[Kamen Rider Die]

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Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

Huh. Well, it didn't take long for you to casually say something about Kiva that completely blew my mind. I've honestly never stopped to connect those dots before, and this is kinda putting a lot of the show in a new light for me.

Happy to help!

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It also didn't take long for us to disagree on something!

Happy to... uh.

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I mean, just because I suggested Kiva is More About Music doesn't mean that Hibiki wasn't About Music. It's merely a difference in how they apply that thematically. Hibiki is about rhythm, while Kiva is about melody.

With Hibiki, it's that whole idea of Hitting Your Beat, right? This idea of everyone having their own drum to march to; a life they feel confident in living. Finding a groove that fits and sticking with it. The emphasis on things like the rigorous routine of training the Oni do, or the focus on the beauty of nature, all that – it all feeds into back into that one concept in a way I could probably describe better if I was more passionate about Hibiki. It's like, order, or something. I guess it's less a show about music, and more one about sound.

With Kiva, it is admittedly much more specifically about music. The idea of all these individual notes in their unique places coming together to form a greater tapestry, made all the more beautiful through that connection. You're only two episodes in, but I probably don't need to explain how things like the dual timeline shtick fit that concept – it all feeds back into that one concept in a way I could probably describe better if I was more passionate about Kiva. It's like, harmony, and stuff. I guess... I guess it's definitely a show that's more About Music than Hibiki, huh?

Still though, the point I was trying to make here is that I disagree hard that you blew the lyrics gimmick on Hibiki. I think it fit the offbeat nature of that show in particular very well. I mean, Kiva is mostly about wordless classical pieces, whereas the title character in Hibiki had a habit of singing that one little tune with lyrics tailored to his current situation. Tell me which one of those honestly sounds like a better time to bust out that trick.

Sure, I see what you're saying. It's hard to outright say that Hibiki wasn't About Music when it did that theme song trick: layering in new instrumentation as new characters joined the story, trying different combinations to evoke different feelings, and so on. It's a show that... I think about it musically maybe more than I think about it verbally, I guess. I used a Sylvan Esso lyric on the first episode that sums up my feelings of what's best about Hibiki more than anything I ever wrote up:

I was gonna write a song for you
Gonna sing it out loud
Gonna sing it at such decibels that
All you'll hear is sound and
All you'll feel is sound and
All you'll be is sound

That idea, of sound transcending action, until sound becomes meaning... that was something that made the first episode of Hibiki really magical to me.

But then Ibuki never really practices his trumpet, and Zanki never practices his guitar, and there's an entire story where Todoroki has fun rocking out and the entire cast looks at him like he's got two heads... it just never really seemed like it was a story about what music means to people, you know? Even the various scenes of Hibiki training up his drum skills, that's all metaphors for different things that are related to Asumu's adolescence. It could've been any rigorous training that Hibiki was doing, to my mind (running a marathon, competitive ice dancing, full-contact Connect Four), and it would've had as much relevance to the themes of the show.

I just... I always had the feeling that Hibiki had a ton of really compelling metaphorical tools that it sort of let languish? Or didn't really explore as fully as it could have? There were missed opportunities on that front that bother me more than they maybe should. I don't know.

Thank you for the clarification, though! I don't think we're disagreeing as much as either one of us thought.