The Song at the End of Kamen Rider Ryuki 33
So I’ve been marathoning older Kamen Rider shows to help me fall asleep. (Not that they’re boring, but I’ll talk more about that another time.) And as I watched episode 33 of Ryuki, I was on the verge of dozing off until I got to the end of the episode.
Without ruining it for anyone who’s never seen the show, the end of this episode has a deliciously over-dramatic slow motion sequence backed by an amazing instrumental song. Folding laundry has never been so hype. But I also knew I’d heard that song somewhere before, so I was suddenly wide awake and searching the web to figure out what it was.
The most obvious search query was something along the lines of “kamen rider ryuki 33 song,” but all I could find were other people wanting to know what the song was and getting no answers. I found even less than that in a Japanese search.
But I knew the song sounded like something I’d heard in sports promo videos, probably including WWE. So I figured it must be some common sports music, and I spent about an hour searching for every variation of “dramatic sports song” and encountering numerous songs that weren’t this one.
Then I tried the obvious and started searching for WWE promo videos. And suddenly it hit me to try “don’t try this at home,” and I found it!
“Emergency Beat” by VideoHelper
VideoHelper seems to be some kind of stock music production company. In addition to the piece being used by Toei in Ryuki and by WWE, apparently it was also used by CNN during coverage of the build-up to the Iraq war. All three of these seem to come from late 2002 to early 2003, so I assume that’s the period VideoHelper shopped the song around the most.
There are a lot of standalone videos for the song on YouTube, but the uploaders and commenters only note its uses on American TV. So perhaps I’m the first person to connect the dots with its use in Ryuki. Am I the only wrestling fan who’s watched Ryuki and has a decent memory for music? Who knows.
But that’s the entire point of this post. If anyone watching through Kamen Rider Ryuki wants to know what that song is, hopefully they’ll find this post and get their answer.
(Disclosure: This was all written a couple weeks ago, and I’ve long since finished Ryuki, but I put off posting it until I could archive all the relevant YouTube videos, in case they get taken down. Apparently that only takes a few seconds, though.)