[Kamen Rider Die]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Switchblade

Whoa, this crept up on me. Honestly didn't expect this until next week. Glad I went ahead and downloaded the episodes in advance a few days ago. Haven't started the rewatch yet, so I'll likely have more to say tonight.

That said, let's start with my overall thoughts going back into this: I'm legitimately looking forward to it.

I got into Kamen Rider back in '09, while Decade was still airing, and I followed the same path you've been on for over a year now of going back through the whole Heisei era before watching Decade (Kinda. Kuuga hadn't been fansubbed yet, so I only watched a couple episodes of that before moving on to Agito). Back then, I remember that Kiva was THE, all-caps, SHIT. Everybody loved the show and even some of my friends who I didn't know watched these shows were raving about it. I didn't get around to it personally for months, but at the time I wasn't a fan. In fact, until Ghost this was the show that I always ranked as my least favorite. I had a lot of problems with it and I suspect I'll be revisiting them over the next couple months.

That said, I know I've also forgotten a lot of the show's specifics and I'm sure that there's going to be a lot of material that hits me differently, twelve years later. The big thing I'm going into this with is one thing I said back on TFW2005's old Rider Kick thread, which was basically that I disliked Kiva more, but I'd still rather watch it again than Faiz. Then last year I finally rewatched Faiz and fell back in love with it. I'm really, really curious to see what happens when I go back and give Kiva a second chance.

The Ghost thing... really funny to have that show brought up in conjunction with Kiva, because I can already see the broad shape of a post about how Ghost and Kiva have similarities. There's probably a way to talk about Familial Obligation and Connecting With An Absent Father that I'll be able to get at better after, uh, watching more than a single episode of Kiva. There's clearly some similar questions being asked by Wataru and Takeru, even if the shows are bound to have different answers to them. (I cannot see an Inoue show preventing an apocalypse by hugging someone!)

Neat to hear that Kiva was well-regarded(-ish?) back in the day, since it's another show I didn't really hear too much about when I came in. I mean, some negative talk, but nothing too egregious. It was just something I thought of as An Unpopular Show, based mostly on how long it took to get a Seihou or whatever. Interesting that, when it was recent, it was more appreciated. Definitely a show I'm not finding too disagreeable so far!