[Kamen Rider Die]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sh Ranger

Okay, I have a different take on what Wataru singing represents, other than that he's a great singer due to having Seto Koji's talent. I think there's a lot more happening inside Wataru than just deciding to sing. You can see when he starts, that he immediately becomes more confident and vigorous. I think he's actually channeling his Kiva persona here to trigger that change. Just like Kiva, the key to that change is the power of music which Wataru resonates with. If the Bloody Rose tells him to fight, then the music here is telling him to sing, so he sings. It's not like the bad violin performance he gave at his house, where only his reputation was at stake. He has to sing here, for the sake of Kengo and the audience who were excited to hear them play. It shows that Wataru can Break The Chain of his shyness with the right stimulus.

This is a nice idea! I can see it tying into Wataru's violin performance for Megumi when she was in the hospital, where his connection with her overpowered his fears.

I just don't know how much of that is really onscreen here? I feel like Wataru's stage fright needed either one other scene with his friends, or some narrative parallel in the IXA fight. Either we needed to get Kengo or Megumi to give him some sort of pep talk that he could tap back into when he was on stage, or... I mean, I feel like not tying it into his IXA fight is a huge missed opportunity. If there had been some angle to the IXA fight where he needed to face his fears directly and come through for Megumi, then I'd feel like it was a worthwhile conclusion to the episode. As it is, Kiva beating IXA doesn't feel like some repudiation of Nago's actions/attitude/existence, so there's really not much to tie it all together.

I do like the idea of Wataru improving as a person! I just don't think the show really spent enough time on that concept.

(Also, I think I maybe preferred Kengo's vocals! Wataru's performance on stage is too tentative, too cautious. The music is shredding, and he's singing a ballad. Bring back Kengo!)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sh Ranger

It probably helps that Jirou is secretly a Clawolve/Wolfen, so his body is more resilient than a human. In exchange for agreeing to be an expendable test driver, he gets to play the self-sacrificing hero and make himself look even cooler to Yuri. And it works. I mean, it's like he's taking cues from Zanki in the second half of Hibiki!

But yeah, now Yuri knows that Shima was lying about the Rider System being complete and that she's a candidate for the next user when it gets a bugfix patch. She's a human, so she may not have been as lucky as Jirou.

She's probably still not going to be super lucky when the system gets fixed, because it's being calibrated for a Clawolve. All of the data that's being collected is fixing the IXA System for non-human biology. Yuri puts that thing on in a few months, it's probably going to kill her faster than it would've before!