Battle Fight! Round 2: Everyone vs. Everyone Else

For this installment of the closer examinations into the many Rider battles, we turn to the show that was all about fighting, fighting, and more fighting- Kamen Rider Ryuki. This battle comes in episode #40, and is one of my favorite in the series.

Since this comes at a fairly critical point in the series, it's hard to accurately map out everything going on without recapping a bunch of the previous episodes, but here's the long and short of it: with the original Alternative out of the picture, Kagawa Hideyuki, aka Alternative Zero, is continuing his war on Kanzaki Shirô's reckless battle between the Riders. You heard right- a war declared on another war. I told you this show was about fighting! To that end, he's got Tôjô Satoru/Kamen Rider Tiger on his side, and they've been trying to kill Kanzaki's sister Yui, for some deeper purpose yet to be revealed. Naturally, this does not sit well with big brother, nor with our main men, Kidô Shinji/Kamen Rider Ryuki and Akiyama Ren/Kamen Rider Knight.

On top of all this, Asakura Takeshi/Kamen Rider Ouja got his butt handed to him a few episodes back thanks to a sneak attack by Tiger, and is currently incarcerated, much to the delight of his archnemesis Kitaoka Shuichi/Kamen Rider Zolda, who also played a role in Asakura's arrest. Previously, Ryuki got beaten senseless by Tiger, and is currently in the hospital. (He'll be out soon enough, following a little pep talk by Yui.) Knight has been duking it out with Alternative Zero, and Kanzaki has been butting into the action as usual to keep Yui from becoming a splat somewhere in the Mirror World because, you know, it's really all about her. Meanwhile, yet another Rider is about to emerge from the shadows.

Got all that? Good, because here's where our fight begins. Kagawa and Kanzaki just had a little chat prior to this, until Kagawa transforms to go join Knight & Tiger, who have just recently run into each other as well as the double K's, and are now engaged in battle because, hey, that's how this show works. Note here that Kanzaki has threatened Kagawa that unless he knocks off this "Close the Mirror World" baloney, Kagawa's wife and son are as good as dead. This will be important later on.

Alternative Zero enters the Mirror World and joins Tiger against Knight. Watch as Tiger gloats about his mentor being a "great hero" in the creepy way that he does.

As this is all going on, Asakura staged a little jailbreak, much to Kitaoka's frustration. Kanzaki shows up to give him his card deck (previously confiscated) and, following this gem of a reaction...

...he runs towards the camera with one of those classic Asakura "Raaaaaaarghs!" and transforms.

Back in the Mirror World, Knight evens the odds with a Trick Vent, which means it's now a small army of Knights vs. Alternative Zero & Tiger.

Alternative Zero quickly disposes of the Knights with an Accel Vent, a high-speed attack that I like to think is sort of a forerunner to Faiz & Kabuto's high-speed antics. When he and Tiger realize there's now no Knights left at all (as while the duplicates are easily destroyed, the real one is usually noticeably still there) they get a nasty surprise- they get blown away by DarkRaider!

Knight Survive jumps down from the sky and stands atop his bat Monster ally, who transforms into bike mode for the Final Vent. Not to be outdone, Alternative Zero slashes his own Final Vent card, summoning his monster PsychoRogue who transforms into PsychoRoader, Denjin Zaboga-style.

The two bikes collide (with Psychoroader & Zero spinning around rapidly, which is far funnier than it should be) and the combatants are sent flying back. Tiger casually strolls out to view the aftermath, and spots Ouja, who cuts short his usual theatrics and remembers Tiger as the guy who got the drop on him before. Itchin' for revenge, Ouja summons his big horn sword thingy, to be matched against Tiger's oversized claws of doom. There's a great little exchange between them here:

Tiger: You're fighting only for the fight.

Ouja: Do you really need any other reason?

Tiger: As I thought...You really are the worst Rider!

So as you'd expect, they start fighting. About this point, a whole pack of Gazelle-type Monsters (Gigazelle, Megazelle, Omegazelle, etc.) drop in to join the battle. Well later find out they're here courtesy of Kamen Rider Imperer, but before that, Zolda also arrives, keen on taking out Ouja and anyone else in the way. Although he initially doesn't recognize Alternative Zero ("Is that a Rider?") he decides to blast him all the same. Before he can hit everyone with his Final Vent (which, as you may recall, pretty much just blows everything up) he gets attacked by a Monster and joins the greater fight, which is quickly turning into a free-for-all.

But before long, Ryuki Survive shows up. Yes, Kidô got out of the hospital, and with a little help from DragRanzer, destroys/runs over the gazelle horde and stops the action cold. Now comes what is possibly the one of the coolest moments in the whole series.

Ryuki tells Alternative Zero that his family is safe. We get a quick cutaway scene showing one of Kazanki's Monster goons about to eat Mrs. Kagawa & son, but DragRedder flies out of a nearby reflection and smacks him down. So basically, Ryuki just saved the life of the family of a man who pretty much wouldn't be above killing him. As Zero contemplates this, Tiger scoffs that his mentor really doesn't care about that, to which Ryuki replies "I wanted to save them, so I saved them."

Let's go over that again. Ryuki, in spite of possessing a Survive Form, is arguably on the weaker end of the Rider scale in the series. He's a decent fighter, and he's made it this far and all, but compared to most of the others, he's really the odd man out. So he just drove up and halted a battle that involved his best friend who often wants to kill him; another guy who will shoot him just as soon as fight alongside him; two psychopaths, both of whom would gladly just kill him right there; another guy who would kill him if it were for the greater good, and a pack of dimension-jumping monsters that eat people. All of the above are probably better physical fighters than him, and one or two is nearly equal in power when it comes to the fancy card stuff. And what does he do, when they all roll their eyes at his insistence on saving even his enemys' loved ones? He basically asks if anyone there has the balls to tell him that wasn't the right thing to do. With one exception (see below) this shuts everyone up.

By this point, time's running out in the Mirror World, so pretty soon everybody leaves more or less unscathed. But before that, Ouja, as laconic as ever, wants to keep on fighting, and attacks Ryuki. And what does Ryuki do?

He effortlessly blocks it. Eat it, Ouja.

Moral of the story? Sometimes, you don't need to actually be the one throwing the punch to totally own someone else.