Kamen Rider Ryuki

Welcome to a new review of another series in the Kamen Rider franchise. This time we have the third series in the early Heisei. Ryuki was quite an important point for me in my study of this franchise. The series started airing in 2002 and it garnered quite a bit of popular support. So why did this happen?

Let's find out!

[Aesthetics]

The first point, as we used to do, is to talk about aesthetics. But let's start talking about aesthetics from afar. The first thing to talk about is who shot it and under what conditions.

Early Heisey for the Ryder franchise was a period of innovation in both storytelling and overall stylistics. There were a tremendous amount of detail changes. Ryuki has truly become a "New Generation Season."

This season, like most of the early Heisei seasons, was filmed with the collaboration of Ishimori Productions and Toei. The role of the former cannot be understated, for in the development of the early Heisei seasons it is a heck of a lot bigger. The developments left by master Ishinamori after his death resonated with the employees of the company he founded. With slogans along the lines of "The legend must be revived", the company restored Ishinamori's work one by one. Ideas left by Ishinamori were already given two iterations, which brought the series back to its peak of fame. And so, in 2002, the company decided to go further and go beyond their usual formula, to write something strikingly different even from their previous experience in Heisei based on Ishinamori's material. This is how Kamen Rider Ryuki was born.

The season brought a number of innovations that refreshed the perception of Riders for the audience of the time. Events decided to revolve around the "Battle Royale" concept, the number of Raiders in the season increased dramatically and nominally reached 13 (most of them appeared in the series itself, but some remained only as characters for the "Final Episode" movie). For the first time in a long time, the concept of evil in the franchise was redefined, as it was no longer Ryder and Monster confronting each other, but Ryder and Ryder. Monsters were left as mere expendable material, with little weight in the story.