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Those who don’t fight won’t survive: Kamen Rider Ryuki 1-4
Preface: Notes on translation
I am working off of TV Nihon’s fansubs of Ryuki, with a few tweaks here and there according to interpretation. Due to sheer habit, I write with given name first and family name last; technically I should fix this habit, but I’m trying to get these minireviews out in the least painful way possible for me. All spelling I use is rather colloquial, semi-Hepburn Romanization: Shiro and Goro, for example, instead of Shirou and Gorou. While those are accepted Romanizations (as well as Shirō and Gorō, among others) and actually more academic and accurate, these are the general spellings you’d see of these names in Wikipedia or summaries as written for an Anglophone audience—essentially, really colloquial Hepburn. The strangest spelling you will see from me is Syuichi, which is the official spelling of Kitaoka’s given name in all supplemental material and in press conferences.
As for translation—though the subs for episode 3 refers to Sanako as Yui’s grandmother, I’m referring to her as Yui’s aunt. This is based on math and the official TV Asahi Ryuki site, which lists Sanako’s age as 45 (in contrast, her actress’s age is 48 at the time the series began). Given that Shiro’s age is given as 25, that would put her at 20 when he was born, which makes it pretty damn hard for her to be his grandma unless there was more abuse of the Time Vent card than we thought.
In terms of what to actually call the characters, I’m going with the general policy of referring to all characters by what the lead calls them. For example: Ren, Kitaoka, Tezuka—one given name in the whole group. The exceptions are Okubo, since it’s a lot easier to type than “Editor-in-chief,” which gets awkward, and Sanako, since otherwise I’d be writing “Obasan” the whole time. This policy really isn’t all that important outside of W, where I would be forced to go with Shotaro and Philip’s naming preferences and figure out how to reconcile the differences between them. But I do need to draw a distinction between “Shiro” and “Kanzaki,” based on the role he plays. Up until he runs his experiment at Seimein University, he is Shiro, Yui’s loving older brother. But once he chooses to become a villain and do whatever he believes is necessary in order to save her, then he becomes Kanzaki, the threatening mastermind behind everything.
The Secret Story’s Birth (Yasuko Kobayashi): Right off the bat, let me say that I love the way this opens. When you start out a new series, you have to really nail that opening. Power Rangers in Space had the villains of the universe celebrating the capture of Zordon and getting gate-crashed by a Red Ranger. RPM had a message about a machine war destroying the world, then showing the last stages of that war being fought before they have to seal the city and trap any survivors outside. Gokaiger has the frickin’ Legend War. Kamen Rider W goes with Sokichi and Shotaro rescuing Philip, Sokichi dying, and Philip asking Shotaro to join him as his partner as a Kamen Rider.
Ryuki is a mystery, and that is what they go with: a horror/mystery. You’re following the victim of the week like in CSI, wondering just what’s going on until you see a giant spider in the window. She gets home, sees webbing around her neck in the mirror but none in reality. Then that giant spider appears, scaring the crap out of her—though, to be honest, it breaks the rules set down by the show that normal humans can’t see the Monsters until they emerge—and when she turns her back to the mirror, it reaches out and pulls her into the mirror. Then you see the guy who is not the hero of the show, Ren, as he and Yui turn in shock and Ren runs toward the building. We don’t see him transform, but we see the silhouette of…well, Batman, before he disappears, with Yui watching anxiously. That is a great opening, with a great false sense that Ren is going to be the hero—something I’ll get into as I explore Shinji’s character.
Another good fake-out is Shinji’s introduction. We see a motorcycle on the ground and Shinji arguing with a truck driver. When Editor-in-chief Daisuke Okubo calls, he tries to explain what’s going on, and Okubo freaks when he thinks that Shinji’s bike got hit by a truck. But no, Shinji is sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong and getting in a fight. He happens to ride the single most embarrassing vehicle any Kamen Rider has ever had—including Ryotaro’s bike-in-a-tree and Eiji’s vending machines. Shinji’s moped looks so silly. Our hero, ladies and gentlemen.
Blank Form is the biggest joke of the series—even more so than Shinji’s bike. It’s fun in the way that Plat Form from Den-O is—you know that the first henshin should be the coolest, but it isn’t until the hero forges a contract with a red monster that he becomes cool. Blank Form just gets batted around by everyone—including Knight—and when he goes in for his first attack, his sword breaks. It’s hilarious.
