[Fish Sandwich]

This episode is where the music picks start heating up rapidly, but please try not to pay too much attention to the mysterious(?) figure on that album cover for now, Die! Because today we're talking about the Arms Monsters' theme songs, starting with the one played in this episode, Basshaa's tribute, Innocent Trap, which is, uh, a jam!

...Yeah, my descriptive powers are miserably failing me here, but this one meets all the usual criteria for a sweet Kiva song. I'd try to analyze the lyrics, since that's the one thing I ordinarily could do, but I can only kind of figure out what they're on about, which I promise is a compliment! Usually these types of insert themes are just talking up how cool whatever toy is, but Innocent Trap does it in a weirdly not straightforward way, and I appreciate how overachieving it is.

(And that piano that bookends it is obviously just amazing, of course.)

Moving on to the episode itself... is what I would say, if I weren't moving backwards here!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

I don't know why it was looking back at this particular episode that convinced me of this, but I'm starting to guess Kiva's whole thing about connections is something I would appreciate significantly more on a rewatch in a post-Ghost world.

I remembered why! It's that the entire two-parter both starts and ends with Otoya's influence on the people who help Wataru. Before the theme song even starts in 17, we see Jirou reminding the other Monsters they can't just eat Wataru because of an unspecified promise to Otoya, which a barely conscious, injured Wataru ignorantly interprets as a dream, and the very last thing in 18 is Wataru wondering who it was that said the thing about listening to your heart, ignorant of the fact that this too was thanks to his dad. I meant to directly mention how much this bit of structure impressed me, but it slipped my mind somewhere in gushing about the show as a whole. Again, really nice set of episodes!

Actually moving on to 19, yeah, Kouji Seto makes a surprisingly killer Otoya. I think what's most impressive is how much he sounds like him simply thanks to his delivery; you'd almost expect his voice to dubbed over by Kouhei Takeda all Den-O style, and I respect that they trusted both Seto's acting and the audience's intelligence enough not to do that!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sh Ranger

Oh, that's not a deleted scene. That's a scene from Episode 20.

No, no, rest assured, there was totally a deleted scene with Otoya using a laptop in that cafe.



(Honestly, it's not anything important or funny enough to be a huge loss, but thanks to Androzani for calling attention to it, because I might not have looked at those deleted scenes otherwise. There's also an extended version of Kiva thinking he killed that Fangire where he gives the body a little tap with his foot before walking away. It's pretty cute!)