I kind of love that there's this subsection to Rider episodes, where the lesson is It's Okay To Quit Things. I mean, it absolutely is okay to quit things you aren't passionate about, but that's such an unusually (to me) mature message to pitch directly to children.

I can see it getting tiresome (it's a little Deus Ex Machina, especially the IXA stuff), but I'm okay with for a couple reasons.

First, there's the poetic nature of Agito's all-changes form change being a one-and-done form (up until way later in a movie), and now Kiva's all-changes form change is another one-and-done. That's too funny to not admire. It'd be like if Dogga Form was introduced by having Nago fling the Dogga Fuestle at Kiva's head. It's such a specific disregard for toku conventions that I find it really entertaining.

And that's sort of the second thing: I mostly don't care about that stuff? I like form changes and power-ups (less into the CGI monstrosities), and I would certainly prefer they be well integrated into the story (Build's various upgrades are pretty much the gold-standard for me), but it's not really the end of the world for me if they aren't. It's also clearly something Inoue doesn't really care that much about, and I'm willing to cut him slack on it. When the stories are strong and the themes are prominent, I don't really think too much about the show's indifference to accessories. Sometimes they line-up like the last episode, though, and it makes it all the better.

Though probably their background is different (burned out), I was thinking regarding the spoiled child, the child's reaction to the teacher and being teached is similar to Tsurugi's cluelessness and pride. And... I thought "support and guidance" is pushing it. He proclaims he doesn't like kids and is teaching as a way to get laid. He's the type to also mock if the student isn't on his liking... I don't approve of overlooking every questionable stuff you've done in part of contribution to others! (like for example in heroism too, like overlooking for example, them doing it only to get paid, etc. because "the result is them saving the world")

I think there's something that relates into both archery and violin, that both involve the use of bows and has a string that you pull it with. Though dunno if I'm wrong, I'd like for archery and violin to be touched upon in the story. Though the kid Mami before seems to be portrayed as severe as Keiko in Faiz or Amane in Blade in brattiness, the solution seems to be simple here, or that her brattiness in this episode is toned down, that it's just Otoya sharing his way of life to her, doing anything that she wants only (though Otoya's "The Worst" part is him doing anything what he wants...abusing freedom with little regard to others).

Nago's other quirk is being obsessed by button and collecting them as memento yeah. Nago's self-righteousness gets into his head too much for letting Fangire escape. He'd ought to beat himself up for doing that, as he's been doing that to the other people who do that like Wataru to Oomura.

The part of him quitting to play bass didn't really get to me that time, it's probably Wataru being a follower to others, or also being desperate to bond with Keigo. If being Kiva brings pain to Wataru and he feels guilty for him not being there to save others, I guess Wataru should try to make someone a Kiva successor, so he's out of it but there's still someone fighting off Fangires (he briefly thought to leave the fighting to IXA). So from your insight here, Wataru's hatred of Kiva is the violence (I know he said he wants to stop fighting, but didn't really get of it being about violence), but he loves to help people... I'd also think for Wataru, though he's painfully shy, to work this way out by helping people not in fighting way here.

Yeah, the semi final form of Kiva, DoGaBaKi Form. The Kiva's equivalent of Agito's Trinity Form (Kuuga forms with Agito's semi final form), changing the color of your hands and torso with the respective form colors. I'd think how Kiva uses Bassha Gun is the best here, maximizing the use with turning the surrounding landscape into water for more flexibility in movement, and if the form allows to use all the weapons it has, maximizing it would be using 2 or more weapons at once (if he only use 1 weapon at once, then it can be done by just usual form change). Although I find the weapon usage good, the finisher's kind of underwhelming... it's just an usual kick like base Kiva... but without even changing the sky into night!

Oh, I see where the confusion is coming in. I was talking about the Wataru/Mami story, and you were talking about the Otoya/Mami story. Yeah, no, the Otoya stuff is zero percent Hibiki. If anything, it's more Ryuki, since I can see the exact same story happening with Kitaoka forced to teach some kid a lesson.

Yeah, that would've been a nice touch!

Seems like a weird oversight from the production team. I think this is the first time Kiva's done a finisher without it being at night, either natural or supernatural?

And at the start of the episode, Wataru was all like, "I don't need to fight, leave it to IXA." He has way too much faith in Nago, who is at his most unreliable in this arc and only cares about getting his button to the point of insanity. His buttons are supposed to be trophies for capturing criminals but here he takes the trophy without capturing him and still deems that a success. The dude's crazy and a caricature of himself! Totally not the kind of person who can be trusted with protecting people, although it is pretty humorous to watch how pathetic he acts when his crusade stops being about fighting evil and just becomes about Button!