It’s always interesting watching the initial characterization, especially of side characters. You’ve got this basic set of guidelines that the main characters have to follow in order to develop, though the actors’ portrayals will allow different quirks to grow (like Jack DeSena’s improv making Sokka utterly hilarious in Avatar: The Last Airbender). Side characters don’t need quite as much. Notably, in the first few episodes, Nanako Shimada is sane. Shimada is the webmaster for ORE, and she only seems to be snarky at first—putting up a picture of a shirtless Okubo holding a beer as his official photo on the website, for example. The only thing about her that screams “weird” is the fact that she’s got tons of bobby pins in her hair—but even that doesn’t seem so out there. It isn’t until later that she begins to get stranger until she becomes the totally insane woman that we all love.
Other things we learn: Reiko has been investigating the disappearances for six months. Ryuki runs on relative real time, based on airdates—beginning in February 2002 and ending on Yui’s twentieth birthday, January 19, 2003. So this puts the first case she investigated at about August 2001. And Sakakibara (that guy who was the first Ryuki in 13 Riders) disappeared two months ago—sometime in December. Also, even covering up every reflective surface in your house does not stop a Monster from attacking you. Dragreder blasted a fireball through the newspapers and blinds covering the window and ate Sakakibara. Being a Rider really sucks.
Note of continuity: ORE Journal’s top story that day is about police corruption, foreshadowing Sudo, a.k.a. Scissors. Also, when Shinji and Ren pass by each other at the crime scene, they both experience something weird—for a moment, they seem to notice something about one another, but they decide not to look behind them. I’ll come back to that in the final episode.
Giant Spider Counterattack (Yasuko Kobayashi) I have to question how Ren and Yui got Shinji back to Atori when he’s unconscious. Given that their general mode of transportation is “Yui rides on the back of Ren’s bike.” Must have looked really awkward trying to fit the unconscious guy on the bike too. And for another confusing moment toward the end, just how the hell did Ren know that Shinji in Rider form should be called Ryuki? I mean, aside from reading the script. All of the Riders afterward have to be introduced to them, there’s no indication that he ever met Sakakibara (since he shows no recognition when Shinji mentions him to Yui), and it’s unlikely that if the names come from Kanzaki that he would have told Ren at all. So either Ren remembers bits and pieces of the various Time Vents that he’s gone through up until that point and the name stuck with him, or he just goes around and randomly names people he’s just met. Whichever makes more sense.
I do like, however, that Shinji immediately recognized Ren as Knight the moment he heard his voice. It’s a nice change from the obliviousness we usually see when it comes to secret identitiesyou’d think SOMEBODY in the Futo Police Department would recognize Shotaro’s voice coming from W half the time, no matter how skilled Jinno is at getting fooled.
And here we come to the part where I gush about Reiko. Reiko Momoi is the star writer for ORE, and I generally think of her as Lois Lane but even more awesome. She’s snarky, she’s serious, she’s dedicated, and she doesn’t take crap from anybody. And it’s a great introduction to her when Shinji tries to warn her off the investigation, now that he knows what’s causing the disappearances. She gets pissed, prints out the data on the missing people, throws it at him, and points out that every single one of those people mattered to someone else. She is a journalist because she’s searching for the truth. She doesn’t care how dangerous it is—she is going to whatever lengths it takes to find the answer. Which sums up Ryuki in general, and it’s a great lead-in for both her characterization (as she investigates and discovers the truth of the Kamen Riders) and for Shinji, teaching him to protect other people.
Speaking of what Shinji learns, I love the way they show how he comes to decide to protect other people—which gets more in-depth the next episode. At first, when he learns about the Monsters eating the disappeared people, it bothers him, but he worries a lot more about himself, that Dragreder will eat him too. It isn’t until Reiko yells at him that it begins to hit him, and he sees Shiro Kanzaki’s name on the list of disappeared people and realizes that Yui’s older brother might well have become one of the victims. Then when he arrives at Global Plaza, he finds a crying little girl left behind when her mother was eaten, and he goes to the roof and asks Yui if the Monster did it. It really shows how he’s growing into the role of the hero, even from the beginning. And it was a great way to tie it back to his argument with Reiko when he tears up the Seal card and tells Yui that he doesn’t feel right if he doesn’t plunge headfirst into a situation—which Reiko had actually respected in him as a journalist.
