Inalienable: “The Purge”
Major thanks to Kapaychan for reviewing it first, and thus saving me a rewatch for the order of events. Plus, hers is a lot funnier.
The four main groups of the Forever Knights that we’ve seen so far-Patrick and Urian from Alien Force and Ultimate Alien and Enoch and Driscoll from the original-gather at the Round Table (it’s only a model), ready to war with each other once more. In the middle of this, Old George steps in, flanked by a couple of…well, there’s no way for me to put this despite my bias, very cool looking Knights in high-tech armor. Really, these guys don’t need laser lances or anything-they can just generate holographic shields and lightsabers from their armor; I think it’s similar to what Psyphon used back in “Reflected Glory.”
Anyway, the Forever Knights, particularly Driscoll, challenge him, but the ancient man promptly hands them their asses. Remember this the next time you’re complaining about how slow Grandpa drives. He tells Driscoll that if he wants to know who he is, to think of the tapestries in the castles, and Driscoll realizes that he’s the First Knight. The other heretical leaders bow before him as George vows to unite them under one banner to rid the world of the alien threat they have too long left unchecked. This doesn’t come up again (though I hope it will), but their first victim is Pierce, who they electrocute once he argues that he’s got every legal right to be on the planet. So, did Pierce just die? You know, it was really unclear.
The team is busy fighting that elephant guy from “Basic Training” again (whose name is apparently Trombipular or something like that; I still have trouble with it) when Argit arrives, allowing him to escape. While the team isn’t exactly willing to hear him out, he reveals that the Forever Knights are after him and every other alien on the planet, and he wants their protection. Naturally, Kevin decides this is worth investigating, since he’s Argit’s sort-of-friend and he’s got a point anyway. They stop by several castles only to find them deserted, but at the last, Argit trips the security system, and they wind up having to fight a mechanical dragon, just like in “Ben 10 Returns.” It’s kind of a filler battle, so let me sum it up with “Friends don’t use friends as ammunition.” Apparently, Ben and Kevin go to the Kamen Rider Decade school of tag-team fighting. Waiting for the day they use the Hibiki attack.
Coming to the conclusion that if the Forever Knights are attacking aliens, they should be checking for aliens rather than knights, they decide to head to a popular hangout for aliens. So where? Roswell? Tokyo? New York City or LA? Cheyenne Mountain?
No. Of course, it’s the Abandoned Warehouse District, which happens to secretly house an alien grocery store. Guess that would explain why they even HAVE an Abandoned Warehouse District anyway. They meet with the shopkeeper, who provides Grandpa Max with all of his weird food…well, the weird alien food at least. Gwen senses something suspicious about the whole place (namely the fact that it’s empty), and the shopkeeper totally misses her glowing pink eyes as she says that they should get going. Once they leave, the shopkeeper goes to the back to tell a hiding alien family that it was only the Tennyson team and he got rid of them, but the team shows up right behind him for an explanation. Why, no, this doesn’t remind us of ANYTHING historical or current AT ALL.
The shopkeeper confirms that the Forever Knights are after aliens and that they came to him demanding he shut down and turn over all of his customers. Unfortunately for him, the next supply ship comes Thursday, and it’s his biggest day-even if he tried to stop his customers from coming, they still would. What, there’s no way to put up a warning that says “Stay away, danger?” and make sure everybody knows? In a world confirmed to have Twitter? I call bullshit. Ben decides this is the perfect time to attack, so on Thursday, they hold a stakeout as the ship arrives. Sure enough, the Knights arrive to capture/kill the alien customers, and the team goes into action. The Knight unit is led by Driscoll, as a trust-building exercise from George, who finds his lack of faith disturbing. Determined to prove…something to his leader, Driscoll holds the aliens hostage. Ben tries to appeal to honor and decides it’s time to d-d-d-d-duel! What? I had to! Driscoll agrees, and they go at it, Ben turning down Kevin’s suggestion of going Way Big and totally going Ultraman on their asses. It hits me now just how ironic that is, given in an alternate future, Ben totally went Ultraman on his ass. Instead, Ben decides to do this honorably, by jousting as Ultimate Spidermonkey. Not sure what makes him more honorable than the rest, but whatever. He learns that Driscoll’s new armor hurts like all hell, but he ultimately manages to defeat him. But of course, Driscoll goes against honor and threatens to kill the aliens anyway if Ben doesn’t stand down. Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal. Ben, however, follows it up with a Doctor Who speech threatening to wipe every last stinkin’ Forever Knight out of the sky-or something to that effect-if he doesn’t hold to his word and leave the aliens alone.
