Fight against fate: Ryuki 21-24
Yui’s Past (Yasuko Kobayashi): Previously on Kamen Rider Ryuki: Ren confronted his inability to kill, jailed murderer Takeshi Asakura became Ouja, and Ouja killed Gai, leading Ren to decide to form an alliance with him and attack Shinji.
This episode finishes up the “Ren is really fucked up and makes a series of mistakes” arc, at least for the next ten or so episodes. Knight attacks Ryuki, who refuses to fight back, thinking of Tezuka’s warning that Ren is intentionally modeling Asakura’s behavior in order to restore his will to fight. Raia is forced to jump in to protect Ryuki, but before the three of them can fight, Metalgelas interrupts, so they return to the real world. There, Tezuka confronts Asakura about a man named Yuichi Saito, whom Asakura doesn’t remember. Tezuka then warns him that Metalgelas wants revenge for Asakura killing Gai. And I have to give credit to Hassei Takano, Tezuka’s actor, for his performance. I’m kind of on the fence about his acting. He’s certainly not bad, but he doesn’t seem to emote very well. He seems to have two emotions: calm and kind of happy. Granted, Ren doesn’t emote a whole lot, but Satoshi Matsuda is able to perform very well with subtle emotional cues, something I think Takano misses. And if you ever watch his performance as Hayato Ichimonji in Kamen Rider THE FIRST, you’ll really notice where he falters (though, to be fair to Takano, that movie has a whole host of problems, and Ichimonji in general is a headache and a half). So it’s great seeing him put more emotion into his acting, outright growling at Asakura here. Like I said, he’s not bad, but I don’t think he’s nearly as good as Takamasa Suga, Satoshi Matsuda, Ryohei, and Takashi Hagino.
Ren tries to leave with Asakura, but Shinji tries to stop him. He finally asks Ren why he fights, which he was thinking about all throughout the previous episode. And Tezuka reveals that Ren wants Eri Ogawa to wake. Shinji manages to put two and two together and realizes the significance of Ren’s ring, that Eri is Ren’s lover. Ren confirms it, and he reveals that the great power is her only chance: the doctors have only given her another half a year to a year to live. Interestingly, he also insists that this is his fault, though episode 12 shows that he did go to the lab early, and therefore he saved her life. He made a contract with Darkwing, the Monster that attacked her, and that also helped save her. But it’s not enough, in his mind, and he unfairly blames himself for something that was completely out of his control. This, I think, ties into his whole inferiority complex as far as she goes, that he doesn’t think very much of himself and doesn’t value his own life or happiness, but he values hers immensely. Shinji is shaken by this revelation, since he’d believed that if he stopped the fighting, then everything would be all right. Tezuka has to assure him that he wasn’t wrong to want to stop this, but Shinji’s still doubtful because he doesn’t want Ren to lose someone so precious to him. Tezuka, however, warns him that Ren’s not the only one with something to lose, and they both have to admit that they don’t know what the right thing to do is. But Tezuka is insistent on stopping the fighting, since it’s the whole reason he became a Rider.
From here, the story splits again. I’m going to start with ORE Journal, since while it seems unimportant here, it becomes extremely important later on. Reiko calls Okubo to report on the crash, but she doesn’t believe that Asakura’s dead. She reminds him of the seemingly impossible escape from the restaurant last time, and she’s sure he’s just pulled his Houdini act again.
The next part is Shinji’s character development, which really is impressive. He spends the entire episode moping, reeling from the truth about Ren. He wonders if he has the right to stop him, but at the same time, he’s afraid of what’ll happen if he doesn’t. He’s been warned that Ren will die if he keeps fighting, but now he knows that Ren’s fiancée is dying, and this is his only chance to save her. Kanzaki appears to him, admitting that he’s surprised Shinji lasted so long for being an accidental Rider. He offers to give the doubtful Shinji something to fight for, telling him of the great power that the last Rider standing will receive. But Shinji’s confrontational, and it’s a great moment because so rarely does he get to deal with Kanzaki face-to-face, and he calls him out on his bullshit. He asks him what he really wants and points out that Yui’s worried sick over him. But Kanzaki derails this by mockingly saying that it’s all right if Shinji’s wish is to die for the other Riders, leaving Shinji as confused as ever. It gets to the point that the next day at work, he’s so deep in thought that Okubo and Shimada notice, and they’re worried. Shinji asks Okubo for advice on his conflicted beliefs, and Okubo argues that every journalist has to learn this: “There is one truth, but no one justice.” And I think that this is the heart of Ryuki as a deconstruction. Kamen Riders are supposed to fight for justice; this has been their calling since 1971. But what happens when justice is hard to determine? When you don’t know what’s right? When the conflicts and difficulties that you find in the real world leak into a superhero’s life? Does this mean that “justice” is useless? No. Okubo’s answer is that Shinji must believe in himself, and that will lead him to his justice, and Shinji leaves to think.
On Yui’s side, she’s still investigating the strange photo she discovered. She asks Sanako about it, and she’s alarmed that Yui has it, but she denies recognizing it and won’t answer Yui’s questions. Tezuka, however, agrees to help her and looks at the photo, finding the reflection of the Marunochi-line train in one of the windows. There’s also two children visible in a closed window, implying that somebody lives there. They go to investigate, tracking down the house by finding the subway’s emergence point. The house appears to be abandoned, and much to Yui’s surprise, the name “Kanzaki” is on the nameplate. But as they approach, she’s gripped by a painful fear, and it worries Tezuka enough that he warns her not to force herself to enter, and he goes in alone. Inside, it appears to be abandoned, with sheets on the furniture and newspapers covering the windows...and every glass surface.
As this goes on, Asakura is frustrated by Shinji’s very existence, since he makes the whole Rider battle stop being fun by getting mad when Asakura kills people. Funny that. Ren asks him to defeat Shinji, since he can’t do it himself. Asakura asks if Ren’s got a grudge against him, but Ren answers no, and that’s his problem: Shinji’s in his way because Ren likes him, and he’s not supposed to be friends with him. They manage to find the remains of Asakura’s old house, and a restless Asakura starts breaking things, insisting that his head only feels clear when he’s fighting. He tells Ren to call Shinji for a fight, but Ren says it’s pointless because Shinji refuses to fight. Well, Asakura doesn’t like to hear this, and he starts making his way over to Ren with a broken pipe, clearly threatening him if he doesn’t do this. At this point, Ren realizes that maybe trying to make friends with Takeshi the Homicidal Maniac wasn’t such a good idea, and he realizes in horror that Asakura has no reason to fight and kill other than his own personal enjoyment. Fortunately for Ren, Shinji appears. Normally, I’d complain about how easily he found them, but to be honest? Shinji’s a journalist. His job is to find people and places based on the flimsiest of leads and investigate. He knows to look at Asakura’s childhood home, since it looks like he’d been heading there. And he knows that Ren will be with Asakura. Shinji’s a pretty damn good journalist when he applies himself.
Shinji admits his doubts to Ren, who asks him if he’s just going to die out of pity for him. Shinji admits that he thought about it, but he doesn’t think that that’s right either. And here I think is a key difference between them. Both of them take a little too much on their shoulders: Ren blames himself unfairly for what happened to Eri, and he puts her needs ahead of his, and Shinji puts the needs of the other Riders ahead of his belief that the fighting is wrong. But where Ren will deny himself his own needs, his own humanity, and his own happiness, Shinji’s not willing to do that. He doesn’t see Ren as more important than he is; he has a good sense of his own self-worth, and unlike Ren, he’s not willing to sacrifice himself like that. I almost want to say it’s an Objectivist view of Kamen Rider and heroes in general, but it’s kinder than that. Yes, you’re pursuing your own interests, but in the interest of helping others, and this is something that’s in all of the Rider series that Kobayashi’s written. It’s a view that heroes have to be able to save themselves before they can save someone else, and that a broken hero with no sense of his own self-worth is not going to be able to value life and others truly unless he begins to value himself. See Eiji in OOO.
Instead, Shinji’s answer is that he’ll fight Ren, much to Ren’s surprise. Shinji offers to fight with all of his strength if that’s what Ren needs, and he’s willing to take on his burden, but he’s not going to die for him. This sets up a thing with these guys: Shinji will accept whatever stupid shit Ren has pulled and will welcome him back home with open arms, no matter how much Ren’s hurt his friends-okay, okay, you know where this is going. Ren agrees, but Asakura reminds him that he’s supposed to face Shinji, since, you know, Ren technically put out a hit on him. And Takamasa Suga and Satoshi Matsuda have the perfect facial expressions at this point: Shinji just gives this look like he’s saying, “Really, Ren? Really?!” while Ren has the decency to look ashamed. But before Shinji can complete his henshin pose, Asakura attacks him, and throughout the fight, Ryuki’s injury puts him at a severe disadvantage, and he’s losing. Ren can’t bear to watch any longer and finally gets his shit together and runs into help, throwing off Ouja’s Final Vent. Knight insists that he’ll fight Ryuki himself, but he’ll do that after defeating Ouja first. Knight gains the advantage, but Metalgelas appears, wanting a piece of Ouja too. Fed up, Ouja pulls out a second contract card. Oh, come on! First attacking before someone can transform, now this? That’s clearly cheating!
Tezuka senses a presence from the Mirror World upstairs in the old Kanzaki house while Yui remembers children drawing. As Yui collapses in terror, Tezuka goes to investigate, finding uncovered mirrors similar to the ones in Room 401 at Seimeiin University, and Kanzaki appears.
