people” conceit to focus more on the actual conflict between the Riders themselves. That’s not unusual for Kamen Rider seasons from the Heisei era and beyond, but it still feels so markedly different in Ryuki compared even to shows that focus on a similar “Rider War” concept. It ties back into something I touched on in the last of these posts, where there seems to be this sense that the Riders actually fighting each other is literally only a negative.

Last time, I talked about how the show kind of felt like it was suggesting that “why do the Riders have to fight” is an unhelpful question, because it takes the thesis statement of “those who do not fight do not survive” at face value. If you have entered the Rider War, then you must fight or you will not survive. Those are the rules. It’s literally a matter of life or death. But now, when presented with that same statement, the show has found ways to continually ask: “Okay, yeah, but why though?” And it’s done that not just through Shinji’s ideals, but also through Miyuki Tezuka aka Kamen Rider Raia, who has given us reason to question not the moral basis for the Rider War, but the material one: Shiro Kanzaki isn’t going around telling people to kill each other in the Mirror World for no reason. Why should we take him at his word?

It’s also by this point that the show has given us some truly villainous characters, and good god to they hit different. At this point, the show has made it clear that most of the people who would willingly participate in the Rider War are varying degrees of fucked up and generally deplorable. While it seemed as though our “bad guy” would be Shuichi Kitaoka aka Kamen Rider Zolda, there’s just too much we don’t know about the guy for us to draw the conclusion that he’s actually just awful. Like, I wouldn’t want to be friends with the guy, but his greatest crime is just being honest about the nature of his work as a defence lawyer. He’s nothing compared to our first real bastards: Jun Shibaura aka Kamen Rider Gai and Takeshi Asakura aka Kamen Rider Ouja. They both ooze charisma and demand your attention when they’re on screen, but while Shibaura is just a little fucking shit who doesn’t take this seriously and fucking dies for it, Asakura is… something else.

Speaking of, the way that Asakura has had influence over both Shinji and Ren is incredibly interesting. For Ren, it’s further amplified this tension the show has been exploring with his character centred on his cold and ruthless personality being merely a facade, and the desire to effectively make himself more like Asakura, as that’s the only way he can conceivably win the Rider War. This contrasts really well with how Asakura has also started pushing Shinji to the limits of his ideals and morals - Shinji ultimately doesn’t want to kill anyone, but when Asakura is able to so easily take someone’s life and even find joy in the act, it takes Shinji to an interesting place; a place where you could argue that maybe - just maybe - some people deserve to die. But then, if he dies, then that would be a victory more for Shiro Kanzaki than anyone else. Shinji has been getting visibly more competent at fighting, but his moral quandaries have only gotten more and more complex as the plot thickens.

Bonus thoughts: seeing Kitaoka and Goro-chan interact is so cute. I want them to kiss. Also I can’t believe I didn’t mention it earlier but the music in this show whips ass?

Oh yeah, and this shot from the end of episode 19 goes so fucking hard and I’m shocked it didn’t hang on it a little longer before cutting to episode preview.

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30-episode check-in

We’ve pretty firmly established the status quo by now. The main villainous force at this point is still Asakura, and the more I see of this guy, the more I come to understand why he is one of the most enduringly popular characters in the whole Kamen Rider canon. There is just this raw magnetism and charisma to his character, and Takashi Hagino’s performance just makes the character so much more effective at demanding your attention. I use this kind of impersonal, academic language to describe this performance because I don’t want to admit that the way Asakura tells people he’s going to kill them with that sly smile makes me feel things.

Anyway, with the status quo being firmly established, this particular set of episodes only worked on further developing its characters and their relationships - a lot more focus has been given to Shuichi Kitaoka, to the point where he’s basically become a regular member of the “main gang”, as it were. We’re also beginning to see his health issues really come into effect, and that’s surely going to be the payoff for the tragedy behind this character that the show has clearly been hinting at.

Tragedy is, of course, the name of the game, since this batch of episodes is also where we’re treated to the incredibly emotional demise of Miyuki Tezuka. I’ll be honest, this moment did hit, but not as hard as I think it wanted to. It’s still, of course, a defining moment for Shinji and Tezuka, and even for Ren, since it debuted his Survive Form.

Actually, speaking of, I think that this season’s “final form” being called “Survive” is a really interesting bit of characterisation for Shiro and of the Rider War as a whole. Something about the power inherent to the Survive cards being attached to “survival” rather than “victory” seems like a subtle aspect of Shiro’s manipulation of the Riders.

That said, there was also a whole bunch of exposition about the Kanzaki siblings and the nature of the Mirror World. Not much has been actually concretely established (I imagine the show is saving the best for last at this point), but it’s also hinting at something very deeply tragic about Yui and Shiro both. There’s enough intrigue about what exactly is going on, but you also can’t help but wonder what Shiro’s endgame is.

…

I’ll be honest, I’m shocked I managed to write this many words about this batch of episodes. It’s all fantastic, don’t get me wrong, but a lot of it seems to be setting up things that will pay off in the last 20 episodes or so. Truth be told, I really only expected to talk about one episode - episode 28.

It’s fucking perfect. Brilliant, brilliant episode.

In the first one of these, I talked about the show’s commitment to an almost horror-esque tone, and episode 28 really brought that back in full force for the majority of the episode. With the establishing of Kamen Rider Odin as the Big Chief Of Fucking Shit Up and his ability to literally rewind time, the resulting episode-long sequence of Shinji realising that he’s constantly being sent back in time but not being able to remember the details for long enough to actually change anything about the course of events is low key fucking horrifying. There is this existential terror that you can see creeping up on Shinji’s face every time he becomes cognisant of his situation

And it all pays off with one of the single hardest fucking moments in all of television.