Driscoll returns home in defeat and apologizes to Old George for failing and failing to uphold the Forever Knights’ principles. But Old George, who still recognizes doubt in him, has faith in him and makes him his second-in-command, to lead the Knights while he goes on his quest for the battle of a hundred lifetimes…
I’m trying not to show my dislike of this arc. I really am. But unfortunately, I was pretty bored by this episode, and I’m going to have to dedicate my analysis to the three things that bugged me the most (as brought up in a reaction post I put up immediately after)
First, I’m still bored by the Forever Knights. Maybe it’s because I’m not a big fan of the original. I didn’t know who Enoch or Driscoll was beyond a look-up on Wikipedia. And sure, I might have seen “Ben 10 vs. the Negative 10,” but it was hard for me to follow because I didn’t know what the hell was going on. To put this in perspective alongside another one of my fandoms, it’s kind of like going into Power Rangers in Space without having watched any of the previous shows. This is exactly what I did. Now, I certainly enjoyed PRiS and consider it to be one of my favorite seasons (the favorite, at this posting, being RPM), and the same holds true for the Ben 10 sequels. Or going into Gokaiger without any knowledge of Super Sentai (again, guilty). Or going into Decade without knowing any of the Heisei Kamen Rider series before it (I’m actually trying to avert this, as I’m going through 555 and then starting the whole series from Kuuga and able to skip the ones I’ve seen: Ryuki, 555 and Den-O; it might be a problem for Fourze, though, but I don’t know how the anniversary element is going to go there)
But I think what really causes a problem with the Forever Knights in this series is the same problem that plagued Vilgax, Hex and Charmcaster, and even Animo after a while. It’s something that I can virtually guarantee that those who despise the sequels will agree with, though I’m going to put it in a diplomatic way: The original series villains simply don’t click with the sequel crew. I personally believe that the writers do a whole lot better with the villains they themselves have created: the Highbreed, Aggregor, Darkstar (much as I’m not crazy about him), and Albedo, among others.
Now, this is not necessarily a bad thing. I consider myself a pretty good writer, and there are still characters I have trouble with (notably Koji Minamoto of Digimon Frontier). But it becomes a problem when you try to include these characters in a major plot and you just don’t know how to write them. You will headdesk, you will struggle with their voice, you will try to adapt them in a way that fits for the plot or is simply easier to write, and you’re going to get complaints from your audience (I have gotten this about Koji in “Yang-Yin,” for instance). And then things just lag from there. It’s hard, and for all I like that the sequels try to include fan favorite villains, I’d really just prefer that the storyline focus more on the new guys, since they have felt much better-the Aggregor arc is a very good example.
The Knights-I still don’t get what they’re about. Now they’re trying to protect the Earth from the scum of the universe, to quote the Men in Black. The writers have tried to build a history for them and an entire mythology, but it just hasn’t struck me as compelling yet. George was really cool when we didn’t know what he was up to. When he walked into Area 51 and destroyed the whole compound and we have no idea how. Now we see that he’s regained his memories or whatever, and the loss of mystery makes him a little less compelling a character.
