Lord of Lords: Ryu Knight is not currently available for streaming or reading.
It feels like a minor miracle that I was exposed to Ryu Knight. A total fluke that a friend passed along a crusty 360p YouTube transfer of the title sequence to a 30-year-old anime. And a stroke of luck that it was perfectly teed up for a “gotcha” reveal.
Ryu Knight opens by monologue (lovingly subtitlted by a fan into French), told while gazing up at a monolothic sword. A cloud wipes across the scene, transitioning to a lush forests stretching out to a light-speckled ocean. I'd absolutely play this role-playing game on the SNES. And then the camera fades to admire the rising sun behind…
…hey, is that a Wow Cool Robot™️?!
Oh, neat, a proper fantasy show, with mecha! Just let me just dig up some details and…
Hey, excuse me.
They released model kits for this?
In 2024?!
Where has this square-up-my-alley programming been all my life?
Vibe Check
I do mean “all my life”, because there's so much of this that show that points at an alternate history where this aired on a programming block on U.S. television. Maybe it wouldn't have been Digimon levels of popular, but it sure could've been a Medabots- or Monster-Rancher-style stape. From the slice I've seen, it has everything: robots for the robot kiddos, a whole-hearted fantasy setting for the traditionally adventureful sort, and a crystal-clear vector for toy marketing. All your Saturday-morning needs.
If that last point sounds facetious, I promise you it's not. Not to put too fine a point on it, but its sense of flamboyant, charicature-driven design feels right at home next to other delightfully-questionable designs from just this side of the new millenium. Just scroll back up to the Cowboy Robot for a quick gander and compare him to a pair of its would-be contemporaries:
There ain't no hallmark of early-aughts animation quite like critters that read like goofy charicatures.
And that's nothing to say of how Ryu Knight was produced by, let me check my notes… Sunrise. Yes, Gundam and Inuyasha-Sunrise. And – here's the real kicker – it was produced by the exact same studio within the company and over exactly the same 52-week time period as G Gundam, the hearts-on-fire poster child for “Problematic Fave” (but it's my problematic fave, gosh dangit).
All of which is to say, it was a right show made at a right time. When I pull it up to watch today, it evokes the exact same emotional response as when I revisit Medabots or even the early seasons of Pokémon.
It's a nostalgia for something that I never had the first time around.
But, for how much I love Ryu Knight when I think about it, I don't think about it much at all unprompted.
It's the very definition of “hey, that was neat”.
Okayest Anime of the 1990s
All of this is especially coming front-of-mind now, as the New York Times famously released their “Top 100 Movies of the 21st Century (so far)” list. It's naturally a conversation-starter for shared experiences, or for people to post their own quippy top-10-of-the-century lists on social media for video games, books, or whatever media is your top hobby.
And a lot of these have the same few items popping up; it's almost the “correct” thing to put Shadow of the Colossus or The Orange Box on a “most significant games of 2000-2025” list. But almost all of them have a couple of unique items. Zeboyd lists off Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter, a sequel so divergent from its predecessors that I'm sure I've never seen it discussed openly. Video essayists will frequently make left-field pulls like Anatomy that will prompt 95% of readers (including me) to look up what they're even talking about.
Still, all these natrually gravitate toward shortlists, asking people to cut out large swaths of experiences that stick with them for unique reasons but can't cut the mustard for “all-timer” status. A nebulous definition of “most significant” or even “best” is absolutely worth examining, and of course people shout elevate and pass around their favorite stories.
But we should be completely honest. That's nobody's entire media diet. For every Casablanca you watch, you're probably also checking out Baby Assassins – which I say not as any attempt of judgment of their quality. It's more that I don't think many of us would keep watching film, or playing games, or taking in any sort of media, if we forced ourselves to just stick to what we “should” be taking in. Art is also entertainment; part of that should involve watching teen roommates have charming little sitcom gripes about their dead-end assassin jobs.
Is there a place to be listing out The Absolute Okayest Anime of the 1990s? Should we be making an effort to ensure that the tapes keep circulating on the stories that we just snack on week-to-week? Does it matter to be talking at length about a show that would've made a decent bumper between Cubix and Static Shock 20 years ago?
Absolutely.
Recognizing Game
Because at the end of the day, people still put their sweat and tears into these things. Not even just the director, who's got Higurashi and Tsubasa Resevoir Chronicle to his name, or the original creator who still gets recognition for Outlaw Star – though they certainly deserve recognition for more than just a few works each over their long careers. But imagine being a late-20s animator, working for a whole year to help create a weekly run of a show with such a unique concept and character designs, and then it… fades out. Barely the fifth most popular show your team made that decade.
The problem is certainly only set up to get worse – how many of the 46 anime that aired on TV just this three-month season can any real person name? 40 games came out on Steam per day last year – about a dozen of which have what Valve calls ” certain player and sales metrics that give confidence that a reasonable number of customers that are engaged with the game.”
It's hard to get work seen, let alone remembered. Take it from a community blog trying to operate in an “SEO Is King” landscape.
So it's our responsibility to lift up our own little blorbos, even and especially when that blorbo is a whole production, the long labors of a whole team of creative folks. Made for capital reasons, sure, but made all the same.
All of which is to say: I think you should put an eye on Ryu Knight. I only wish it was easier to do so.
Please, Discotek. I'm begging you here.
P.S. – If nothing else, peek at the show's ending credits, featuring the cast dancing around as little Dragon-Quest-inspired character sprites. Adorable.