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akinoameA warning to the people, the good and the evil
(All images were put together by me from a variety of sources. The background image is shattered glass clipart from LordofDesign. All screencaps except those of Knight/Survive/Ren, Ryuki/Survive/Shinji, and Femme/Miho are mine. Those three sets were from screencaps provided to me by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
advancing.)
Now here's the part where I bring it all together. The Endpoint Analysis is something I began doing with my Ben 10 Alien Force reviews, where I took all of the analysis I'd done and brought it all home now that the show was over. Throughout the course of watching the series, my thoughts on the characters have evolved, and this is pretty much my last word on them. And a very long word at that. This is especially thorough given that this series isn't new to me, the way Alien Force, Ultimate Alien, and to some degree, Lost Galaxy were. I've had a good three years to think about this series and to try to make it all make sense in my head, and this is a revision and evolution of my original impressions. But unlike the prior series I've analyzed, this one has such a large cast and such a complex story that it really needed to be written inthree four parts (as it turns out, I really need to shut up. The first part of this analysis was 19 3/4 pages, which was too large to post), otherwise I'd run out of room or lose track of my thoughts.
Like with the Season 1 Summation of Ben 10 Ultimate Alien, I couldn't help but add my personal soundtrack choice. Think of it as what I'd choose if I knew how to make fanvids. Two songs dominated my thoughts on this series, but one ultimately triumphed. The runner-up was "Hope Is So Far Away" by Eyeshine, which felt to me like Shinji's and Yui's thoughts on the Rider War. But the winner was "This Is War" by 30 Seconds To Mars, which really seemed to match what I felt about the characters of the story, and I used its lyrics to help organize my three-part Endpoint Analysis. First are the secondary Riders and the Alternatives of the series, with the subtitle above. The second is the support staff, including ORE, Sanako, and Eri and the background investigation that led us to our story. And the third is our four main characters of Shinji, Ren, Yui, and Kanzaki and the themes of the story.
Kamen Rider Ryuki is not a story about one person. It tells the story of many people, all framed within the context of the Rider War, a massive battle set up by Shiro Kanzaki in order to save his sister, Yui. Thirteen people were chosen to fight and kill their way to the top, promised that if they were the last to survive, they would receive a great power—a single wish for anything in the world. And all of them have a reason to want it. In fact, the series’ catchphrase is “Tatakawana kereba, ikinokorenai!” which the official guidebook, Hybrid File, translates as ”Without battle, you can’t survive.” This is a really bleak outlook on Kamen Rider in general, but it makes perfect sense for the characters. They are fighting to survive and surviving to fight. Everything depends on the battle.
It’s the first of Yasuko Kobayashi’s run on Kamen Rider where, to date (as of this writing, her most recent Rider series was OOO), each series has tackled the theme of desire or wishes, why these wishes are important, and what will you do to obtain your heart’s desire. Or, to reference the sci fi series Babylon 5, it asks the Shadows’ question: “What do you want?”
If you could have one wish—any wish in the world—what would it be? And what would you be willing to do to get it?
This is the question at the hearts of the Riders as they battle to be the last one standing.
In terms of Kamen Riders, these are the guys with probably the suckiest powers in the world. They were the first Riders to use cards to access their weapons and powers, followed later by Blade and Decade (to date). And they were also the ones most shafted by the system. Blade had various cards he could use and combine for different attacks. Decade could turn into any Rider and access their attacks, along with accessing his own. Ryuki, however, is seriously limited by the amount of cards in his deck, which is hardly ever more than five. Each card can only be used for one “turn,” unless it’s a weapon card, and the cards disappear from the deck after they’ve been scanned and won’t return until a new fight. You know, like an actual trading card game. Why so fail? Well, the Ryuki system was specifically designed to put everyone at a disadvantage. The winner is supposed to be Odin, after all. Give the Riders too many cards or let them keep their weapons and effects for too many turns, and there’s a chance that they might be able to overpower Odin. By imposing the same limits that a children’s card game would have and reducing the size of the deck to five-or-less cards, then Kanzaki can ensure that he’ll win. It’s a system designed by a guy trying to cheat the system. If any of the Riders want to stand a chance, they have to fight smart and strong. It takes the strongest hearts and minds to withstand the Rider War, and all of them have everything on the line.
I know I already discussed Femme, Ryuga, and Verde in the reviews of EPISODE FINAL and 13 Riders, but I figured it would be good to group them together, especially with the Alternatives, which are the closest thing to filling out the number in the series. Also, I’m going to leave out Koichi Sakakibara, the original Ryuki. He may have put in an appearance in the special, but it was only to be killed off soon after his appearance, which didn’t give him nearly enough of a chance to make an impact. So with that said, let's start with the Movie Riders and Alternatives.
Let’s start off with our weakest and work our way up through the movie/special-only characters. Itsuro Takamizawa, also known as Kamen Rider Verde, is introduced in the 45-minute special 13 Riders, and he really isn’t well developed there. While he has more to him than, say, Sakakibara, there’s still not a whole lot to write home about with him. A lot of the time that should have been spent on him instead went to the story of Ren being forced to learn if he could really participate in the Rider War and Shinji trying to stop it. What we do see is that he is a rich and powerful man, the head of a corporation called the Takamizawa Group. However, it’s implied that he only inherited this, and he wants more power of his own. To obtain it, he is willing to do every dirty trick in the book, even down to forming a temporary alliance with the other Riders and blackmailing Ren into joining—right after having killed Ren’s best friend, mind you. His actor, Arthur Kuroda, puts in a good performance, but overall, I feel like he’s kind of wasted on this character. Takamizawa didn’t have enough screentime or development to really do the actor justice, and I would have rather seen him play a recurring character in the series. When Knight gets back up from Verde’s Final Vent and kills him with a Final Vent of his own, it’s really hard to feel anything for Takamizawa other than vindication on Ren’s behalf.
Verde’s costume? Oy. Ryuki started off the non-traditional looks of the Riders, who had previously all been bug-themed. Even Riderman and Tackle, who had decidedly unconventional costumes for their series (given that neither had their whole face covered and really looked like they’d made their suits by themselves), still had an insect theme to their costumes—the same grasshopper theme that V3 had for Riderman, and a ladybug for Tackle. Even Shin, the most maligned character in the entire franchise to date (and I bet it’s going to be hard to top the flack Shin gets) looked like a bug—which was part of his problem. Ryuki changed it up by having none of its actual Riders looking like bugs—I’ll come back to this in a bit with the Alternatives—and designing them after the different animals that their Contract Monsters were based on. And Verde’s is a chameleon.