“If you see golden feathers, punch behind you.”

IT IS SIMPLY PEAK FUCKING FICTION. NO NOTES. NO FUCKING NOTES.

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40-episode check-in

As I was pulling up the Kamen Rider Ryuki episode list to refresh myself on the broad strokes of the last 10 episodes, I learned that episodes 29-50 comprise what is apparently referred to the “Space Between Battle and Desire” (戦いと願いの狭間, tatakai to negai no hazama) arc. That certainly feels very appropriate at this point, given how much focus the show has given to the various moral dilemmas that each of the Riders face vis-a-vis their participation in the Rider War, as well as the various contradictions that have arisen from it running its course up to this point.

Quite a few interesting things have happened since Odin fucked around with the timeline, including the hilarious introduction of Megumi Asano, a few interesting (but thoroughly unsurprising) windows into Takeshi Asakura’s headspace and how other characters - particularly Shinji - react to him, and the ORE Journal crew all but figuring out that Something Just Isn’t Right with reflective surfaces around the place. That last point, and particularly all the ways that Reiko is trying to get to the bottom of the story and its connections with Shiro Kanzaki, is really interesting, since it kind of highlights that Kanzaki’s machinations have had a much broader effect on society than just getting 12 randoms to kill each other.

It also just dawned on me that something really interesting has happened up to this point in the story: different Riders are effectively allying themselves with each other, despite the fact that everyone has explicitly acknowledged that the nature of the Rider War is that it’s every man for himself. There’s even an element of denial about that contradiction, like everyone’s pretending that it’s all for their own gain and they’re actually just being 4D chessmasters. Conflict is not a default state of being for humans to be in with each other, and I think the show is implicitly recognising that by drawing attention to the growing “gang” that Shinji and Ren have accidentally ended up forming - despite the outside force that is the Rider War imposing a ruthless competition between them, the Riders end up banding together anyway.

But certainly the major theme of the past few episodes has been what it means to be a hero, expressed primarily through the tension between Shinji and the newly-introduced Kamen Rider Tiger, aka Satoru Toujou. Toujou is obsessed with the idea of being a “hero”, and to him (and his mentor, Hideyuki Kagawa), a hero is one who necessarily must make sacrifices for the sake of the greater good - a hero must be willing to sacrifice one life in order to save ten, if they must. Now, for what it’s worth, it does become increasingly obvious over time that Toujou seems to think you can substitute “making sacrifices” for “just straight up killing people you find inconvenient”, but it does highlight something kind of interesting.

Some time ago, I formulated a kind of basic system for analysing the themes of Kamen Rider which views each season through the lens of a particular question: “What is it to be Kamen Rider?” The answers fit into one of three broad categories:

• To be Kamen Rider is a curse (e.g. Gaim)
• To be Kamen Rider is literally the coolest shit ever (e.g. Den-O)
• To be Kamen Rider is… look, man, it’s complicated (e.g. OOO)

And this theme of “heroism” ties pretty neatly into that, because to be Kamen Rider is, in the broad strokes of Japanese pop culture, to be a hero. Does Kamen Rider Ryuki believe that a hero must necessarily make sacrifices in order to be worthy of the title? I don’t think so. While the actual world of Ryuki makes it clear that to be a Kamen Rider is, in fact, very deeply complicated, I think the show believes that to be a hero - the kind of hero that Shinji has very much become - is fairly straightforward. One may sometimes have to make sacrifices, but that should not be the default assumption. Being a hero is not about developing a worked out solution to the trolley problem, as Toujou seems to have done, but about striving to save everyone within your reach. After all, Kamen Rider himself said it best:

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50-episode check-in

I’ve watched a fair few seasons of Kamen Rider that covered a whole range of tones, themes and ideas, from Fourze’s boundless joy and optimism to Gaim’s violent, weirdly sexist cynicism and everything in between. Kamen Rider Ryuki is just… different. It is bar none some of the most gripping and emotionally affective television I have ever seen. It can be called nothing but a complete and utter triumph.

In this late stage of the show, we’re introduced to our final main Rider - Mitsuru Sano, aka Kamen Rider Imperer. This guy is real interesting. Like I mentioned in the last one of these, this final arc of the show is referred to as “The space between battle and desire,” and it focuses primarily on the tensions and contradictions that arise out of the fight itself and the reasons why the Riders fight - there is seemingly a gap between these two things that arise for all of our remaining contestants, and for all of them, that gap only widens as the world continues to move around them, muddying their wishes. And yet, they are forced to fight all the same.

Sano is probably the most obvious example of this space between the battle and his desires. We’re first introduced to him working in a parking garage, sucking up to the rich businessmen who idly toss money at him in exchange for washing the windows on their cars. We see that he’s a bit of a sycophant, more than willing to lick the boot if it’ll benefit him, but not in a money-grubbing way per se - it’s more that he sees human relationships as transactional. A series of “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine” deals, because that’s all he ever really saw in his day to day life. That initially takes the form of him basically selling himself as an “employee” of sorts to various factions in the Rider War, which ends up with him working alongside Hideyuki Kagawa and co, and alongside Tojo¹, and it particularly ends up with him forming something of a bond with Tojo himself, as the two end up working together to try and survive the Rider War.

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