Kamen Rider Ryuki Episodes 49 & 50 + Rider Time

EPISODES 49 - 50

Ryuki was never going to have a happy ending. We're told from the start that there will only be one survivor; we have one genuine good guy amongst a bunch of amoral characters. The opening credits promise a showdown between Shinji and Ren, with Yui in the middle. "If you don't fight, you won't survive!" is the show's tagline. "This fight's not about justice, but simply desire" is the way Daisuke sums up the Rider battle in the final episode. And then there's the show's imagery of misfortune -- thirteen Riders, broken mirrors, two clairvoyant characters who never had good news. (It's also thirteen years since Yui and Shiro's accident, which makes me wonder if the purpose of Shiro's creating thirteen Riders was that there needed to be one to represent each year that Yui's been replaced.)

Episode 49 begins with the death of Yui and ends with the death of Shinji. I really didn't expect that at the time, it was a shock. You had a bad feeling about Shinji but expected that to be saved for the very last episode. (You knew Ren was safe, otherwise 13 Riders wouldn't have blown such a big moment on such a meaningless special.) And so when the moment comes that Shinji takes a mortal hit from a monster while protecting a girl, it's presented in an impactful way, but you're still kinda like "Oh, he'll be fine. The show will wriggle around this in some way." So when he actually dies, with Ren by his side? I think it's all done well, and I think Suga's performance is great. Matsuda's good, but I think gets a little TOO emotional. Ren's come to like Shinji, yes, but Matsuda acts like a lover bigger than Eri is the one dying a bloody mess.

I find it pretty funny that, once Shinji dies, Kanzaki appears and tells Ren to get busy fightin' Odin, because he's the only one left. Like...there's still Kitaoka and Asakura, but they're isolated in these final two episodes, stuck in their own little drama -- and Kanzaki basically is here to tell you that, even if they're still alive, he thinks they're so unimportant and realizes they're at the end of their story...so he's going to come right out and crown Ren the Highlander who wins the booby prize of getting to face Odin...again. Knight's killed Odin twice now. No matter how rigged Kanzaki makes this game, that doesn't look good, man -- you sure you want to go down that road again?

Because Kitaoka is Inoue's character, Kobayashi can't really be bothered to do anything but basically repeat Episode Final. There's been different outcomes for other characters, but here's Kitaoka just once again realizing he's at the end, he's had enough, and he quits. Unlike that movie, which made no mention of how he intends to quit and not end up as Magnagiga's lunch, this take at least gives you more of an idea -- I think Kitaoka knows he's low on time. He begins the scene peppy, talking about asking Reiko out, but then gets gloomy, talking about the way he feels he needs to take care of Asakura, or like he's left a huge mistake behind. We later see Kitaoka, unconscious, laying on the couch of his office, holding a flower -- it's funereal. I think he died on the spot and Goro decided to contract Magnagiga and fight in Kitaoka's place, hoping to deal with Asakura on his own so that Kitaoka's guilt could be cleared, so that he could rest in peace...

But Goro fails, he ends up killed by Ouja, the one bright spot being that seeing Goro's body instead of Kitaoka's sends Asakura into such a blind rage that he has no problem running right to his own death, being gunned down by law enforcement. (One thing that confuses me: we get a voiceover of officers making arrangements to trap and deal with Asakura, and part of this message plays over a shot of Kitaoka. Did Kitaoka set him up? He had to have known Asakura's whereabouts since Goro knows where he is to challenge him.) It's supposed to be some kind of cool, bad-ass Bruce Lee moment, but I always thought this death was ill-fitting for Asakura and a pretty anti-climactic way to send him off.

I find it strange how Goro's not able to put up much of a fight against Ouja. Sure, Asakura's probably stronger and deadlier than Goro is, but Goro's supposed to be a good fighter, and yet he doesn't put up much of a fight. That says Goro was holding back, since Kitaoka as Zolda never really fought hand-to-hand much -- he relied on his weaponry. Did Goro hold back just so he could keep up the charade that he was Kitaoka? Possibly, but I think it also seems like he intended to die. Goro couldn't live without Kitaoka -- so he wants to die with sensei.

