Kamen Rider Ryuki Episodes 3 & 4

EPISODES 3 & 4

It's hard to feel bad for Ren when Shinji suspects him of nefarious actions considering how far he goes out of his way to be an asshole to Shinji. Yui even has a moment of being an asshole to Shinji because she doesn't like Shinji's accusations against Ren. You can accuse Shinji of diving into this too hard, being too forceful, but...it's not like he's wrong. Ren's been a dick, he's always at the scene of the crime and doesn't care to explain himself in any way. Yeah, Ren's standoffish and doesn't like Shinji, but it's one of those Faiz examples where a simple sentence would clear up confusion. Ren, you don't like Shinji? Well, be a little more open in explaining yourself and get him off your ass. It's not that hard. It's your own damn fault for just being silent and looking suspicious. I can understand Ren feeling like he doesn't need to fill in Shinji on everything, but if it's going to get him out of your hair...why wouldn't he?

These episodes highlight the problem with Ren for me. Even by Episode 2, the show has decided it favors Ren. He's the "serious" character, the "cool" one. (Hell, he's the first Rider we're shown in the series.) We're just supposed to like him because of that, the show wants that to be enough. But Ren's supposed to be a harder, more dangerous-seeming character than he ever comes across. Yes, he is a good person deep down -- very deep down, only Eri's really supposed to know at first -- but he is supposed to be vaguely criminal, really rough. You're supposed to not know if he's an ally or enemy, he's supposed to have an air of mystery -- what's driving him, why he's with Yui, what Yui sees in him, why Yui has any control over him.

The problem is not only in the show favoring him over the lead character, but in the casting of Satoshi Matsuda. He's just too damn young to ever be completely convincing. (Toku needs to stop being afraid to cast older performers!) Matsuda is also an easygoing jokester in real life, and I feel like that often comes through in not only his performance, but eventually in the writing. (It's funny that Matsuda seems the goof in real life, while Takamasa Suga seems to take himself very seriously.) Even in episode two Ren has a scene where he's confronting Shinji, but Matsuda is playing it in this playful way where he has a light, humorous tone.

When he's berating Shinji, he often has this sparkle in his eye, much like Hiroshi Miyauchi when playfully scolding or one-upping a character. It doesn't work for this character. Matsuda gets in the character's way more than once in this show. He's a likable guy, he's not a bad actor, just too young for the part, unable at that point to hide some of his more natural instincts. Whenever Ren seems bemused by everything -- I feel like that's Matsuda slipping through. While Ren IS supposed to warm up and take a liking to Shinji and his buffoonery, he's certainly not at that point yet. Shinji's supposed to be a massive pain in the ass he doesn't need right now. But he's already reacting to Shinji with bemusement. There's also just the fear in not wanting to have Ren be too bad or unlikable. For as bold of a rule-breaker as Ryuki wants to be, it's funny the way it will hold back or be afraid to commit to an idea. (Hence the whole cowardly finale.)

When Ryuki aired, I really wished that Shinji Kasahara had played Ren -- I think he would have brought the intensity and danger the character had, but also the heroism and honor he was supposed to have buried beneath. (Of the Ryuki cast, I think Tomohisa "Goro-chan" Yuge would have made the best Knight, as written. How Yuge ended up in the final auditions for Shinji, I have no idea.) I also think we need a better suit ACTOR as Knight than Makoto Itou, who really doesn't bring much of anything to the part. (Itou's best in the roles that are meant to be less flashy and more human, like G3 and Hibiki.) Perhaps if there had been a better suit-actor -- think someone like Naoki Oofuji -- that could have carried over and helped Matsuda out in his performance.

The show never really cares to explain Ren and Yui's deal, does it? (And it's not for the reasons you think and put into your novel, Inoue!) Like, you can assume he wants to be close to her to keep tabs on the whole Shiro Kanzaki situation (and the show does confirm that later on), but what the hell does she get out of befriending Ren? Does she recognize that Ren's a good person, so he's her way to keep tabs on the goings-on of the Mirror World? Her crazy defense of Ren at Shinji's expense hints at something bigger that's never followed through with. Some things work better as a mystery, but this ain't one of them. It's awesome when she breaks through the Mirror World to save Ryuki by giving Knight an ultimatum, though. She saved our hero from being a smear in the Mirror World.

I hate how nasty Yui is to Shinji, though -- calling him weak and more untrustworthy than Ren -- especially after Shinji tries to get her to feel better about the possibility that Shiro might not be an evil bastard. And even if he is an evil bastard, well Shinji's going to prove him wrong by being the one guy in the fight who just wants to save people. That scene in the Atori in episode 3 is one of my favorite moments of the series, one of the reasons I thought Shinji was so cool. And I like that the episode starts with Ryuki making a mistake in his battle with Knight which he learns from and uses to his advantage to get the upper hand in a battle with one of the gazelle monsters. It's not like Shinji ends up a karate warrior, but I've always liked how the show tries to have a progression to his fighting ability.