The contract complete, Metalgelas is forced to submit to Ouja’s will. Ouja preps Metalgelas’s Final Vent, and Ryuki and Knight hurry to use their Guard Vents, but they’re not fast enough, and both are hit…
Raia’s Revenge (Yasuko Kobayashi): Ryuki and Knight continue fighting Ouja, but they run into serious trouble when the time limit hits. They’re disintegrating, but Ouja doesn’t care and continues to attack them. Despite being exhausted, he pulls his own Final Vent on Ryuki and Knight, and the fact that he’s falling apart is probably the only reason that the two survive. The three of them make it out of the Mirror World, in pain and exhausted. Ren and Shinji start making their way out of Asakura’s lair, but Asakura tries to attack Shinji from behind with a broken pipe. However, the act of lifting it over his head throws off his balance, and he passes out, giving Shinji and Ren the chance to escape. This shows that the Mirror World’s time limit has physiological effects on the Riders. You can’t just go back to the real world when you see that you’re beginning to disintegrate, then go immediately back in to finish your fight. The time limit is the absolute limit your body can take the Mirror World’s destructive energy for a day. Your body needs to rest for a while between trips. Having made their escape, Shinji and Ren walk along the beach to their bikes, discussing what to do about Asakura. Interestingly, the logical answer of “call the police” is thrown out by Ren, with an equal amount of logic: Now that Asakura is a Rider, the police will only become casualties. Kind of makes you miss Kuuga and Agito, I guess. Since Ren’s argument makes sense, Shinji decides that their priority right now should be stopping Asakura. This gets Ren thinking about how Shinji offered to fight him earlier, being willing to help shoulder his burden, and he admits that he owes Shinji for that. Naturally, Shinji has no idea what he’s talking about, and naturally, Ren denies he said anything and derails the conversation until they wind up arguing over how much money Shinji owes Ren again.
On the saner side of things, Tezuka confronts Kanzaki in the old house, where he tries to coerce him into fighting. Kanzaki admits he chose Asakura for Tezuka’s sake as well as Kitaoka’s, hinting further at a past between the two Riders. He then presents Tezuka with a special card, Survive (Shippu-Swift Wind, Hurricane, etc.; I can never find a precise translation, but W later approximates it as a translation for the English word “cyclone”) and urges him not to defy the Riders’ fate and to fight, otherwise he’ll be the next to die. When Kanzaki disappears, Tezuka finds an empty sketchbook, but he’s attacked by an unseen Monster, deeply cutting his hand.
The two teams meet up back at Atori, and it turns out that after her panic attack, Yui had fainted and apparently Tezuka got her to bed, where she’s dreaming about crayon drawings of animals burning, and of two small children drawing. As the dreams wake her up, Shinji, Ren, and Tezuka discuss what Tezuka discovered about the old house. Shinji reasons that the children in the photo must be Shiro and Yui, but Tezuka has to reject the theory, pointing out that the subway train was only painted ten years ago-far too recently for this to be a photo of a young Shiro and Yui. He plans on investigating further, but Ren tells him to keep Yui out of it. He’s scared by her fainting spell, and Shinji has to agree. As Ren starts to leave for the apartment, Tezuka starts trolling him, saying that he looks like he “lost something [he] liked” (TV Nihon translation-I’m a little iffy on what it’s supposed to mean), but Ren’s only annoyed that Tezuka keeps trying to look into him.
Upstairs, Ren finds Yui curled up in the kitchen, shaken by her dream. He tries to talk to her about what happened at the old house, but she points out that he’s been acting strange ever since they met at her brother’s lab. Ren owns up to it but promises that it’s over. He tells her to leave the investigation to Shinji and Tezuka and not to get too involved, but she refuses, insisting that she wants to know. And this is a great moment between the two, showcasing how close they are. I’ve said before that Yui seems to think of Ren as a surrogate brother, and even Yasuko Kobayashi and Satoshi Matsuda said that Ren thinks of Yui as his little sister, and it really shows here. He’s being honest with her, which is a rarity with him up to this point. He’s worried, and he’s making sure she knows it. He doesn’t want her getting hurt again. But Yui doesn’t want him to protect her like that, and it’s a major part of her character development. She wants to know, even if it’s going to hurt her in the end. She’s going to continue getting involved until she gets to the bottom of this and stops her brother, no matter what Ren or even Kanzaki says. She’s willing to defy her brothers-biological and surrogate-if it means she can find the truth and stop everything. And to be honest, this is why I like her more than Hana of Den-O or Hina of OOO: she’s involved. She may not be physically strong the way her successors are, but she’s a much stronger character by refusing to stay on the sidelines the way they do, and this is a part of her characterization from the very beginning. And the sibling-like relationship between her and Ren is something I’m going to analyze more much later on in my endpoint analysis, when I have to compare to her actual brother.
Anyway, surprised by Ren’s amazingly level-headed behavior, Tezuka asks Shinji what happened, and he’s even more surprised to hear that the two of them fought. Kind of. In that they didn’t fight, but Shinji put the offer on the table and Ren asked for a rain check. Shinji admits that he wasn’t planning to do what Kanzaki wanted, but it was the only answer he could come up with. Again, Shinji doesn’t know what to do, and he’s not sure he knows what he believes in, so he does what he can and hopes for the best. Tezuka admits that destiny hasn’t changed, especially for the Riders, and he struggles to light a match with his injury, foreseeing the next Rider’s death. As the flame goes out, he’s shaken by the prediction, glancing momentarily at Shinji, who asks what he saw. Tezuka just says that he’ll be the next one to go.
Asakura, however, continues to be a problem, and when he wakes up and realizes that Ren and Shinji ran away long ago, he vows to kill the three Riders who’ve crossed him. Kitaoka may not know what’s going on, but he doesn’t believe for a moment that Asakura is dead, since Riders are notoriously hard to kill. This claim worries Goro, who covers it up by going out to shop. Meanwhile, ORE Journal is being hassled by some of their readers for suggesting that Asakura might still be alive. Shinji asks Reiko why she made that claim, and she promises to continue the investigation until she’s satisfied she’s found the truth. But he makes her promise not to investigate him alone. She casually responds that she’ll check in regularly, but Shinji is insistent enough to throw her off-guard, and she promises. It’s another good moment showing how Shinji’s coworkers are beginning to recognize his growth, though Shimada’s had enough of Mature Shinji and decides he’s been possessed, so he’s forced to make a run for it while Reiko holds her back. Wait for Den-O, sweetie.
Yui asks Sanako for some of her childhood pictures, but Sanako insists that they’re lost, still oddly avoidant about Yui’s past. She heads to the back of the shop to escape, saying she forgot something, but Yui follows, leaving Ren on the floor to handle the shop by himself. That’s when Goro pops in, asking if Ren knows whether or not Asakura is alive. He’s worried that Kitaoka will be targeted, but Ren reminds him that anybody could be a target. This, however, confirms Goro’s suspicions, and he leaves knowing the truth. What’s interesting about Ren’s development here is that you see him trying not to worry about it, like he’s telling himself that whatever Goro’s up to, it’s not his problem…and then he senses a Monster’s presence, and without hesitation, he races out the door. Down the road, Goro encounters Asakura, but Venosnaker blindsides him. By the time Ren arrives, everyone is gone.
Shinji meets Tezuka at a restaurant to discuss the latest findings about the Kanzaki house. It turns out that neighbors revealed an explosion happened there about thirteen years ago. Nobody knew what caused it, but both of the parents were killed. The older brother, Shiro, was badly hurt, but the younger sister, Yui, didn’t have a scratch on her. In the middle of this mystery, Shinji picks up that Tezuka seems oddly calm for a man who thinks he’s going to die, missing the way that Tezuka’s hands are shaking. Tezuka insists that yes, it’s going to happen, since his predictions are always right, but he still believes that fate can be changed. This leads Shinji to ask him why he became a Rider, and Tezuka admits that he wasn’t chosen to be a Rider. Instead, he’s a replacement for his best friend, the one who’d really been chosen, but he’d died.
Kitaoka gets a sudden call from Asakura about Goro, where the ransom is a battle with all the Riders. Ren arrives just after Kitaoka’s hung up, intending to do the right thing and tell him what happened…a little late to the party. What’s interesting here is the implication that Ren is all on-board for helping Kitaoka rescue Goro. Remember, he doesn’t even like Kitaoka. But he’s utterly shocked when Kitaoka refuses his help. Kitaoka insists that he has to keep fighting for himself to avoid becoming weak like Ren and Shinji did. Ren attempts to guilt trip him, pointing out that Goro was looking for Asakura for Kitaoka’s sake, but it backfires horribly when Kitaoka admits that Goro will do anything for him. Yeah, my gaydar’s off the chart with these two too. When Ren presses further, Kitaoka gets very defensive and challenges him to a fight, saying that right now, he has a reason to fight Ren.
Tezuka leaves and heads to his bike, but a Monster grabs him. He recognizes the Monster immediately and henshins just before he’s pulled into the Mirror World. Shinji arrives and henshins to help, finding Raia fighting fiercely against the Monster. Ryuki tries to help, wondering why he’s so uncharacteristically upset, but Raia outright shoves him out of the way, insisting on defeating the Monster himself as he thinks of his friend, Yuichi.
