[DreadBringer]

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Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

First, I'm not sure I'd read Ryoko's admission that she knew Shinji was a Fangire as something she just learned. I definitely read it as something she's known for years, maybe since 1986. The way she quiets him as he tries to unburden himself implies that she has lived with this knowledge for a long time, but let him keep his secret as a kindness. She had spent a long time caring for Shinji, and if he needed to pretend he was a human because he couldn't bear the thought of her hating him? She's okay with that compromise.

Second, the implication is that Shinji and Ryoko spent years living off-the-radar in not-great conditions to avoid being tracked down by Maya. Unless you mean how Shinji escaped originally? Because that was from Maya laughing so hard at Otoya that Shinji was able to make a run for it.

I mean not only about how Grizzly Fangire escaped originally, but about how Grizzly Fangire escapes from Maya every time, if Maya's threat to those who love humans like him is continuous. I'd imagine Maya would try to hunt him again if possible. I'd also think that other Fangires that Maya killed also lived off the radar... I didn't realize that the ones Maya hunted before in the wedding are Fangires before it's revealed.

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Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

KAMEN RIDER KIVA EPISODE 25 - “FANFARE: THE QUEEN’S AWAKENING”

Kamen Rider Kiva is a story about love.

I don’t mean to say it’s a romance, although that’s part of it. It’s a series about all types of love, and about what they mean to people. The love for a parent. The love for a child. The love for a sibling. The love for a romantic partner. Why do we love other people? What does it mean to love someone?

The show’s gotten at these questions in different ways since the start, and they’ve been as tentative and oblique as Wataru used to be. It got at the idea of love through art, through the act of expressing yourself through music or craft. It talked about how precious that can be, and how finite a resource it can seem to those who covet it. It’s all neatly metaphorical and clever.

Love triangle is one of the main aspect of Kiva as well, the most egregious one among Inoue's work. It hits all the bullseye regarding that part; there's men literally and figuratively tying up women to keep them from leaving for another man, men punching each other while the woman screams at them, two women barely avoiding a cat fight over a man, women lying to other women to keep or “steal” a man, a woman lying to a man to get him to kill his rival for her affections. Though I'd appreciate another insight regarding this, albeit I think love for relatives (parent, child, and sibling) is quite omnipresent, and one of the main ways KR series (or many pieces of media) give redeeming qualities to jerks are about those loves.

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Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

Now, though, the show’s in a different phase. Much like Emperor Form heralded a Wataru who was unchained and ready to engage with the world in a more open and honest way, we’re at a point in the show where it’s just coming out and asking its big questions: Why do Fangires love humans? Why do humans love Fangires? Why does anyone love anyone else?

Instantly I’m more dialed-into this show than I was for some of the previous stories. It’s like the Shinji/Ryoko story wasn’t just some immaculately constructed one-off; it was the template for everything this show wanted to do going forward. We’re now at a stage where characters are pairing off and making commitments to one another. The stakes are higher and more personal. It’s a version of the show, that, like… it is deploying its cape and turning gold. Everything seems grander and more dazzling.

Well yeah, Kiva picked-up (woke-up?) after 20 or something episodes, starting with the introduction of Maya and Mio.

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Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

Which is to say that, yes, this is a Maya/Mio spotlight episode. It’s a story that’s mostly concerned with the intersection of humanity and the Fangire, and how these two women navigate it.

I know Otoya touches upon about the woman he already loved when talking with Maya at one point, but this kinda feels like how Otoya will be turned up into any women that he comes across, though the one with Maya will likely be the last, and shows he's a total playboy as a womanizer. He'd try to please every women as womanizers do that, but still. I'd agree the Maya's part is interesting here to learn about the species she looks down upon herself, as a mindset to look forward and process, not to ignore what she did to other Fangires. Killing own species, like in Faiz before regarding Saeko to "rogue" Orphnochs or Kitazaki (irredeemable villain) to other Orphnochs, is a trait commonly possessed by most despicable villains in the franchise, it always reminds me of Daguva in Kuuga killing many number (much more than Yusuke did) of Grongis.

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Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

The Mio stuff is like the other half to the equation, as her new role as Queen in 2008 is making her feel like she’s putting Wataru in danger. (Very funny inversion of the whole Otoya Protects Maya thread.) So she breaks up with him, and it doesn’t matter, because her problem is very quickly becoming a Kiva problem. They’re entwined together by fate, just like Maya and Otoya are.

So this part is the "realizing that you're the monster" plot, that Mio realizes that she kills people around her unwittingly. Though it'll also put herself in danger like Grizzly Fangire attacking her earlier, and the Fangires that hunt her here, or force her to do her job as the Queen. I guess for her to not realize her Fangire powers, she's somehow the one that only had human-level physical stats in her human form and never feel super strength or anything like for example accidentally breaking mundane tools, like Hiyori in Kabuto?

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Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

P.S. I don’t know if anything in this show has made me laugh as hard as this episode remembering Shizuka exists:

At first glance this seems to be just a throwaway moment for Shizuka, but this will play much important role later, revealing dark sides of the people involved.