Ryuki’s first fight here is…well, not that great, to be honest. While the series doesn’t always mesh the CGI well with the live action footage, it’s pretty glaringly bad throughout the battle with the Dispider. It’s kind of like a spider centaur, so they have the room to use a suit actor with hands-on fighting with Knight. But it’s a very obvious shift from suit actor to CGI, and some of the CGI attacks just look pathetic, like the spikes. I’m talking Race Against Time bad. And Shinji’s fight isn’t fantastic either. Ryuki treats general tropes of tokusatsu more realistically—for lack of a better term—than most. Instead of the first henshin being the best fight, it’s one of the worst. Shinji’s first henshin as Ryuki isn’t particularly dramatic. We get introduced to his Sword Vent—a scimitar that he actually catches this time and doesn’t break, and it destroys one leg off the Dispider—and his Final Vent, the Dragon Rider Kick. Which is one of my favorite attacks ever, since it involves leaping into the air while a dragon is flying around you, flipping, and performing a kick while on fire. It’s just so cool. But otherwise, Shinji destroys the Monster quickly, Dragreder eats the energy, Ren gives the explanation about absorbing Monsters energy that any fan of Digimon Tamers already understands, and then Ren attacks him. Because this is Ryuki and that’s how they roll.
What does really impress is when Shinji forms the contract with Dragreder. It’s impossible to tell if it’s all in his head or not, but he’s in a black, featureless plane, face-to-face with the Monster, and then it circles him and enters his body, transforming him into Blank Form before all of the detailing for Ryuki appears and changes the suit. It’s probably the best transformation I’ve seen in any fandom, and it is absolutely the way you pull off that first real henshin.
Finally for this episode, I have to say that Yui has Ren whipped. It’s clear from this episode that she’s really the only one keeping him from basically just doing all the things a Ryuki Kamen Rider is supposed to do. Ren just doesn’t care about Shinji. We don’t know what’s going on with him yet, but it seems pretty clear that he just wants to become stronger, by any means necessary—which makes perfect sense when we find out his origin story in episode 12. So for right now, Yui’s got to be his moral compass. When he tries to throw Shinji out without even a Seal card, Yui tells him that if he does, it’s over between them (yeah, it sounds shippy, but I think it was intentionally set up to be misleading), so he gives her a sarcastic, placating smile and says she doesn’t have to get so mad at him. Then when he’s been following Shinji in order to chase Dragreder, Yui calls him right as he’s talking to Shinji (and being a total dick about it, of course), and she asks if he’s still after that dragon. He easily lies and tells her no, he’s not. Their relationship is pretty complex, as it grows from him simply needing her help to actually being her friend and surrogate brother (at least in my opinion), and I’ll be bringing it up quite a few times.
School Ghost Story (Yasuko Kobayashi) I admit that I’m not quite sure how the Advent Cards work, but it seems to me that when you use up a card, that’s it. You have to wait until the next time you transform to be able to use it again. Yet in his battle with Knight immediately after destroying that giant spider, Ryuki is able to use Sword Vent again—I think that’s more a matter of the rules of canon not yet being completely set for things like this.
In this episode, Yui is forced to smash a window to stop Ren from killing Shinji, and then Ren pays for it out of his own pocket when neither she nor Shinji has the money. This establishes two running gags for the series: the fact that Shinji has to pay back the 30,000 yen (over $300 U.S.) and that Ren has a habit of betraying and/or trying to kill Shinji. It’s not quite a drinking game, but you might as well make one of it. It also establishes two questions I have about this scene: one, did Yui really need to stop Ren? As we see later on—particularly in episodes 17 and 35—he is extremely reluctant to kill another human being, no matter how much he tells himself it’s what he needs to dowhy no, this doesn’t sound like another of my fandoms at all. It’s entirely possible that he wouldn’t have been able to scan the card, or that he would have hesitated long enough for Shinji to escape, or that he would have missed with the Final Vent. Still, character-wise, it’s important to keep his true self hidden right now and to have Yui save his soul at the same time, keeping him from actually going through with it. Plus, it again establishes that Yui is probably the only one that Ren will listen to (as of yet) and the only one who can get him to stop. Which sounds like another character in this series, and I’ll get to comparisons between Ren and Kanzaki much later. The second question is: Where the hell did Ren get all that money? Supplemental info and implications in episode 37 or so indicate that he can’t hold a steady job—much less a good one—because of his attitude and his habit of getting into fights. So how does he have 30,000 yen in cash and large denominations? And what exactly does he do all day when he’s not helping out at Atori, fighting Monsters and other Riders, or visiting Eri?