And without an answer, Ren agrees to the battle, and Knight and Zolda head to the Mirror World…
Changing Destiny (Yasuko Kobayashi): Having defeated the Monster, Raia thinks on Yuichi before returning to the real world. There, Shinji confronts him on what just happened, and Tezuka admits that the Monster had killed his friend, the intended Rider. He explains to Shinji that Yuichi Saito had flat-out refused to become a Rider. A talented amateur pianist, Yuichi had finally had the chance to hit it big by entering a competition. But one night, as he and Tezuka walked home, Yuichi was caught up in a fight with Asakura. In the fight, he cut his wrist, and it’s implied that this caused nerve damage, since it was impossible for Yuichi to make his fingers work properly in order to play. Kanzaki approached him with what is now the Raia deck, offering him the chance to use the great power to heal himself. Tezuka reveals that most of the Riders are actually seeking to use the reality-warping wish granted to the winner of the Rider War with the intent to heal someone, and not to become gods-which, of course, we see with Ren and Kitaoka. But instead, Yuichi gave up his dream to become a professional pianist, believing it to be wrong to fight other people. But by refusing his contract, his intended partner, Guldthunder, killed him. Tezuka had been with Yuichi throughout the whole ordeal, and he’d been unable to save him. This inability to change his friend’s fate led to his obsession with destiny. He wonders if Yuichi knew that rejecting the deck would lead to his death but followed that path anyway, and he respects Yuichi’s strength in continuing to do what he believed in. So in Yuichi’s honor, Tezuka took up the deck to try to preserve his friend’s ideal of justice and to try to change fate, since he’d been helpless against it before. Continuing the progress on his character development, Shinji admits that he understands and he wants to help, but he’s not sure if it’s okay to just stop the fighting.
Meanwhile, Asakura is frustrated that nobody’s answered his ransom demand, and Goro awesomely tells him something along the lines of “I told you so.” He doesn’t even flinch as Asakura starts trashing the car he’s been locked up in, instead using the distraction to pick the lock on his handcuffs.
The battle between Knight and Zolda is pretty evenly matched, and eventually, Ren and Kitaoka return, equally beaten up by the other. Kitaoka’s forced to admit that Ren’s gotten stronger since the last time they fought, but Ren snipes that Kitaoka might have gotten weaker, thoroughly disgusted that he’s not trying to save Goro. The argument they have here is a really good display of their philosophies, especially now that Ren’s gotten his head on straight. Kitaoka believes in putting himself first and thinks that self-sacrifice is stupid. And though he doesn’t say it outright, we’ve seen across the last several episodes that Ren believes in doing everything possible for a loved one’s sake, even if it means sacrificing your life or your own interests for them. Neither is able to understand the other, and they each think the other is weaker for his philosophy. But, in a great moment, once Ren’s gone, Kitaoka can’t take it anymore and starts racing for the door, implicitly to rescue Goro…only for Goro to open the door, revealing that he brought home groceries. And Asakura is left behind, absolutely pissed that Goro escaped.
Tezuka shocks Shinji and Yui by moving out of Shinji and Ren’s room, telling Shinji that he thinks he’s walking a separate path from the other two Riders. He tries to tell Yui something, but at the last second, he changes his mind and just thanks her for letting him stay. In private, Shinji tries to convince him to stay because of his prediction, but Tezuka warns him to keep a close eye on Yui, though he can’t or won’t explain just why. Ren arrives, and Tezuka gives him the Survive card, saying that he refuses to rise to Kanzaki’s bait and he wants Ren to use it instead. But with Tezuka now on his own, away from Shinji and Ren, Kanzaki goes to Asakura and tells him to defeat Raia.
On the ORE Journal side of things, while Shinji was in the Mirror World with Tezuka, Reiko is annoyed that she can’t reach Shinji’s phone-apparently, there’s no reception in the Mirror World-so she has to go investigate Asakura alone. Shinji’s distressed the next day to learn that she’s doing this alone, especially since she’d tried to call him like he’d asked her to. Reiko’s car gets stuck in the mud not far from Asakura’s lair, and when she goes to investigate the ruins, she finds signs that someone is living there, along with Asakura’s trademark jacket-proof positive that he is alive. Yes. Apparently he’s got a jacket in the exact same style as his stolen shirt. Pretty good at getting extra clothes, for an escaped convict.
Tezuka realizes that Yui, not Kanzaki, is the key to the mystery. But as he puzzles over this, Kanzaki appears to try to provoke him again, insisting that Yuichi regretted not becoming a Rider. Over Tezuka’s protests that it can’t be true, he insists that this is human nature: to fight for yourself, and Yuichi died in regret, and so too will Tezuka. At this, Asakura appears, threatening further violence should Tezuka refuse to fight. The presence from the Mirror World manages to catch Shinji’s attention, and also Yui’s…who has a very strange reaction, staring into the light in almost a trance, breaking a dish in the process. Huh.
Distracted by Kanzaki’s words about Yuichi, Raia can hardly fight back against Ouja, too busy wondering if his friend really did have regrets. Fortunately, Ryuki arrives to aid him, but as Ouja gains the upper hand against Ryuki, Raia is still frozen in doubt about Yuichi and fate. But as Ouja uses his Final Vent on Ryuki, Raia finally goes into action, shoving Ryuki out of the way and taking the hit himself. Ryuki stumbles over to try to help Raia, but Ouja continues to attack him. As Raia’s armor shatters, Knight arrives to take on Ouja, telling Ryuki to get Tezuka out of there-apparently, normal humans can escape the Mirror World with a Rider’s help. Or if you have an intact deck, you can still make it out. As Ryuki drags Tezuka to safety, Knight pulls out the Survive card, causing winds to swirl around him and Ouja.
What happens next is a major turning point in the series and in Shinji’s character. Shinji gets Tezuka back to the real world and pleads with him to stay alive, to change his fate. But Tezuka reveals that he’d foreseen Shinji’s death all along, and for once, he managed to change destiny. As begins to lose consciousness, he sees Yui’s image in nearby glass, but when he looks toward Shinji, Yui is standing behind him suddenly, and she’s not positioned where the image in the glass can be her reflection. He tries to point at the strange vision in the glass for Shinji while Yui calls for an ambulance, but he’s too weak to explain anything. Instead, he realizes that Shinji can probably succeed where he failed. Now he knows that Yuichi never regretted a thing and in fact, actually changed Tezuka’s fate. He hopes, now that his prediction was finally wrong, that destiny has changed altogether. He closes his eyes and goes limp in Shinji’s arms. Stunned, Shinji tries to wake him, but fails, and he screams Tezuka’s name in agony. Another Rider is dead, and for the first time, it was a heroic character. And he won’t be the last.
As the power of the Survive card manifests, Knight’s Visor changes form from a dark blue and silver sword to a bright blue and gold wrist-mounted shield and sword combo. He inserts the card into a special slot on the shield, then removes the sword, which lengthens automatically. New armor forms over him, in the same bright blue and gold, the bat motif a little more evident, and featuring a split cape, almost similar to a scarf. And Knight Survive calmly approaches Ouja…
Ouja’s Secret (Toshiki Inoue): Something I waited until here to discuss is Knight Survive’s cape. I like it, don’t get me wrong, but they do something with it in his first two episodes that really drives me nuts. In order to show it off and have it dramatically blowing in the wind, they’re very obviously suspending it on wires. The whole shot is set up pretty much like your typical Batman moment-dark cavern, a light from behind the character, cape blowing dramatically in the wind. You know the director marathoned a bunch of Batman movies the night before shooting. However, the whole wire thing really kills the shot. If they’d moved the wires so that the cape looked like it was behind Knight Survive instead of to his side, it would have been a little better, since at least the fan would have let it flutter a bit, but what they went with kills the effect they’re going for. And the worst part is that they do this again later on when he shows up. You know what? I know this is saying something, coming from me when I overdo my running jokes, but really: Lay off the Batman reference if it’s not working. Okay?
Anyway, Knight Survive and Ouja suddenly are in an underground parking garage when they’d just been above ground near a fountain earlier, and Knight Survive is easily wiping the floor with him. He even manages to shatter Ouja’s Strike Vent before he manages to use it and injure him. But a Monster interrupts the battle, and in the confusion, Ouja is able to escape, leaving behind a trail of blood. When Asakura makes it back home, Reiko sees him collapse in pain.
Ren arrives home, only to hear the bad news that Tezuka died. Shinji blames himself because Tezuka sacrificed himself to save him. Yui, however, blames her brother for starting the Rider War in the first place. She’s worried that her brother’s doing this for her, and that it makes her guilty too. When Ren tries to ask her why she’d think that, she runs off in fear and confusion. Ren tells Shinji that they can blame themselves if they want, but in the end, what happened was Tezuka’s choice and it’s just who he was. Shinji confronts him on being so cold, and Ren points out that Tezuka was a Rider and that means he should have been ready to die the moment he took up the deck. He asks Shinji if he plans to die, which shakes him and forces him to admit that no, it wouldn’t make Tezuka happy if he did. But later, we see Ren wandering along a stream alone. He stops to sit down and stares at his Survive card. And here I have to bring up the preview from the previous episode. In the preview, this scene is a little different: instead of looking at the Survive card, Ren is burning Tezuka’s contract card, a clear sign that he too is mourning the other Rider. The scene they went with is a little more ambiguous about Ren’s mental state, and I think it’s for good reason. You can still tell that Ren’s grieving too, but in his own way. And the fact that he’s looking at his Survive card implies that maybe, despite what he said to Shinji, he also blames himself. After all, Tezuka had given Ren the card before the battle, and Ren saw that it was powerful enough that he didn’t have any trouble defeating Ouja. If Tezuka had it, maybe things never would have turned out the way they did. Both scenes are really good, but I think the one they went with probably stays a little truer to Ren’s character, where he kind of seems to be struggling with his own emotions and trying to deal with his grief.