(Random factoid while I'm thinking of it -- in the broadcast episode, as Reiko sits waiting for Kitaoka in the restaurant, Louis Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World" is playing. This is replaced with generic muzak for the home-video releases. I HATE when things are changed for the video/DVD releases like that, and it's often music that's changed because there's no such thing as too much money for record labels.)

It's sad how rushed and cheap the final battles in this show are. I understand the episode has a lot to pack in, and I'm glad it chooses to focus on character moments. But the final battle between Knight and Odin really needed more attention and money put into it. We just get these quick shots flying by of strikes and tumbles. It doesn't convey the total, brutal, deadly beating Knight is supposed to undergo in this battle. Odin's Final Vent is so brutal, we don't even get to see it -- and Knight runs right towards it to keep fighting! Ren ends up dying from his wounds! But it's just not conveyed, it's filmed in the way a generic cliffhanger fight is filmed -- they never put much effort into those, because they know the next episode's going to begin with some cheap cop-out. But this is the final battle that sees the death of the longest-serving cast member's character! It's the final battle in what's been a show all about battle! They needed to haul out some crazy Junji Yamaoka-esque big guns here, even if they had to go to the Abandoned Warehouse District where all of Yamaoka's Metal Hero action scenes took place. (Eighties Metal Heroes at Mt. Makuu; Nineties Metal Heroes have the Abandoned Warehouse.) I like that the final fight takes place outside of the Kanzaki home, at least.

Shiro remains tormented by the idea of Yui's wish to cease the efforts to revive her -- Yui's presence being made by black feathers again. (If Shiro's represented by the golden feathers of Odin, the phoenix, then what could Yui's black feathers signify -- a crow? A raven? In Norse mythology, Odin's animal companions include ravens.) Kanzaki has a meltdown which erases Odin, who names Ren the final Rider of it all. The new life appears before Ren and...he's said it from the start and, true to his word, he uses it to bring Eri back, dying at the foot of her bed. (It's always looked like Ren has died with a slight smile on his face, which is an interesting touch that I wonder if it was scripted or Matsuda's idea.)

On one hand, I almost admire that decision of Kobayashi's. I mean...it's true to the character! He's stubborn, and he never got over Eri and never listened to her to think of himself over her if it means his improvement, so OF COURSE he's going to stick to his plan to bring her back, even if he's no longer there to be with her. Imagine this ending without the reset! It's infuriating, but pretty damn bold and would frustrate a lot of viewers. Because the way I wanted this to play out -- the way a lot of viewers probably expected it to be -- is perhaps a little "safer," a little predictable...

One of the show's biggest points -- maybe THE point of the show -- was Ren being softened by not just Eri, and not just Yui, but especially Shinji. Shinji was supposed to make Ren be the hero that was within him. You get to the end of 49 where Ren's just weeping all over Shinji's dying body, with Shinji stating what his absolute firmest wish would be if he won the Rider fight and you think, "Oh. Ren's listening to Shinji's last words, taking them to heart." So, I thought Ren was going to come to a conclusion that basically honored Shinji's dying words -- his last request. I thought Ren would abandon his own wish and try to find some loophole, try and decide to do something like wish the Mirror World never existed or was never opened or that Mirror Monsters never existed or even that the Kanzakis never existed, meaning the Rider fight never would happen. So, the show would have a reset, but since it was Ren's choice, his action, he would retain the knowledge of what happened. And that would be kind of bittersweet -- he'd no longer be in the lives of people who bettered him, like Shinji or Yui, but he'd still be that person we saw evolve throughout the show (meaning his development throughout the year wasn't a waste), and Eri would still be saved. But Ren sticks to his intentions and saves Eri. And that's true to the character. And, for as vague as the show could be about what exactly the Mirror World was and what could be done with it, I think the show intended for the "wish" to be only something personal for whoever was granted it -- I don't think something big like the closing of the Mirror World was really an option...