We’re also introduced to Shiro Kanzaki, the villain of the piece. Yui explains that when they were younger, her brother always protected her. Ever since she was a child, she could see Monsters in the mirror, though her classmates couldn’t and thought she was lying and teased her. Shiro, however, always believed in her and made her feel safe even when she saw the Monsters. When their parents died, the kids were split up: Yui stayed with their aunt and Shiro was sent to America to live with other relatives, protesting all the way that he needed to protect her. So Yui can’t reconcile this memory of her loving, protective older brother whom she rarely sees now with the person who Ren says created the decks and Shinji says told the Riders to fight each other. Shinji, however, warns that maybe they’ve got it all wrong and Kanzaki actually made the decks to protect people from Monsters. And when Yui points out that he doesn’t have any evidence of that, one of Shinji’s most important character moments happens. He insists that he’ll become her proof and swears to become a Rider to protect people. This is Shinji’s main motivation and he comes back to it full circle at the end.
The main conflict introduced here that carries over into part two is Shinji’s distrust of Ren. Which is perfectly understandable, given the guy just tried to kill him. Shinji first sees him right after Kanzaki’s appearance and sudden disappearance at a Monster attack (and in fact, Kanzaki can be seen fleeing as soon as Shinji arrives on the scene), and Shinji is surprised to see him. But he doesn’t think too much until the very end, when he rushes inside an elementary school immediately after fighting a Monster that had targeted a girl there, only to find Ren standing in front of another girl, while Darkwing is flying over her. Yeah, that doesn’t look good.
School Ghost Story 2 (Yasuko Kobayashi) Previously on Kamen Rider Ryuki: Kanzaki is creepy and wants the Riders to fight each other, Yui is confused and saddened by her brother’s actions, Shinji wants to protect people, and Ren is a dick.
The conflict heats up when Reiko tells Shinji that a teacher from the elementary school disappeared the night before in the exact location where Shinji found Ren. When Shinji goes to confront him about it, there’s this hilarious bit where he totally blanks on Ren’s name and calls him Ron. But hey, he’s only heard his name about twice in passing from Yui. What’s really interesting about this scene and is good foreshadowing for later is that Shinji reveals that even after you’ve contracted with a Monster, the Rider knows that they still want to eat humans. This falls in line with Yui’s theory in EPISODE FINAL that the Monsters need life force from humans in order to live as something more than an illusion in the mirror. Shinji adds that should he or Ren let their guard down, Dragreder or Darkwing might attack humans. This will really be important later on with Eri.
Shimada starts to hit her insanity stride when in the middle of Reiko’s rant to Shinji that he can’t just move into the office after he got evicted from his apartment, she walks in with an aquarium containing her pet iguana and tells it that it’ll be living in the hot water room from now on. There’s this moment of shocked silence as Shinji, Reiko, and Okubo stare after her before Reiko tries to prove her point to Shinji. Still, though, Shinji moves in and sleeps underneath the lunch table.
Much as this episode resolves the conflicts and battles of episode 3, its true purpose is to set up everything for the future. Particularly regarding Ren. There’s this interesting conversation between Shinji and Yui where he expresses his distrust of the other Rider—who just tried to kill him, as he points out—and Yui argues that Ren’s not the kind of person who would attack innocent people. She argues that she can see it in the way he fights, the way he keeps getting up after every battle, no matter how hurt he is. She knows he’s fighting for something, and even though she doesn’t know what, she knows it means she can trust him. In contrast, she and Ren point out that Shinji has no true purpose to fight, and it’s something that makes them both wary of him. He says that he wants to protect others, but Ren argues that it’s a naïve and weak purpose, and if he’s trying to be a hero, he’s just going to get himself killed—but we’ll come back to the “hero” bit with Tojo, Kagawa, and Nakamura much later. Shinji, however, isn’t swayed by Yui’s arguments, and he gets into a fight with Ren. He gets his ass kicked, but he gets in one good punch and accidentally rips the necklace from Ren’s neck—apparently Ren buys his chains at the same place as Astronema. Seeing the look of shock and panic on Ren’s face as he realizes Shinji just ripped it away from him, Shinji decides to take a look at just what that necklace is. When he sees that it’s a woman’s ring, he asks if this has anything to do with what Yui says he’s fighting for. Ren just takes his necklace back and tells Shinji to piss off—I’m paraphrasing here—and asks if Shinji’s “cheap sense of justice” will let him kill someone. He argues that neither he nor Yui thinks Shinji will last long in the Rider War, but Shinji argues he’s got a good reason to live: the 30,000 yen debt. Until he pays Ren off, he’s not going to let himself die.
Huh. It’s horrible, but I wonder if Shinji did manage to pay him back before the end of episode 49.