I’m going to cut ahead a little bit because the actual next portion focuses heavily on Reiko, and it’s a huge part of this two-part arc. So we’ll see what’s going on with Yui now. She returns to the old Kanzaki house, fighting her fears. When she enters, she immediately notices the windows covered up with newspaper. Sensing a faint Mirror World presence upstairs, she heads there and notices the setup of the mirrors and how they resemble those she’d found at Room 401 at Seimeiin, and she realizes this is her brother’s new base of operations. She calls out for him, but he doesn’t appear. As she turns away, she notices a tear in one of the newspapers on the window and goes to examine it, finding a painting of a boat on the sea, spurring memories.
Back to Reiko, she hides as Asakura stumbles into his lair, but she accidentally knocks over some crates, forcing her to reveal herself. Ignoring her fear, she calmly confronts him, proving once again that she’s a total badass. Asakura recognizes her from Kitaoka’s place back in episode 18, and he relaxes slightly, realizing she’s not with the police. However, she threatens to call them on him, but he reminds her that he’ll just break out of jail again, so she hangs up. Note, kids: Do not call the police and then hang up. This is bad, okay? She asks him how he broke out of jail and how he’s still alive, since she’s interested in him as a journalist, and he agrees to tell her after he takes care of his injury. So she steps out and calls Okubo, who picks up that she’s in some trouble and warns her not to get in too deep-she’s a reporter, not a police officer, and she shouldn’t try to cross the line between them. Keep herself safe. She asks where Shinji is, but Okubo admits that Shinji hasn’t been in the office very much lately. So she tries to call his phone directly, but he doesn’t answer, lying sprawled out on the bed in grief. She returns to Asakura, who’s bound up his wound. In pain, he demands that she hit him, insisting that he’s always somewhere between hitting or being hit.
And here, I have to derail the review a little bit to talk about my background studies in abnormal psychology and forensic psychology. Something I’ve been building up to is a total shoot-down of the assumption that Asakura is insane. The word is thrown around very liberally, and it’s easy to forget that it is a legal, not a clinical term. So I use more clinically friendly terms like “totally guano loco” or “completely crazy-pants.” More professional that way.
Admittedly, what I learned applies to American law, specifically for the state of Maryland, and not Japanese law. But it’s clear that Asakura didn’t get off for his crime for being insane. There are two standards in Maryland that apply: the M’Naughten Rule that says that a mentally ill person can be declared insane if he cannot appreciate the criminality of his actions-i.e., his cognitive state prevents him from understanding that what he does is illegal; or the Irresistible Impulse test-would a mentally ill person have done this even if he had a policeman at his elbow?
Now, while personality disorders can form the basis for an insanity plea, antisocial personality disorder is never the basis of one. I will heavily go into detail about antisocial personality disorder when it comes to the endpoint analysis for him, but in short, the diagnosis criteria fits him to a T. But that cannot be the basis of an insanity plea. Now, I will definitely say that Asakura is a sadomasochist-he needs to release energy by fighting or hurting himself, and if he can’t hit anybody, he’ll just beat his head into the wall; and you can make that argument for insanity there, however this is the big thing:
Asakura clearly understands that what he’s doing is illegal, even if he doesn’t give a flying fuck if it’s wrong or not. That fails the M’Naughten test. What about the Irresistible Impulse test? He can control himself, and he clearly displays that here when he’s talking with Reiko. Not once does he attack or even threaten her, and as we get into the next episode, physical state isn’t even a factor in it. He manages to perfectly convince her that he can behave as a rational human being, and we see that there is a cunning mind underneath all that rage and energy. He is manipulating her, and that’s something that someone who can’t control their impulses wouldn’t have the patience or cognitive ability to do. In short, Asakura acts the way he does because he just doesn’t give a shit.
Reiko, however, begs to differ. She points out that he committed a crime because he was “vexed,” and says that there’s got to be more to it than that, that it’s too weak a motivation. But Asakura is annoyed at her and everyone else for trying to apply reason to him, and he insists that they’re just doing this to make themselves feel at ease-basically pre-empting Heath Ledger’s version of the Joker. He admits to being what Shakespearean scholars call “motiveless malignity”-he doesn’t have any clear objective or gain and just rationalizes why he does things as “feeling vexed.” He gets nowhere, and this is really a symptom of his antisocial personality disorder. When he tries to explain his actions to Reiko, he explains that he’s often eaten mud when he didn’t have any food to eat, and he still tastes it in his memories. It implies an abusive background, but it doesn’t give any real meat to his story-essentially, he’s left the audience eating mud. But when he passes out, Reiko sees a burn scar on his shoulder.
She goes to Kitaoka, who had to research Asakura’s past in order to represent him, and asks him for information. He tries to talk her out of it and hit on her, but she’s not amused. Before she can leave, though, he admits what he knows: When Asakura was thirteen, a fire destroyed his home and killed his parents and younger brother, Akira. Interesting note here: Asakura’s given age is the same as Kanzaki’s, twenty-five, and this puts the fire Asakura went through a year after Kanzaki’s explosion. I’m sure this couldn’t possibly be important in explaining the epilogue. Following the fire, Asakura was alone, living like a “wild dog,” and Reiko realizes this explains both the burn and Asakura’s comments about eating mud. But Kitaoka reveals that Akira in fact survived the fire and was adopted by other relatives, and it’s something Asakura doesn’t know. Kitaoka then tries to ask Reiko out, but she shoots him down, saying she’s only interested in Asakura before she leaves. This leaves Goro feeling awkward, since he’d just brought in two cups of coffee for them, and Kitaoka gets hysterical about rejection in favor of Asakura of all people. I love this guy.
Still grieving, Shinji heads to the park and sits down. Ren walks over, and Shinji tells him to go away. Ren can’t help but laugh, though, pointing out the irony: not long ago, their roles were reversed, and Shinji wouldn’t leave alone a depressed Ren. However, Ren insists that he’s different from Shinji and starts to leave him be. But the Monster from earlier reappears, now targeting a little girl playing nearby. Shinji is about to run into action, but Ren pushes him back down on the bench, insisting he’s got it. He bodyslams the emerging Monster and tells the kid to run before he henshins and goes to fight. A second Monster blindsides him, cutting his arm, and forcing him to use Survive to make up for his injury. When he uses it, Darkwing appears and changes form, its body shattering to reveal a larger form in similar color to Knight Survive, with wheel-like fans in its wings. I know that I really overdo the Digimon references sometimes, but really? The best way I can describe the change from Darkwing to Darkraider is “evolution,” and I’m going to stick with it for the rest of the series. Knight Survive uses his Final Vent, which transforms Darkraider into a motorcycle so he can charge at the Monster, shooting it with a beam of paralyzing energy and then charging into it like a missile, taking advantage of the “Rider” portion of Kamen Rider that’s really become rarer in the Heisei era. Something that I always noticed, even when I was first watching it: At the start of the Final Vent, the camera focuses on the positioning of Knight Survive’s feet. He takes a step forward and then leaps onto Darkraider. I don’t want to say it’s odd or anything, but it does seem strangely specific. This is a recurring thing, this camera focus, so it’s clearly got some meaning behind it. This unexpected moment of grace for some reason makes me think of ballet. True, the positioning of your feet can be pretty important in martial arts too, but to be perfectly honest, Ren doesn’t strike me as a martial artist at all. He doesn’t have any style or form to his fighting: it’s quick and efficient, not necessarily elegant. But still, there is a kind of grace to Knight in general that wouldn’t make something like ballet too completely out there. So I’ll add that to the running tally of potential backstories for Ren: that he was a dancer.
…A knight who practices ballet. I just described Fakir from Princess Tutu.
The other Monster escapes, but Ren doesn’t worry about it, returning to a concerned Shinji, who sees the blood running down his arm. Ren tries to walk away, but Shinji follows him and binds the wound with a handkerchief, fussing over him to treat it thoroughly later, much to Ren’s mild annoyance. Shinji then apologizes for calling Ren cold, realizing that he’d fought alone as a show of concern about him. Ren insists that he just owed Shinji and was repaying a debt, but Shinji’s not fooled by his tough guy act this time and points out how Ren’s changed-he wouldn’t have worried himself about Shinji before. And these are Shinji’s words, not mine.
