Kamen Rider Ryuki meant a lot to me in 2002. I was still pretty new to being a Rider fan, and at the time was catching up on Agito, and gradually was making my way through Kuuga. But I got into those shows far too late; Ryuki was actually beginning, and I was following it from the start. And I thought it looked fucking awesome.
One of the things that drew me to Agito was that it had three Riders -- I had always wondered why Kamen Rider never tried to do a Spielban, having more than one (ideally a trio) of Riders. And I liked how different the three Riders in Agito were, what they represented -- not to mention the fact that it's not until the show's nearly over that the three are all on the same page and fighting together. They cross paths the entire series, but don't truly "team up" until later episodes, in a masterfully written way that makes sense in terms of the show's story. It was a big pay-off, it was like a big prize when they all finally started working together.
And Ryuki was shaping up to have multiple Riders, too. Not only that, but clearly an antagonistic one. (Going off the early publicity photos, I had hoped Knight would have been more like what I initially imagined Shadow Moon to be -- a transforming villain Rider. He wasn't, but Ryuki gives us plenty of those.) Cut to finally getting the first volume on VHS, along with Hurricaneger's first volume. Despite being a Sentai Guy, I was more excited about Ryuki, so I figured I'd watch its first episode first, then get to the Sentai. And I did that. And then I popped in Hurricaneger. And I thought Hurricaneger was so cheap-looking and terrible that I was barely able to make it through the first episode, let alone the entire volume. So, after that one episode, I went on to wipe out the remaining Ryuki.
I was totally crazy for Ryuki. Couldn't wait to watch the new episodes, couldn't wait to check out Toei's site each week to see what was happening. And then...basically, the show bought its own hype and took a nosedive, culminating in one of the weakest, letdown series finales of all tokudom, essentially ruining the show. I went from loving the show to outright hating it, barely able to even tolerate the sight of it. (Even when I tried to ignore the finale, I wouldn't be able to enjoy any of the earlier episodes I had loved so much.) But something happened and actually, to my surprise, it rekindled my Ryuki love again. I'll get into that and the series' highs and lows in the posts to come. So let's start with...
EPISODES 1 & 2
These were pretty fresh, exciting episodes at the time. What's shocking in retrospect is how many just quiet, conversational character moments these two episodes have. They really give you (and Shinji) the perfect amount of time to take in the whole strange concept it's depicting and quickly get you on board in rooting for Shinji as our main hero.
Because these were very uncharted waters. Shinji, in terms of main protagonists, was nothing like what Rider had given us previously. Godai and Shouichi were often viewed as carefree or stupid, but they weren't, and they obviously stepped up and were bad-ass when they transformed. And nearly every Rider prior to that was supposed to be really intelligent and into science, if not actual students or scientists. Shinji's not a smart guy. He's not totally clueless or helpless, but his heart is definitely bigger than his brain. He's led by his emotions and he's not really aware of how mean the world can be, but it's definitely something he's going to find out over the course of the show.
He means well and just wants to be good at his job but is just clumsy and irresponsible. He's hapless. But he's just a good person with a pure heart and drive, and he is just so in over his head once he makes a contract with Dragredder. That's one of the great things about this show, though, and why I initially liked Shinji. It's what I talked about with Koutarou in Black versus RX -- in Black, he just seemed like a normal guy who seemed just so outnumbered and outmatched by the opponent he decided to go against. With Shinji, he's going to be encountering a lot of blackhearted, evil people, and how much is he going to be able to retain any of his optimism, hope, heart? It's a new spin on the Ishinomori ingredient of a Rider clinging to their humanity and morals, fighting against succumbing to darkness and being a monster.