Shinji and Ren do come to a grudging respect for one another by the end, especially on Shinji’s side. He realizes that he was wrong to accuse Ren when it turns out that the Monster Ren said had attacked is too fast for them to sense sometimes, and it always travels in packs—meaning Shinji only killed one of the pack in the previous episode. And when Ren says that he needs to fight the Monster that he’d been too slow to save the teacher from, Shinji gives him a look of surprise, though Ren insists it’s just a matter of pride. Uh-huh. You keep telling yourself that. But at the end, they destroy the Monsters, head to Atori, and proceed to be awkward and semi-confrontational around each other as they try to avoid one another and completely confuse the hell out of Yui. They are such guys.
But outside of character development, this story sets up the first arc when Reiko discovers that a few of the disappearance victims had an interest in antiques, and we see a glimpse of a man in an antique store, bearing a card deck…
I am working off of TV Nihon’s fansubs of Ryuki, with a few tweaks here and there according to interpretation. Due to sheer habit, I write with given name first and family name last; technically I should fix this habit, but I’m trying to get these minireviews out in the least painful way possible for me. All spelling I use is rather colloquial, semi-Hepburn Romanization: Shiro and Goro, for example, instead of Shirou and Gorou. While those are accepted Romanizations (as well as Shirō and Gorō, among others) and actually more academic and accurate, these are the general spellings you’d see of these names in Wikipedia or summaries as written for an Anglophone audience—essentially, really colloquial Hepburn. The strangest spelling you will see from me is Syuichi, which is the official spelling of Kitaoka’s given name in all supplemental material and in press conferences.
As for translation—though the subs for episode 3 refers to Sanako as Yui’s grandmother, I’m referring to her as Yui’s aunt. This is based on math and the official TV Asahi Ryuki site, which lists Sanako’s age as 45 (in contrast, her actress’s age is 48 at the time the series began). Given that Shiro’s age is given as 25, that would put her at 20 when he was born, which makes it pretty damn hard for her to be his grandma unless there was more abuse of the Time Vent card than we thought.
In terms of what to actually call the characters, I’m going with the general policy of referring to all characters by what the lead calls them. For example: Ren, Kitaoka, Tezuka—one given name in the whole group. The exceptions are Okubo, since it’s a lot easier to type than “Editor-in-chief,” which gets awkward, and Sanako, since otherwise I’d be writing “Obasan” the whole time. This policy really isn’t all that important outside of W, where I would be forced to go with Shotaro and Philip’s naming preferences and figure out how to reconcile the differences between them. But I do need to draw a distinction between “Shiro” and “Kanzaki,” based on the role he plays. Up until he runs his experiment at Seimein University, he is Shiro, Yui’s loving older brother. But once he chooses to become a villain and do whatever he believes is necessary in order to save her, then he becomes Kanzaki, the threatening mastermind behind everything.
The Secret Story’s Birth (Yasuko Kobayashi): Right off the bat, let me say that I love the way this opens. When you start out a new series, you have to really nail that opening. Power Rangers in Space had the villains of the universe celebrating the capture of Zordon and getting gate-crashed by a Red Ranger. RPM had a message about a machine war destroying the world, then showing the last stages of that war being fought before they have to seal the city and trap any survivors outside. Gokaiger has the frickin’ Legend War. Kamen Rider W goes with Sokichi and Shotaro rescuing Philip, Sokichi dying, and Philip asking Shotaro to join him as his partner as a Kamen Rider.
Ryuki is a mystery, and that is what they go with: a horror/mystery. You’re following the victim of the week like in CSI, wondering just what’s going on until you see a giant spider in the window. She gets home, sees webbing around her neck in the mirror but none in reality. Then that giant spider appears, scaring the crap out of her—though, to be honest, it breaks the rules set down by the show that normal humans can’t see the Monsters until they emerge—and when she turns her back to the mirror, it reaches out and pulls her into the mirror. Then you see the guy who is not the hero of the show, Ren, as he and Yui turn in shock and Ren runs toward the building. We don’t see him transform, but we see the silhouette of…well, Batman, before he disappears, with Yui watching anxiously. That is a great opening, with a great false sense that Ren is going to be the hero—something I’ll get into as I explore Shinji’s character.
Another good fake-out is Shinji’s introduction. We see a motorcycle on the ground and Shinji arguing with a truck driver. When Editor-in-chief Daisuke Okubo calls, he tries to explain what’s going on, and Okubo freaks when he thinks that Shinji’s bike got hit by a truck. But no, Shinji is sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong and getting in a fight. He happens to ride the single most embarrassing vehicle any Kamen Rider has ever had—including Ryotaro’s bike-in-a-tree and Eiji’s vending machines. Shinji’s moped looks so silly. Our hero, ladies and gentlemen.
