[Kamen Rider Die]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Switchblade

This one felt weird to me. It's a bit hard to explain, but there was something about it that felt off, mostly in regards to the Otoya section. Otoya is behaving really weirdly, even by his own standards. As it turns out, this episode is weird: this two-parter is written by Shoji "Kabuto" Yonemura, making these the only two episodes of Kiva not written by Inoue.

They aren't bad, but the characters do tend to feel just a little bit off-base to me. I did enjoy the Wataru sections, though. Overall, I feel like Wataru is growing on me a lot more on the second time through the series. We'll see if he can maintain that.

One of the ways Kamen Rider Kiva leverages the supposed drawback of a large cast is that it sort of turns the show into It Takes A Village To Raise A Rider. It makes Wataru a character that needs connection, needs to be fixed, so badly that it motivates other characters. Wataru becomes both star and story-generator, and I think it keeps his shy, withdrawn Rider in a multi-generational ensemble melodrama from ever feeling overshadowed by more charismatic characters. Even when Megumi's killing me (the fact that Shizuka enlisted her aid by informing Megumi that Wataru had been acting strangely, all depressed and withdrawn, and Megumi's response was I Thought You Said He Was Acting Strangely, that destroyed me), the second she falls back in Wataru's orbit, her high-energy comedy turns into just another pair of hands that are trying to build a better Wataru.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Androzani84

So yeah, this two-parter was by a different writer and it kind of shows in how it’s slightly more committed to selling toys (namely, IXA’s fuestles).

They are really in an IXA Has The Best Toys section of this show, aren't they? I wonder if anyone on the production team wished they'd gone with IXA's whole thing as the main Rider.