The choice is, and has always been, in the hands of the Kanzakis. Shiro's always had the fight fixed. Once Ren wins and goes about his way, Shiro ponders his next move before a Mirror World Yui talks to him, questioning if he's just going to start over. Now...Yui's done disappeared, but Shiro's still been pushing for the Riders to fight, saying that there are still two days remaining. So...by asking him if he's going to start again, does she mean Shiro -- despite the time limit having passed -- would set up a completely new and accelerated Rider battle, or does she mean would he pull some Time Vent hijinks and do it all over? I think that's purposely left for you to wonder, with most fans seeming to take the implication as being that he'd undo time, and this is where Episode Final and 13 Riders is supposed to wiggle in. So...how many times might he have played with time by now? And if he has this kind of ability, then why doesn't he just prevent Yui's accident in the first place? He has all of this power and still can't accomplish this one thing? At this point, the show just wants you to care about the characters and not little details like this, but...that doesn't always work. You can leave some things mysterious or up in the air, but you better be given just enough information for it to make sense, and it better make sense for the character. It doesn't make sense to me that Kanzaki is apparently powerful enough to exist past death and can alter time, but he chooses to use that power in ways that frustrate his own agenda.

So Yui finally convinces Shiro to just stop and they both go off to some dimension together to draw happier things with their younger selves. The final shot of the series is the pictures of the siblings at the Atori being of their younger selves -- Sanako is also no longer the quirky and joyful woman she was, but curt and surly. And this, I think, is that Shiro decided to go back and die with Yui when she had her accident. They never made it to adulthood, there was never the breach in the Mirror World, the Riders were never created.

Yui said a few episodes prior to this that the Kanzakis basically created the Mirror World and...I never really liked that. Like I've said, I feel like early on there were strong supernatural suggestions about the Mirror World. I feel like it always existed, it's just that the Kanzakis were the first to ever breach it.

Here's what I always thought should be done with the mystery of Shiro and the Mirror World -- the Mirror World existed. It's another world, dimension, maybe even afterlife. Emotions like vanity gave birth to the monsters within it. (To bring up Cocteau's Orpheus again, mirrors are used as a portal into the underworld; the underworld is shown to be bombed-out ruins, described as a zone born of "men's memories and the ruins of their habits." Funny that Orpheus also ends with a reset.) The Mirror World always had a ruler, a deity -- Odin. The Kanzakis break through to the Mirror World; Yui is threatened. Shiro eventually is targeted by Odin who makes him a deal, a contract -- Odin wants out of the Mirror World, but he can't get out. Shiro, obviously, has found a way INTO the Mirror World, even if it's limited, so if Odin merges with him, he can have access to both worlds, even if limited. Outmatched, Shiro has no choice -- he's intertwined with Odin.

Shiro comes up with the idea of creating Riders and the Rider fight, all based on Odin. His reason? Whoever wins that Rider battle will take his place in the Mirror World as Odin's puppet. Shiro promises a wish, a new life, but nobody realizes the small print -- the wish is only going to apply to the Mirror World. Ren, you want Eri back? Win the battle and you'll get your wish...it's just that Eri will be safe, trapped forever in the Mirror World, Odin's new underling. Kitaoka, you want eternal life? You can have it, but it will be eternity in the cold, terrifying Mirror World.

And that's basically my idea of where things might have been heading in 2002. (I never really worked out how Yui would fit into all of it, but neither did the show. Hey-ooooooooo.) But I feel like my old take keeps Shiro fairly villainous and would go along with the images of bad fortune. I feel like it was a mistake to make the Mirror World seem so small -- a placed conjured up by two lonely kids -- and to make Odin just a puppet of Shiro's. He was obviously meant to be a little more important than what they did with him.

So, Yui's convinced Shiro to put a stop to the madness and he does, and everything is reset and everything you've just watched for the year was meaningless. I always broke it down like this...

* Shinji's back to being a dolt who nobody likes or respects. The Rider fight caused his best qualities to come out, it caused him to do some quick growing which improved him, but that's all gone.

* Ren's back to being a coldhearted thug who only cares about Eri. Any of his heroic qualities remain deeply buried and unknown to even him.

* Kitaoka's still dyin', and is back to being a complete narcissistic asshole.

* Asakura's still a nut, and most of his crimes are completely unrelated to being a Rider. Which means: he will still kill Miho's sister, he will still maim pianist Yuuichi Saitou.

And that's just the four main Riders. I feel like for characters like Shibaura and Toujou there would eventually be escalation, they'd probably become plain old killers. So our main characters lose character growth, their becoming good people, while all of the villainous Riders are free to become even more horrible than they were. The only real bright side is that Mirror Monster victims should now be alive. Whoopee, the show didn't care much about them, so that's not even important. What's important is...you just flushed all of this character growth and wasted my time, now didn't you? You were supposed to be a show that broke all of the rules and was so bold and different, yet you have this cowardly finale because you painted yourself into corners and don't want to commit to anything that might "damage" a popular character.