I really wish there was a better way to incorporate a chameleon into the design of a Kamen Rider, at least in this series. All of the Riders in Ryuki have one common element of their designs, and that’s the grill on their masks. On most of them, it looks great. On Verde…oy. Yes, chameleons have weird-looking eyes. But I don’t think it excuses the use of the grill on the eyes. Even Ryuki manages to keep the traditional Kamen Rider eyes and puts the grill over it. I love the way that looks (but that’s another topic). Verde really didn’t do a good job incorporating it, and he winds up looking like bastard son of his Monster, Biogreeza. One of my friends commented to me that Verde looks more like a Super Sentai than a Kamen Rider, and I almost want to agree, except for the fact that I’ve seen Super Sentai’s take on a chameleon-themed warrior, Mele of Gekiranger (Camille in Power Rangers Jungle Fury). Her suit is still a little weird, but much more impressive. What’s worse is that in Kamen Rider Decade, we get a fourteenth Rider, Abyss, who has a wonderful design, with a shark motif. Yes, it’s still a little silly, but Abyss’s design actually fits with the overall motif of all the other Riders this series. Sadly, I must save all discussion on him for a year or two when I actually do the Decade reviews.
Every Rider and Alternative has a set of Advent Cards in order to use their attacks—similar to Digimon Tamers’ use of the Digimon CCG to slash and upload powers to their digimon, or like Yu-Gi-Oh. And because I said that name and I can’t go back now, “card games on motorcycles.” You’re welcome.
Each deck establishes a particular Rider’s fighting style and it seems to illustrate their personalities fairly well. For the sake of clarity, I’m going to distinguish types of cards by “Attack,” “Weapon,” and “State.” An Attack Card is a particular power a Rider may use, or their Monster, as an attack. A Weapon Card is pretty self-explanatory—any actual weapon or shield the Rider uses. And a State Card changes a Rider’s physical state—make them faster, stronger, or whatever.
Verde’s deck relies on deceptive tactics, and he’s the one where State Cards really come into play. He has a combination Weapon/State Card, Copy Vent (which we’ll discuss again later), which allows him to copy any Rider’s weapon or physical form. He uses it to copy Knight’s form in order to get Raia to lower his guard, allowing him to wound him long enough to use his Final Vent. His other State Card is Clear Vent, which gives him the power of invisibility, which makes him really damn hard to fight, as you might imagine. His Weapon Card, Hold Vent, gives him the Bio-Winder, which as I mentioned, is a weaponized yo-yo. It’s meant to mimic the movements of a lizard’s tongue, but it still looks silly in action. Despite this, it has as many Attack Points as Ryuki’s weapons, so there you go. His Final Vent, Death Punish, is almost a direct copy of Lucemon Falldown Mode’s Paradise Lost attack in Digimon Frontier, as I mentioned in the original review—Biogreeza grabs the victim by the ankles and pulls him in the air while Verde brings him down and slams him into the ground, breaking his victim’s neck. It’s still silly, but it works—and better than Lucemon’s attack at that. We see it in action twice, and both times, the victim dies from a broken neck. The only thing is that Ren turns out to be really damn determined to get back up even with his injuries, so by act of plot, he survives long enough to finish him off.
Kamen Rider Ryuga is another really weak character. I hesitate to call him by any other name, even though I know the Hybrid File has him listed as Dark Side Shinji. He’s Shinji Kido, but an imaginary copy made from the Mirror World. In that way, he’s very similar to Yui in the series, especially when he fuses with the real Shinji and becomes a real boy. He doesn’t seem to have a wish, which makes it hard to get a feel for him. It’s not like Eiji Hino of OOO, where it was a major character point that he had a lack of desire. With Ryuga, it feels like an oversight. He wants to be whole, but that can’t be why he’s fighting—he’s able to merge with Shinji the same way Mirror Yui merged with the real Yui to create our Yui. It’s possible that he wants to save Yui, but it’s also hard to tell if he was just giving Shinji an empty promise in order to convince him to merge with him. He never brought it up again, and when he came to kill Ren and saw Yui’s body, it was Shinji who reacted and broke free.
His origin is never explained in the movie at all. He’s a human from the Mirror World, but how? Why? Tie-in information for the movie reveals that after Yui failed to meet up with Shinji again, she created Ryuga subconsciously as a playmate. There are two major problems with this. First and foremost is that important information like this should never be released as supplemental information. Never explain everything about a character or a plot only as information released in interviews, magazines, or on a website. That’s poor writing. I said it with Ben 10 and I say it again here. Bad writing. Not everyone has access to the supplemental information. It should remain optional, something that may or may not apply, but it doesn’t matter either way because it’s not in the series or movie itself and fans can decide if they want to include it or not. A Schrodinger’s canon, if you will. But Ryuga comes out of frickin’ NOWHERE halfway through the movie, with no anticipation or explanation. I love evil twins, but Ryuga was not a good example of how to write one.
The second issue is that Ryuga’s supplemental origin story still doesn’t fit within the context of the movie—which is another problem the movie has with this whole “Shinji and Yui were friends” origin story. Shinji explains that when he couldn’t meet up with Yui in the park again because it rained, Yui suddenly appeared in his room and they played there for a while. Yui, however, explains that when she couldn’t find Shinji in the park, she came home and cried for a while until her Mirror World self invited her over to play, something that ultimately used up her life force and meant she had to borrow life from Mirror Yui for the next thirteen years. These stories contradict one another. At the time that Shinji says he was playing with Yui—implicitly Mirror Yui—Mirror Yui was playing with real Yui in the Mirror World. Even if it happened before or after the two Yuis started playing, it still doesn’t seem to fit. Why would Mirror Yui appear before Shinji? She never does again. And in that, when is Ryuga created? If Yui created Ryuga as a playmate because she didn’t get to meet with Shinji again, where does he fall into all of this? Why isn’t he there playing with the two Yuis? Why doesn’t he make the same offer to Shinji, who’d be more likely to accept the merge as a child? It’s a mess, and it really screws up what could have been a great character.
What he does have going for him is actor Takamasa Suga’s performance. Of course, he’s playing both Shinjis, and he does a damn good job playing them as two different people. His body language is completely different, with Ryuga being much colder and harsher, always vaguely threatening. His voice is low and feral, very sinister and inhuman. Yes, he hams it up a bit, but so do quite a few of the actors, and it’s forgivable because they do it well. It’s a great surprise seeing him play off of himself, essentially, since the whole point of Ryuga’s character is to build to that climax with Shinji, where our hero is terrified and easy prey for manipulation.
In terms of suit design, Ryuga is lazy as hell. Now, I like the Ryuki suit. I do. But I like it in red, black, and silver (and Survive, but we’ll get to that much later). When I first watched EPISODE FINAL and I knew Ryuga was coming, I was expecting a suit that looked more like Blank Form—some contrast with the black and silver, and a black or dark blue bodysuit. I didn’t expect to see the Ryuki suit spray-painted black. That’s it—that’s the difference between the two. My guess is they were trying to go for something similar to Kuuga with Amazing Mighty form being a black repaint of Mighty, but at least then, it had enough contrast to look impressive. Ryuga’s costume looks like someone took a spare Ryuki suit and a can of black spray paint and went to town. Even the deck is all black, which is even more of a shame because they actually put some effort into the deck emblem. It’s more stylized than the Ryuki emblem, featuring wavy lines that bring to mind flames. Except that you don’t get a chance to appreciate it because it’s painted black and blends in perfectly with the rest of the deck. Seriously? No contrast or anything? Give us something that looks like it gives half a damn! You’ve got a movie budget! Use it!