This gives Shinji hope, and he admits that maybe Tezuka dying to change the Riders’ destiny was wrong. He reiterates that he doesn’t want to die, and he decides that maybe instead of changing them as Riders, he should change them as people. That way, the fighting would stop on its own, and it would still honor Tezuka. Ren points out that it’s unrealistically idealistic and wouldn’t work on him anyway. When Shinji points out that he can try with the other Riders, Ren points out that this leaves Kitaoka and Asakura, and then they start arguing over whether or not Shinji can succeed. At this point, Reiko calls again with news about Asakura’s past. She wants Shinji’s help in investigating Akira. Asakura overhears, waking up in surprise and asking if it’s true that his brother is alive. Shinji promises to Ren that he can change Asakura, but Ren points out that Asakura’s forsaken his humanity, and they start arguing again. But the Monster’s presence reappears, and Shinji tells Ren that this time, he’s coming along too to fight. They’re not the only ones, and Zolda is also taking on the same Monster. But suddenly, the three Riders realize they’re disintegrating way ahead of the time limit. They rush back to find that the images on their contract cards are disintegrating and turning blank. Then Kanzaki appears, telling them that the Rider War is over…
This episode finishes up the “Ren is really fucked up and makes a series of mistakes” arc, at least for the next ten or so episodes. Knight attacks Ryuki, who refuses to fight back, thinking of Tezuka’s warning that Ren is intentionally modeling Asakura’s behavior in order to restore his will to fight. Raia is forced to jump in to protect Ryuki, but before the three of them can fight, Metalgelas interrupts, so they return to the real world. There, Tezuka confronts Asakura about a man named Yuichi Saito, whom Asakura doesn’t remember. Tezuka then warns him that Metalgelas wants revenge for Asakura killing Gai. And I have to give credit to Hassei Takano, Tezuka’s actor, for his performance. I’m kind of on the fence about his acting. He’s certainly not bad, but he doesn’t seem to emote very well. He seems to have two emotions: calm and kind of happy. Granted, Ren doesn’t emote a whole lot, but Satoshi Matsuda is able to perform very well with subtle emotional cues, something I think Takano misses. And if you ever watch his performance as Hayato Ichimonji in Kamen Rider THE FIRST, you’ll really notice where he falters (though, to be fair to Takano, that movie has a whole host of problems, and Ichimonji in general is a headache and a half). So it’s great seeing him put more emotion into his acting, outright growling at Asakura here. Like I said, he’s not bad, but I don’t think he’s nearly as good as Takamasa Suga, Satoshi Matsuda, Ryohei, and Takashi Hagino.
Ren tries to leave with Asakura, but Shinji tries to stop him. He finally asks Ren why he fights, which he was thinking about all throughout the previous episode. And Tezuka reveals that Ren wants Eri Ogawa to wake. Shinji manages to put two and two together and realizes the significance of Ren’s ring, that Eri is Ren’s lover. Ren confirms it, and he reveals that the great power is her only chance: the doctors have only given her another half a year to a year to live. Interestingly, he also insists that this is his fault, though episode 12 shows that he did go to the lab early, and therefore he saved her life. He made a contract with Darkwing, the Monster that attacked her, and that also helped save her. But it’s not enough, in his mind, and he unfairly blames himself for something that was completely out of his control. This, I think, ties into his whole inferiority complex as far as she goes, that he doesn’t think very much of himself and doesn’t value his own life or happiness, but he values hers immensely. Shinji is shaken by this revelation, since he’d believed that if he stopped the fighting, then everything would be all right. Tezuka has to assure him that he wasn’t wrong to want to stop this, but Shinji’s still doubtful because he doesn’t want Ren to lose someone so precious to him. Tezuka, however, warns him that Ren’s not the only one with something to lose, and they both have to admit that they don’t know what the right thing to do is. But Tezuka is insistent on stopping the fighting, since it’s the whole reason he became a Rider.
From here, the story splits again. I’m going to start with ORE Journal, since while it seems unimportant here, it becomes extremely important later on. Reiko calls Okubo to report on the crash, but she doesn’t believe that Asakura’s dead. She reminds him of the seemingly impossible escape from the restaurant last time, and she’s sure he’s just pulled his Houdini act again.
The next part is Shinji’s character development, which really is impressive. He spends the entire episode moping, reeling from the truth about Ren. He wonders if he has the right to stop him, but at the same time, he’s afraid of what’ll happen if he doesn’t. He’s been warned that Ren will die if he keeps fighting, but now he knows that Ren’s fiancée is dying, and this is his only chance to save her. Kanzaki appears to him, admitting that he’s surprised Shinji lasted so long for being an accidental Rider. He offers to give the doubtful Shinji something to fight for, telling him of the great power that the last Rider standing will receive. But Shinji’s confrontational, and it’s a great moment because so rarely does he get to deal with Kanzaki face-to-face, and he calls him out on his bullshit. He asks him what he really wants and points out that Yui’s worried sick over him. But Kanzaki derails this by mockingly saying that it’s all right if Shinji’s wish is to die for the other Riders, leaving Shinji as confused as ever. It gets to the point that the next day at work, he’s so deep in thought that Okubo and Shimada notice, and they’re worried. Shinji asks Okubo for advice on his conflicted beliefs, and Okubo argues that every journalist has to learn this: “There is one truth, but no one justice.” And I think that this is the heart of Ryuki as a deconstruction. Kamen Riders are supposed to fight for justice; this has been their calling since 1971. But what happens when justice is hard to determine? When you don’t know what’s right? When the conflicts and difficulties that you find in the real world leak into a superhero’s life? Does this mean that “justice” is useless? No. Okubo’s answer is that Shinji must believe in himself, and that will lead him to his justice, and Shinji leaves to think.
On Yui’s side, she’s still investigating the strange photo she discovered. She asks Sanako about it, and she’s alarmed that Yui has it, but she denies recognizing it and won’t answer Yui’s questions. Tezuka, however, agrees to help her and looks at the photo, finding the reflection of the Marunochi-line train in one of the windows. There’s also two children visible in a closed window, implying that somebody lives there. They go to investigate, tracking down the house by finding the subway’s emergence point. The house appears to be abandoned, and much to Yui’s surprise, the name “Kanzaki” is on the nameplate. But as they approach, she’s gripped by a painful fear, and it worries Tezuka enough that he warns her not to force herself to enter, and he goes in alone. Inside, it appears to be abandoned, with sheets on the furniture and newspapers covering the windows...and every glass surface.
As this goes on, Asakura is frustrated by Shinji’s very existence, since he makes the whole Rider battle stop being fun by getting mad when Asakura kills people. Funny that. Ren asks him to defeat Shinji, since he can’t do it himself. Asakura asks if Ren’s got a grudge against him, but Ren answers no, and that’s his problem: Shinji’s in his way because Ren likes him, and he’s not supposed to be friends with him. They manage to find the remains of Asakura’s old house, and a restless Asakura starts breaking things, insisting that his head only feels clear when he’s fighting. He tells Ren to call Shinji for a fight, but Ren says it’s pointless because Shinji refuses to fight. Well, Asakura doesn’t like to hear this, and he starts making his way over to Ren with a broken pipe, clearly threatening him if he doesn’t do this. At this point, Ren realizes that maybe trying to make friends with Takeshi the Homicidal Maniac wasn’t such a good idea, and he realizes in horror that Asakura has no reason to fight and kill other than his own personal enjoyment. Fortunately for Ren, Shinji appears. Normally, I’d complain about how easily he found them, but to be honest? Shinji’s a journalist. His job is to find people and places based on the flimsiest of leads and investigate. He knows to look at Asakura’s childhood home, since it looks like he’d been heading there. And he knows that Ren will be with Asakura. Shinji’s a pretty damn good journalist when he applies himself.
Shinji admits his doubts to Ren, who asks him if he’s just going to die out of pity for him. Shinji admits that he thought about it, but he doesn’t think that that’s right either. And here I think is a key difference between them. Both of them take a little too much on their shoulders: Ren blames himself unfairly for what happened to Eri, and he puts her needs ahead of his, and Shinji puts the needs of the other Riders ahead of his belief that the fighting is wrong. But where Ren will deny himself his own needs, his own humanity, and his own happiness, Shinji’s not willing to do that. He doesn’t see Ren as more important than he is; he has a good sense of his own self-worth, and unlike Ren, he’s not willing to sacrifice himself like that. I almost want to say it’s an Objectivist view of Kamen Rider and heroes in general, but it’s kinder than that. Yes, you’re pursuing your own interests, but in the interest of helping others, and this is something that’s in all of the Rider series that Kobayashi’s written. It’s a view that heroes have to be able to save themselves before they can save someone else, and that a broken hero with no sense of his own self-worth is not going to be able to value life and others truly unless he begins to value himself. See Eiji in OOO.
Instead, Shinji’s answer is that he’ll fight Ren, much to Ren’s surprise. Shinji offers to fight with all of his strength if that’s what Ren needs, and he’s willing to take on his burden, but he’s not going to die for him. This sets up a thing with these guys: Shinji will accept whatever stupid shit Ren has pulled and will welcome him back home with open arms, no matter how much Ren’s hurt his friends-okay, okay, you know where this is going. Ren agrees, but Asakura reminds him that he’s supposed to face Shinji, since, you know, Ren technically put out a hit on him. And Takamasa Suga and Satoshi Matsuda have the perfect facial expressions at this point: Shinji just gives this look like he’s saying, “Really, Ren? Really?!” while Ren has the decency to look ashamed. But before Shinji can complete his henshin pose, Asakura attacks him, and throughout the fight, Ryuki’s injury puts him at a severe disadvantage, and he’s losing. Ren can’t bear to watch any longer and finally gets his shit together and runs into help, throwing off Ouja’s Final Vent. Knight insists that he’ll fight Ryuki himself, but he’ll do that after defeating Ouja first. Knight gains the advantage, but Metalgelas appears, wanting a piece of Ouja too. Fed up, Ouja pulls out a second contract card. Oh, come on! First attacking before someone can transform, now this? That’s clearly cheating!
Tezuka senses a presence from the Mirror World upstairs in the old Kanzaki house while Yui remembers children drawing. As Yui collapses in terror, Tezuka goes to investigate, finding uncovered mirrors similar to the ones in Room 401 at Seimeiin University, and Kanzaki appears.
