#and it also can't change his indecision either. shinji exists to coax out everyone's emotions so we know everyone's motivations. and he

[sleepygaymerdisease]

ok you know what actually i cant shut up so here we go. SPOILER WARNING (for kamen rider ryuki and this stupid special)

ok first of all, im just gonna have to ignore how flawed the rtr premise is. the crossover bits made like no sense to me but i dont know those guys so i wont talk about that. what does bother me is this like, fundamental misunderstanding of the mirror world and how it functions. it's intentionally mysterious in nature and a lot is left unexplained in the original show, sure, but that doesnt mean that there arent any rules to its logic. it's meant to be a tool for the narrative. it has a metaphorical function to talk about the cycles of violence. and like, okay i guess inoue tried to make it about that, but it still doesnt make any sense? the original show is basically like "i think that violence can solve all my problems, because i cant imagine anything else, so i dont care about the casualties that are required to grant my wish, and therefore im fine with making riders fight each other to the death." this one tries to be, like, "sorry, but i think violence might work for some reason, to stop some other guy who's killing but that's wrong because violence is always wrong, so im gonna have you guys kill each other until only one remains so you can then kill the evil killer. sorry." literally what's the point. the person in charge hates the violence and the riders arent even doing this to grant their own wish anymore. like what? shinji as a character tends to value other people's wishes, so it does end up working out for the girl, but what would the plan have been if literally anyone else won? why would they want to keep fighting after all that? why would they go against this other bad guy? why would they care about the wish of someone who just made them kill? why would they keep killing? why would they trust this narrative? makes no sense. it's even worse if you assume that someone like asakura (etc) won, because then theres a chance that they'll just keep killing innocents. the riders don't even get to fight for their own selfish reasons anymore, either. it's all built around fighting for someone they dont know to stop someone they dont know for the sake of the greater good. congrats for missing the entire point of ryuki. "lets just get rid of the whole wish thing" are u serious.

it also makes me mad because i actually really like amnesia plots but this was all done so badly it makes me want to scream. there was seriously no point to it at all for this special. like. god. it was literally done so the characters could he grouped together like dolls and so their brand new drama would have no stakes or real personal attachment to it. and it doesnt even apply to all the characters either?!?!!? goro and asakura knew EXACTLY what was up the entire time and thats unexplained. and guess what. their dynamic was the most compelling part of the entire special. it turns out that characters knowing and hating each other and decieving each other can actually be really interesting but nooo inoue doesnt want to deal with any of the canon events or memories or relationships of characters unless he likes it. it's so obvious that he doesnt value the story itself. it actually would be interesting if the characters' memories were messed with if it was done well. could you imagine? feeling the need to fight but not remembering why? slipping into the familiar groove of violence that you shouldn't have the muscle memory for at all in this lifetime? or, even better, thinking that the fight is still on? as if the ending didnt happen at all? still desperately fighting for your wish again, and slowly having to realize that it's not real? that those are thoughts and feelings that you are borrowing from you that doesnt exist anymore? that you dont need that wish at all? that you already got your happy ending? and what about the anger in discovering that your memory was tampered with? where's their rage at the one who traps them, who continues this cycle of violence that was supposed to be broken? what about the borrowed grief of their past lives, unsure if theyre feeling it all over again or if theyre a bystander of their own misery? and what about the grief at knowing their current lives are being dismantled all over again, that they can truly never quit? what about the hopelessness at realizing that they dont even get to grant a wish at the end of all this senseless violence? instead of using the amnesia as a tool to elaborate on the previous events of the show its used to deliberately shove everything aside to ignore it, and things are only brought up again via flashbacks for brief moments of dramatic flaire.

also yami shinji as a concept is also interesting but done absolutely terribly. it makes me mad that inoue made this concept but keeps dropping the ball. its not even that hard to have an evil version of the main character but he fumbles it 3 separate fucking times. ohh my god. yami shinji might be from the mirror world but you have to explain what that actually MEANS for shinji as a person and why this is a reflection of shinji and not just an entity that wants to escape that also just happens to look like him. it would be interesting if yami shinji was supposed to be a manifestation of shinji's greatest fears. he could be a version of the protagonist who makes the decision to finally and truly give into violence without any remorse. and that's kind of what inoue was going for but it has to be more obvious that this like externalization of an internal conflict is like actually something that shinji has truly considered. WHICH MAKES ZERO SENSE WITH THE AMNESIA PLOT. if your protagonist is a blank slate who doesnt remember anyone and doesnt have any internal conflict and doesnt have any motivations anymore and doesnt have any hesitation about his actions and hasnt gone through even a sliver of the hero's journey, then what the fuck is the narrative foil doing here??!?!?

this post is getting too long sorry. tldr: this was incredibly, spectacularly terrible. fixing this would require starting from the very beginning because the entire premise is at odds with the show itself, but even on top of that nearly every single writing choice and character interaction makes no fucking sense at all.

inoue really does everything in his power to undo the ending of the original show and replace it with the worlds shittiest fanfiction. "what if this time everyone lost their memories so their relationships with each other were completely different and they had to kill each other for completely different reasons so they had different motivations too" congrats! you have made something else.