Like Ryuki, Ryuga is a “balanced fighter,” in that he has a good spread of both melee and ranged attacks. His deck is identical to Ryuki’s, in fact, with Weapon Cards Sword Vent, Strike Vent, and Guard Vent, and of course his Final Vent being a Dragon Rider Kick. Naturally, I’m discussing Ryuki’s deck when I get to Ryuki, so the only real difference is that Ryuga’s Attack Points are always 1000 higher than Ryuki’s, and his powers are all based off dark fire. This actually does give a damn, I’m happy to say. When Ryuga uses his dark fire powers, it looks as impressive as CGI fire from 2002 can get, and it makes for a great Final Vent. The first time he uses his Final Vent, he uses the dark fire to immobilize Genocider, then levitates in the air before kicking with backup from his Monster, Dragblacker. The levitation is only used that first time—when he has his showdown with Ryuki, he leaps in the air just like his twin—but it really gives off this creepy vibe that he’s not human, and that he’s more in-tune with the Mirror Monsters than he is with other Riders, similar to Odin.
Miho Kirishima is Kamen Rider Femme, the first official female Rider. The first female hero in Kamen Rider was, of course, Tackle in Stronger, and both of these character started off the disturbing trend of female Riders dying—a streak broken by Natsumi Hikari, Kamen Rider Kivala, in Kamen Rider W x Decade: Movie Wars 2010 and upheld once again by Nadeshiko Misaki, Kamen Rider Nadeshiko, in Kamen Rider Fourze x OOO: Movie Wars MEGAMAX.
Miho, played by Natsuki Kato, is a great character, and as I said in the movie review, I like her more as a human than as a Rider. When we first meet her, she’s a con artist scamming rich men out of their money by getting into arranged marriage schemes. Shinji meets her when he and Reiko are trying to expose another marriage swindler, and she gleefully steals his ring. And Shinji’s wallet. There’s a fun love story going on with Miho and Shinji, where she keeps dragging him into her troubles and he’s torn between being attracted to her and being utterly annoyed with how she keeps using him. She does wind up with real feelings for him toward the end, especially when she thinks he saved her from being killed by Ouja (it was actually Ryuga who saved her, but due to his very lazy design and the bad lighting when he made his early appearances, people mistook him for Ryuki). She gets him to go out on a real date with her, but he’s replaced halfway through by Ryuga, who tries to kill her. The real Ryuki saves her, but she’s still badly injured. She promises Shinji that she’ll quit the Rider War, but it’s to cover up the fact that she’s dying from her injuries, and she passes away without him knowing.
Fortunately, Miho has more to her character than just a love story. To some degree, her character is inspired by Ren—there are thematic similarities in their suits, and their origin stories are similar. Miho’s older sister was murdered by Asakura, and she’s fighting in order to revive her, having cryogenically frozen her for that day. Because of this, she has one hell of a vendetta against Asakura, and a lesser one against Kitaoka, who defended him in court. She’s proud and self-reliant, but not to a degree where it becomes a liability (like Ren). She wants to settle the score with Asakura, but when it’s apparently Shinji who saves her from him, she’s okay with that. Kitaoka, of course, is another story. She’s also a good cook and gets offended when Shinji asks if she’d learned how to cook in order to con guys, but she forgives him when he apologizes. She’s teasing and deceptive, and it’s hard for Shinji to see her true self. The audience gets a better look at it, however, and we see how she’s trying her damndest to be stronger than she really is.
This is where my problem comes with Femme. I love Miho as a character, and I really wish she’d been in the series. This would have given her a great chance to grow and develop further. Even so, in the movie, she does a pretty good job fulfilling most of her character arc. But the movie takes place at the end of the Rider War, and she’s introduced at a much lower level than the Riders we’ve grown with thus far: Ryuki, Knight, Zolda, and Ouja. All four of them are very strong and capable, and Femme isn’t given a chance to build herself up as a particularly strong Rider. She gets her butt kicked by Ouja, who admittedly is bugfuck crazy, and proceeds to get the same treatment from Ryuga. She only wins against the Monsters. She never wins a battle against any of the guy Riders, and that doesn’t do anything to make it look like she’s on their level. You start wondering how she got this far in the first place, and it almost seems like she was weeded out early in the series.
Another problem comes from the fact that EPISODE FINAL feels like two movies in one with poor arc-welding between the two. Think of it like a proto-Movie Wars, where you’ve got two separate movies held together only by the finale. Then take away the finale and just have two competing story arcs that aren’t cohesive together. The heart of EPISODE FINAL is the alternate ending to the series: the Rider War is coming to an end, and Yui realizes it’s all about her. She decides to take matters into her own hands while Kanzaki pushes the plot to its climax. In that, you only need Ryuga to tell this story.
But the movie that Miho is in is a great one in itself, and if it had been done like a Movie Wars, it would have worked better (I’m thinking of what happened with Nadeshiko in MEGAMAX here). Her story is how she’s trying to get revenge against Asakura and how she and Shinji are falling for one another, only for her duplicitous nature to keep forcing them apart. She manages to get her revenge, only to be killed by Ryuga. If it were a Movie Wars, there would have been a cut here to another Rider’s movie, where we would have gotten the other half of the story. And here’s where I’d say release it as a series of two movies or specials. Save Yui’s story for the second act. Then, the most important part, you have to fuse it together with the climactic battle against Ryuga. Miho is entirely forgotten in the finale. We literally go from her death to Shinji being confronted by Ren and then Yui revealing the truth. After that is Shinji realizing the truth about Yui and meeting Ryuga. In-between, there should have been a scene to bridge the gap—Shinji telling Ren about his evil twin, Ren mentioning seeing Ryuga attack Femme, Shinji going to check on Miho and finding out she’s dead. And then it being compounded by the truth about Yui and then him finding the teru teru bozu that makes him realize he’s the whole reason that Yui’s living on borrowed time. But Miho is treated as an afterthought; she’s only there to fill up time in the beginning of the movie, and then it’s like she never existed at all. Even Nadeshiko got better than that.
Switching now to Femme’s costume—I really do love the aesthetic of it. This is a great superheroine costume in general, and it’s a great way to do a woman in armor. Yes, it’s feminine. But it’s not made for sex appeal. She looks like she’s on the same level as the guys and like she should be taken as seriously as they are. Okay, admittedly, some of the other guys have suits that say “Don’t take me seriously!” as I mentioned above, but Femme’s suit is nice and dignified. I’ve always hated seeing heroines having to fight in costumes that serve only fanservice—bikini armor, massive boobs in skintight leather, leotards, miniskirts—you all know what they look like. Even some of our most beloved heroines in the West are underdressed, but it’s only because of tradition that we can take them as seriously as we take the guys. If Femme walked into the Justice League Watchtower or S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters, she’d be visually as serious a concept as Superman or Iron Man. Whereas Wonder Woman, for example, wears a leotard into battle and traditionally can be defeated by bondage. Femme is proof that you can make a superheroine or female knight design that still looks feminine while actually protecting the person inside the armor. The only changes I’d make are a stronger sword and fixing the material of the cape (since it looks like a shower curtain, at times).