Blank Form is the biggest joke of the series—even more so than Shinji’s bike. It’s fun in the way that Plat Form from Den-O is—you know that the first henshin should be the coolest, but it isn’t until the hero forges a contract with a red monster that he becomes cool. Blank Form just gets batted around by everyone—including Knight—and when he goes in for his first attack, his sword breaks. It’s hilarious.
It’s always interesting watching the initial characterization, especially of side characters. You’ve got this basic set of guidelines that the main characters have to follow in order to develop, though the actors’ portrayals will allow different quirks to grow (like Jack DeSena’s improv making Sokka utterly hilarious in Avatar: The Last Airbender). Side characters don’t need quite as much. Notably, in the first few episodes, Nanako Shimada is sane. Shimada is the webmaster for ORE, and she only seems to be snarky at first—putting up a picture of a shirtless Okubo holding a beer as his official photo on the website, for example. The only thing about her that screams “weird” is the fact that she’s got tons of bobby pins in her hair—but even that doesn’t seem so out there. It isn’t until later that she begins to get stranger until she becomes the totally insane woman that we all love.
Other things we learn: Reiko has been investigating the disappearances for six months. Ryuki runs on relative real time, based on airdates—beginning in February 2002 and ending on Yui’s twentieth birthday, January 19, 2003. So this puts the first case she investigated at about August 2001. And Sakakibara (that guy who was the first Ryuki in 13 Riders) disappeared two months ago—sometime in December. Also, even covering up every reflective surface in your house does not stop a Monster from attacking you. Dragreder blasted a fireball through the newspapers and blinds covering the window and ate Sakakibara. Being a Rider really sucks.
Note of continuity: ORE Journal’s top story that day is about police corruption, foreshadowing Sudo, a.k.a. Scissors. Also, when Shinji and Ren pass by each other at the crime scene, they both experience something weird—for a moment, they seem to notice something about one another, but they decide not to look behind them. I’ll come back to that in the final episode.
Giant Spider Counterattack (Yasuko Kobayashi) I have to question how Ren and Yui got Shinji back to Atori when he’s unconscious. Given that their general mode of transportation is “Yui rides on the back of Ren’s bike.” Must have looked really awkward trying to fit the unconscious guy on the bike too. And for another confusing moment toward the end, just how the hell did Ren know that Shinji in Rider form should be called Ryuki? I mean, aside from reading the script. All of the Riders afterward have to be introduced to them, there’s no indication that he ever met Sakakibara (since he shows no recognition when Shinji mentions him to Yui), and it’s unlikely that if the names come from Kanzaki that he would have told Ren at all. So either Ren remembers bits and pieces of the various Time Vents that he’s gone through up until that point and the name stuck with him, or he just goes around and randomly names people he’s just met. Whichever makes more sense.
I do like, however, that Shinji immediately recognized Ren as Knight the moment he heard his voice. It’s a nice change from the obliviousness we usually see when it comes to secret identities
And here we come to the part where I gush about Reiko. Reiko Momoi is the star writer for ORE, and I generally think of her as Lois Lane but even more awesome. She’s snarky, she’s serious, she’s dedicated, and she doesn’t take crap from anybody. And it’s a great introduction to her when Shinji tries to warn her off the investigation, now that he knows what’s causing the disappearances. She gets pissed, prints out the data on the missing people, throws it at him, and points out that every single one of those people mattered to someone else. She is a journalist because she’s searching for the truth. She doesn’t care how dangerous it is—she is going to whatever lengths it takes to find the answer. Which sums up Ryuki in general, and it’s a great lead-in for both her characterization (as she investigates and discovers the truth of the Kamen Riders) and for Shinji, teaching him to protect other people.
Speaking of what Shinji learns, I love the way they show how he comes to decide to protect other people—which gets more in-depth the next episode. At first, when he learns about the Monsters eating the disappeared people, it bothers him, but he worries a lot more about himself, that Dragreder will eat him too. It isn’t until Reiko yells at him that it begins to hit him, and he sees Shiro Kanzaki’s name on the list of disappeared people and realizes that Yui’s older brother might well have become one of the victims. Then when he arrives at Global Plaza, he finds a crying little girl left behind when her mother was eaten, and he goes to the roof and asks Yui if the Monster did it. It really shows how he’s growing into the role of the hero, even from the beginning. And it was a great way to tie it back to his argument with Reiko when he tears up the Seal card and tells Yui that he doesn’t feel right if he doesn’t plunge headfirst into a situation—which Reiko had actually respected in him as a journalist.
