What’s The Work?
Kamen Rider Ryuki is the third entry in the Heisei era of Kamen Rider and the twelve to installment of the franchise overall. It centers around a group of people as they are given power to transform into riders and must fight each other in a war called the rider war.
Who Is He?
Shiro Kanzaki is the overarching antagonist of Kamen Rider Ryuki. He is the controller of Kamen Rider Odin and the one who started the Rider war in attempt to save his sister Yuki.
What Makes Him Heinous?
Background
As a child, Shiro would constantly be abused by his parents and be confined to his attic alongside his sister Yui, the only person to keep him company. To ease their pains, the two would draw words where they were happy and protected by monsters. Unfortunately, her being unable to go outside and get help lead to her tragically dying from illness from at the age of 7. Not wanting to be alone, he allowed the mirror version of her to replace her, despite the fact she would eventually disappear forever once she turned twenty. Upon doing this though, she unintentionally caused an explosion that killed their parents, leading to Shiro being adopted by a couple in America and Yuki being adopted by grandmother Sanako. For the next 13 years, he studied the Mirror World in order to find a way to resurrect her, culminating in him creating the Mirror Monsters and the Advent Decks and ultimately starting the Rider War. In the process, he eventually merged with the Mirror World and became a Mirror Being as well.
Rider War
Once the time was right, he began instigating Rider War by finding users so that he could give them the Advent Decks and have them fight to the death until one remained. Once this happened, he would have his puppet Rider Kamen Rider Odin come in and kill them and obtain their wish so that he could claim them. The only problem in achieving this was Shinji Kido, an altruistic man who entered into the Rider War despite never choosing him. Shinji's non stop determination to stop the war proved to be a big hindrance to his plan to save Yui due to him delaying the Rider War past the day of her death. To stop him, he would use to Time Vent to reset the War every time. In spite of this, Shinji would still find away to enter the war and mess with his plans.
Near the end of the series, Yui threatened to commit suicide to convince Shiro to end the war and stop more incinerate people from getting killed. To stop her, he pretend to agree only to have a mirror monster grab her and had it bring her to their old home where he trapped her in a room. Eventually though, Shiro came to realize that his obsession with saving her would only bring suffering and that Yui would never be happy with his actions just to save her. With this in mind, he used his Advent Deck to rewind the Rider War one finale time to create a timeline where it never happened and the Mirror Monsters never existed.
Kamen Rider Zi-O
It’s heavily implied that Shiro restarted the Rider War in 2019 during the events of Rider Time: Ryuki as following Kamen Rider Odin’s defeat, his final words before disintegrating were "Yui".
Heinous Standard
As the one who orchestrated the entire war, not only is he responsible for all 13 of the riders killing each other multiple times but the deaths of hundreds of innocent people and near deaths of millions (including children) caught in the crossfire as well, weather it be from the Mirror Monsters, Takeshi Asakura, Jun Shibaura, Masashi Sudo, or all of them. With the mirror monsters, he opened their world (the mirror world), allowing them to attack lots of people throughout the city from mirrors and eat them. With Takeshi, he knew he was a dangerous serial killer yet gave him the Advent cards to and allowed into the battle anyways, leading to him slaughtering 4 of the riders in battle and him using his contract mirror monster to massacre dozens of people, including the parents of a junior high school student who he briefly tried to use as bait when his contact monsters turned against him. With Jun Shibaura, him starting the rider war inspired him to brainwash a bunch of people into fighting each other to the death and eventually try this on the rest of Japan. With Masashi Sudo, he sacrificed two cops who were after him.
His actions also inspired Itsuro Takamizawa to join the war so that he could eventually take over the world.
What Makes Him Inconsistent?
He is incredibly tragic as his parents were abusive and would constantly lock him and his sister up in the attic, eventually leading to the latter dying from a sickness due to being unable to get help and the former having a mirror version replace her so that he wouldn’t be alone. This leads me to my second point; he really loves his sister, even going so far as to sacrifice countless lives just to be with her.
Adding on to the last preventions, he is given lots of sympathetic moments. For examples
- In the series finale, upon realizing that Yui would never be happy with what he is doing and seemingly realizing that what he would be doing would never bring her back, he screams in anguish while using his time vent to undue the entire war.
- In the film, he screams hysterically in anguish while dissolving after Yui died.
These moments couple with his tragedy are too preventing for him to be NPE.
Final Verdict
I’ll give him an easy yes but you guys decide.