It's nice that, after only a dozen or so episodes on the show, Nago is basically irrevocably broken. The last time he went on a Button Bender and got hauled off by the cops, Shima and Megumi were like Okay This Dude Just Needs An IXA Win. And now, in the very next story after IXA gets a new toy and a big win, Nago is completely obsessed with getting a button, to the degree that he lets a Fangire escape.

He's just... like, what is his value to any organization? I know that Shima's a fan of quirky team members, but this is just absurd.

Today's track gets used fairly regularly during the opening narration from Kivat, including for episode 18 of course, and probably because of that, it's... I mean, I don't even know how to describe this well. It's just one I hear and instantly go "oh yeah that's music from Kiva?" Anyway, it's really tense and cool so maybe give it a listen the next time a bat is lecturing you about music history or something i don't know

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=039HRLn45t4

I kinda think this is a scenario where it might be because of it being a fill-in story that it turned out so good? Like Yonemura realized this was his one shot to write Kiva and tried to essentially put the entirety of the show as he saw it all in that single script. Hence all the characters being peak themselves, and the narrative structure that makes such textbook use of the dual time periods.

I've mentioned that I'm skimming back through all these episodes to pick out music for them, and these two ended up being a lot more gripping than most so far? I can't remember much about my initial reaction to this two-parter; I'm pretty sure I liked it quite a bit because Kiva as a whole was still very much riding high for me in this stretch, but nothing about the plot stuck too much with me. While I basically got the highlights reel version jumping all around from scene to scene, and haven't rewatched it in full, I have a feeling I'd be echoing a lot of your thoughts here, because many of those isolated moments I was catching really commanded my attention in a good way. It even gave me a new appreciation for the overall themes of the show, in fact!

There's a lyric in the first verse of Break the Chain that's rather cruelly cut out of the TV-Size edit despite summing up the nature of Kiva's plotting so perfectly: "everything that surrounds you in the present is a message from the past." And that's so much of this show, of course, from the scars left on bits of the environment from battles in 1986, to something used to great effect in this episode, which is Wataru being taught something by someone who learned it from Otoya. I don't know why it was looking back at this particular episode that convinced me of this, but I'm starting to guess Kiva's whole thing about connections is something I would appreciate significantly more on a rewatch in a post-Ghost world.

There's stuff about that central gimmick of the show taking place across two years so far apart where I think people like to look at it very literally and poke fun – the constantly escaping '86 Fangire being a particularly popular subject for that – and while I'm always down to poke fun at Kiva, it's becoming apparent to me there are genuine thematic strengths to emotional parts of that gimmick I feel like I've been underestimating. There's this real beauty in the idea of Wataru as a character desperate to connect with his father as he makes his way through a turbulent life, scarcely realizing how often the love of that father keeps finding its way back to him when he needs it most. Otoya looking out for his son without even trying. Being there for him without being there at all.

I don't know. Whatever point I'm trying to make, it's obviously underdeveloped having such an incomplete recollection of the series, but there's something very poetic going on here that I'm pretty sure I like.

I'm pressed for time, and I'm trying to get 19 done before I've got non-Kiva stuff to do later tonight (it's a very busy night!), but I wanted to post real quick for two reasons.

The first is to basically agree with everything Fish said. I love all of this post: the idea that this random two-parter is another writer aiming for their perfect Kiva story; the perspective on certain heightened attributes working as idealized versions of the characters, touchstones and thematic representations; and just someone else besides me linking Kiva to Ghost. Thanks for such well-stated praise for this story!

The other reason is OH MY GOD:

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/...engohmygod.gif

I thought They Did Trinity Form Again was going to be the happiest Kiva made me this week, and I was wrong. I audibly gasped when I heard Kengo shouting at bullies, and then it got better from there. In fact, I'm pretty sure I reflexively shouted GASP to the screen. So thrilled. You guys.

Update:

!!!!!!!!

IT

!!!!!!!!

GOT

!!!!!!!!

BETTER

!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

KAMEN RIDER KIVA EPISODE 19 - "FUSION: AURA STORM”

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/kiva/kiva19a.png

I don't know if I've enjoyed anything in my life as much as I enjoyed this episode of Kiva. It is a perpetual happiness delivery mechanism, using every frame to generate endorphins in my brain. I am a grown man, and I was bouncing in my chair as I watched this TV show designed to sell toys to Japanese children. I was Jirou getting a girl group autograph, losing my detached and critical eye to just squeal in delight at whatever Inoue thought up next.