Ryuki’s first fight here is…well, not that great, to be honest. While the series doesn’t always mesh the CGI well with the live action footage, it’s pretty glaringly bad throughout the battle with the Dispider. It’s kind of like a spider centaur, so they have the room to use a suit actor with hands-on fighting with Knight. But it’s a very obvious shift from suit actor to CGI, and some of the CGI attacks just look pathetic, like the spikes. I’m talking Race Against Time bad. And Shinji’s fight isn’t fantastic either. Ryuki treats general tropes of tokusatsu more realistically—for lack of a better term—than most. Instead of the first henshin being the best fight, it’s one of the worst. Shinji’s first henshin as Ryuki isn’t particularly dramatic. We get introduced to his Sword Vent—a scimitar that he actually catches this time and doesn’t break, and it destroys one leg off the Dispider—and his Final Vent, the Dragon Rider Kick. Which is one of my favorite attacks ever, since it involves leaping into the air while a dragon is flying around you, flipping, and performing a kick while on fire. It’s just so cool. But otherwise, Shinji destroys the Monster quickly, Dragreder eats the energy, Ren gives the explanation about absorbing Monsters energy that any fan of Digimon Tamers already understands, and then Ren attacks him. Because this is Ryuki and that’s how they roll.
What does really impress is when Shinji forms the contract with Dragreder. It’s impossible to tell if it’s all in his head or not, but he’s in a black, featureless plane, face-to-face with the Monster, and then it circles him and enters his body, transforming him into Blank Form before all of the detailing for Ryuki appears and changes the suit. It’s probably the best transformation I’ve seen in any fandom, and it is absolutely the way you pull off that first real henshin.
Finally for this episode, I have to say that Yui has Ren whipped. It’s clear from this episode that she’s really the only one keeping him from basically just doing all the things a Ryuki Kamen Rider is supposed to do. Ren just doesn’t care about Shinji. We don’t know what’s going on with him yet, but it seems pretty clear that he just wants to become stronger, by any means necessary—which makes perfect sense when we find out his origin story in episode 12. So for right now, Yui’s got to be his moral compass. When he tries to throw Shinji out without even a Seal card, Yui tells him that if he does, it’s over between them (yeah, it sounds shippy, but I think it was intentionally set up to be misleading), so he gives her a sarcastic, placating smile and says she doesn’t have to get so mad at him. Then when he’s been following Shinji in order to chase Dragreder, Yui calls him right as he’s talking to Shinji (and being a total dick about it, of course), and she asks if he’s still after that dragon. He easily lies and tells her no, he’s not. Their relationship is pretty complex, as it grows from him simply needing her help to actually being her friend and surrogate brother (at least in my opinion), and I’ll be bringing it up quite a few times.
School Ghost Story (Yasuko Kobayashi) I admit that I’m not quite sure how the Advent Cards work, but it seems to me that when you use up a card, that’s it. You have to wait until the next time you transform to be able to use it again. Yet in his battle with Knight immediately after destroying that giant spider, Ryuki is able to use Sword Vent again—I think that’s more a matter of the rules of canon not yet being completely set for things like this.
In this episode, Yui is forced to smash a window to stop Ren from killing Shinji, and then Ren pays for it out of his own pocket when neither she nor Shinji has the money. This establishes two running gags for the series: the fact that Shinji has to pay back the 30,000 yen (over $300 U.S.) and that Ren has a habit of betraying and/or trying to kill Shinji. It’s not quite a drinking game, but you might as well make one of it. It also establishes two questions I have about this scene: one, did Yui really need to stop Ren? As we see later on—particularly in episodes 17 and 35—he is extremely reluctant to kill another human being, no matter how much he tells himself it’s what he needs to do
We’re also introduced to Shiro Kanzaki, the villain of the piece. Yui explains that when they were younger, her brother always protected her. Ever since she was a child, she could see Monsters in the mirror, though her classmates couldn’t and thought she was lying and teased her. Shiro, however, always believed in her and made her feel safe even when she saw the Monsters. When their parents died, the kids were split up: Yui stayed with their aunt and Shiro was sent to America to live with other relatives, protesting all the way that he needed to protect her. So Yui can’t reconcile this memory of her loving, protective older brother whom she rarely sees now with the person who Ren says created the decks and Shinji says told the Riders to fight each other. Shinji, however, warns that maybe they’ve got it all wrong and Kanzaki actually made the decks to protect people from Monsters. And when Yui points out that he doesn’t have any evidence of that, one of Shinji’s most important character moments happens. He insists that he’ll become her proof and swears to become a Rider to protect people. This is Shinji’s main motivation and he comes back to it full circle at the end.
