As someone who has watched Kamen Rider Ryuki several times before, i actually was aware about the existence of the american adaptation, but i didn't saw it until recently.
Ryuki itself was a Battle Royale theme series about monsters in a mirror world and 13 kamen riders than need to fight for survive in order to get a wish from Kanzaki, the main villain. The adaptation now called Dragon Knight makes a great number of changes but remains faitful to the overall concept of fighting monsters in a mirror world now called Ventara and even naming other worlds in the way. The bad guy is now called Xaviax, which objective is to kidnap all the people from earth to be their slaves in his destroyed planet, and, in order to accomplish this, he used the counterpart people from the earth dimension to become the new Kamen Riders with the promise of giving them everything they want.
I gotta say, motivations in this one are far better here than in the original, Kido in Ryuki was very out of place with everyone, a detective, an attorney, and even an assasin, but here feels more organic, and having a more clear connection with both his father and Xaviax is more reasonable than just save people, making him both the objective and the center of the conflict.
The first 30 episodes were actually pretty great, the acting, the characters, how the story is build, how organic and important the world felt and even the footage used was used effectivily. But the last 10 episodes were actually the weakest part, more specifically when the Survive mode appears, oh, and also Adam, the Kit counterpart that starts the betrayal arc.
Even with this issues, i gotta get credit to this adaptation for getting rid of the time reset ending of Ryuki, and making a more satisfactory ending that matches both the series and the Power Rangers as well, giving us one of the most satisfying endings of any Kamen Rider series.
Ryuki itself was a Battle Royale theme series about monsters in a mirror world and 13 kamen riders than need to fight for survive in order to get a wish from Kanzaki, the main villain. The adaptation now called Dragon Knight makes a great number of changes but remains faitful to the overall concept of fighting monsters in a mirror world now called Ventara and even naming other worlds in the way. The bad guy is now called Xaviax, which objective is to kidnap all the people from earth to be their slaves in his destroyed planet, and, in order to accomplish this, he used the counterpart people from the earth dimension to become the new Kamen Riders with the promise of giving them everything they want.
I gotta say, motivations in this one are far better here than in the original, Kido in Ryuki was very out of place with everyone, a detective, an attorney, and even an assasin, but here feels more organic, and having a more clear connection with both his father and Xaviax is more reasonable than just save people, making him both the objective and the center of the conflict.
The first 30 episodes were actually pretty great, the acting, the characters, how the story is build, how organic and important the world felt and even the footage used was used effectivily. But the last 10 episodes were actually the weakest part, more specifically when the Survive mode appears, oh, and also Adam, the Kit counterpart that starts the betrayal arc.
Even with this issues, i gotta get credit to this adaptation for getting rid of the time reset ending of Ryuki, and making a more satisfactory ending that matches both the series and the Power Rangers as well, giving us one of the most satisfying endings of any Kamen Rider series.