Shinji's also not a fighter, he's just running on pure instinct when most past Riders had cyborg superstrength or were said to be athletic. This is nicely reflected by Seiji Takaiwa's in-suit performance as Ryuki. It's funny about Takaiwa...at the time, I hadn't really liked any of his (mostly comedic) Sentai roles. But I loved his work in Agito. So I definitely feel like he switched over to Rider to get work of that type, and then...his very second Rider role is a comedic one. Shinji also doesn't have much of any moral support -- his co-workers aren't helpful, leaving just Yui, who's torn between wanting her own answers and wanting to help Ren. So, again: he's in way over his head. Can he survive, and what will be left of him?!
The other, bigger thing Ryuki is ushering in is the incorporation of anime gimmicks. For better or worse, Ryuki is the one that started it all, and it's one of the several problems the franchise has faced which can be traced back to this series. I'm pretty split on what I think about the Advent Cards, the Mirror Monster allies. When Ryuki was first announced, I kind of scoffed. I thought it was lame. Pokemon-mania was just dying in America, I didn't understand it and thought it was stupid. Here I was, just getting into Kamen Rider, with so much of Ryuki looking promising, and...they're gonna have cards to play with and, like, Pokemon to look after?! What's Toei thinking?! But then I ended up so into the show and liking its gimmicks that I bought pretty much every Advent Card I wanted. And it was so fun to buy the packs of those, which came on sheets and you had to peel 'em and you didn't know what you were getting, they were like a drug. So, on the one hand is the purist "OMG, that's just lame and greedy," but on the other...I bought into the gimmick, so I'm a bit of a hypocrite.
At least the Mirror Monsters don't talk! I was relieved at the time by that, and it's something that they'd definitely do now. A problem with the Mirror Monsters coming off too Poke/Digimon-ish is the quality of CGI. CGI's overestimated -- when it's millions and millions of dollars it still doesn't look right. So I'm not trashing Toei's much-cheaper CGI, just that CGI already lends a cartoonish quality to live-action, and the way the Mirror Monsters for the Riders are depicted, being so colorful, they clash with the show and stick out. Thankfully, the show doesn't give much of a damn about the Mirror Monsters, so it's not that big a deal. They're not cute buddies, but live up to their "monster" name. They just want fed, making them more like Tamagotchis than Pokemon, which sounds even worse when you word it like that now that I've done it. I think the show could have made them even more monstrous, but that's not where the show's interest is; the show's interest is in showing that the monsters this time around are the humans.
I'd really like to keep track of how many times we see one of the Riders actually save someone in this show. So far, it's one and a half. Shinji inadvertently saves Reiko from the spider, and Ren laters saves Yoshifumi Oshikawa on a rooftop from another spider. Don't get used to it, citizens of Japan -- not many people get saved in early Heisei Rider shows, but especially Ryuki.
It's a shame the show never knows what to do with Reiko, though. She's supposed to be such a good journalist, but she's not allowed to solve the show's mystery because the show itself can't solve the mystery until the end. But I really like her in these first two episodes, and it's the last thing of note she does. She's the one who lights the fire under Shinji's ass to realize the severity of what's happening, the realization that he might have something he can do to put a stop to all of the mysterious disappearances.
I like that he's trying to look out for her by trying to drive her away from the missing persons scoop, and I like how insulted she is that he's pegged her wrong -- she's not in it for a scoop, but to help people find the answers and get closure. She doesn't care how dangerous it can get, that comes with the territory. The scene when she prints out the list of missing people, pointing out they're parents, siblings, kids, and shoves it towards Shinji is great. Too bad the track the show takes forces her to be sidelined, so she's used mostly as a comedic foil for Kitaoka; it would have been nice for her to be a little more involved and maybe be that source of support Shinji could have used, a cold splash of logic when Shinji's twisted up in confusion by the other Riders. She could have been a great ally. She could have been used in better ways than becoming a one-note nag who has to tell everyone what a better journalist she is than they are. Eyeroll.