Femme’s deck has so few cards, it’s part of what makes her feel like a weak Rider. Its entire contents are her Contract card, her Final Vent, and two Weapon Cards, Sword Vent and Guard Vent. Like Knight, Femme’s Visor is a sword, so she’s got a great melee weapon to begin with. Sword Vent is a double-bladed naginata, the Wing Lancer, which is more useful than my “it’s not a sword!” complaints imply. Again, though, I wish her suit actress had put more force behind the attacks, which is what my problem with it had been. Guard Vent is amazing, being a combination Weapon/Attack Card. It summons a shield, the Wing Shield, to protect her, yes. But it also creates a blinding storm of white feathers—similar to Odin’s, except they don’t explode on contact—and lets her teleport around to attack her enemies. Really! It would have been great to have her in the series! But I guess they didn’t need two Riders who could blast feathers around and teleport. Her Final Vent, Misty Slash, has her Monster, the swan Blancwing, blast air at the enemy to blow them toward Femme, who takes them out with the Wing Lancer.
For the sake of analysis, I'm going to group together the discussion of the Alternatives, if only because they're a weird case. The Alternative system is created by Professor Hideyuki Kagawa (later Alternative Zero, and played by Satoshi Jinbo), a professor at Seimeiin University, who happened upon Kanzaki's research on the Mirror World. The research was nigh-incomprehensible, with Kanzaki essentially reinventing physics on the fly, but unknown to Kanzaki at the time, Kagawa had a photographic memory and was able to memorize everything he read in the short span of time that the documents were in his hands. The information burned at the back of his mind until he finally did something with it, which didn't happen until after Kanzaki's fateful experiment. From there, it occurred to Kagawa that he should take up two students, and he developed an anti-Kamen Rider system that could defeat Kanzaki.
Among the students in Ejima Lab was Hajime Nakamura (portrayed by Junichi Mizuno), a man who just happened to be absent the day of the experiment, according to supplemental info and heavily implied by the show. As such, he was the only one to come out of there unscathed: Eri ended up comatose, Ejima disappeared (going on the run and eventually dying of an apparent heart attack), and everybody else was implicitly killed. Understandably, he really didn't want to be reminded of all of this and wanted to go on with his life. We first meet him in episode 12, when Yui runs into him at the university when she's trying to track down information about her brother. He realizes who she is and demands information from her on why such horrible things happened to his classmates, overall hating her and wanting nothing to do with her. When he returned, he was still reluctant to talk about his past and absolutely loathed Yui, seeking revenge.
That is the difference between the two men. The researchers' plan of attack is to seal the Mirror World by killing Yui, in the misguided belief that if she dies, then Kanzaki will have no reason to keep the Mirror World open. Kagawa sees this work as heroic, that as distasteful as it is, it's what's necessary to save countless people. He's not a heartless man; we see that he is a loving father and husband who deeply cares about his family and that he's a dedicated mentor. But in his mind, in order to be a hero, he has to make these tough decisions and sacrifice his own morality and even his own family if it will save other people. And then he'll take that suffering and tragedy and give him strength to continue doing the "right" thing. Nakamura, on the other hand, sees no point in heroism. He's in this for revenge. Everyone in his class was killed or almost killed, and try as he might, he can't escape the past. He knows that this was all for Yui's sake, and he wants to kill her to get back at Kanzaki.
I can't say I'm too crazy about the Alternatives' costumes. They're insectoid, as per the typical Rider tradition, but they are made to be visually different from a standard Rider, with an almost bio-mechanical looking body and non-reflective helmets. In a way, I kind of like it because it visually establishes them as being different and "bad," but Kagawa really thinks he's doing good. So why does he look evil? But I guess what bugs me the most is that they look very much like mooks, similar to the Riotroopers of 555 or the ZECTroopers of Kabuto, which were essentially Red Shirts. It's difficult to distinguish between the two (even harder than Kamen Riders 1 and 2 in certain costumes), which makes them feel a little generic and mook-like. Apparently, Decade even uses the Zero costume in one arc and just calls it "Alternative," which proves my point.
Alternative Zero was the prototype for Alternative, so we can assume they have the same deck capabilities. It's hard to analyze an actual fighting style for them, since their shtick was assassination and standing on the same ground as the Riders. Their cards have a barcode on the side, and they scan it through the Slash Visor (voiced by Midori Edamura), which consumes it in blue flame. They both have the Contract Monster Psyco-Rogue, though I have to admit I don't know if they have two identical Monsters or if they share a single one. It's kind of unclear, given that we don't really get to see a whole lot of that Monster from Nakamura. Their Weapon Card was Sword Vent, giving them a good-sized lance (the weapon appears to be unnamed). The State Card Accele Vent gave them a short burst of super speed, but nothing on the level of the later Faiz, Kabuto, or Accel. It was only used to let them close a distance quickly. Wheel Vent was an Attack Card that let them transform Psyco-Rogue into a motorcycle called Psyco-Roader, similar to the transformations of Dragranzer and Darkraider for the Survive Final Vents. Unsurprisingly, Final Vent (only used by Alternative Zero, who comes off as a more competent prototype than the production model) involves the Psyco-Roader, which spins rapidly as it crashes into an opponent, nicely named “Dead End.” This is an extremely powerful attack, with 8000 Attack Points—the same amount as Knight Survive's Final Vent, for perspective. These guys were specifically designed to fight powerful Riders. However, I think that Kagawa was a far more effective fighter, despite being a middle-aged professor. Nakamura was too hotheaded, where Kagawa was more patient and analytical. And with his photographic memory, he was able to pick apart fighting styles and predict an opponent's next move—a skill that almost led to him defeating Knight, had he not created a smokescreen to escape.
They're good character concepts, but I feel they're misused. I love the idea that somebody else is trying to fight against Kanzaki's system, but not in the way that Shinji would like—instead of focusing on changing the Riders' hearts and winning them over, they think that killing Yui will solve all their problems (which actually may have made things worse, as we saw with the massive invasion in the final episodes). Kagawa and Nakamura feel like really dark reflections of Shinji and Ren—Kagawa wants to save others, and Nakamura is driven by the pain of what happened the day of the experiment. But I question why they had to be Alternatives at all. I group these two with the movie-only Riders because they really could have taken their place. This series has a massive cast, so why complicate things further by having thirteen Riders AND two kinda-sorta-not-Riders? I already explained how badly mishandled Verde and Ryuga were. Why not create Rider forms for these two to take their place? On top of that, the death of Kagawa is a very powerful moment—much more powerful than Sano's death, so switching Kagawa to Imperer would accomplish the same purpose both deaths had while having the emotional impact of a better established character who thought he was doing the right thing, and at the same time, removing a threat to Yui and another Rider in the War. Nothing in the story requires them to have a separate power source, and Kanzaki even chooses somebody allied with them to become a Rider. So I never saw the point why they weren't Riders themselves.