The contract complete, Metalgelas is forced to submit to Ouja’s will. Ouja preps Metalgelas’s Final Vent, and Ryuki and Knight hurry to use their Guard Vents, but they’re not fast enough, and both are hit…
Raia’s Revenge (Yasuko Kobayashi): Ryuki and Knight continue fighting Ouja, but they run into serious trouble when the time limit hits. They’re disintegrating, but Ouja doesn’t care and continues to attack them. Despite being exhausted, he pulls his own Final Vent on Ryuki and Knight, and the fact that he’s falling apart is probably the only reason that the two survive. The three of them make it out of the Mirror World, in pain and exhausted. Ren and Shinji start making their way out of Asakura’s lair, but Asakura tries to attack Shinji from behind with a broken pipe. However, the act of lifting it over his head throws off his balance, and he passes out, giving Shinji and Ren the chance to escape. This shows that the Mirror World’s time limit has physiological effects on the Riders. You can’t just go back to the real world when you see that you’re beginning to disintegrate, then go immediately back in to finish your fight. The time limit is the absolute limit your body can take the Mirror World’s destructive energy for a day. Your body needs to rest for a while between trips. Having made their escape, Shinji and Ren walk along the beach to their bikes, discussing what to do about Asakura. Interestingly, the logical answer of “call the police” is thrown out by Ren, with an equal amount of logic: Now that Asakura is a Rider, the police will only become casualties. Kind of makes you miss Kuuga and Agito, I guess. Since Ren’s argument makes sense, Shinji decides that their priority right now should be stopping Asakura. This gets Ren thinking about how Shinji offered to fight him earlier, being willing to help shoulder his burden, and he admits that he owes Shinji for that. Naturally, Shinji has no idea what he’s talking about, and naturally, Ren denies he said anything and derails the conversation until they wind up arguing over how much money Shinji owes Ren again.
On the saner side of things, Tezuka confronts Kanzaki in the old house, where he tries to coerce him into fighting. Kanzaki admits he chose Asakura for Tezuka’s sake as well as Kitaoka’s, hinting further at a past between the two Riders. He then presents Tezuka with a special card, Survive (Shippu-Swift Wind, Hurricane, etc.; I can never find a precise translation, but W later approximates it as a translation for the English word “cyclone”) and urges him not to defy the Riders’ fate and to fight, otherwise he’ll be the next to die. When Kanzaki disappears, Tezuka finds an empty sketchbook, but he’s attacked by an unseen Monster, deeply cutting his hand.
The two teams meet up back at Atori, and it turns out that after her panic attack, Yui had fainted and apparently Tezuka got her to bed, where she’s dreaming about crayon drawings of animals burning, and of two small children drawing. As the dreams wake her up, Shinji, Ren, and Tezuka discuss what Tezuka discovered about the old house. Shinji reasons that the children in the photo must be Shiro and Yui, but Tezuka has to reject the theory, pointing out that the subway train was only painted ten years ago-far too recently for this to be a photo of a young Shiro and Yui. He plans on investigating further, but Ren tells him to keep Yui out of it. He’s scared by her fainting spell, and Shinji has to agree. As Ren starts to leave for the apartment, Tezuka starts trolling him, saying that he looks like he “lost something [he] liked” (TV Nihon translation-I’m a little iffy on what it’s supposed to mean), but Ren’s only annoyed that Tezuka keeps trying to look into him.
Upstairs, Ren finds Yui curled up in the kitchen, shaken by her dream. He tries to talk to her about what happened at the old house, but she points out that he’s been acting strange ever since they met at her brother’s lab. Ren owns up to it but promises that it’s over. He tells her to leave the investigation to Shinji and Tezuka and not to get too involved, but she refuses, insisting that she wants to know. And this is a great moment between the two, showcasing how close they are. I’ve said before that Yui seems to think of Ren as a surrogate brother, and even Yasuko Kobayashi and Satoshi Matsuda said that Ren thinks of Yui as his little sister, and it really shows here. He’s being honest with her, which is a rarity with him up to this point. He’s worried, and he’s making sure she knows it. He doesn’t want her getting hurt again. But Yui doesn’t want him to protect her like that, and it’s a major part of her character development. She wants to know, even if it’s going to hurt her in the end. She’s going to continue getting involved until she gets to the bottom of this and stops her brother, no matter what Ren or even Kanzaki says. She’s willing to defy her brothers-biological and surrogate-if it means she can find the truth and stop everything. And to be honest, this is why I like her more than Hana of Den-O or Hina of OOO: she’s involved. She may not be physically strong the way her successors are, but she’s a much stronger character by refusing to stay on the sidelines the way they do, and this is a part of her characterization from the very beginning. And the sibling-like relationship between her and Ren is something I’m going to analyze more much later on in my endpoint analysis, when I have to compare to her actual brother.
Anyway, surprised by Ren’s amazingly level-headed behavior, Tezuka asks Shinji what happened, and he’s even more surprised to hear that the two of them fought. Kind of. In that they didn’t fight, but Shinji put the offer on the table and Ren asked for a rain check. Shinji admits that he wasn’t planning to do what Kanzaki wanted, but it was the only answer he could come up with. Again, Shinji doesn’t know what to do, and he’s not sure he knows what he believes in, so he does what he can and hopes for the best. Tezuka admits that destiny hasn’t changed, especially for the Riders, and he struggles to light a match with his injury, foreseeing the next Rider’s death. As the flame goes out, he’s shaken by the prediction, glancing momentarily at Shinji, who asks what he saw. Tezuka just says that he’ll be the next one to go.
Asakura, however, continues to be a problem, and when he wakes up and realizes that Ren and Shinji ran away long ago, he vows to kill the three Riders who’ve crossed him. Kitaoka may not know what’s going on, but he doesn’t believe for a moment that Asakura is dead, since Riders are notoriously hard to kill. This claim worries Goro, who covers it up by going out to shop. Meanwhile, ORE Journal is being hassled by some of their readers for suggesting that Asakura might still be alive. Shinji asks Reiko why she made that claim, and she promises to continue the investigation until she’s satisfied she’s found the truth. But he makes her promise not to investigate him alone. She casually responds that she’ll check in regularly, but Shinji is insistent enough to throw her off-guard, and she promises. It’s another good moment showing how Shinji’s coworkers are beginning to recognize his growth, though Shimada’s had enough of Mature Shinji and decides he’s been possessed, so he’s forced to make a run for it while Reiko holds her back. Wait for Den-O, sweetie.
Yui asks Sanako for some of her childhood pictures, but Sanako insists that they’re lost, still oddly avoidant about Yui’s past. She heads to the back of the shop to escape, saying she forgot something, but Yui follows, leaving Ren on the floor to handle the shop by himself. That’s when Goro pops in, asking if Ren knows whether or not Asakura is alive. He’s worried that Kitaoka will be targeted, but Ren reminds him that anybody could be a target. This, however, confirms Goro’s suspicions, and he leaves knowing the truth. What’s interesting about Ren’s development here is that you see him trying not to worry about it, like he’s telling himself that whatever Goro’s up to, it’s not his problem…and then he senses a Monster’s presence, and without hesitation, he races out the door. Down the road, Goro encounters Asakura, but Venosnaker blindsides him. By the time Ren arrives, everyone is gone.
Shinji meets Tezuka at a restaurant to discuss the latest findings about the Kanzaki house. It turns out that neighbors revealed an explosion happened there about thirteen years ago. Nobody knew what caused it, but both of the parents were killed. The older brother, Shiro, was badly hurt, but the younger sister, Yui, didn’t have a scratch on her. In the middle of this mystery, Shinji picks up that Tezuka seems oddly calm for a man who thinks he’s going to die, missing the way that Tezuka’s hands are shaking. Tezuka insists that yes, it’s going to happen, since his predictions are always right, but he still believes that fate can be changed. This leads Shinji to ask him why he became a Rider, and Tezuka admits that he wasn’t chosen to be a Rider. Instead, he’s a replacement for his best friend, the one who’d really been chosen, but he’d died.
Kitaoka gets a sudden call from Asakura about Goro, where the ransom is a battle with all the Riders. Ren arrives just after Kitaoka’s hung up, intending to do the right thing and tell him what happened…a little late to the party. What’s interesting here is the implication that Ren is all on-board for helping Kitaoka rescue Goro. Remember, he doesn’t even like Kitaoka. But he’s utterly shocked when Kitaoka refuses his help. Kitaoka insists that he has to keep fighting for himself to avoid becoming weak like Ren and Shinji did. Ren attempts to guilt trip him, pointing out that Goro was looking for Asakura for Kitaoka’s sake, but it backfires horribly when Kitaoka admits that Goro will do anything for him. Yeah, my gaydar’s off the chart with these two too. When Ren presses further, Kitaoka gets very defensive and challenges him to a fight, saying that right now, he has a reason to fight Ren.
Tezuka leaves and heads to his bike, but a Monster grabs him. He recognizes the Monster immediately and henshins just before he’s pulled into the Mirror World. Shinji arrives and henshins to help, finding Raia fighting fiercely against the Monster. Ryuki tries to help, wondering why he’s so uncharacteristically upset, but Raia outright shoves him out of the way, insisting on defeating the Monster himself as he thinks of his friend, Yuichi.
