Top 5 secondary Riders ^_^
HM. This is a surprisingly hard question! ...Also this got very abstract very quickly, like about their story or their place in the narrative, but this is why they are my favorites. Ok, so, kinda sorta in 1-5 order, but don't quote me on that:
Birth: Date Akira/Shintaro Gotou
Ok I know this is two guys but, to me, ‘secondary rider’ means you have to look at the suit, and who’s in the suit, and the story that goes into that suit. It’s not my top 5 favorite secondary characters in Rider, it’s secondary RIDERS, right? So we have to get into the whole ‘official categorization’ thing, and the Secondary Rider™ in OOO is Birth. And Birth is these two guys (and Satonaka in a bonus). AND FURTHERMORE you cannot separate these two’s character arcs, they do not work alone, they are linked! Narratively! And it’s a good narrative. It’s about being broken down. It’s about not believing in yourself and being told you’re enough and having to come to believe it. It’s about keeping distance so you can burn it all down but not being allowed to. It’s about letting love in. It’s about realizing you are not right all the time. It’s about growing from self-righteousness and savior complexes and realizing that you just have to do what you can. It is so neatly tied into the themes and arcs of every other character, and THE THEMES OF THE WORK AS A WHOLE.
Zeronos: Sakurai Yuuto
At the end of Episode Red I had to lay on the floor for 15 minutes. My wife put a blanket over me. Yuuto is. Important. Yuuto is about memory, and loss, and having to fill very big shoes. Yuuto is about sacrifice, and that deep pit in your heart that used to be a person you knew, a long time ago. He’s tragic and he’s hopeful and he’s beautiful. He takes the themes of the work and paints them with a harsher brush. And also he is a bratty teen boy who loves his demon bird mom from the future.
Cross-Z: Banjou Ryuuga
It’s about the story. It’s about being a scrappy little featherweight in a world of monsters and what war makes you, and choosing love. Banjou is so full of love, it burns and burns until he’s overflowing. All he wants is to see someone smile. All he wants is to brand the love he feels onto one other person until that person sees himself the way Banjou does. He punches monsters in the face with a roll of quarters* in his fist. *The lingering feelings of someone who loves him. HE PUNCHES MONSTERS. WITH LOVE**. DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT I AM SAYING. **The dragon fullbottle
Garren: Tachibana Sakuya
Do you know how hard it is to decide who you count as the secondary rider of Blade?? Blade isn’t really… about that??? It’s very weird to say with any strength in my voice that Tachibana deserves the title more than Hajime. But he is the guy on the official merch?? SO. OK. IT’S THIS WET CAT. I already wrote a whole huge rant about this character. I feel like my feelings are known. This man is a TRAGEDY. Like it’s fun to talk about him in terms of wet cat and meow meow and blorbo and guy who did it the worst it’s ever been done. And it’s true! I know we all say that with earnest love and affection. But, seriously, I find him so fascinating. He inarguably makes terrible choices for the whole show, but the choices don’t feel forced, to me. Tachibana makes sense, a horrible, sad, painful sense. Tachibana’s choices come from a place of misguided desire to do The Right Thing, and his idea of what that is differs from everyone else. His Right is organization, and status, and structure. He doesn’t know anything, because he relies on people more powerful than him to know better. He doesn’t see worth in his own choices, he sees himself as an enforcer. Tachibana is a soldier, and it’s killing him, and even then he can’t break out. Even when he knows he’s wrong. Even when he tries over and over and fails every time. He makes one choice for himself, and it’s right at the end, and it’s beautiful, and powerful, and sad, and it’s important, to me, that he makes it. Even if you don’t win, the will to change, the letting yourself finally admit you are wrong… Even if you only do one good thing at the end, it matters that you did the one good thing. Also I have a nuclear-hot take about Tachibana that I’m not going to share here.
Gatack: Kagami Arata
I feel so weird putting Kagami in as a secondary rider. He’s the main character of the show, the guy who has to grow and change, the guy who the Stuff Happens To. But he is, officially, the secondary Rider. I love him. I cheered so hard for him. They don’t give this guy a win every episode but when he gets a win he’s earned it through so much grit and straightforward rage that it’s palpable through the screen. And it FEELS. SO. GOOD. Just great setup and payoff, the pacing in Kabuto can be insane but like, this stuff? The way it makes you wait for Kagami but never leaves you unsatisfied? Kabuto is the good shit. Every show should make you wait for someone to become a rider like this. This goes the same for Gotou, and to a lesser extent Banjou. You have to make it MEAN something. Also he is a normal man beset upon by the weirdest guys in the entire cosmos, he lives in something like a harem anime but most of these guys are not trying to date him, they are just trying his patience. What is not to love about that setup?