And this comes down to the fact that it’s another racism plot. In a sci fi series, you absolutely need a racism plot, and given that this is a show geared toward kids? It’s vital. You need to emphasize that just because somebody looks different from you, it is not okay to hate them. But here’s where I have the issue: Alien Force had the Highbreed plot focusing on genocide. If you were going to put the Forever Knights genocide plot anywhere, it would have been after that. They tried to build it up a bit alongside it, but they really didn’t go anywhere until now. It would have been the perfect place for it: Ben has proven to the Highbreed that their self-destructive method of wiping out all other species because they’re so far gone that they themselves can’t interbreed even if they wanted to is wrong. And it would be perfect to take those lessons and apply them to the humans. To force the Forever Knights to see the same thing. Hell, I think that it would have made an awesome dual plot-on one front, Ben’s trying to prevent the Highbreed from wiping out all other life in the galaxy, and on the other front, the Forever Knights are doing the same on Earth. But here, so far removed from the lessons of the Highbreed arc-forgotten in Ben’s pride against Vilgax, his frustration against Aggregor, his fury against Kevin, his problems with his fame, his issues with Julie, and his ONORE DECADE! from Will Harangue-it feels out of place. It’s hard to remember these lessons, especially if you’re watching this from the perspective of a ten-year-old kid in the target audience. Those episodes were years, series, seasons, and hiatuses away.
And finally, Ben makes a pretty awesome speech to Driscoll regarding what he’ll do if he goes back on his word and continues to attack the aliens (taken from Kapaychan’s review):
Maybe you've forgotten something. I'm Ben Tennyson. Wielder of the most powerful weapon in the universe. I stopped the Highbreed Invasion. I defeated Vilgax in hand-to-hand combat. And I've beaten the Forever Knights more times than I can count. Here's what's going to happen: You're going to release these prisoners. You're going to crawl back wherever you came from and you're going to stop hunting down aliens. Because if you don't, I promise you will regret it for the rest of your Very. Short. Lives.
This is, admittedly, a minor problem. But it’s something that’s been bugging me since I started doing my Kamen Rider Ryuki reviews during the hiatus. I perfectly understand the mindset Ben is coming from when he speaks so easily about being able to kill someone. I understand from “Forge of Creation,” from his self-justifications in “Enemy of My Enemy” and “Absolute Power,” but I have never believed even in his darkest hour that he is capable of killing another person with his own hands.
The whole premise of Ryuki is that the thirteen Kamen Riders must fight and kill each other in order to gain their wish. The two lead Riders are Ryuki, Shinji Kido, and Knight, Ren Akiyama, who first meet by Ren trying to kill Shinji (though, to be fair, this is how most Kamen Riders’ first meetings go no matter the series; Ryuki and Decade just take this to the extreme). Shinji, who believes this whole killing thing is total bullshit, absolutely refuses to take another Rider’s life under any circumstances. In episodes 13 and 14 (which I have yet to review), he’s led to believe that he killed a fellow Rider, Zolda, and this leaves him in a suicidal depression. He’s so horrified by what he’s done that he refuses to fight at all, even though he knows it means his contract Monster will eat him. Ren, on the other hand, has to fight in order to save his fiancée’s life, and he constantly tries to maintain this mask that he’s the perfect Rider and he’ll be able to do what needs to be done-gee, sound familiar? But several times throughout the series and the special, he comes to realize that he’s a decent human being and he doesn’t have it in him to kill someone else. When he does in the series, killing Kamen Rider Odin (the first time, at least), in self-defense, he completely loses it in horror-the exact same way Shinji lost it when he thought he’d killed Zolda.
