[barnstenchfartface]

Wow. This is a doozy.

This may come as a big surprise to people who keep track of my opinions (which, um, would be no one), but despite being someone who generally dislikes most Rider movies, and also Kiva, I...I actually kind of liked Kamen Rider Kiva: King Man of the Demon World Castle Thing Place.

Yeah, I know.

So, it's obviously non-canon nonsense that doesn't even begin to fit into the continuity of the show in any fashion, but once you get past that, I find very little to dislike. It felt to me to at least have some semblance of self-consistency, at least enough so to not take me out of the movie most of the time.

There were some pretty stupid/unexplained elements, mainly Rey's whole part in the story and Arc's belt just popping up out of nowhere, but like, as Kiva shit goes this felt more business as usual than something deal-breaking. Compared to Tatsulot never being addressed in like, 30 episodes, this was pretty much the smallest peanuts.

Other than that, this movie felt like it had everything, by which I mean, in a large way, that it had nothing. No Mio, no Maya, no Taiga, no stupid fucking love triangle garbage anywhere in sight. I'd almost forgotten it was possible to tell stories about Kiva without that crap. It was really refreshing. So perhaps it wasn't really a super compelling tale, but hell, I'm just thankful to have anything Kiva that doesn't even bring to mind triangular shapes.

And the humor kinda worked for me, sometimes. I haven't even seen Den-O but the "Ore? Sanjou" line got a good chuckle out of me.

And Arc-bat going "Go to hell" was frankly just too incredible for words.

Speaking of which, Arc is really cool. Didn't even mind when the last fight turned into a PS1 cutscene either.

So yeah, I dunno. Maybe someone slipped something into my drink or I'm going senile early or something. It probably really is an awful movie, but what the hell, I enjoyed it.