(One of an infinite number of laugh-out-loud moments was the joke in the beginning that Onyanko Club was beloved by middle schoolers, when it's literally only two grown men that we've seen stan these girls on Kiva. It's a joke that works great from what we've seen before, and then explodes later in the episode.)

There's absolutely no way I can do justice to either this episode's wall-to-wall brilliance, or to my own love for it. If you do nothing else this weekend, please rewatch Episode 19 of Kiva. It's exceptionally funny in a way that maybe only Inoue is capable of. It's a type of logic he uses in his comedy stories where... it's like everything in the plot sounds like a parody of a Kamen Rider story, but not only is it 100% true, it's riotously funny and totally in-character. He makes insanity seem sane, and I love that wavelength.

What this one's about... harder to talk about than why it works? It's a story where Kengo is trying to figure out what Kiva means to the rest of the cast (KENGO IS BACK!!!), while Yuri and Megumi are feeling some massive pressure with their connection to the IXA System. The way those two threads connect, I'm not completely seeing it yet. There's bound to be some relevance to Yuri and Megumi freezing up at the exact same time that Otoya is taking over as Kiva, but I can't get there in my brain.

(I am giving the Yuri And Megumi Freeze Up plot a pass in this story, even though the concept sets my teeth on edge. I desperately want to believe that they're going somewhere worth going with this plot, so I'm holding off judgment until after 20. For this one's part of it... I think there's some value in showing a potential weakness for both women, especially if it's a connection between them. I just wish part of that weakness wasn't easy to read as Girls Shouldn't Be Kamen Riders!)

It's possible that my brain is too unbelievably jazzed at Otoya's spirit possessing Wataru's body, though. Because, THAT IDEA.

If there were no other great moments in this story, seeing Wataru play Otoya would make this episode unforgettable. The only real bum note in this episode is Otoya announcing his presence in Wataru's body at the end, because Wataru's actor nails Otoya's delivery and mannerisms from the jump, and any announcement is unnecessary. The very first scene, where he's swanning around the room and flirting with Megumi, it's so on-point it's deadly. I could've died watching that performance, and I wish the producers had been more careful in deploying it, so as to save lives. It's as unexpected as it is excellent, and I did not know that kid had it in him. Seeing him hit those notes, after eighteen episodes of bashful anxiety, it's epic.

The rest of the episode is full of tiny little moments of insanity, the overriding logic being What Is The Most Insane Thing That Could Happen Next. There's a blinding pace to this story that never lets you dwell on the minor details (why were Kengo and Nago wandering through a forest?), because it's always there to distract you with a terrific joke (Nago's anguished plea to stop being called "Gramps” by Kengo, a man who is only one year younger than him), as well as some clever, character-based action.

The action in this one! So great! Yuri's multiple stand-offs with Rook (who is also back, at least in 1986!) were tense and beautifully shot, with his passive demeanor ratcheting up Yuri's fear. Kiva's quick take-out of the Moth Fangire, where he just walks away because the Fangire drops BUT WAIT now he's being attacked from behind because Kiva completely forgot to do a finisher. (My assumption is that Otoya is Kiva at that point in the fight, and since no one in 1986 ever finished off a Fangire, he didn't think he needed to do anything special to kill it.) The breathtaking (and rocking!) Megumi/Nago team-up; a fight that's so badass that Nago completely forgets to Henshin, he's so into kicking ass.

It's... yeah, it's not the most logically sound episode. There are a bunch of little details that get glossed over or contradicted in order to keep the story moving. But none of them rise above the level of nitpicky for me, and they're all overshadowed by how awesome this episode was.

Even the stuff I was initially not too thrilled to see eventually won me over. Like, man, was not hopped up for another story where Yuri wants revenge and the boys don't let her! Even if we can see more of Jirou's reluctance to part with the IXA Knuckle as being about his own selfish need for vengeance (plus some paternalism), it's still tacky to trot this plot out again. But then the episode swerves away from theat, having Otoya hilariously lift the IXA Knuckle from Jirou (while infuriating him as a bonus) to give it to Yuri so she can get her revenge. It's a huge moment of growth from Otoya, with him letting Yuri do what she thinks is best, while doing what he can to support her. It's a genuine moment of kindness from Otoya, and it's best punctuated by Yuri thanking him for his help and then punching him in the stomach because he completely had that coming after knocking her out before. It's these weird people finding little moments of empathy amidst hilarious and poignant emotional struggles.

The whole episode was like that, and I adored it. This thing was overflowing with memorable nonsense, and I never even talked about Otoya finding his heaven in a 2008 maid cafe. World's Greatest Kiva Episode, right here.

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/kiva/kiva19b.png

All this talk of Kiva got me googling Japanese commercials of the 80s. Interesting nonetheless.