Kamen Rider Ryuki (2002-2003)

"If you do not fight, you will not survive."

 KAMEN RIDER RYUKI

 SYNOPSIS
 A wave of mysterious disappearances is gripping the city. Shinji Kido, cub reporter for the ORE Journal finds a strange deck of cards while investigating one disappearance and is pulled into the Mirror World, a parallel dimension accessible through any reflective surface. Once there, he learns what's behind the disappearances--the Mirror Monsters, who have been reaching through into our world and devouring people. He also encounters Ren Akiyama, Kamen Rider Knight (who looks a lot like Batman) and who is fighting the Mirror Monsters, though, not necessarily for reasons of altruism.

 To survive in the Mirror World (normal humans last about five minutes before they dissolve) you have the best chance if you're a Kamen Rider. To become a Kamen Rider, one must form a contract with a monster--which Shinji soon does, to a dragon called Dragredder. Forming said contract allows a Rider access to various powers through the cards in his deck, typically derived from the body parts of the monster (For example, Shini's Strike Vent card allows him to summon a sword. While this gives them access to a vast set of powers, it has a downside--you have to keep the monster fed with other Mirror Monsters. If you don't, or if your cards get damaged or destroyed, the monster will turn on you and devour you.

 So a Rider has to fight to survive, and not just against the Mirror Monsters. Because there are 13 other riders, all vying to win the Rider War (no, not that one), a contest being played out in the Mirror World between the Riders and organised by a mysterious man named Shiro Kanazaki. Whoever emerges victorious in the War will have his wish granted, and every one of them has a wish: Kamen Rider Knight wants to save the life of his fiancee. Kamen Rider Zolda wants immortality. Kamen Rider Ohja wants revenge on Zolda, the man who locked him away in jail. Kamen Rider Tiger wants to be a hero. Kamen Rider Raia wants to end the Rider War to avenge his friend.

 Shinji sees all this as madness and just wants to destroy the Mirror Monsters and stop the fighting between Riders.

 But what does Shiro Kanazaki want? What is the ultimate goal of the Rider War? Kanazaki created the Advent Decks and the Mirror World, and through his agent, the phenomenally powerful Kamen Rider Odin, who possesses the Time Vent card that allows him to roll time back to the beginning of the Rider War. Some of the answers lie with his sister Yui, Ren's ally and Shinji's friend, who has a deeper connection to the whole mystery than even she knows.

 In the meantime, the Rider War continues.

 The only way out? "Punch where there's golden feathers."

 

 
 ANALYSIS
 My run of covering American Kamen Rider shows was bound to be short (they've only tried to twice--once with Masked Rider, which you may remember from last week, didn't do so well) and once with next week's show. For the second show, Kamen Rider Dragon Knight, I wanted to do the original Japanese show first and then the American version for a side-by-side comparison. So this is part 1 of 2.

 And now, a rather large-ish spoiler, which I have to get outta the way because it's impossible to talk about Ryuki's plot very much without it. The Rider War is a stable time loop, created by Kanazaki to manipulate to to prevent a certain event from happening. If it should, Odin plays the Time Vent card, time rewinds back to the start of the Rider War and tries again (if you've ever played the game Blazblue, or remember the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Year of Hell," that's his angle) so abuse of the Reset Button is not just a bug, it's a feature, as there are THREE alternate endings to this show: one happens in a TV special (13 Riders, which had two endings that fans were allowed to vote on, both of which involved something of a reset) another happens in the feature film (Episode Final, which features Shinji's evil counterpart Ryuga, and one of the early female riders, Femme) and the final, canonical version in the series (yes, somehow the main series was the last ending)

 Ryuki is generally considered on of the darker Rider shows, not as oppressive as 555 (the writer of 555, Toshiki Inoue, also wrote some episodes of Ryuki, as well as 13 Riders and Episode Final) was, but close. Besides Shinji, most of the other Riders are either jerks or out-and-out psychopaths who eliminate their opposition without a whit of conscience and have little tolerance for Shinji's earnest desire to fight the Mirror Monsters and keep the Riders from battling each other, which they see as naive and pointless in the face of their pursuit of power.

 One of the things I like a lot about Ryuki is how easily it seems to juggle a large cast and multiple narrative arcs with its wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey plot. You're talking about 13 Riders (OK, minus the 3 that just show up in the movies, that still leaves ten) Yui,Yui's grandmother, and Shinji's co-workers at ORE Journal. It's a big cast for a 50-episode series. All the Riders have an individual arc (even Ohja, who may be one of the worst people in the history of Kamen Rider has a storyline that makes him terrifying, dangerous, but almost pitiable as well) that plays itself out to an often bleak and brutal conclusion. The further into the show you get and the more ferocious the Rider War becomes, the higher the stakes and more costly the victories. If Ryuki has a point, or a central idea driving it, it's the question of what is worth fighting for? What do you hold on to? And how can your intentions and your will to win turn on you and destroy you?

 A word, for a moment, about Ryuki's standing in relation to the other Kamen Rider series. While Ryuki would set the tone for Rider shows going forward--multiple riders, more collectible gimmicks, etc--at the time it was an incredible departure from the standard Kamen Rider show. For one thing, there hadn't been a show featuring this many Riders simultaneously--the previous show, Agito, had 4, which was the most ever. For another, the Kamen Riders previous had been slightly tortured but unimpeachably good guys, and the Riders in Ryuki . . .generally aren't. For another (and this seems like a minor thing) the Ryuki Riders henshin belts weren't part of their bodies--a major shift in Kamen Rider design (they're basically just docks for the Advent Decks) and Kamen Rider fans at the time huffed at the somewhat Highlander-inspired plot.

 Let's put it in context in the timeline--at this point, this is the third series since the beginning of the Heisei era, and while Kuuga and Agito had pushed against the conventions a little bit, they hewed very much to the standard Kamen Rider formula. Ryuki blew it up, and while that ultimately worked out for the good (Kamen Rider's still going strong as I write this and the latest series, Gaim, is frankly amazing and owes a lot to Ryuki) but at the time was so radical that Episode Final was made because they weren't sure they were going to get a full run.

But subverting preconceptions wants the right way to go. Ryuki is, believe it or not, probably a show that's best watched early on if you're getting into Kamen Rider--the longer you wait after seeing other shows, the more it may not sit well initially, but the wide variety of characters and engrossing plots will soon draw you in and really give you something to sink your teeth into. I really ended up enjoying it a lot more than I thought I might.
 
 NEXT WEEK
 Two weeks ago, we looked at the first attempt to bring Kamen Rider to America, and I've been in a bad mood ever since. Next week, we'll look at the second attempt to bring it over from six years back. Join us in seven as Ryuki is adapted for American audiences, tells a wildly different but surprisingly deep (for American kid's TV, anyways) story, features improves special effects from the Japanese original, and stuntwork so great that it won them an Emmy.

 And it got cancelled two episodes from the end. Sigh.

 It's part 2 of our side-to-side comparison--Kamen Rider Dragon Knight.