Kamen Rider Ryuki Episodes 11 & 12

EPISODES 11 & 12

So far, Ryuki has done a pretty decent job of having the episodes overlap into one another, giving it a sense of serialization. They can still be broken down into two-parters, but it's not as obvious as Kuuga's format and even Agito had a clean cut before they got onto the next storyline. Ryuki will introduce something and pick it up and run with it, smoothly, into the next episode. But then it eventually does wind up being more easily broken down into the two-parter format that the franchise would soon end up beating to death and beyond.

And so this episode picks up from Ryuki and Knight trying to recover from being blasted with End of World, with Ren taking a hit to the head that causes him to lose most of his memories from the past year. A cheap story device? Eh, I just see it as the most convenient way to fill in some backstory without slowing things down and doing an episode set full on in the past, and in a way that's going to be able to involve the titular character. You can't really keep holding back on Ren's deal, especially as we go into the episodes with Tetzuka and Asakura having Ren question his ability to go all the way in this fight.

We get a glimpse of what kind of life Ren led before the series by all of the criminal hoodlums he encounters as he returns to past haunts to try to remember everything. He's pissed off or left bad blood with just about every two-bit punk in Tokyo, as you'd expect. A too kind Shinji, worried about Ren and hoping he can safely recover, accompanies him and always tries to intervene before those wanting some revenge against Ren can get it. He takes quite a beating, almost looking like Rocky Balboa by the end of this arc, taking beatings Ren was meant to pay for (and with interest). In retrospect, this kind of looks like the beginning of Shinji becoming just too chumpy when it comes to Ren -- he eventually just loses his mind with how hard he tries to help Ren -- but so many of these scenes play for comedic effect that they work on their own. And it helps that Shinji gets pretty fed up after a while, making comments about how Ren just always leaves people pissed off and then Shinji himself tries to start fleeing from the punks after one too many beatdowns. So he doesn't just look like a dope who's needlessly putting himself in danger for someone who's been a jerk to him.

Ren's compelled, driven by one big reason to piece together his past, and as he continues towards that goal, Yui decides to begin to piece together the Shiro Kanzaki story. She goes to his old university to investigate, finding that he led a lab experiment that went bad and brought nothing but questions, resentment and damage. She realizes that she doesn't really know what her brother was like -- she's remembering that kid that seemed hellbent to stay by her side as he was hauled away, but what if he changed? She learns from experiment participant Hajime Nakamura that, whatever Shiro was aiming to do, he claimed it was all for Yui's sake. I like how Ren and Yui's investigations intersect, with both of their paths leading to the abandoned Lab Room 401.

As we learn, Eri was involved with the experiment. Eri Ogawa, the one who Ren's rings belong to. I find her to be such a sad story of the show, but I've always been confused by the casting of the actress. She just really doesn't seem to mesh with the type of people this show was casting. She has a kind of old-fashioned look about her, making her more appropriate for period productions. And she doesn't quite match the typical mold of the pure and angelic love interest in Japanese media. Getting past that, she's a good actress, and you just feel bad for Eri. She one day begs Ren to pick her up early from the university, just sensing something bad is going to happen with the next day's experiments. For some reason, he just doesn't seem to want to. So when he DOES actually show up for her, it's too late -- the experiment has laid waste. He gets his first taste of the crazy stuff he's going to be dealing with for the next year, as Kanzaki is there and gives him his Card Deck.

The show's fuzzy on what the experiment is definitively supposed to be, but here's how I always took it -- it was Shiro's first success at opening the gates of the Mirror World. The Monster that happened to first appear was Dark Wing, and Shiro had the contract and Deck ready to go for whatever Monster first showed itself. Now, what was the extent of Eri's involvement? We never find out. If things hadn't turned out so bad, with Eri attacked and/or collapsing in absolute terror, would he have forced her to make the contract? Was she just bait for any of the Monsters, to entice them into our world -- using her light as a lure? It's purposely left a mystery, I guess to keep you on the same page as Ren. Ren didn't know what the hell she was up to at the university and certainly didn't think it could have been anything to scare her out of returning there. A dozen episodes into this show, we understand how Ren feels when he just bursts into Room 401 and is thrust into a world of mad scientists and monsters.

