[Sh Ranger]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

KAMEN RIDER KIVA EPISODE 08 - “SOUL: THE ANGERED DRAGON CASTLE”

1986 fared a little better, but not really. It’s a lot of plot machinations, maneuvering Zanki to be less of a cool heroic loner and more of a wolf in helpful clothing. He’s up to something, and it’s not really clear what it is. There’s a bit of a cliffhanger here, where Yuri flirts with Zanki, but it feels disingenuous to me. I can’t really buy it as Yuri starting to swoon for her feral protector. She’s probably letting him think she’s falling for him so she can figure out what he’s up to. (Yuri is way too smart to take Zanki at face value.) It’s not really as shocking as it maybe was supposed to be, her picking Zanki over Otoya.

It’d help if Yuri seemed to be anything less than horrified at Otoya, though. Otoya is maybe at his most unhelpful in this episode, vacillating between actively making situations worse and almost killing himself to prove his bravery. His least frustrating moments are only when he’s debilitated and pathetic. He’s still funny in this episode (him jumping that rando in the park was a stitch; I still love how unsubtle he is in his feud with Zanki), but there’s almost no way to look at him as anywhere near the league of a suave, decisive, leather-clad werewolf. If I’m supposed to be invested in Otoya’s attempts to win over Yuri (and I was just a few episodes ago), episodes like this are the wrong direction to go in.

I can totally see why Yuri might be romantically interested in Jirou. Other than how he's just a really cool bad*ss, he appears to be reliable and gentlemanly, which acts as a foil to Otoya, whose best quality is probably his determination (drinking all that bitter black coffee is crazy impressive!) but that gets overshadowed by all his terrible flaws. It's the same thing that happens in Faiz, where Kusaka exploits Takumi's flaws to damage Mari's trust in him. Except in this Kiva 86 story, it's also a love triangle and Inoue does an awesome job at making it exciting like he always does!

Anyway, like Switchblade said, the cute windmill wyvern makes his one and only appearance here. It was nice knowing you, Shoodoran!

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Originally Posted by Androzani84

I’ll let you decide.

Other than Go-Onger being my favorite Sentai, Engine Oh G12 is also my favorite clusterfudge mecha, followed by Good Cool Kaizer VSX!