(TO BE CONTINUED)
(All images were put together by me from a variety of sources. The background image is shattered glass clipart from LordofDesign. All screencaps except those of Knight/Survive/Ren, Ryuki/Survive/Shinji, and Femme/Miho are mine. Those three sets were from screencaps provided to me by
advancing.)Now here's the part where I bring it all together. The Endpoint Analysis is something I began doing with my Ben 10 Alien Force reviews, where I took all of the analysis I'd done and brought it all home now that the show was over. Throughout the course of watching the series, my thoughts on the characters have evolved, and this is pretty much my last word on them. And a very long word at that. This is especially thorough given that this series isn't new to me, the way Alien Force, Ultimate Alien, and to some degree, Lost Galaxy were. I've had a good three years to think about this series and to try to make it all make sense in my head, and this is a revision and evolution of my original impressions. But unlike the prior series I've analyzed, this one has such a large cast and such a complex story that it really needed to be written in
Like with the Season 1 Summation of Ben 10 Ultimate Alien, I couldn't help but add my personal soundtrack choice. Think of it as what I'd choose if I knew how to make fanvids. Two songs dominated my thoughts on this series, but one ultimately triumphed. The runner-up was "Hope Is So Far Away" by Eyeshine, which felt to me like Shinji's and Yui's thoughts on the Rider War. But the winner was "This Is War" by 30 Seconds To Mars, which really seemed to match what I felt about the characters of the story, and I used its lyrics to help organize my three-part Endpoint Analysis. First are the secondary Riders and the Alternatives of the series, with the subtitle above. The second is the support staff, including ORE, Sanako, and Eri and the background investigation that led us to our story. And the third is our four main characters of Shinji, Ren, Yui, and Kanzaki and the themes of the story.
Kamen Rider Ryuki is not a story about one person. It tells the story of many people, all framed within the context of the Rider War, a massive battle set up by Shiro Kanzaki in order to save his sister, Yui. Thirteen people were chosen to fight and kill their way to the top, promised that if they were the last to survive, they would receive a great power—a single wish for anything in the world. And all of them have a reason to want it. In fact, the series’ catchphrase is “Tatakawana kereba, ikinokorenai!” which the official guidebook, Hybrid File, translates as ”Without battle, you can’t survive.” This is a really bleak outlook on Kamen Rider in general, but it makes perfect sense for the characters. They are fighting to survive and surviving to fight. Everything depends on the battle.
It’s the first of Yasuko Kobayashi’s run on Kamen Rider where, to date (as of this writing, her most recent Rider series was OOO), each series has tackled the theme of desire or wishes, why these wishes are important, and what will you do to obtain your heart’s desire. Or, to reference the sci fi series Babylon 5, it asks the Shadows’ question: “What do you want?”
If you could have one wish—any wish in the world—what would it be? And what would you be willing to do to get it?
This is the question at the hearts of the Riders as they battle to be the last one standing.
In terms of Kamen Riders, these are the guys with probably the suckiest powers in the world. They were the first Riders to use cards to access their weapons and powers, followed later by Blade and Decade (to date). And they were also the ones most shafted by the system. Blade had various cards he could use and combine for different attacks. Decade could turn into any Rider and access their attacks, along with accessing his own. Ryuki, however, is seriously limited by the amount of cards in his deck, which is hardly ever more than five. Each card can only be used for one “turn,” unless it’s a weapon card, and the cards disappear from the deck after they’ve been scanned and won’t return until a new fight. You know, like an actual trading card game. Why so fail? Well, the Ryuki system was specifically designed to put everyone at a disadvantage. The winner is supposed to be Odin, after all. Give the Riders too many cards or let them keep their weapons and effects for too many turns, and there’s a chance that they might be able to overpower Odin. By imposing the same limits that a children’s card game would have and reducing the size of the deck to five-or-less cards, then Kanzaki can ensure that he’ll win. It’s a system designed by a guy trying to cheat the system. If any of the Riders want to stand a chance, they have to fight smart and strong. It takes the strongest hearts and minds to withstand the Rider War, and all of them have everything on the line.
I know I already discussed Femme, Ryuga, and Verde in the reviews of EPISODE FINAL and 13 Riders, but I figured it would be good to group them together, especially with the Alternatives, which are the closest thing to filling out the number in the series. Also, I’m going to leave out Koichi Sakakibara, the original Ryuki. He may have put in an appearance in the special, but it was only to be killed off soon after his appearance, which didn’t give him nearly enough of a chance to make an impact. So with that said, let's start with the Movie Riders and Alternatives.
Let’s start off with our weakest and work our way up through the movie/special-only characters. Itsuro Takamizawa, also known as Kamen Rider Verde, is introduced in the 45-minute special 13 Riders, and he really isn’t well developed there. While he has more to him than, say, Sakakibara, there’s still not a whole lot to write home about with him. A lot of the time that should have been spent on him instead went to the story of Ren being forced to learn if he could really participate in the Rider War and Shinji trying to stop it. What we do see is that he is a rich and powerful man, the head of a corporation called the Takamizawa Group. However, it’s implied that he only inherited this, and he wants more power of his own. To obtain it, he is willing to do every dirty trick in the book, even down to forming a temporary alliance with the other Riders and blackmailing Ren into joining—right after having killed Ren’s best friend, mind you. His actor, Arthur Kuroda, puts in a good performance, but overall, I feel like he’s kind of wasted on this character. Takamizawa didn’t have enough screentime or development to really do the actor justice, and I would have rather seen him play a recurring character in the series. When Knight gets back up from Verde’s Final Vent and kills him with a Final Vent of his own, it’s really hard to feel anything for Takamizawa other than vindication on Ren’s behalf.
Verde’s costume? Oy. Ryuki started off the non-traditional looks of the Riders, who had previously all been bug-themed. Even Riderman and Tackle, who had decidedly unconventional costumes for their series (given that neither had their whole face covered and really looked like they’d made their suits by themselves), still had an insect theme to their costumes—the same grasshopper theme that V3 had for Riderman, and a ladybug for Tackle. Even Shin, the most maligned character in the entire franchise to date (and I bet it’s going to be hard to top the flack Shin gets) looked like a bug—which was part of his problem. Ryuki changed it up by having none of its actual Riders looking like bugs—I’ll come back to this in a bit with the Alternatives—and designing them after the different animals that their Contract Monsters were based on. And Verde’s is a chameleon.