Another thing Ren shows little patience for with Shinji is the concept of the Rider War, which hasn't been stated by this point in the series, so Shinji doesn't know about it, and we don't know about it unless we've read press material leading up to the show. Can't fault Shinji for that one, either, Ren. (Although Ren has a point that it would be easier for him to just kill Shinji now, but it would be easier to believe he could if we didn't already know Ren's a good guy and they're counting on you to want to buy his toys!) Shinji's going to get his first taste of this nightmare in the next two episodes, but Shinji discovers Ren's possible motivation to fight in the two rings he wears on a necklace. Ren's of the mindset that a person needs a personal reason to fight, Shinji thinks just wanting to help and protect people is enough. This, of course, is the major theme running throughout the series, and the motivation of Shiro in selecting who he does to be a Rider. Yasuko Kobayashi's reach exceeds her grasp a bit, because she never quite makes her point with this, especially when Shinji ends up losing grip of his beliefs in often unconvincing ways. And it says something that she makes the "stupid" character the one who's selfless and wants to do good with his power; the "cool" one, the real star of the show is the "realistic" one.

Shiro makes his first appearance, a shady character who just urges Shinji to fight. We and Shinji and the other Riders will become very, very familiar with this directive from Shiro throughout the show. I was always a little puzzled at actor Kenzaburo Kikuchi's casting, though. He was an illustrator who tried his hand at modeling and then acting, with Ryuki his acting debut. I kinda wonder how he got this big role, but he works as this mysterious, shadow-y character. Call me crazy, but he also always reminded me a little of Mitsuo Andou, and that really helps give him an extra vibe of creepiness. Because Shiro's a creepy guy! We don't know his deal yet. And even when we do, he remains creepy. You never quite know what to make of the character. He's using people, but the people he selects to be Riders are terrible themselves. Is he good or bad? That's for you to decide as the evidence piles up. So many moral quagmires in this show, Ryuki was perfectly in step with the trend of the "age of the complicated antihero" that Hollywood loved in their TV dramas at the time.

Like here, when Shiro basically takes up Shinji's time and seemingly prevents his Ridey-Sense from going off in time to save that teacher who's killed. (We later find out Ren was on the scene, but the monster moved too fast, so he holds a bit of a grudge against it.) Shinji and Ren both manage to save a couple of girls at the school that the gazelles are apparently obsessed with, so...yay, heroism!

We get a flashback of Shiro helping a bullied Yui when kids don't believe her about the existence of Mirror Monsters. We see briefly the scene of an angry Shiro being pulled into a car by adults as kid Yui cries. I have no idea where this story was originally going to go, but I don't think for a second it was going to be about Yui drawing monsters and being replaced by her mirror self and all that. I feel like Yui was going to have a more important role than that, be a little more active in the story. Look at the way she can see into the Mirror World to observe Ryuki and Knight's fight. I feel like she was going to have a more supernatural involvement with the Mirror World -- maybe the monsters came from her, but they weren't going to be from awful doodles. Maybe she was going to be a villain and Shiro was out to stop her? (Black feathers fall upon her in the opening credits.)

One thing I find most tedious on Ryuki rewatches is the ORE Journal gang. And what's funny is that I really liked them when Ryuki aired, I thought they were funny. Daisuke's always up to something, even if he's way too lax with his employees and you have no clue how ORE Journal stays afloat. Shimada's memorably quirky to the point where she won a role on the next Rider show based on her awesomeness. Reiko had potential, but she's mostly just a pill. It's a lot of scenes of her acting like she's more important than she is, when she's 77 steps behind what we know is going on. So, a lot of the ORE Journal scenes can end up feeling gratuitous.

We'll divert to shenanigans we don't need or we'll just be padding time as Reiko thinks she has a brain wave, and it doesn't add up to much in the end. They're certainly not the support system Shinji could use, despite Reiko's potential or Daisuke's apparently being a good friend to Shinji prior to employing him. Ordinarily, this situation would be kept in the show as a way for our main hero to find out the latest happenings he needs to go and help superhero with -- the reason Clark Kent decides to work at the Daily Planet -- but that's not even the case here, because the Riders in this show just always know what's going down with the Mirror Monsters. They have Ridey-Sense and Pokemon pals! They don't need a job to help 'em. So it's kinda like...what's ORE Journal's purpose again?