Kamen Rider Ryuki Special: 13 Riders

Kamen Rider Ryuki Special: 13 Riders was written by Toshiki Inoue and directed by Ryuta Tasaki. It features the debut of the thirteenth Kamen Rider in the continuity of Ryuki: Verde. This special was first broadcast on TV Asahi on September 19, 2002.

It was later released on DVD on July 21, 2003. The DVD also featured information on the characters, an interview with actor Arthur Kuroda, and an “interview” with some of the characters.

This television special is an alternate telling of the Kamen Rider Ryuki story. Shinji Kido’s life, working as an employee at ORE Journal, takes a sharp turn after being pulled into the Mirror World by a Mispider. Luckily, he was saved by Kamen Rider Ryuki, Koichi Sakakibara. However, Sakakibara could no longer go on due to the severity of his injuries and passed his Card Deck to Shinji, allowing him to become the next Ryuki and defeat the monster.

After meeting with Yui Kanzaki and Ren Akiyama (Kamen Rider Knight), Shinji learns about the conditions of the Rider War, as well as of the other Riders participating. Unable to allow such a game of death to exist like his Rider predecessor, Shinji sets out to convince all the Riders to end the senseless fighting and put an end to the War.

His pleas fall upon deaf ears as just about every other Rider sets out to hunt down Shinji and his eventual reluctant ally, Ren. Eventually, Shinji’s deck is destroyed and Ren dies, after passing on the deck for Kamen Rider Knight to Shinji.

The special has two different endings which were voted on by the viewers via phone at the time of the initial airing: the voted-for-air ending (in which Shinji faces the surviving Riders on his own) and the alternate ending (a resetting of the Rider War).