I really wish there was a better way to incorporate a chameleon into the design of a Kamen Rider, at least in this series. All of the Riders in Ryuki have one common element of their designs, and that’s the grill on their masks. On most of them, it looks great. On Verde…oy. Yes, chameleons have weird-looking eyes. But I don’t think it excuses the use of the grill on the eyes. Even Ryuki manages to keep the traditional Kamen Rider eyes and puts the grill over it. I love the way that looks (but that’s another topic). Verde really didn’t do a good job incorporating it, and he winds up looking like bastard son of his Monster, Biogreeza. One of my friends commented to me that Verde looks more like a Super Sentai than a Kamen Rider, and I almost want to agree, except for the fact that I’ve seen Super Sentai’s take on a chameleon-themed warrior, Mele of Gekiranger (Camille in Power Rangers Jungle Fury). Her suit is still a little weird, but much more impressive. What’s worse is that in Kamen Rider Decade, we get a fourteenth Rider, Abyss, who has a wonderful design, with a shark motif. Yes, it’s still a little silly, but Abyss’s design actually fits with the overall motif of all the other Riders this series. Sadly, I must save all discussion on him for a year or two when I actually do the Decade reviews.
Every Rider and Alternative has a set of Advent Cards in order to use their attacks—similar to Digimon Tamers’ use of the Digimon CCG to slash and upload powers to their digimon, or like Yu-Gi-Oh. And because I said that name and I can’t go back now, “card games on motorcycles.” You’re welcome.
Each deck establishes a particular Rider’s fighting style and it seems to illustrate their personalities fairly well. For the sake of clarity, I’m going to distinguish types of cards by “Attack,” “Weapon,” and “State.” An Attack Card is a particular power a Rider may use, or their Monster, as an attack. A Weapon Card is pretty self-explanatory—any actual weapon or shield the Rider uses. And a State Card changes a Rider’s physical state—make them faster, stronger, or whatever.
Verde’s deck relies on deceptive tactics, and he’s the one where State Cards really come into play. He has a combination Weapon/State Card, Copy Vent (which we’ll discuss again later), which allows him to copy any Rider’s weapon or physical form. He uses it to copy Knight’s form in order to get Raia to lower his guard, allowing him to wound him long enough to use his Final Vent. His other State Card is Clear Vent, which gives him the power of invisibility, which makes him really damn hard to fight, as you might imagine. His Weapon Card, Hold Vent, gives him the Bio-Winder, which as I mentioned, is a weaponized yo-yo. It’s meant to mimic the movements of a lizard’s tongue, but it still looks silly in action. Despite this, it has as many Attack Points as Ryuki’s weapons, so there you go. His Final Vent, Death Punish, is almost a direct copy of Lucemon Falldown Mode’s Paradise Lost attack in Digimon Frontier, as I mentioned in the original review—Biogreeza grabs the victim by the ankles and pulls him in the air while Verde brings him down and slams him into the ground, breaking his victim’s neck. It’s still silly, but it works—and better than Lucemon’s attack at that. We see it in action twice, and both times, the victim dies from a broken neck. The only thing is that Ren turns out to be really damn determined to get back up even with his injuries, so by act of plot, he survives long enough to finish him off.
Kamen Rider Ryuga is another really weak character. I hesitate to call him by any other name, even though I know the Hybrid File has him listed as Dark Side Shinji. He’s Shinji Kido, but an imaginary copy made from the Mirror World. In that way, he’s very similar to Yui in the series, especially when he fuses with the real Shinji and becomes a real boy. He doesn’t seem to have a wish, which makes it hard to get a feel for him. It’s not like Eiji Hino of OOO, where it was a major character point that he had a lack of desire. With Ryuga, it feels like an oversight. He wants to be whole, but that can’t be why he’s fighting—he’s able to merge with Shinji the same way Mirror Yui merged with the real Yui to create our Yui. It’s possible that he wants to save Yui, but it’s also hard to tell if he was just giving Shinji an empty promise in order to convince him to merge with him. He never brought it up again, and when he came to kill Ren and saw Yui’s body, it was Shinji who reacted and broke free.
His origin is never explained in the movie at all. He’s a human from the Mirror World, but how? Why? Tie-in information for the movie reveals that after Yui failed to meet up with Shinji again, she created Ryuga subconsciously as a playmate. There are two major problems with this. First and foremost is that important information like this should never be released as supplemental information. Never explain everything about a character or a plot only as information released in interviews, magazines, or on a website. That’s poor writing. I said it with Ben 10 and I say it again here. Bad writing. Not everyone has access to the supplemental information. It should remain optional, something that may or may not apply, but it doesn’t matter either way because it’s not in the series or movie itself and fans can decide if they want to include it or not. A Schrodinger’s canon, if you will. But Ryuga comes out of frickin’ NOWHERE halfway through the movie, with no anticipation or explanation. I love evil twins, but Ryuga was not a good example of how to write one.
The second issue is that Ryuga’s supplemental origin story still doesn’t fit within the context of the movie—which is another problem the movie has with this whole “Shinji and Yui were friends” origin story. Shinji explains that when he couldn’t meet up with Yui in the park again because it rained, Yui suddenly appeared in his room and they played there for a while. Yui, however, explains that when she couldn’t find Shinji in the park, she came home and cried for a while until her Mirror World self invited her over to play, something that ultimately used up her life force and meant she had to borrow life from Mirror Yui for the next thirteen years. These stories contradict one another. At the time that Shinji says he was playing with Yui—implicitly Mirror Yui—Mirror Yui was playing with real Yui in the Mirror World. Even if it happened before or after the two Yuis started playing, it still doesn’t seem to fit. Why would Mirror Yui appear before Shinji? She never does again. And in that, when is Ryuga created? If Yui created Ryuga as a playmate because she didn’t get to meet with Shinji again, where does he fall into all of this? Why isn’t he there playing with the two Yuis? Why doesn’t he make the same offer to Shinji, who’d be more likely to accept the merge as a child? It’s a mess, and it really screws up what could have been a great character.
What he does have going for him is actor Takamasa Suga’s performance. Of course, he’s playing both Shinjis, and he does a damn good job playing them as two different people. His body language is completely different, with Ryuga being much colder and harsher, always vaguely threatening. His voice is low and feral, very sinister and inhuman. Yes, he hams it up a bit, but so do quite a few of the actors, and it’s forgivable because they do it well. It’s a great surprise seeing him play off of himself, essentially, since the whole point of Ryuga’s character is to build to that climax with Shinji, where our hero is terrified and easy prey for manipulation.
In terms of suit design, Ryuga is lazy as hell. Now, I like the Ryuki suit. I do. But I like it in red, black, and silver (and Survive, but we’ll get to that much later). When I first watched EPISODE FINAL and I knew Ryuga was coming, I was expecting a suit that looked more like Blank Form—some contrast with the black and silver, and a black or dark blue bodysuit. I didn’t expect to see the Ryuki suit spray-painted black. That’s it—that’s the difference between the two. My guess is they were trying to go for something similar to Kuuga with Amazing Mighty form being a black repaint of Mighty, but at least then, it had enough contrast to look impressive. Ryuga’s costume looks like someone took a spare Ryuki suit and a can of black spray paint and went to town. Even the deck is all black, which is even more of a shame because they actually put some effort into the deck emblem. It’s more stylized than the Ryuki emblem, featuring wavy lines that bring to mind flames. Except that you don’t get a chance to appreciate it because it’s painted black and blends in perfectly with the rest of the deck. Seriously? No contrast or anything? Give us something that looks like it gives half a damn! You’ve got a movie budget! Use it!
