Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die (Post 800460)

I assume that Zord looked cool

Originally Posted by Androzani84 (Post 800462)

I’ll let you decide.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=RkuZCkppUto

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die (Post 800424)

KAMEN RIDER KIVA EPISODE 08 - “SOUL: THE ANGERED DRAGON CASTLE”

1986 fared a little better, but not really. It’s a lot of plot machinations, maneuvering Zanki to be less of a cool heroic loner and more of a wolf in helpful clothing. He’s up to something, and it’s not really clear what it is. There’s a bit of a cliffhanger here, where Yuri flirts with Zanki, but it feels disingenuous to me. I can’t really buy it as Yuri starting to swoon for her feral protector. She’s probably letting him think she’s falling for him so she can figure out what he’s up to. (Yuri is way too smart to take Zanki at face value.) It’s not really as shocking as it maybe was supposed to be, her picking Zanki over Otoya.

It’d help if Yuri seemed to be anything less than horrified at Otoya, though. Otoya is maybe at his most unhelpful in this episode, vacillating between actively making situations worse and almost killing himself to prove his bravery. His least frustrating moments are only when he’s debilitated and pathetic. He’s still funny in this episode (him jumping that rando in the park was a stitch; I still love how unsubtle he is in his feud with Zanki), but there’s almost no way to look at him as anywhere near the league of a suave, decisive, leather-clad werewolf. If I’m supposed to be invested in Otoya’s attempts to win over Yuri (and I was just a few episodes ago), episodes like this are the wrong direction to go in.

Originally Posted by Androzani84 (Post 800462)

I’ll let you decide.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=RkuZCkppUto

Originally Posted by Sh Ranger (Post 800496)

I can totally see why Yuri might be romantically interested in Jirou. Other than how he's just a really cool bad*ss, he appears to be reliable and gentlemanly, which acts as a foil to Otoya, whose best quality is probably his determination (drinking all that bitter black coffee is crazy impressive!) but that gets overshadowed by all his terrible flaws. It's the same thing that happens in Faiz, where Kusaka exploits Takumi's flaws to damage Mari's trust in him. Except in this Kiva 86 story, it's also a love triangle and Inoue does an awesome job at making it exciting like he always does!

Originally Posted by Kurona (Post 800501)

That said, I mean, I dunno. Kamen Rider toy stuff, easy for me to overlook. As Switchblade said it never comes up or matters again so it's, like, a minor minor minor issue with the show as a whole

Originally Posted by Kurona (Post 800501)

That said, I mean, I dunno. Kamen Rider toy stuff, easy for me to overlook. As Switchblade said it never comes up or matters again so it's, like, a minor minor minor issue with the show as a whole

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die (Post 800502)

Second, I think the problem with the Zanki/Kusaka comparison here is that Otoya's losses are way more self-inflicted than Takumi's were. Takumi could be a selfish, grumpy asshole, but Kusaka usually needed to actively stir the pot and/or physically assault someone to get Takumi to strain friendships. Here, Zanki just has to not be as much of a pushy creep as Otoya? Like, Zanki just has to clear that incredibly low bar to (theoretically) turn Yuri against Otoya.

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die (Post 800502)

I don't love a finish with CGI monstrosities battling in the skies for a Kamen Rider episode, but it ain't like I'm turning my nose up at toyetic content. I mean, Ex-Aid. I'm okay with fun toy content that enhances the narrative! This wasn't that for me.

Originally Posted by Sh Ranger (Post 800508)

I'm surprised how anybody can just not think these CGI fights are totally awesome, but considering our frequently clashing opinions about Makamou fights in Hibiki, I think we are always going to disagree about that.

Originally Posted by Kurona (Post 800501)

I would definitely like Kiva a lot more if Engine-Oh was in it.

Originally Posted by Switchblade (Post 800505)

Now that I think about it, I wonder if this is the reason why Inoue never did another Rider show after Kiva. Decade and all the other shows after it have been really big about pushing the collectible gimmick toys, which is something that Inoue is just not interested in. I can see him not wanting to write a toy commercial and Toei not wanting a writer who would have Kouta just randomly pull out the watermelon Lockseed once and then never mention it again.

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die (Post 800511)

It's completely a Personal Preference thing. I like human-scaled conflicts in my tokusatsu, so anything that goes giant-sized tends to lose my interest. It's maybe one of the major reasons I've stayed away from Sentai?

Originally Posted by Sh Ranger (Post 800513)

Well in Sentai, the giant fights are choreographed using a mix of CGI, suit actors in miniature city sets and a little animatronic action so you might actually prefer that to the non-humanoid CGI fights in KR?