[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER KIVA EPISODE 24 - "EMPEROR: GOLDEN FEVER”




This is a real Halfway Point In The Series type of episode, you know? We get a new Upgrade Form for Kiva. We resolve the big Otoya/Yuri/Jiro triangle, probably. And Wataru gets to bear witness to a story that's equally about his past and his future. It's an episode that ends up feeling like the end of the beginning, and the beginning of the end.

It's not the tightest episode, unfortunately. While 23 felt like it was coherent and focused, using the Ryoko/Shinji brilliance to let a bunch of other sweet love stories branch off, this episode is mostly about the costs of love instead of the rewards. It gets at that theme in a variety of ways, which is nice, but there's some tonal stuff I wish they'd been more aware of.

Like, that scene where Riki flirts with Yuri using Otoya's tips and tricks? Funny, but 1000% the wrong episode to have it in. It's in a lighter part of the episode, but its ridiculousness runs in contrast to Wataru's newfound self-confidence and the slow-motion tragedy of Shinji and Ryoko. It's a gag that's way too over-the-top for an episode whose central thesis is, as Superchunk once sang, "Everyone gets crushed/And every kind of love rushes out". This is one where we don't need to laugh at the Frankenbury who thinks Yuri is pretty.

Because, god, Ryoko and Shinji! Again! I don't care about half of the other reveals and twists, because this episode creates an entire, indelible love story in just a few scenes.

It's dumb to even try and put into words why the Shinji and Ryoko stuff works. It sounds so minor and basic when it's spelled out. Shinji and Ryoko spent a life together on the run, and now Ryoko is dying. Shinji never got to give her the life she deserved, but she got the life she wanted: they were together. It's a beautifully sad sentiment. It's simple. They were in love, and it didn't last. It never does, for anyone, one way or another. It's still sad.

It's sad because it's minor and basic, maybe. It's not a story about skinny superheroes and supernaturally-gorgeous supernatural executioners, despite the presence of both. It's a tragedy that's all about human choices, human heartbreak, the sacrifices we make for the people we love. It's a story where a man can feel like a failure for all of the ways he wasn't able to do more for his wife, and then be confronted by the way their love grew massive over the decades. It's only tangentially a tokusatsu story. It's arguably cheapened by adding more toku to it, which you can tell in a lot of the staging. Wataru's frequently kept to the side for the truly emotional moments, since this story isn't about him, despite being for him. He's a witness to something he maybe shouldn't be, hanging around the periphery of a marriage that's ending in illness and grief. It'd feel too weighty for a TV show designed to sell toys to Japanese children, if it also wasn't integral to the entire next phase of the show.

Because, yeah, we're seeing real love develop between Otoya and Yuri, plus some very strong feelings between Wataru and Mio, and that isn't going to always be blushing and flirting. It's going to mean compromise. It's going to mean sacrifice. It's going to mean getting mauled or kidnapped by a Clawolve, or finding out that your new girlfriend is the latest incarnation of a supernatural executioner. Things are going to get complicated for Wataru real quick (and they already have for Otoya), and he needs to see what it really means to care about someone as much as Shinji and Ryoko cared for each other.

As for the rest of this episode... I mean, this show pretty much shot itself in the foot by having that big Ryoko death scene in the middle of the episode. Everything after that, Jiro's insanity and Mio's reveal and Kiva Emperor Form and Tatsulot, is going to feel like karaoke at a wake or something. It's inappropriate, and vaguely offensive. It's not reading the room, you know?

I think Shinji's whole Suicide By Rider thing with Nago worked out the best. Shinji's a guy who lost his last tether to this world, and here's the physical manifestation of the things that kept him from feeling like he wasn't dragging Ryoko down with him. IXA isn't Maya, but he's one more thing that wouldn't let them be happy. Sure, why not fight IXA until one or both of them is dead.

The introduction of Emperor Form... again, not sure this is the best place for a hilarious new Henshin Monster! Tatsulot is, uh, a lot. It's chipper and goofy and a man's wife just died. The suit it generates is, like, Why Are You Wearing That To A Funeral. It's a plot development that expects us to see more emotion in Mio getting knocked out (for maybe actual good reason, if she's the new Queen!) than Shinji's devastating grief, and that is such a total miscalculation. It ain't like I'm rooting for Mio or Kiva to get demolished or anything, but I'm not feeling excited about some new duds for Kiva. Let me mourn, dudes.

The Jiro stuff, while being the Shout It To The Cheap Seats melodrama that the minor key Shinji/Ryoko stuff strenuously avoided, worked... I don't know. It's there to complement the 2008 story, to double-down on love as being something you don't experience without at least a little pain. It's full-tilt crazy, with Jiro screaming in Yuri's face for her to love him, and the shift from Shinji feeling the weight of his dead wife on his back and just standing there, rooted to the ground just like that tree... the shift from that to Yuri getting strung up by some fake-looking vines while Jiro cackles maniacally, it's not great. It is some tonal whiplash that this episode didn't need.

I don't know how much I care about the parts that didn't work for me, though. It sounds stupid to look at a toku episode and say I Loved Everything But The Toku Parts, but I did. The Shinji/Ryoko story is probably one of the three things I'll remember after I've forgotten everything else in the first 24 episodes. (The other two are Kengo's return to save Wataru from bullies and that Fangire chef's hat getting stuck in the doorway.) It's so evocative and tragic, a world apart from the overheated whatever of Otoya/Yuri/Jiro. It's hard to care about Wataru and Mio's upcoming betrayal and/or star-crossed lovers bit when a man is mourning his dead wife. I don't know. Maybe the problem isn't that everything else in the episode couldn't measure up. Maybe the problem is that the Shinji/Ryoko story was just too good?