Like Ryuki, Ryuga is a “balanced fighter,” in that he has a good spread of both melee and ranged attacks. His deck is identical to Ryuki’s, in fact, with Weapon Cards Sword Vent, Strike Vent, and Guard Vent, and of course his Final Vent being a Dragon Rider Kick. Naturally, I’m discussing Ryuki’s deck when I get to Ryuki, so the only real difference is that Ryuga’s Attack Points are always 1000 higher than Ryuki’s, and his powers are all based off dark fire. This actually does give a damn, I’m happy to say. When Ryuga uses his dark fire powers, it looks as impressive as CGI fire from 2002 can get, and it makes for a great Final Vent. The first time he uses his Final Vent, he uses the dark fire to immobilize Genocider, then levitates in the air before kicking with backup from his Monster, Dragblacker. The levitation is only used that first time—when he has his showdown with Ryuki, he leaps in the air just like his twin—but it really gives off this creepy vibe that he’s not human, and that he’s more in-tune with the Mirror Monsters than he is with other Riders, similar to Odin.
Miho Kirishima is Kamen Rider Femme, the first official female Rider. The first female hero in Kamen Rider was, of course, Tackle in Stronger, and both of these character started off the disturbing trend of female Riders dying—a streak broken by Natsumi Hikari, Kamen Rider Kivala, in Kamen Rider W x Decade: Movie Wars 2010 and upheld once again by Nadeshiko Misaki, Kamen Rider Nadeshiko, in Kamen Rider Fourze x OOO: Movie Wars MEGAMAX.
Miho, played by Natsuki Kato, is a great character, and as I said in the movie review, I like her more as a human than as a Rider. When we first meet her, she’s a con artist scamming rich men out of their money by getting into arranged marriage schemes. Shinji meets her when he and Reiko are trying to expose another marriage swindler, and she gleefully steals his ring. And Shinji’s wallet. There’s a fun love story going on with Miho and Shinji, where she keeps dragging him into her troubles and he’s torn between being attracted to her and being utterly annoyed with how she keeps using him. She does wind up with real feelings for him toward the end, especially when she thinks he saved her from being killed by Ouja (it was actually Ryuga who saved her, but due to his very lazy design and the bad lighting when he made his early appearances, people mistook him for Ryuki). She gets him to go out on a real date with her, but he’s replaced halfway through by Ryuga, who tries to kill her. The real Ryuki saves her, but she’s still badly injured. She promises Shinji that she’ll quit the Rider War, but it’s to cover up the fact that she’s dying from her injuries, and she passes away without him knowing.
Fortunately, Miho has more to her character than just a love story. To some degree, her character is inspired by Ren—there are thematic similarities in their suits, and their origin stories are similar. Miho’s older sister was murdered by Asakura, and she’s fighting in order to revive her, having cryogenically frozen her for that day. Because of this, she has one hell of a vendetta against Asakura, and a lesser one against Kitaoka, who defended him in court. She’s proud and self-reliant, but not to a degree where it becomes a liability (like Ren). She wants to settle the score with Asakura, but when it’s apparently Shinji who saves her from him, she’s okay with that. Kitaoka, of course, is another story. She’s also a good cook and gets offended when Shinji asks if she’d learned how to cook in order to con guys, but she forgives him when he apologizes. She’s teasing and deceptive, and it’s hard for Shinji to see her true self. The audience gets a better look at it, however, and we see how she’s trying her damndest to be stronger than she really is.
This is where my problem comes with Femme. I love Miho as a character, and I really wish she’d been in the series. This would have given her a great chance to grow and develop further. Even so, in the movie, she does a pretty good job fulfilling most of her character arc. But the movie takes place at the end of the Rider War, and she’s introduced at a much lower level than the Riders we’ve grown with thus far: Ryuki, Knight, Zolda, and Ouja. All four of them are very strong and capable, and Femme isn’t given a chance to build herself up as a particularly strong Rider. She gets her butt kicked by Ouja, who admittedly is bugfuck crazy, and proceeds to get the same treatment from Ryuga. She only wins against the Monsters. She never wins a battle against any of the guy Riders, and that doesn’t do anything to make it look like she’s on their level. You start wondering how she got this far in the first place, and it almost seems like she was weeded out early in the series.
Another problem comes from the fact that EPISODE FINAL feels like two movies in one with poor arc-welding between the two. Think of it like a proto-Movie Wars, where you’ve got two separate movies held together only by the finale. Then take away the finale and just have two competing story arcs that aren’t cohesive together. The heart of EPISODE FINAL is the alternate ending to the series: the Rider War is coming to an end, and Yui realizes it’s all about her. She decides to take matters into her own hands while Kanzaki pushes the plot to its climax. In that, you only need Ryuga to tell this story.
But the movie that Miho is in is a great one in itself, and if it had been done like a Movie Wars, it would have worked better (I’m thinking of what happened with Nadeshiko in MEGAMAX here). Her story is how she’s trying to get revenge against Asakura and how she and Shinji are falling for one another, only for her duplicitous nature to keep forcing them apart. She manages to get her revenge, only to be killed by Ryuga. If it were a Movie Wars, there would have been a cut here to another Rider’s movie, where we would have gotten the other half of the story. And here’s where I’d say release it as a series of two movies or specials. Save Yui’s story for the second act. Then, the most important part, you have to fuse it together with the climactic battle against Ryuga. Miho is entirely forgotten in the finale. We literally go from her death to Shinji being confronted by Ren and then Yui revealing the truth. After that is Shinji realizing the truth about Yui and meeting Ryuga. In-between, there should have been a scene to bridge the gap—Shinji telling Ren about his evil twin, Ren mentioning seeing Ryuga attack Femme, Shinji going to check on Miho and finding out she’s dead. And then it being compounded by the truth about Yui and then him finding the teru teru bozu that makes him realize he’s the whole reason that Yui’s living on borrowed time. But Miho is treated as an afterthought; she’s only there to fill up time in the beginning of the movie, and then it’s like she never existed at all. Even Nadeshiko got better than that.
Switching now to Femme’s costume—I really do love the aesthetic of it. This is a great superheroine costume in general, and it’s a great way to do a woman in armor. Yes, it’s feminine. But it’s not made for sex appeal. She looks like she’s on the same level as the guys and like she should be taken as seriously as they are. Okay, admittedly, some of the other guys have suits that say “Don’t take me seriously!” as I mentioned above, but Femme’s suit is nice and dignified. I’ve always hated seeing heroines having to fight in costumes that serve only fanservice—bikini armor, massive boobs in skintight leather, leotards, miniskirts—you all know what they look like. Even some of our most beloved heroines in the West are underdressed, but it’s only because of tradition that we can take them as seriously as we take the guys. If Femme walked into the Justice League Watchtower or S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters, she’d be visually as serious a concept as Superman or Iron Man. Whereas Wonder Woman, for example, wears a leotard into battle and traditionally can be defeated by bondage. Femme is proof that you can make a superheroine or female knight design that still looks feminine while actually protecting the person inside the armor. The only changes I’d make are a stronger sword and fixing the material of the cape (since it looks like a shower curtain, at times).