Damn, don't you miss when Toei took Rider seriously, and actually cared about it? The cracks begin to show within this show, as Shirakura and everyone else begin to go power-happy, but at least early on, this show is good, it's fresh, it's exciting. It still cares about Kamen Rider -- look at how the franchise has dropped even pretending to be connected to Ishinomori's creation by getting rid of the tradition of having a spider as the first episode's monster.
"But Ryuki's not a Rider! It began life as a Metal Hero." Why's that rumor still pop up? I don't buy it. Rider was back, and Toei wasn't going to risk losing that heat on a Metal Hero. True, Yasuko Kobayashi got her start on Metal Heroes, and it's the franchise that inspired her to write toku, so there's always a strong Metal Hero influence in her works, but I think the only reason she was randomly given that episode of Agito to write was to basically test her out and get her in with Rider -- they were obviously getting Ryuki underway by that point. And Ryuki, for as different as it seems, still does have a lot of Rider in its DNA, and that's what makes the early run of Heisei shows so damn good -- they were the breath of fresh air the franchise needed, especially to come back so strong and stay on the air, but they retained a lot of the core elements of what made Kamen Rider so unique, and utilized those elements and ideas in new ways.
There's a lot positive I can say about Ryuki, but it's still one of my least favorite Rider shows. I should probably revisit that statement though, considering how bad the recent entries have been, but I never even liked the way it looks. You talk about how cheap looking Hurricanger was the same year, that's always how I felt about Ryuki too. The suits and colors didn't pop at all, everything was very drab and dreary, everyone being an asshole doesn't really get you too invested in the characters (something Ex-Aid and now Zero One took to an extreme), and the story was good until the end when it made no sense.
ReplyDeleteI was never wild about Kobayashi's Rider series. She wrote some of my favorite Sentai shows and knew how to stick a landing in them, but Rider wise, she has a compelling universe she creates and then just soils herself hard when it comes to wrapping it all. All three of her Rider shows end in absolute nonsense.
I do think Ryuki gets a cheaper look later on, but that's pretty typical of toku shows; the longer they run, the budget lessens. But I think the earlier episodes do have a visual slickness and style to them, and I think some of the drabness you described was going for a mood.
DeleteI can't really say anything about the way new Riders approach a Ryuki style, but I think it works for Ryuki since Ryuki was the first one to focus on the idea of evil Riders, and since the point of the show (as Ryuta Tasaki once said) is to show human monsters as opposed to toku's standard monsters. It's funny to think how fresh and shocking evil Riders were at the time, and now it's been beaten beyond death.
I think something that might help Kobayashi's Sentai shows versus her Rider ones is the producers she's working for. They all have such different styles. People like Takatera, Hikasa, Utsunomiya and Shirakura couldn't be more different in their approach and thinking of toku. I have often thought that Sentai seems to suit Kobayashi better, though.
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ReplyDeleteNice to see you cover Ryuki. This should be interesting.
ReplyDeleteRyuki was “my” Kamen Rider as well. It was one of my first series and I loved it at the time (even did an extensive coverage of it for one of non-english toku sites), but got disillusioned with the show as well. I don’t even blame the finale specifically necessarily, but the entire last third of the show in general (starting right with Tiger’s idiotic storyline slowly but steady killing everything good Ryuki had going for it followed by Yui stuff finishing it all off for good).
I still love the cast and for me Ryuki’s at its best when it focuses on characters rather than story or any kind of progression (which it executes poorly pretty often).
One thing that kinda bothers me about Shinji right from the start is how one-note he comes off initially. Kuuga had a lot of idealized things, but still felt grounded in reality. And watching Ryuki between two Inoue series, you just can see the difference between him and Kobayashi who’s clearly influenced by anime school of writing as opposed to Inoue’s soapier dramatic approach. I get that Shinji is supposed to be naive and inexperienced, but show goes a bit too far. He’s clearly a very interactive person, so I can’t even call him socially awkward to justify his plain refusal to accept some pretty obvious things. He’s supposed to be an ordinary person out of his depth, but not really stupid like show tries to paint him. A lot of Ryuki anime imitators take this even further and turn main characters into delusional pacifists with brain damage, so Shinji is far from the worst example I can think of, but a lot of his initial characterization still feels cartoonish. I’d even that Kouta was a better-conceived example of this archetype… initially. Plenty went wrong with him as well, but it’s the whole other topic.