Gah! Wasn't it bad enough how the show started to stray in its second half? The overly comedic tone, the cheapening of the production? Couldn't it have delivered a definitive finale that wasn't a cheap trick or didn't feel like it made you waste your time?

I had been so into Ryuki, but after its finale, I felt pretty cheated by it. It killed a lot of goodwill, I'd have trouble even going back and watching the earlier episodes I loved because I could never shake its cop-out finale that made it all useless. I'd try and try to enjoy those earlier episodes or even just enjoy ANYthing Ryuki, period, but found it difficult.

And then Rider Time happened. And I didn't know what to make of it initially -- I think the Rider franchise is in a poor, poor state. I think everything Zi-o touches is terrible, and Inoue's Ryuki episodes were a mixed bag, so I didn't have much hope for this little web series. But by the end of the third episode...I felt love for Ryuki return.

The special is on the cheap side (it makes the 13 Riders Special seem like a movie), a little rushed, it tries to be a little too weird and mysterious, but I liked what it tried to do for the most part. To me, it felt like somewhat of an apology for the show's finale not having the courage to stick to its guns. It ends up making the Ryuki show matter again, it undoes the finale's making everything feel like a waste. I love that the characters all gradually remember the original show's timeline and they try to set things right before it's too late. There's also something about seeing so many of the cast members, seventeen years older, that gives the bleakness of this miniseries some weight. They -- and we -- have been waiting so long for things to be made right in the Ryuki world! And it's probably the last time we'll see all of these cast members together as these characters, so that makes things take on an even sadder tone.

The timeline of the TV series is the only one that matters. And it was all undone in the finale and the characters were all back to their normal (abnormal for the psycho ones) lives. Like I said, Shinji's a dolt working at the ORE Journal, Ren's a punk, Kitaoka went back to being one of the scummiest lawyers, etc. But as fate would have it, most of these same schmoes are once again selected to take part in a fight that doesn't concern them -- unaware of how they got there, they all wake up in the Mirror World, thrown into an extremely accelerated version of the Rider Fight by a mysterious woman... We get mirrors of old alliances, there's a fuzzy familiarity for some of the participants before they eventually have total recall.

Look, with Ryuki's reset finale, it was very uncertain if we'd ever see anyone from Ryuki participate in a team-up or new project. Fans generally thought "Well, we can't bring Ryuki back, because his timeline was erased and the Riders of that show don't even exist anymore." Sure, we got Ryouhei cameoing as Kitaoka in that Superhero Taisen movie, but those movies don't count -- they never make sense, so they do whatever they want. So, this special was a nice surprise, and a good way to bring the characters back, get them back into their positions from the show, while also addressing that blunder of the finale. It shouldn't work as well as it did, and it's a shame that there wasn't an episode or two more.

It sucks that they didn't get everyone back -- since a few have retired, it wouldn't have been an option, anyway. (It's a shame Ryouhei wasn't able to be worked in in some way.) But you can pretty much picture that the Riders who have replacements still met their demise in the new timeline that was established in the finale. Here's what I pretty much think happened from the finale to the point of Rider Time...

Shinji -- Remained at the ORE Journal. The Zi-o episodes featuring Shinji and Daisuke Ookubo reveal that the ORE Journal has long since shut down, which is pretty obvious given how shoddily it was run. I like that the Time Jackers selecting Mirror Shinji has made Mirror Shinji terrorize the real Shinji, and that Shinji's now living a life a lot like Sakakibara's before he vanished: frightened, in hiding, all reflective surfaces of his home covered.

Ren -- No Kanzakis or Mirror World means Eri was never harmed, so he probably spent more time with her, but...I don't think those two were built to last. It's twisted, but I think Eri's accident made Ren realize her importance to him more than he might have otherwise. That accident needed to happen to set him on the right path. And I like the fake-out at the end, when Shinji visits Eri at the hospital for Ren. You're like "What?! The show was erased, but she's still in the hospital?" And then they reveal that she's a nurse there, still wearing her rings; even if things might not have worked out for the two in the reset timeline, Ren obviously still meant something to her, too. Or, hey, maybe I'm reading it wrong and Eri and Ren DID last, and he still became a better person. He does seem a little more good-natured, and he IS still disturbed when he makes his first kill. (Abyss.)