Femme’s deck has so few cards, it’s part of what makes her feel like a weak Rider. Its entire contents are her Contract card, her Final Vent, and two Weapon Cards, Sword Vent and Guard Vent. Like Knight, Femme’s Visor is a sword, so she’s got a great melee weapon to begin with. Sword Vent is a double-bladed naginata, the Wing Lancer, which is more useful than my “it’s not a sword!” complaints imply. Again, though, I wish her suit actress had put more force behind the attacks, which is what my problem with it had been. Guard Vent is amazing, being a combination Weapon/Attack Card. It summons a shield, the Wing Shield, to protect her, yes. But it also creates a blinding storm of white feathers—similar to Odin’s, except they don’t explode on contact—and lets her teleport around to attack her enemies. Really! It would have been great to have her in the series! But I guess they didn’t need two Riders who could blast feathers around and teleport. Her Final Vent, Misty Slash, has her Monster, the swan Blancwing, blast air at the enemy to blow them toward Femme, who takes them out with the Wing Lancer.
For the sake of analysis, I'm going to group together the discussion of the Alternatives, if only because they're a weird case. The Alternative system is created by Professor Hideyuki Kagawa (later Alternative Zero, and played by Satoshi Jinbo), a professor at Seimeiin University, who happened upon Kanzaki's research on the Mirror World. The research was nigh-incomprehensible, with Kanzaki essentially reinventing physics on the fly, but unknown to Kanzaki at the time, Kagawa had a photographic memory and was able to memorize everything he read in the short span of time that the documents were in his hands. The information burned at the back of his mind until he finally did something with it, which didn't happen until after Kanzaki's fateful experiment. From there, it occurred to Kagawa that he should take up two students, and he developed an anti-Kamen Rider system that could defeat Kanzaki.
Among the students in Ejima Lab was Hajime Nakamura (portrayed by Junichi Mizuno), a man who just happened to be absent the day of the experiment, according to supplemental info and heavily implied by the show. As such, he was the only one to come out of there unscathed: Eri ended up comatose, Ejima disappeared (going on the run and eventually dying of an apparent heart attack), and everybody else was implicitly killed. Understandably, he really didn't want to be reminded of all of this and wanted to go on with his life. We first meet him in episode 12, when Yui runs into him at the university when she's trying to track down information about her brother. He realizes who she is and demands information from her on why such horrible things happened to his classmates, overall hating her and wanting nothing to do with her. When he returned, he was still reluctant to talk about his past and absolutely loathed Yui, seeking revenge.
That is the difference between the two men. The researchers' plan of attack is to seal the Mirror World by killing Yui, in the misguided belief that if she dies, then Kanzaki will have no reason to keep the Mirror World open. Kagawa sees this work as heroic, that as distasteful as it is, it's what's necessary to save countless people. He's not a heartless man; we see that he is a loving father and husband who deeply cares about his family and that he's a dedicated mentor. But in his mind, in order to be a hero, he has to make these tough decisions and sacrifice his own morality and even his own family if it will save other people. And then he'll take that suffering and tragedy and give him strength to continue doing the "right" thing. Nakamura, on the other hand, sees no point in heroism. He's in this for revenge. Everyone in his class was killed or almost killed, and try as he might, he can't escape the past. He knows that this was all for Yui's sake, and he wants to kill her to get back at Kanzaki.
I can't say I'm too crazy about the Alternatives' costumes. They're insectoid, as per the typical Rider tradition, but they are made to be visually different from a standard Rider, with an almost bio-mechanical looking body and non-reflective helmets. In a way, I kind of like it because it visually establishes them as being different and "bad," but Kagawa really thinks he's doing good. So why does he look evil? But I guess what bugs me the most is that they look very much like mooks, similar to the Riotroopers of 555 or the ZECTroopers of Kabuto, which were essentially Red Shirts. It's difficult to distinguish between the two (even harder than Kamen Riders 1 and 2 in certain costumes), which makes them feel a little generic and mook-like. Apparently, Decade even uses the Zero costume in one arc and just calls it "Alternative," which proves my point.
Alternative Zero was the prototype for Alternative, so we can assume they have the same deck capabilities. It's hard to analyze an actual fighting style for them, since their shtick was assassination and standing on the same ground as the Riders. Their cards have a barcode on the side, and they scan it through the Slash Visor (voiced by Midori Edamura), which consumes it in blue flame. They both have the Contract Monster Psyco-Rogue, though I have to admit I don't know if they have two identical Monsters or if they share a single one. It's kind of unclear, given that we don't really get to see a whole lot of that Monster from Nakamura. Their Weapon Card was Sword Vent, giving them a good-sized lance (the weapon appears to be unnamed). The State Card Accele Vent gave them a short burst of super speed, but nothing on the level of the later Faiz, Kabuto, or Accel. It was only used to let them close a distance quickly. Wheel Vent was an Attack Card that let them transform Psyco-Rogue into a motorcycle called Psyco-Roader, similar to the transformations of Dragranzer and Darkraider for the Survive Final Vents. Unsurprisingly, Final Vent (only used by Alternative Zero, who comes off as a more competent prototype than the production model) involves the Psyco-Roader, which spins rapidly as it crashes into an opponent, nicely named “Dead End.” This is an extremely powerful attack, with 8000 Attack Points—the same amount as Knight Survive's Final Vent, for perspective. These guys were specifically designed to fight powerful Riders. However, I think that Kagawa was a far more effective fighter, despite being a middle-aged professor. Nakamura was too hotheaded, where Kagawa was more patient and analytical. And with his photographic memory, he was able to pick apart fighting styles and predict an opponent's next move—a skill that almost led to him defeating Knight, had he not created a smokescreen to escape.
They're good character concepts, but I feel they're misused. I love the idea that somebody else is trying to fight against Kanzaki's system, but not in the way that Shinji would like—instead of focusing on changing the Riders' hearts and winning them over, they think that killing Yui will solve all their problems (which actually may have made things worse, as we saw with the massive invasion in the final episodes). Kagawa and Nakamura feel like really dark reflections of Shinji and Ren—Kagawa wants to save others, and Nakamura is driven by the pain of what happened the day of the experiment. But I question why they had to be Alternatives at all. I group these two with the movie-only Riders because they really could have taken their place. This series has a massive cast, so why complicate things further by having thirteen Riders AND two kinda-sorta-not-Riders? I already explained how badly mishandled Verde and Ryuga were. Why not create Rider forms for these two to take their place? On top of that, the death of Kagawa is a very powerful moment—much more powerful than Sano's death, so switching Kagawa to Imperer would accomplish the same purpose both deaths had while having the emotional impact of a better established character who thought he was doing the right thing, and at the same time, removing a threat to Yui and another Rider in the War. Nothing in the story requires them to have a separate power source, and Kanzaki even chooses somebody allied with them to become a Rider. So I never saw the point why they weren't Riders themselves.
(TO BE CONTINUED)