I know you’re not a fan of Blade, but I think Rouse Cards are much more thought-out than Advent Decks. Later look cool and all, but with Blade cards you can actually understand the specialization of each Rider and come up with a few sound strategies for him to use in a fight (even if it’s not always evident in the show itself). Advent Decks sort of try to do that, but a lot of them feel awfully unbalanced. Like some effort was put into making certain Riders stand out with his/her abilities and not others (my favorite example is Verde being just a better version of Raia that can do everything he can and more).
Mirror Monsters just come off just meh. I don’t like the designs (non-contract Monsters especially come off bland and forgettable) and they rarely feel like an actual big threat they’re supposed to. At least they actually kill (or try to kill) people pretty frequently compared to many modern series, so I can give them that. Talking MM could have been a good idea if used right, like introducing a couple of advanced intelligent monsters in charge of others in show’s last quarter or so (Why not make Odin’s identity one for example?). Certainly would have mixed up late Ryuki stuff and maybe even contributed to Yui’s story.
As for Spiders, I don’t really think reusing same idea for the first monster is all that good. Plenty of previous shows already moved on from the spider and while it’s a nice callback, it’s better not to overuse it.
Btw, have you seen Dragon Knight?
I kinda like Tiger, but I guess I'm a weirdo. I get into it a little too much, but I do address the way Ryuki suffers for...prioritizing the "mystery" and getting stuck on that or becoming too afraid to shake up the status quo.
DeleteIt's strange that Inoue and Kobayashi both come from strictly toku and anime backgrounds, but their styles are so different. Inoue, obviously, really longs to write for dramas. And I think Kobayashi is similar, but she definitely has more of that anime and comic influence and doesn't let that get in her way. I say this as a fan of Inoue's, but I feel like he has a complex about it.
Like I just said in the reply above, I think the quality of Kobayashi's work depends on the producer of the show she's doing. Kobayashi and Shirakura go on to kinda bring the worst out of each other the more they go along. (Culminating in the "franchise-saving" -- in Shirakura's own mind -- Amazons.)
Gaim's obviously influenced by shows like Ryuki, but I never thought it was "Ryuki done right" like a lot of people do. There's so many unessential characters in Gaim, and most of them feel like one-dimensional cartoons. Ren might feel one note in his worry about Eri, but it's a believable, grounded, realistic motivation compared to...whatever the hell they were trying and failing to do with Baron, for example. Gaim never really felt like it had a threat to me beyond the Helheim forest. There were dozens of Riders, but none of them represented the danger that a Ryuki Rider would. I probably should rewatch Gaim sometime, though. It's kind of hard, though, when it's just so damn goofy, but still wants to be TRAGIDARKEDGY! At least Ryuki only goofs out in the requisite later episodes. Gaim's kinda like Ryuki ep 29 for the entire series.
I've only watched the first episode of Dragon Knight and...I remember it seeming about as cringey as a Power Rangers, even though the staff thought they were making a really, really cool show. It doesn't seem to me like Ryuki was the best choice for what they wanted to do.
Gaim's biggest issue for me that cast wassn't allowed to breathe really. Most of them had potential, but Urobutchi clearly liked writing about Kouta/Mitchy's tragedy more than anyone else (which kinda undermines the entire point of a "comptetion for the big prize" show was pitched as). My favourite character at the time was Takatora and I was pretty disappointed with how little show gave him beyond being Kouta's butter.
DeleteI still liked a lot of what show was going for, but I'd still probably take Ryuki (with all its many flaws) over it.