[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER KIVA EPISODE 26 - "METRONOME: MIRACULOUS MEMORY”




I don't feel like there are a lot of longform romances in Kamen Rider. Like, stories about heroes falling in love and navigating a relationship are weirdly few and far between.

Top of my head... well, most of the cast of Faiz, obviously. But after that? Ibuki. Todoroki. Maybe Drive. That's pretty much it? Everything else is fully-formed on debut (Miu and Shun on Fourze), basically tacked-on at the end (Accel and Akiko from W, Gentoku and Sawa from Build) or the far more likely Fridged Girlfriend (as featured prominently in Ryuki, Blade, Ex-Aid, etc). The arc of a relationship isn't really something Kamen Rider seems to have a lot of interest in, beyond Faiz and half of Hibiki.

And now Kiva, because Inoue. Inoue Forever.

I thought this episode was really tight. It's not exactly my favorite one ever, but I liked its thematic coherence. It's an episode about the figurative and literal Power of Love, and we get to talk about it over three different storylines.

The Yuri/Otoya one is very sweet. Maya wants to see what it means to Otoya to be in love. She's lying to him, pretending she's Yuri, but it's just to get him to talk about what it means to love Yuri. Maya doesn't want Otoya to love her (yet!), but she wants to know what loving her feels like for him, how it motivates him. For Otoya, love's about sacrifice and dedication, despite his normal womanizing ways. As he plays his violin, it connects him to his feelings for Yuri, and a promise he made to find her mother's ring that was lost at a beach. The first thing he remembers about Yuri is a vow.

Maya gets at the other side of the equation when Yuri tracks them both down at the beach. Maya wants to know what it feels like to be loved. Yuri's answer is Otoya's answer, but with words instead of actions. Being loved is motivating, it's empowering. It gives you the strength to be your best self, to be better than your best self. Loving someone and being loved, they're a power.

So, naturally, we get the Mio/Wataru story, where the power of love takes on a darker context. (I mean, Otoya almost drowned because he wanted to fulfill a promise to Yuri, so it ain't like that story was all happiness!) Mio's on the run from Bishop, who wants her to serve as the new Queen for Checkmate Four. She can't do that, because she doesn't believe that love is something to be punished for; it's something to be protected at all costs. Wataru feels similarly, and they both end up finding new strength in their feelings for each other. As someone in love, they view their responsibility to one another as protection. Mio broke up with Wataru to save him from danger, and Wataru gained Emperor Form because of his feelings for Mio. The power they get from loving each other isn't just some internal strength, it's an external force. It makes Kiva more dangerous. It gives Mio not just the ability, but the resolve to execute a Fangire. (I cheered a bit when I realized that she'd found a way to do her job as Queen by murdering the Fangire who hurt Wataru. Incredibly clever plotting.) What Mio and Wataru have found in their relationship feels a little scary, and that's a good way of examining the uncertainty of where a relationship can take people.

There's a third look in at The Power of Love, and it's delightfully off-beat. It's Megumi using the Fangire's love for her against it, delivering an unbelievably overdue kick to its balls as she swipes back the IXA Knuckle for Nago. It feels like it's going to be a story where Megumi and Nago find that the spark from their teamwork is maybe more than they thought, but the show swerves away from that. Instead, Nago uses his love for power to give himself the strength to lie to Shima's face, claiming contrition (he even fake cries) so that he can retain the IXA Knuckle. It's Nago as an Individual System (!!!), his own relationship, and using that to push himself to achieve his goals.

I don't know that anything here really blew me away, but there's really nothing I can point to as subpar. I thought the IXA fight was fun (those hand puppets on the IXA suit are... did they put them in the Seihou?!), and I thought Mio's justification for killing the Fangire was fiendishly clever. Beyond that, the story was just relentlessly well-executed, front to back. That's awesome, and I'd take a season as good as this episode in a heartbeat, but it didn't really have anything in it that I feel is going to stick with me long term. I liked what it was saying, and I loved how it said it (the direction in this one was impeccable), but it all felt very... I don't know, sturdy? That's a good thing! But it's hardly the sort of adjective you trot out to get people excited. Still, a very good episode for a show that is putting together a very enviable second-half.