Kamen Rider Ryuki's Finale: Making Most of Toshiki Inoue's Bad Finales Look Decent!


Toshiki Inoue is infamous for his lackluster finales and the only finale I saw so far that is passable is Kamen Rider Agito (except why would Hojo later develop a romantic interest with a person he's been antagonistic with is funny).  But one must think of Ryuki's ultra-super duper lackluster finale.  So I did see Spielban raw anyway, but at least I was able to talk with Fantasy Leader on what the finale was about.  On the other hand, Ryuki itself had some interesting development and then... POOF!  The reset button was HIT!  So what's the big deal?  Compared to Spielban's finale that kept character development, Kamen Rider Ryuki didn't!

Ryuki itself as a TV show was interesting with the concept of the Kamen Rider War going on.  You had all your douchebag protagonists like Shinji, Renn and Satoru.  You had them develop and in fact, while Shinji and Renn were basically antagonistic towards each other because of different goals, they did get closer.  However what really, REALLY pissed me off was when Ryuki's finale came.  So Renn wins, the protagonist Shinji dies.  I mean, he could have at least wished for Shinji back to life (I could care less about Satoru) BUT guess what... eventually the whole finale hit a reset button of unimaginable proportions.  That reset button just made Toshiki Inoue's finales look decent!

Why does it make Inoue's bad finales look decent?  Jetman's bad way of killing Gai Yuki was bad but hey at least, Ryu and Kaori still remembered him even if they failed to notice he was dying.  Five years later, they named their son Gai after Gai Yuuki in his remembrance.  Kamen Rider Faiz got rid of Masato Kusaka and even if the finale was hanging, at least character development was kept.  Hibiki may have a bad finale but at least character development was kept.  But Ryuki's finale did the unimaginable.  It made the show pointless to watch because character development was thrown out and two, the villains are still around.  It pisses me off to think that Takeshi is verified to still alive (and I'd hate to assume that Jun is still alive)... I mean Takeshi even without his Rider powers was already a dangerous criminal that should have been put down years ago.  Plus, you can see in the finale that Shinji goes back to being an idiot and Renn to his usual douchy self.

I simply wonder whether or not this was really part of executive meddling.  Granted, Ryuki was considerably more serious than Kuuga or Agito can ever get.  Agito may be serious but it wasn't disturbingly serious.  The series came after Ryuki.  Both Kuuga and Agito were imo, not depressing seasons considering that Agito was even written by Mr. Darker and Edgier now Mr. Failed Comedian, Toshiki Inoue.  Toshiki Inoue did write a good portion of Ryuki though he did have failed comedy in introducing Megumi.  Yasuko Kobayashi wrote its finale.  Perhaps Ryuki was already getting too serious in between that parents complained about it. So maybe, the whole reset button idea was hit because the show was getting too dark.  But the idea may have backfired pretty badly that they ended up creating Episode Final as an alternate ending.

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