Sudou -- Probably in prison or killed by a pissed off accomplice.

Kitaoka -- Succumbed to Non-Specific Illness #5, leaving Goro to once again be called upon as Zolda.

Tetzuka -- As I said, it's likely that things went bad with Yuuichi, sending Tetzuka on a darker path.

Shibaura -- The years have made him rot even more.

Asakura -- Went about his usual business. I like that he's the one who knows what's all going on, that he still has his memory of the previous timeline. I like that he basically has that Joker line of "I think we're destined to do this forever." He might be right! And since Asakura said his wish in the show was for the fight to go on forever, maybe he's the real winner, huh?

Toujou -- In prison or murdered, c'mon. Maybe a politician.

Sano -- Went on to still be a dipshit who fell ass backwards into his father's fortune. He had a big mouth, I can imagine some businessman wanting to eliminate him. Someone like...

Takamizawa -- Probably in prison or in hiding overseas.

Miho -- The absence of Femme from this special is an interesting mystery. Since she's Inoue's creation, and Inoue wrote this miniseries, it has to mean something, right? Anyway, she probably ended up scamming the wrong person. She could've reformed, I dunno.

Mirror Shinji -- Where there's a good Shinji there's a mirror one.

Odin -- Ah, here's another mystery, and I like that they make him so mysterious here. A hooded figure who's guiding the Another Rider to kill for lifeforce. After he's defeated by Zi-o and Geiz, he mutters "Yui" before fading. Even if the Kanzakis have made it that they died in that accident in 1989, there's some remnant in the Mirror World of their existence, their memory. What could it mean? Maybe Odin IS a higher power of the Mirror World...? You have nothing but speculation, in a good way.

Our characters live a fast and furious version of the Rider battle, but try to set things right. And, once again, there's not a happy ending in the Advent Cards for these characters. This special is bleak -- everyone dies, but mostly die trying to be better people than they were -- being the better people they actually were, once upon another timeline. Here we finally get closure on Ren's heroic arc, that he sacrifices himself for Shinji. Shinji's acknowledged for all that he previously did, ending this special with the knowledge of those accomplishments and growth.

Yeah, the Zi-o series ends up undoing its timeline, and if you want to be nitpicky, you can realize that that means that this special is undone, so we're back to the Ryuki series having a finale that strips the series of its meaning. But this is more of a Ryuki special than a Zi-o one, somehow, magically. (Unlike, say, that Kamen Rider One movie that was really a Ghost movie with special guest Kamen Rider One.) Rider Time is its own thing, it stands on its own, individual from the Zi-o series. It introduces the idea that these characters will eventually remember the previous timeline -- that someone like Asakura already did -- and therefore not make the Ryuki series feel so wasteful. It's this three-part miniseries that got me back into Ryuki, and the reason I was able to do this project.

I actually tried two or three years ago to cover Ryuki like this, but it went the way it usually always went -- I couldn't get past the first few episodes, so I scrapped the project. I was then going to do a joke post where I "covered" the entire series in one post, in which the summary for every episode read "This episode ends up not mattering because of the chickenshit finale." I never would have thought that Toei would actually do something like this miniseries and that it would be something that managed to make me feel something positive for Ryuki again. I can enjoy it again, I can look at it with fondness again...

I can count myself as a Ryuki fan once again. While I like it nowhere near as much -- nor does it mean as much to me -- as Liveman, I feel a similar way about Ryuki. They're both bold shows, with a very strong first half...then it changes. It will have flickers of the great show it was here and there, but for the most part, it abandons a lot of what made it good and unique, and you just have to kind of cherry-pick what you do like about the second half or reimagine some things yourself. There are many flaws, but there's also still a lot of good and good ideas there that still make the show worthwhile and special, even if you're frustrated that it turned into something different than it set out to be or promised to be or you expected it to be.

Ryuki was a big, bold show, with lofty ambitions. It didn't stick its landing, it got a little too preoccupied with trying to please viewers, it got a little full of itself, but it wanted to be different. It succeeded there and, for better or worse, I feel it has been more of an influence on the Heisei Riders that followed it than either Kuuga or Agito was.