The main conflict introduced here that carries over into part two is Shinji’s distrust of Ren. Which is perfectly understandable, given the guy just tried to kill him. Shinji first sees him right after Kanzaki’s appearance and sudden disappearance at a Monster attack (and in fact, Kanzaki can be seen fleeing as soon as Shinji arrives on the scene), and Shinji is surprised to see him. But he doesn’t think too much until the very end, when he rushes inside an elementary school immediately after fighting a Monster that had targeted a girl there, only to find Ren standing in front of another girl, while Darkwing is flying over her. Yeah, that doesn’t look good.
School Ghost Story 2 (Yasuko Kobayashi) Previously on Kamen Rider Ryuki: Kanzaki is creepy and wants the Riders to fight each other, Yui is confused and saddened by her brother’s actions, Shinji wants to protect people, and Ren is a dick.
The conflict heats up when Reiko tells Shinji that a teacher from the elementary school disappeared the night before in the exact location where Shinji found Ren. When Shinji goes to confront him about it, there’s this hilarious bit where he totally blanks on Ren’s name and calls him Ron. But hey, he’s only heard his name about twice in passing from Yui. What’s really interesting about this scene and is good foreshadowing for later is that Shinji reveals that even after you’ve contracted with a Monster, the Rider knows that they still want to eat humans. This falls in line with Yui’s theory in EPISODE FINAL that the Monsters need life force from humans in order to live as something more than an illusion in the mirror. Shinji adds that should he or Ren let their guard down, Dragreder or Darkwing might attack humans. This will really be important later on with Eri.
Shimada starts to hit her insanity stride when in the middle of Reiko’s rant to Shinji that he can’t just move into the office after he got evicted from his apartment, she walks in with an aquarium containing her pet iguana and tells it that it’ll be living in the hot water room from now on. There’s this moment of shocked silence as Shinji, Reiko, and Okubo stare after her before Reiko tries to prove her point to Shinji. Still, though, Shinji moves in and sleeps underneath the lunch table.
Much as this episode resolves the conflicts and battles of episode 3, its true purpose is to set up everything for the future. Particularly regarding Ren. There’s this interesting conversation between Shinji and Yui where he expresses his distrust of the other Rider—who just tried to kill him, as he points out—and Yui argues that Ren’s not the kind of person who would attack innocent people. She argues that she can see it in the way he fights, the way he keeps getting up after every battle, no matter how hurt he is. She knows he’s fighting for something, and even though she doesn’t know what, she knows it means she can trust him. In contrast, she and Ren point out that Shinji has no true purpose to fight, and it’s something that makes them both wary of him. He says that he wants to protect others, but Ren argues that it’s a naïve and weak purpose, and if he’s trying to be a hero, he’s just going to get himself killed—but we’ll come back to the “hero” bit with Tojo, Kagawa, and Nakamura much later. Shinji, however, isn’t swayed by Yui’s arguments, and he gets into a fight with Ren. He gets his ass kicked, but he gets in one good punch and accidentally rips the necklace from Ren’s neck—apparently Ren buys his chains at the same place as Astronema. Seeing the look of shock and panic on Ren’s face as he realizes Shinji just ripped it away from him, Shinji decides to take a look at just what that necklace is. When he sees that it’s a woman’s ring, he asks if this has anything to do with what Yui says he’s fighting for. Ren just takes his necklace back and tells Shinji to piss off—I’m paraphrasing here—and asks if Shinji’s “cheap sense of justice” will let him kill someone. He argues that neither he nor Yui thinks Shinji will last long in the Rider War, but Shinji argues he’s got a good reason to live: the 30,000 yen debt. Until he pays Ren off, he’s not going to let himself die.
Huh. It’s horrible, but I wonder if Shinji did manage to pay him back before the end of episode 49.
Shinji and Ren do come to a grudging respect for one another by the end, especially on Shinji’s side. He realizes that he was wrong to accuse Ren when it turns out that the Monster Ren said had attacked is too fast for them to sense sometimes, and it always travels in packs—meaning Shinji only killed one of the pack in the previous episode. And when Ren says that he needs to fight the Monster that he’d been too slow to save the teacher from, Shinji gives him a look of surprise, though Ren insists it’s just a matter of pride. Uh-huh. You keep telling yourself that. But at the end, they destroy the Monsters, head to Atori, and proceed to be awkward and semi-confrontational around each other as they try to avoid one another and completely confuse the hell out of Yui. They are such guys.
But outside of character development, this story sets up the first arc when Reiko discovers that a few of the disappearance victims had an interest in antiques, and we see a glimpse of a man in an antique store, bearing a card deck…