But it really comes to a head when they have to fight each other. Despite themselves, Shinji and Ren have become friends, and no matter what it is they want, when they have to fight one another to the death, neither can finish the other off. The first time they really go at it (well, after the first few episodes when they first met, when third main character Yui had to stop Ren from killing Shinji) is after Kamen Rider Raia points out to Ren that he doesn’t have what it takes to kill somebody, and he ends up failing to kill Kamen Rider Gai-a move that would have cost him his life, had it not been for Shinji pushing him out of the way of the attack. Ren decides that the only way to overcome this is to work alongside crazy-pants serial killer Kamen Rider Ouja, whom he asks to kill Shinji, since he can’t do it himself. Ren eventually learns this was a Bad Idea and he works alongside Shinji to try to stop Ouja. The second time comes when his fiancée is dying, and he challenges Shinji to a battle, despite the fact that he knows he doesn’t have enough time to save her, not with so many Riders still out there. He and Shinji battle, but they eventually separate knowing that Ren couldn’t kill him, and Ren goes to challenge someone else, culminating in killing Odin out of self-defense. The third and fourth times are Shinji’s fault, when the main villain, Kanzaki, convinces him that the only way to save Yui is to fully participate in the Rider War, and he attacks Ren. Still, for all he tries to do what needs to be done (wonder why this still sounds so familiar), he can’t bring himself to kill, much less to kill his best friend. And this isn’t even touching the special!
I really wish I could find clips of the battles where these events happened, but the closest I can get is a Shinji-centric music video someone made to Evanescence’s “Going Under.” See here around 2:40 for Shinji’s hesitation as he tries to kill Ren-he knows he has to do it, but he can’t make himself make the final attack because he can’t help but think of all the Riders he’s watched die.
It’s something that isn’t present throughout Ultimate Alien, and I didn’t realize I was missing it until I did the review for 13 Riders. That had really been the heart of that special, and I realized that for all I could appreciate Ben’s psychological defense mechanisms saying that he had to kill Kevin in season 1, there was never any soul-searching of whether or not he could do it. Hell, that moment at the end where Gwen stops him is just as ambiguous as when Yui stops Ren from killing Shinji in their first meeting-it’s impossible to tell whether or not he’d really be able to do it. And at least in the case of Ben, I can’t believe he would. And I think that takes a lot of the bite out of his speech; he says he’s going to hunt down the Forever Knights if they come after the aliens again, but really? What’s a guy with a no-kill policy he hasn’t broken going to do against an ancient warrior who can destroy an entire military facility apparently with his mind?
But really, guys, go check out Kapaychan’s review of this episode on deviantART. She got a lot more out of the episode and really manages to find the heart of the arc, where I’m still struggling over the ways they chose to get there.
“The Purge” was written by David McDermott.
The four main groups of the Forever Knights that we’ve seen so far-Patrick and Urian from Alien Force and Ultimate Alien and Enoch and Driscoll from the original-gather at the Round Table (it’s only a model), ready to war with each other once more. In the middle of this, Old George steps in, flanked by a couple of…well, there’s no way for me to put this despite my bias, very cool looking Knights in high-tech armor. Really, these guys don’t need laser lances or anything-they can just generate holographic shields and lightsabers from their armor; I think it’s similar to what Psyphon used back in “Reflected Glory.”
Anyway, the Forever Knights, particularly Driscoll, challenge him, but the ancient man promptly hands them their asses. Remember this the next time you’re complaining about how slow Grandpa drives. He tells Driscoll that if he wants to know who he is, to think of the tapestries in the castles, and Driscoll realizes that he’s the First Knight. The other heretical leaders bow before him as George vows to unite them under one banner to rid the world of the alien threat they have too long left unchecked. This doesn’t come up again (though I hope it will), but their first victim is Pierce, who they electrocute once he argues that he’s got every legal right to be on the planet. So, did Pierce just die? You know, it was really unclear.
The team is busy fighting that elephant guy from “Basic Training” again (whose name is apparently Trombipular or something like that; I still have trouble with it) when Argit arrives, allowing him to escape. While the team isn’t exactly willing to hear him out, he reveals that the Forever Knights are after him and every other alien on the planet, and he wants their protection. Naturally, Kevin decides this is worth investigating, since he’s Argit’s sort-of-friend and he’s got a point anyway. They stop by several castles only to find them deserted, but at the last, Argit trips the security system, and they wind up having to fight a mechanical dragon, just like in “Ben 10 Returns.” It’s kind of a filler battle, so let me sum it up with “Friends don’t use friends as ammunition.” Apparently, Ben and Kevin go to the Kamen Rider Decade school of tag-team fighting. Waiting for the day they use the Hibiki attack.