It would be nice to have gotten a bit of his reaction, an exchange between him and Kanzaki, just WHY he would have so easily accepted the Card Deck. Whatever the reason -- maybe because, as he saw Eri lying unconscious at this scene of madness, he realized he had a chance to save her by listening to her and picking her up early, and he failed -- he chooses to damn himself with the Card Deck, becoming a Rider, and partnering with the monster who critically injures the woman he loves. Dark Wing's just a constant reminder of her, so I love that scene when it's hovering in the mirror in Eri's hospital room and Ren punches and breaks the mirror, just totally furious with the monster and the whole situation. It makes me wish the show was more confident in depicting Ren as he's supposed to be rather than sugar-coating it to make him and the actor more bankable.

In these episodes, we get the best picture of who Ren's supposed to be. A flat-out hooligan. Look at all of the punks he's pissed off in his wake. I think there's a similarity to Ren and Gai Yuuki, but I think Ren's supposed to be even more dangerous than Gai. Gai has charm and a code. There's a decent and honorable person in Ren, but it's buried deep in him -- he's not even all that aware of it. But then he meets Eri. However she came into his life is a miracle for him. She's pure and loving and a beacon of light. They're an unlikely pair, but work, and she's good for him. And if it isn't obvious enough how different they are, the production dresses each of them in black and white, filming her in softness and brightness. She tries to sway Ren from his combative ways, but still loves him anyway, and he's a changed person when with her. Maybe the person he really is? Or who he wants to be? (I'll paraphrase these Lou Reed lyrics: "You made me forget myself/Made me think I was someone else/Someone good.")

And I think Eri was instrumental in getting Ren to find his heart and become more open and caring and that ends up becoming a series long struggle as this once cold guy has so thawed to where he finds himself caring for people like Yui and Shinji, but he can't afford to take his eyes off the prize because he's in this for the woman who made him this way! So I see it as another spin on the classic Rider dilemma. You have Shinji thrown into this battle, wanting to retain his heart and humanity amidst all of the unfairness and cruelty of life and the Rider Battle. But then you have Ren who probably wishes he didn't feel so much, who would like to lose his humanity if it meant his success, but he can't. Because he loved and that love changed him, that's all tied into his whole reason for being Knight, it's unremovable. And he just has a lot of guilt about what happened to her on top of it -- he probably felt she was too good for him and he really let her down.

Shiro had a partner during his experiments, Ejima, who we meet as a disheveled wanderer, clinging to a Seal Vent card, using it to ward off Mirror Monsters the way Van Helsing uses a crucifix against vampires. (We never learn the extent of Ejima's involvement, do we?) The Seal Vent card, that's kind of a supernatural idea. I originally always thought the Mirror World was going to be a bit more supernatural, perhaps taking inspiration from Jean Cocteau's Orphée, where mirrors were used as an entrance to the land of the dead. I always thought that the Mirror World was something that always existed, and that it absorbed things from the regular world. Mirrors, a sign of vanity, something that people look into and find something about themselves to not be happy about -- I thought maybe the Mirror World took negative thoughts like that and it manifested as the Mirror Monsters.

And there's a scene in this episode on a train when a student is distracted by some guy's loud music, and he just has this look on his face that you can tell he wishes the guy was dead, and, voila, the guy's taken by a monster a split-second later. That student's anger fed the Mirror World and he got his wish. So, I thought that was going to be where the show went with it. The Mirror World existed and Shiro Kanzaki found a way to access it and use it for his own purposes. There's also the way that Mirror Monsters seem to target specific locations -- like they're haunting them. (The school, the hotel's elevator in an upcoming episode.) Web-sites devoted to the strange happenings that are a result of the Mirror World describe it in supernatural ways. More on my original theories, particularly with Kanzaki, in later posts.