Oh cool, more Inoue. Just what this thread was lacking right now. :lol

Jokes aside, I'm eager to hear if you find any enjoyment in them. I'm a pretty aggressively positive person but The Next somehow managed to nearly put me to sleep. The First is slightly more enjoyable, though. Slightly.

Swap some terms and phrases out of this and you have my review of Wizard. :p

:lol, I’ll confess that even though I consider THE FIRST to be the better of the two, I like THE NEXT better. XD

How in the world did I not realize that Riderman doesn't have his own season all this time. I was just so convinced he had one I never realized I had literally never seen any evidence it existed.

Yeah though, I think vanilla ice cream is a good comparison for V3. It's really good, but not memorable. Amazon is something like... purple sweet potato and cheese ice cream.

Kiva 26

The next sentence really shouldn't come as a surprise, but

Man, this is stupid.

Nago goes from "im so perf" to "sob sob i suk" within the span of one episode.

And you know, on paper, that should be fine. Nago absolutely does suk, and it's about high time he realized this. It just, you know, would be nice if there was any real reason or development to cause him to have this realization and start acting this way. Cause as it is it's just about the most shallow, convenient development that's happened in Kiva since....well, let's be honest, since not that long ago at all. It's sort of a recurring thing with this series.

Well, I carbo-loaded the rest of Kiva and my final analysis is:
Inoue had a beginning and an ending pretty well mapped out; when King appears, the show gains a focus previously vacant for twenty some odd episodes. While it's not perfect, obviously, it at least fucking goes somewhere. Inoue seems to have just filled up those middle shows with a bunch of crap and gave no shits at all that none of it made sense because... well, who knows but, damn, what lousy show.

From the late thirties until the finale, the show gets more exciting, the threats are more compelling and the action is great. True, most of the characterization still makes no sense (Nago is bat-shit insane - a better show would have had him committed, Eritate "Shakin'" Kengo loses the ability to play guitar {THANK GOD} and becomes a badass who, despite no strumming abilities, has no problem punching the shit out of Fangire {and Nago}, Yuri and Megumi are still not using IXA because...?) but, there's a PLOT to focus on.

No, it still makes no sense and, if I continue to think about it, I'll shred even the final stretch to bits (IXA 1 arm save - so cool until you take a moment to realize "Da Fuk It Cum From?") but, in a show this genuinely bad, it's something like redemption. I will say the final scene is awesome and what you'd want a Kamen Rider show to end like (Wataru's Otoya clone future son's wardrobe is so brilliantly dumb, I love it).

As I said elsewhere, what Kiva really had going for it is a high production value; the CGI is much better than most Toei product, the cinematography is beautiful and the designs are great (though, yeah, Emperor form is terrible - too bad the other forms weren't so life threatening to suit actor, Seiji Takaiwa). Sure, Kiva and his kin aren't really Riders (IXA is more traditionally Riderish) and their belt system isn't explained at all, despite how cool / stupid it is - but it was so ripe with potential. I mean, Kivat 1-3, Sagarc, those movie bats and Tatsulot are ridiculous but the idea is brilliant - robotic vampire bats that bite the belt user, "infecting" them with a Kiva thing (super vampire?) - fucking brilliant. Castle Doran - no clue what it is (a lot of it's shtick - emerging from that skyscraper, Fangire soul eating - was dropped and never mentioned again) but, again, brilliant.

There's a good show here - 1 to whenever we get Jiro and the "Arm Monsters" general back story, then jump ahead to 38-ish to finish. Everything in between is 90% time wasting and sloppy to a X-Men Origins: Wolverine degree.

DON'T WATCH THE MOVIE THINKING IT WILL HAVE ANY BEARING ON THE SHOW - IT WON'T, DESPITE WHAT KIVAT TELLS YOU!

Heeeey everyone I brought this thread a present! More Inoue!

So The First... definitely is a thing that exists. The suits were pretty cool I guess? Beyond that it's just typical Inoue forced drama making for a pretty forgettable movie. I'm pretty sure if you swapped the characters and tweaked some of the dialogue, you could have slapped this in the middle of Faiz and fooled me. I actually enjoyed the making of documentary more than the film itself, though to be fair the making of had a cat wander onto set at one point so that makes it instantly amazing.

My favorite part though? The credits theme sounds like something out of a softcore porno:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jqI-tySlKM

Wait, people don't like Emperor form? What? I mean, it's not quite as cool in concept as baseline Kiva, but I've always gotten the impression, partially because I share the sentiment, that it was held in a similar regard to King Form.

What's so bad about it?

I also get the impression that it's well liked, but I couldn't say why because at I least echo the feeling that it's pretty lame. The colors are just kinda ugly (shade of gold used is garish at best) and a bit boring and it really loses a lot of the more unique and interesting aspects of the base Kiva suit, like the chains or the asymmetrical wing leg thing. Also I think this may just be me, but the fact that the "nose" part is colored red like the eyes just looks bad.

I also don't like Rising IXA and I just got to the part where Nago gets that, so, the next 18 episodes should be fun.

Least Dark Kiva is cool, whenever I get to that. Speaking of which, I was surprised to find out a few days ago that Dark Kiva is literally a recolored Emperor Form suit (sans head of course) since that's a suit I actually really like. It convinced me that a better color scheme would do wonders for the form, but the ugly gold and red does nothing for me.

The cape is also wantonly goofy.

From a purely aesthetic standpoint, I like the design quite a bit but I don't like the shade of gold used. I wish they'd gone with something a bit darker and more metallic, like the color used on King Form Blade. The really bright, yellow gold used here makes it too obvious that the suit is just plastic and not real metal.