Coming to the conclusion that if the Forever Knights are attacking aliens, they should be checking for aliens rather than knights, they decide to head to a popular hangout for aliens. So where? Roswell? Tokyo? New York City or LA? Cheyenne Mountain?
No. Of course, it’s the Abandoned Warehouse District, which happens to secretly house an alien grocery store. Guess that would explain why they even HAVE an Abandoned Warehouse District anyway. They meet with the shopkeeper, who provides Grandpa Max with all of his weird food…well, the weird alien food at least. Gwen senses something suspicious about the whole place (namely the fact that it’s empty), and the shopkeeper totally misses her glowing pink eyes as she says that they should get going. Once they leave, the shopkeeper goes to the back to tell a hiding alien family that it was only the Tennyson team and he got rid of them, but the team shows up right behind him for an explanation. Why, no, this doesn’t remind us of ANYTHING historical or current AT ALL.
The shopkeeper confirms that the Forever Knights are after aliens and that they came to him demanding he shut down and turn over all of his customers. Unfortunately for him, the next supply ship comes Thursday, and it’s his biggest day-even if he tried to stop his customers from coming, they still would. What, there’s no way to put up a warning that says “Stay away, danger?” and make sure everybody knows? In a world confirmed to have Twitter? I call bullshit. Ben decides this is the perfect time to attack, so on Thursday, they hold a stakeout as the ship arrives. Sure enough, the Knights arrive to capture/kill the alien customers, and the team goes into action. The Knight unit is led by Driscoll, as a trust-building exercise from George, who finds his lack of faith disturbing. Determined to prove…something to his leader, Driscoll holds the aliens hostage. Ben tries to appeal to honor and decides it’s time to d-d-d-d-duel! What? I had to! Driscoll agrees, and they go at it, Ben turning down Kevin’s suggestion of going Way Big and totally going Ultraman on their asses. It hits me now just how ironic that is, given in an alternate future, Ben totally went Ultraman on his ass. Instead, Ben decides to do this honorably, by jousting as Ultimate Spidermonkey. Not sure what makes him more honorable than the rest, but whatever. He learns that Driscoll’s new armor hurts like all hell, but he ultimately manages to defeat him. But of course, Driscoll goes against honor and threatens to kill the aliens anyway if Ben doesn’t stand down. Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal. Ben, however, follows it up with a Doctor Who speech threatening to wipe every last stinkin’ Forever Knight out of the sky-or something to that effect-if he doesn’t hold to his word and leave the aliens alone.
Driscoll returns home in defeat and apologizes to Old George for failing and failing to uphold the Forever Knights’ principles. But Old George, who still recognizes doubt in him, has faith in him and makes him his second-in-command, to lead the Knights while he goes on his quest for the battle of a hundred lifetimes…
I’m trying not to show my dislike of this arc. I really am. But unfortunately, I was pretty bored by this episode, and I’m going to have to dedicate my analysis to the three things that bugged me the most (as brought up in a reaction post I put up immediately after)
First, I’m still bored by the Forever Knights. Maybe it’s because I’m not a big fan of the original. I didn’t know who Enoch or Driscoll was beyond a look-up on Wikipedia. And sure, I might have seen “Ben 10 vs. the Negative 10,” but it was hard for me to follow because I didn’t know what the hell was going on. To put this in perspective alongside another one of my fandoms, it’s kind of like going into Power Rangers in Space without having watched any of the previous shows. This is exactly what I did. Now, I certainly enjoyed PRiS and consider it to be one of my favorite seasons (the favorite, at this posting, being RPM), and the same holds true for the Ben 10 sequels. Or going into Gokaiger without any knowledge of Super Sentai (again, guilty). Or going into Decade without knowing any of the Heisei Kamen Rider series before it (I’m actually trying to avert this, as I’m going through 555 and then starting the whole series from Kuuga and able to skip the ones I’ve seen: Ryuki, 555 and Den-O; it might be a problem for Fourze, though, but I don’t know how the anniversary element is going to go there)
But I think what really causes a problem with the Forever Knights in this series is the same problem that plagued Vilgax, Hex and Charmcaster, and even Animo after a while. It’s something that I can virtually guarantee that those who despise the sequels will agree with, though I’m going to put it in a diplomatic way: The original series villains simply don’t click with the sequel crew. I personally believe that the writers do a whole lot better with the villains they themselves have created: the Highbreed, Aggregor, Darkstar (much as I’m not crazy about him), and Albedo, among others.
