Knight, Ren Akiyama

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Knight	Ryuuki	Scissors	Zolda	Raia	Gai	Oja	Odin	Tiger	Impaler	Verde	Femme	Ryuuga

Actor: Satoshi Matsuda

Ren Akiyama is twenty-three years old. He is the first Kamen Rider we meet in the series and may be the first one chosen. He is constant companion of Yui Kanzaki, whom he met one day when she found him fallen from the Mirror World after a battle. To me, he seemed at first an icy, embittered young man. Then he proved to have a nasty sense of humor and teased Shinji unmercifully, once Yui pushed him to not look at the other man as an enemy. Then he had a heck of a hit to the head and suffered amnesia for a while. While he drug his memories kicking and screaming back from inside his head, we learned more about him. For one thing, he is wild. For another, he dropped out of sight of everyone who knew him several months ago. But trying to remember led him back to the life he had abandoned.

Everywhere he went there was some furious punk dying to take him on (at billiards in one case, but most simply wanted a good brawl). Quite some time ago, Ren had met a girl and fallen head over heels for her. The beautiful Eri Ogawa. Two years older than him, gentle and sweet (but for some reason she hates merry-go-rounds). She was an undergraduate in the science department at Seimeiin University, working for Professor Hitoshi Ejima. And she loved Ren beyond reason. How they met and ended up together, I can't imagine, but most likely it was a case of opposites attracting.

And one day when he picked her up from work for lunch, after she issued a light-hearted scolding to him for fighting again (bruises on his face, a dead giveaway), they went to the beach and she played in the sand. Then she came to him and told him the experiments they were doing were becoming frightening. She wanted him to stick around, pick her up afterwards and hold her, be strong for her. So he waited.

Something happened, perhaps Eri screamed. Whatever it was, Ren tore into the lab to investigate, to find Eri leaping from a cushy black chair and a giant bat creature swooping down on her. Exactly what happened next is a little confused, but Shiro Kanzaki gave Ren a card deck, told him how to bind the monster, and probably told him the terms.

Ren fights to win so that he can use his wish to save Eri. She lies in a coma in the hospital, where he goes almost every day. The doctors and nurses know him well and keep him apprised of her condition. But it was slowly deteriorating. He wears her rings on a chain around his neck to always remind him. The pain had started to dull, until regaining his memory made it fresh and sharp. The tentative friendship he was forming with Shinji Kido suffered for this, for Ren knows for him to win, Shinji has to lose... to die. Shinji and Yui both influence him to gentler emotions, and he was starting to break under the strain of what he had to do.

Shiro Kanzaki allowed or forced Eri to wake from her coma. Precisely why is uncertain, perhaps to give Ren hope that her life could be saved. It backfired. Ren fought the monsters with more determination than ever, and stopped hunting the other Riders. But the discovery that Yui was dying changed all that, for it was HER life he started to fight for. And while he would not kill to save her, it became clear he was willing to die. Ren became infected with Shinji's compassion, he began to care whether Kitaoka lived or died and checked on him. But when Shinji died it nearly broke Ren. Shinji gave up trying to save Yui because he knew she didn't want him to, and turned back to his wish to stop the fighting. And that giving up told Ren what he had to do. When he was the last, he brought his wish and the power to save Eri's life, but the injuries he'd suffered fighting Odin cost him. Though it is possible he was only unconscious, I believe he died.

This is his Visor, in the hilt of which he uses his cards to call for attack or defense modes.

Knight's Advent Cards

Survive Mode