[Kamen Rider Die]

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Originally Posted by Switchblade

So this episode and the next set up my favorite personal head canon for Kiva. A corrupt cop goes after the Wonderful Blue Sky Organization and goes after all of its members: Shima, Megumi, and Nago. Just them; nobody else. I don't think there is a WBSO. I think it's legitimately just some weird dude and whoever else he can convince to fight Fangires for him.

W.A.K.E.U.P. is half cult, half multi-level marketing scheme. Shima's convinced two people that it's their holy crusade to each convince two other people to join their holy crusade, and then those four people each convince two people to join, and so on.

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Originally Posted by Androzani84

SOne thing I like is that we get to see the new upgrade in the first fight of the storyline rather than the last (the only other cases of this I can think of are Grand Zi-O and Geiz Majesty). And instead of some personal journey, heroic willpower of friendship, or being invented because the last fight had no conclusion, they’re just “you have a phone now. Use it”. If it had defeated a monster in its first fight, my happiness would’ve been completed.

Shima's big presentation is peak Inoue Upgrade storytelling: they're just in a gym, and Shima's like Congrats Here's An Upgraded IXA Knuckle as he just tosses it into Nago's lap. It's so borderline-disrespectful that I kind of appreciate it? It's also got this weird thing, where Shima says he's made a decision on who should be IXA, and it's Nago. Like... who else was even in the running?! The only two choices 2008 has ever had for IXA were Nago and Nobody. Tough decision for Shima!

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Originally Posted by Sh Ranger

First of all, Nago accepts an offer from one of his arch enemy Kiva's friends. This shows that his development from the previous episode, feigning humility to be deemed worthy of IXA, continues here with him being willing to use the enemy's resource to accomplish a better long-term outcome, even if it makes his soul feel unclean for having to resort to that.

I found this part extraordinarily weird, because literally no one in the 2008 cast (besides Shima) has had any interaction with the Arms Monsters. And this is Nago's first time meeting a Clawolve! When Jiro just pops out from behind a tree to invite Nago inside a Dragon Cathedral to use the Time Door!

I just didn't feel like the enormity of all of this was something the show was paying off. I think the only thing Nago even says to Jiro is "The Door of Time?", so it's not like there's a ton of energy expended on the weirdness of this pairing.

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Originally Posted by Sh Ranger

Secondly, Nago's adventure in 1986 allows him to have interaction with Otoya, similar to how Megumi met him in 2008 through Wataru as a medium, so this will be a chance for Otoya to tell Nago how much he sucks and what he needs to do to get better. Nago is here on his quest to fix the past, but again, that's just the story of this arc providing an admittedly lazy plot device to further the overall plot of the show. I think the best we can do here is work with the plot on its own terms and enjoy what happens between the characters. Cause if there's anything that Inoue excels at, it's character interactions.

This is a thing where, again, I like the idea of a Nago version of the Megumi/Otoya plot being incredibly literal and straight-forward, but it means there's a lot less to enjoy performance-wise (it's just standard-issue Otoya and Nago), and very little in the way of deeper subtext to those interactions.

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Originally Posted by DreadBringer

I'd wanna ask regarding Otoya being viewed as generally decent or even worse... "champion of justice". I thought before it's agreed that it's undebatable that everyone in this thread has pointed out that Otoya is awful, that we're all on the same page there.... and btw, those people who point out Otoya's nasty stuff are generally those who have watched Kiva in its entirety.

I haven't watched it all, obviously, but it seems like he's a in the middle of a character arc? One that has him acting heroically? And becoming a Kamen Rider?

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Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

Moving on to the episode, I'd like to thank Die for practically giftwrapping another opportunity to defend dumb things in Kamen Rider.

Don't say I never did nothing for you!

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Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

Everything else about the story... I think my argument in favor of it is literally the same as yours against it? I guess we'll see if the second part of the story raises your opinion on what it's doing with that arbitrary premise any, but like Sh Ranger said, I think a cheap plot device or two can be in service of other, more legitimately interesting parts of the story. I honestly love a lot about the idea of Nago being the guy to get this quest in the past where he's there simply to prove he can do someone's job from 22 years ago better than them. He's the guy in the show with some of the least connection to '86, and probably the least investment in connections in general. The contrast between the backstory with his dad and the relationship between Wataru and Otoya highlights this. He's all about himself and his code, so the concept of him tearing through the show's entire backstory with zero appreciation for the significance of anything around him (the last frame of this one is him about to punch Otoya), entirely focused on The Mission, while getting a chance to bounce off of those characters? Definitely potential enough to be worth a sudden Time Door, if you ask me.

I guess my response would be to agree with all of the sentiment there, that Nago's whole I'm Not Here To Make Friends thing makes him an exciting choice to send back to 1986, except I would say that Nago's disinterest is way more exciting in 2008. Nago not caring about some disobedient child's dad (who was also IXA) and Megumi's mom, except to chide them for their sinful living arrangement, that's fine. But Nago being largely unmotivated to save his partner and his boss from prison? Way funnier to me. As soon as Nago was out of the immediate confines of his coworkers, I just... I just longed for him to be back in 2008, motivating Kengo and disappointing Megumi and endangering Wataru. Nago's constant disregard for anything but his increasingly-flexible moral code just works better for me when there's more collateral damage.