Now, this is not necessarily a bad thing. I consider myself a pretty good writer, and there are still characters I have trouble with (notably Koji Minamoto of Digimon Frontier). But it becomes a problem when you try to include these characters in a major plot and you just don’t know how to write them. You will headdesk, you will struggle with their voice, you will try to adapt them in a way that fits for the plot or is simply easier to write, and you’re going to get complaints from your audience (I have gotten this about Koji in “Yang-Yin,” for instance). And then things just lag from there. It’s hard, and for all I like that the sequels try to include fan favorite villains, I’d really just prefer that the storyline focus more on the new guys, since they have felt much better-the Aggregor arc is a very good example.
The Knights-I still don’t get what they’re about. Now they’re trying to protect the Earth from the scum of the universe, to quote the Men in Black. The writers have tried to build a history for them and an entire mythology, but it just hasn’t struck me as compelling yet. George was really cool when we didn’t know what he was up to. When he walked into Area 51 and destroyed the whole compound and we have no idea how. Now we see that he’s regained his memories or whatever, and the loss of mystery makes him a little less compelling a character.
And this comes down to the fact that it’s another racism plot. In a sci fi series, you absolutely need a racism plot, and given that this is a show geared toward kids? It’s vital. You need to emphasize that just because somebody looks different from you, it is not okay to hate them. But here’s where I have the issue: Alien Force had the Highbreed plot focusing on genocide. If you were going to put the Forever Knights genocide plot anywhere, it would have been after that. They tried to build it up a bit alongside it, but they really didn’t go anywhere until now. It would have been the perfect place for it: Ben has proven to the Highbreed that their self-destructive method of wiping out all other species because they’re so far gone that they themselves can’t interbreed even if they wanted to is wrong. And it would be perfect to take those lessons and apply them to the humans. To force the Forever Knights to see the same thing. Hell, I think that it would have made an awesome dual plot-on one front, Ben’s trying to prevent the Highbreed from wiping out all other life in the galaxy, and on the other front, the Forever Knights are doing the same on Earth. But here, so far removed from the lessons of the Highbreed arc-forgotten in Ben’s pride against Vilgax, his frustration against Aggregor, his fury against Kevin, his problems with his fame, his issues with Julie, and his ONORE DECADE! from Will Harangue-it feels out of place. It’s hard to remember these lessons, especially if you’re watching this from the perspective of a ten-year-old kid in the target audience. Those episodes were years, series, seasons, and hiatuses away.
And finally, Ben makes a pretty awesome speech to Driscoll regarding what he’ll do if he goes back on his word and continues to attack the aliens (taken from Kapaychan’s review):
Maybe you've forgotten something. I'm Ben Tennyson. Wielder of the most powerful weapon in the universe. I stopped the Highbreed Invasion. I defeated Vilgax in hand-to-hand combat. And I've beaten the Forever Knights more times than I can count. Here's what's going to happen: You're going to release these prisoners. You're going to crawl back wherever you came from and you're going to stop hunting down aliens. Because if you don't, I promise you will regret it for the rest of your Very. Short. Lives.
This is, admittedly, a minor problem. But it’s something that’s been bugging me since I started doing my Kamen Rider Ryuki reviews during the hiatus. I perfectly understand the mindset Ben is coming from when he speaks so easily about being able to kill someone. I understand from “Forge of Creation,” from his self-justifications in “Enemy of My Enemy” and “Absolute Power,” but I have never believed even in his darkest hour that he is capable of killing another person with his own hands.