And without an answer, Ren agrees to the battle, and Knight and Zolda head to the Mirror World…
Changing Destiny (Yasuko Kobayashi): Having defeated the Monster, Raia thinks on Yuichi before returning to the real world. There, Shinji confronts him on what just happened, and Tezuka admits that the Monster had killed his friend, the intended Rider. He explains to Shinji that Yuichi Saito had flat-out refused to become a Rider. A talented amateur pianist, Yuichi had finally had the chance to hit it big by entering a competition. But one night, as he and Tezuka walked home, Yuichi was caught up in a fight with Asakura. In the fight, he cut his wrist, and it’s implied that this caused nerve damage, since it was impossible for Yuichi to make his fingers work properly in order to play. Kanzaki approached him with what is now the Raia deck, offering him the chance to use the great power to heal himself. Tezuka reveals that most of the Riders are actually seeking to use the reality-warping wish granted to the winner of the Rider War with the intent to heal someone, and not to become gods-which, of course, we see with Ren and Kitaoka. But instead, Yuichi gave up his dream to become a professional pianist, believing it to be wrong to fight other people. But by refusing his contract, his intended partner, Guldthunder, killed him. Tezuka had been with Yuichi throughout the whole ordeal, and he’d been unable to save him. This inability to change his friend’s fate led to his obsession with destiny. He wonders if Yuichi knew that rejecting the deck would lead to his death but followed that path anyway, and he respects Yuichi’s strength in continuing to do what he believed in. So in Yuichi’s honor, Tezuka took up the deck to try to preserve his friend’s ideal of justice and to try to change fate, since he’d been helpless against it before. Continuing the progress on his character development, Shinji admits that he understands and he wants to help, but he’s not sure if it’s okay to just stop the fighting.
Meanwhile, Asakura is frustrated that nobody’s answered his ransom demand, and Goro awesomely tells him something along the lines of “I told you so.” He doesn’t even flinch as Asakura starts trashing the car he’s been locked up in, instead using the distraction to pick the lock on his handcuffs.
The battle between Knight and Zolda is pretty evenly matched, and eventually, Ren and Kitaoka return, equally beaten up by the other. Kitaoka’s forced to admit that Ren’s gotten stronger since the last time they fought, but Ren snipes that Kitaoka might have gotten weaker, thoroughly disgusted that he’s not trying to save Goro. The argument they have here is a really good display of their philosophies, especially now that Ren’s gotten his head on straight. Kitaoka believes in putting himself first and thinks that self-sacrifice is stupid. And though he doesn’t say it outright, we’ve seen across the last several episodes that Ren believes in doing everything possible for a loved one’s sake, even if it means sacrificing your life or your own interests for them. Neither is able to understand the other, and they each think the other is weaker for his philosophy. But, in a great moment, once Ren’s gone, Kitaoka can’t take it anymore and starts racing for the door, implicitly to rescue Goro…only for Goro to open the door, revealing that he brought home groceries. And Asakura is left behind, absolutely pissed that Goro escaped.
Tezuka shocks Shinji and Yui by moving out of Shinji and Ren’s room, telling Shinji that he thinks he’s walking a separate path from the other two Riders. He tries to tell Yui something, but at the last second, he changes his mind and just thanks her for letting him stay. In private, Shinji tries to convince him to stay because of his prediction, but Tezuka warns him to keep a close eye on Yui, though he can’t or won’t explain just why. Ren arrives, and Tezuka gives him the Survive card, saying that he refuses to rise to Kanzaki’s bait and he wants Ren to use it instead. But with Tezuka now on his own, away from Shinji and Ren, Kanzaki goes to Asakura and tells him to defeat Raia.
On the ORE Journal side of things, while Shinji was in the Mirror World with Tezuka, Reiko is annoyed that she can’t reach Shinji’s phone-apparently, there’s no reception in the Mirror World-so she has to go investigate Asakura alone. Shinji’s distressed the next day to learn that she’s doing this alone, especially since she’d tried to call him like he’d asked her to. Reiko’s car gets stuck in the mud not far from Asakura’s lair, and when she goes to investigate the ruins, she finds signs that someone is living there, along with Asakura’s trademark jacket-proof positive that he is alive. Yes. Apparently he’s got a jacket in the exact same style as his stolen shirt. Pretty good at getting extra clothes, for an escaped convict.
Tezuka realizes that Yui, not Kanzaki, is the key to the mystery. But as he puzzles over this, Kanzaki appears to try to provoke him again, insisting that Yuichi regretted not becoming a Rider. Over Tezuka’s protests that it can’t be true, he insists that this is human nature: to fight for yourself, and Yuichi died in regret, and so too will Tezuka. At this, Asakura appears, threatening further violence should Tezuka refuse to fight. The presence from the Mirror World manages to catch Shinji’s attention, and also Yui’s…who has a very strange reaction, staring into the light in almost a trance, breaking a dish in the process. Huh.
Distracted by Kanzaki’s words about Yuichi, Raia can hardly fight back against Ouja, too busy wondering if his friend really did have regrets. Fortunately, Ryuki arrives to aid him, but as Ouja gains the upper hand against Ryuki, Raia is still frozen in doubt about Yuichi and fate. But as Ouja uses his Final Vent on Ryuki, Raia finally goes into action, shoving Ryuki out of the way and taking the hit himself. Ryuki stumbles over to try to help Raia, but Ouja continues to attack him. As Raia’s armor shatters, Knight arrives to take on Ouja, telling Ryuki to get Tezuka out of there-apparently, normal humans can escape the Mirror World with a Rider’s help. Or if you have an intact deck, you can still make it out. As Ryuki drags Tezuka to safety, Knight pulls out the Survive card, causing winds to swirl around him and Ouja.
What happens next is a major turning point in the series and in Shinji’s character. Shinji gets Tezuka back to the real world and pleads with him to stay alive, to change his fate. But Tezuka reveals that he’d foreseen Shinji’s death all along, and for once, he managed to change destiny. As begins to lose consciousness, he sees Yui’s image in nearby glass, but when he looks toward Shinji, Yui is standing behind him suddenly, and she’s not positioned where the image in the glass can be her reflection. He tries to point at the strange vision in the glass for Shinji while Yui calls for an ambulance, but he’s too weak to explain anything. Instead, he realizes that Shinji can probably succeed where he failed. Now he knows that Yuichi never regretted a thing and in fact, actually changed Tezuka’s fate. He hopes, now that his prediction was finally wrong, that destiny has changed altogether. He closes his eyes and goes limp in Shinji’s arms. Stunned, Shinji tries to wake him, but fails, and he screams Tezuka’s name in agony. Another Rider is dead, and for the first time, it was a heroic character. And he won’t be the last.
As the power of the Survive card manifests, Knight’s Visor changes form from a dark blue and silver sword to a bright blue and gold wrist-mounted shield and sword combo. He inserts the card into a special slot on the shield, then removes the sword, which lengthens automatically. New armor forms over him, in the same bright blue and gold, the bat motif a little more evident, and featuring a split cape, almost similar to a scarf. And Knight Survive calmly approaches Ouja…
Ouja’s Secret (Toshiki Inoue): Something I waited until here to discuss is Knight Survive’s cape. I like it, don’t get me wrong, but they do something with it in his first two episodes that really drives me nuts. In order to show it off and have it dramatically blowing in the wind, they’re very obviously suspending it on wires. The whole shot is set up pretty much like your typical Batman moment-dark cavern, a light from behind the character, cape blowing dramatically in the wind. You know the director marathoned a bunch of Batman movies the night before shooting. However, the whole wire thing really kills the shot. If they’d moved the wires so that the cape looked like it was behind Knight Survive instead of to his side, it would have been a little better, since at least the fan would have let it flutter a bit, but what they went with kills the effect they’re going for. And the worst part is that they do this again later on when he shows up. You know what? I know this is saying something, coming from me when I overdo my running jokes, but really: Lay off the Batman reference if it’s not working. Okay?
Anyway, Knight Survive and Ouja suddenly are in an underground parking garage when they’d just been above ground near a fountain earlier, and Knight Survive is easily wiping the floor with him. He even manages to shatter Ouja’s Strike Vent before he manages to use it and injure him. But a Monster interrupts the battle, and in the confusion, Ouja is able to escape, leaving behind a trail of blood. When Asakura makes it back home, Reiko sees him collapse in pain.
Ren arrives home, only to hear the bad news that Tezuka died. Shinji blames himself because Tezuka sacrificed himself to save him. Yui, however, blames her brother for starting the Rider War in the first place. She’s worried that her brother’s doing this for her, and that it makes her guilty too. When Ren tries to ask her why she’d think that, she runs off in fear and confusion. Ren tells Shinji that they can blame themselves if they want, but in the end, what happened was Tezuka’s choice and it’s just who he was. Shinji confronts him on being so cold, and Ren points out that Tezuka was a Rider and that means he should have been ready to die the moment he took up the deck. He asks Shinji if he plans to die, which shakes him and forces him to admit that no, it wouldn’t make Tezuka happy if he did. But later, we see Ren wandering along a stream alone. He stops to sit down and stares at his Survive card. And here I have to bring up the preview from the previous episode. In the preview, this scene is a little different: instead of looking at the Survive card, Ren is burning Tezuka’s contract card, a clear sign that he too is mourning the other Rider. The scene they went with is a little more ambiguous about Ren’s mental state, and I think it’s for good reason. You can still tell that Ren’s grieving too, but in his own way. And the fact that he’s looking at his Survive card implies that maybe, despite what he said to Shinji, he also blames himself. After all, Tezuka had given Ren the card before the battle, and Ren saw that it was powerful enough that he didn’t have any trouble defeating Ouja. If Tezuka had it, maybe things never would have turned out the way they did. Both scenes are really good, but I think the one they went with probably stays a little truer to Ren’s character, where he kind of seems to be struggling with his own emotions and trying to deal with his grief.