The whole premise of Ryuki is that the thirteen Kamen Riders must fight and kill each other in order to gain their wish. The two lead Riders are Ryuki, Shinji Kido, and Knight, Ren Akiyama, who first meet by Ren trying to kill Shinji (though, to be fair, this is how most Kamen Riders’ first meetings go no matter the series; Ryuki and Decade just take this to the extreme). Shinji, who believes this whole killing thing is total bullshit, absolutely refuses to take another Rider’s life under any circumstances. In episodes 13 and 14 (which I have yet to review), he’s led to believe that he killed a fellow Rider, Zolda, and this leaves him in a suicidal depression. He’s so horrified by what he’s done that he refuses to fight at all, even though he knows it means his contract Monster will eat him. Ren, on the other hand, has to fight in order to save his fiancée’s life, and he constantly tries to maintain this mask that he’s the perfect Rider and he’ll be able to do what needs to be done-gee, sound familiar? But several times throughout the series and the special, he comes to realize that he’s a decent human being and he doesn’t have it in him to kill someone else. When he does in the series, killing Kamen Rider Odin (the first time, at least), in self-defense, he completely loses it in horror-the exact same way Shinji lost it when he thought he’d killed Zolda.
But it really comes to a head when they have to fight each other. Despite themselves, Shinji and Ren have become friends, and no matter what it is they want, when they have to fight one another to the death, neither can finish the other off. The first time they really go at it (well, after the first few episodes when they first met, when third main character Yui had to stop Ren from killing Shinji) is after Kamen Rider Raia points out to Ren that he doesn’t have what it takes to kill somebody, and he ends up failing to kill Kamen Rider Gai-a move that would have cost him his life, had it not been for Shinji pushing him out of the way of the attack. Ren decides that the only way to overcome this is to work alongside crazy-pants serial killer Kamen Rider Ouja, whom he asks to kill Shinji, since he can’t do it himself. Ren eventually learns this was a Bad Idea and he works alongside Shinji to try to stop Ouja. The second time comes when his fiancée is dying, and he challenges Shinji to a battle, despite the fact that he knows he doesn’t have enough time to save her, not with so many Riders still out there. He and Shinji battle, but they eventually separate knowing that Ren couldn’t kill him, and Ren goes to challenge someone else, culminating in killing Odin out of self-defense. The third and fourth times are Shinji’s fault, when the main villain, Kanzaki, convinces him that the only way to save Yui is to fully participate in the Rider War, and he attacks Ren. Still, for all he tries to do what needs to be done (wonder why this still sounds so familiar), he can’t bring himself to kill, much less to kill his best friend. And this isn’t even touching the special!
I really wish I could find clips of the battles where these events happened, but the closest I can get is a Shinji-centric music video someone made to Evanescence’s “Going Under.” See here around 2:40 for Shinji’s hesitation as he tries to kill Ren-he knows he has to do it, but he can’t make himself make the final attack because he can’t help but think of all the Riders he’s watched die.
It’s something that isn’t present throughout Ultimate Alien, and I didn’t realize I was missing it until I did the review for 13 Riders. That had really been the heart of that special, and I realized that for all I could appreciate Ben’s psychological defense mechanisms saying that he had to kill Kevin in season 1, there was never any soul-searching of whether or not he could do it. Hell, that moment at the end where Gwen stops him is just as ambiguous as when Yui stops Ren from killing Shinji in their first meeting-it’s impossible to tell whether or not he’d really be able to do it. And at least in the case of Ben, I can’t believe he would. And I think that takes a lot of the bite out of his speech; he says he’s going to hunt down the Forever Knights if they come after the aliens again, but really? What’s a guy with a no-kill policy he hasn’t broken going to do against an ancient warrior who can destroy an entire military facility apparently with his mind?
But really, guys, go check out Kapaychan’s review of this episode on deviantART. She got a lot more out of the episode and really manages to find the heart of the arc, where I’m still struggling over the ways they chose to get there.
“The Purge” was written by David McDermott.