I’m going to cut ahead a little bit because the actual next portion focuses heavily on Reiko, and it’s a huge part of this two-part arc. So we’ll see what’s going on with Yui now. She returns to the old Kanzaki house, fighting her fears. When she enters, she immediately notices the windows covered up with newspaper. Sensing a faint Mirror World presence upstairs, she heads there and notices the setup of the mirrors and how they resemble those she’d found at Room 401 at Seimeiin, and she realizes this is her brother’s new base of operations. She calls out for him, but he doesn’t appear. As she turns away, she notices a tear in one of the newspapers on the window and goes to examine it, finding a painting of a boat on the sea, spurring memories.
Back to Reiko, she hides as Asakura stumbles into his lair, but she accidentally knocks over some crates, forcing her to reveal herself. Ignoring her fear, she calmly confronts him, proving once again that she’s a total badass. Asakura recognizes her from Kitaoka’s place back in episode 18, and he relaxes slightly, realizing she’s not with the police. However, she threatens to call them on him, but he reminds her that he’ll just break out of jail again, so she hangs up. Note, kids: Do not call the police and then hang up. This is bad, okay? She asks him how he broke out of jail and how he’s still alive, since she’s interested in him as a journalist, and he agrees to tell her after he takes care of his injury. So she steps out and calls Okubo, who picks up that she’s in some trouble and warns her not to get in too deep-she’s a reporter, not a police officer, and she shouldn’t try to cross the line between them. Keep herself safe. She asks where Shinji is, but Okubo admits that Shinji hasn’t been in the office very much lately. So she tries to call his phone directly, but he doesn’t answer, lying sprawled out on the bed in grief. She returns to Asakura, who’s bound up his wound. In pain, he demands that she hit him, insisting that he’s always somewhere between hitting or being hit.
And here, I have to derail the review a little bit to talk about my background studies in abnormal psychology and forensic psychology. Something I’ve been building up to is a total shoot-down of the assumption that Asakura is insane. The word is thrown around very liberally, and it’s easy to forget that it is a legal, not a clinical term. So I use more clinically friendly terms like “totally guano loco” or “completely crazy-pants.” More professional that way.
Admittedly, what I learned applies to American law, specifically for the state of Maryland, and not Japanese law. But it’s clear that Asakura didn’t get off for his crime for being insane. There are two standards in Maryland that apply: the M’Naughten Rule that says that a mentally ill person can be declared insane if he cannot appreciate the criminality of his actions-i.e., his cognitive state prevents him from understanding that what he does is illegal; or the Irresistible Impulse test-would a mentally ill person have done this even if he had a policeman at his elbow?
Now, while personality disorders can form the basis for an insanity plea, antisocial personality disorder is never the basis of one. I will heavily go into detail about antisocial personality disorder when it comes to the endpoint analysis for him, but in short, the diagnosis criteria fits him to a T. But that cannot be the basis of an insanity plea. Now, I will definitely say that Asakura is a sadomasochist-he needs to release energy by fighting or hurting himself, and if he can’t hit anybody, he’ll just beat his head into the wall; and you can make that argument for insanity there, however this is the big thing:
Asakura clearly understands that what he’s doing is illegal, even if he doesn’t give a flying fuck if it’s wrong or not. That fails the M’Naughten test. What about the Irresistible Impulse test? He can control himself, and he clearly displays that here when he’s talking with Reiko. Not once does he attack or even threaten her, and as we get into the next episode, physical state isn’t even a factor in it. He manages to perfectly convince her that he can behave as a rational human being, and we see that there is a cunning mind underneath all that rage and energy. He is manipulating her, and that’s something that someone who can’t control their impulses wouldn’t have the patience or cognitive ability to do. In short, Asakura acts the way he does because he just doesn’t give a shit.
Reiko, however, begs to differ. She points out that he committed a crime because he was “vexed,” and says that there’s got to be more to it than that, that it’s too weak a motivation. But Asakura is annoyed at her and everyone else for trying to apply reason to him, and he insists that they’re just doing this to make themselves feel at ease-basically pre-empting Heath Ledger’s version of the Joker. He admits to being what Shakespearean scholars call “motiveless malignity”-he doesn’t have any clear objective or gain and just rationalizes why he does things as “feeling vexed.” He gets nowhere, and this is really a symptom of his antisocial personality disorder. When he tries to explain his actions to Reiko, he explains that he’s often eaten mud when he didn’t have any food to eat, and he still tastes it in his memories. It implies an abusive background, but it doesn’t give any real meat to his story-essentially, he’s left the audience eating mud. But when he passes out, Reiko sees a burn scar on his shoulder.
She goes to Kitaoka, who had to research Asakura’s past in order to represent him, and asks him for information. He tries to talk her out of it and hit on her, but she’s not amused. Before she can leave, though, he admits what he knows: When Asakura was thirteen, a fire destroyed his home and killed his parents and younger brother, Akira. Interesting note here: Asakura’s given age is the same as Kanzaki’s, twenty-five, and this puts the fire Asakura went through a year after Kanzaki’s explosion. I’m sure this couldn’t possibly be important in explaining the epilogue. Following the fire, Asakura was alone, living like a “wild dog,” and Reiko realizes this explains both the burn and Asakura’s comments about eating mud. But Kitaoka reveals that Akira in fact survived the fire and was adopted by other relatives, and it’s something Asakura doesn’t know. Kitaoka then tries to ask Reiko out, but she shoots him down, saying she’s only interested in Asakura before she leaves. This leaves Goro feeling awkward, since he’d just brought in two cups of coffee for them, and Kitaoka gets hysterical about rejection in favor of Asakura of all people. I love this guy.
Still grieving, Shinji heads to the park and sits down. Ren walks over, and Shinji tells him to go away. Ren can’t help but laugh, though, pointing out the irony: not long ago, their roles were reversed, and Shinji wouldn’t leave alone a depressed Ren. However, Ren insists that he’s different from Shinji and starts to leave him be. But the Monster from earlier reappears, now targeting a little girl playing nearby. Shinji is about to run into action, but Ren pushes him back down on the bench, insisting he’s got it. He bodyslams the emerging Monster and tells the kid to run before he henshins and goes to fight. A second Monster blindsides him, cutting his arm, and forcing him to use Survive to make up for his injury. When he uses it, Darkwing appears and changes form, its body shattering to reveal a larger form in similar color to Knight Survive, with wheel-like fans in its wings. I know that I really overdo the Digimon references sometimes, but really? The best way I can describe the change from Darkwing to Darkraider is “evolution,” and I’m going to stick with it for the rest of the series. Knight Survive uses his Final Vent, which transforms Darkraider into a motorcycle so he can charge at the Monster, shooting it with a beam of paralyzing energy and then charging into it like a missile, taking advantage of the “Rider” portion of Kamen Rider that’s really become rarer in the Heisei era. Something that I always noticed, even when I was first watching it: At the start of the Final Vent, the camera focuses on the positioning of Knight Survive’s feet. He takes a step forward and then leaps onto Darkraider. I don’t want to say it’s odd or anything, but it does seem strangely specific. This is a recurring thing, this camera focus, so it’s clearly got some meaning behind it. This unexpected moment of grace for some reason makes me think of ballet. True, the positioning of your feet can be pretty important in martial arts too, but to be perfectly honest, Ren doesn’t strike me as a martial artist at all. He doesn’t have any style or form to his fighting: it’s quick and efficient, not necessarily elegant. But still, there is a kind of grace to Knight in general that wouldn’t make something like ballet too completely out there. So I’ll add that to the running tally of potential backstories for Ren: that he was a dancer.
…A knight who practices ballet. I just described Fakir from Princess Tutu.
The other Monster escapes, but Ren doesn’t worry about it, returning to a concerned Shinji, who sees the blood running down his arm. Ren tries to walk away, but Shinji follows him and binds the wound with a handkerchief, fussing over him to treat it thoroughly later, much to Ren’s mild annoyance. Shinji then apologizes for calling Ren cold, realizing that he’d fought alone as a show of concern about him. Ren insists that he just owed Shinji and was repaying a debt, but Shinji’s not fooled by his tough guy act this time and points out how Ren’s changed-he wouldn’t have worried himself about Shinji before. And these are Shinji’s words, not mine.
This gives Shinji hope, and he admits that maybe Tezuka dying to change the Riders’ destiny was wrong. He reiterates that he doesn’t want to die, and he decides that maybe instead of changing them as Riders, he should change them as people. That way, the fighting would stop on its own, and it would still honor Tezuka. Ren points out that it’s unrealistically idealistic and wouldn’t work on him anyway. When Shinji points out that he can try with the other Riders, Ren points out that this leaves Kitaoka and Asakura, and then they start arguing over whether or not Shinji can succeed. At this point, Reiko calls again with news about Asakura’s past. She wants Shinji’s help in investigating Akira. Asakura overhears, waking up in surprise and asking if it’s true that his brother is alive. Shinji promises to Ren that he can change Asakura, but Ren points out that Asakura’s forsaken his humanity, and they start arguing again. But the Monster’s presence reappears, and Shinji tells Ren that this time, he’s coming along too to fight. They’re not the only ones, and Zolda is also taking on the same Monster. But suddenly, the three Riders realize they’re disintegrating way ahead of the time limit. They rush back to find that the images on their contract cards are disintegrating and turning blank. Then Kanzaki appears, telling them that the Rider War is over…