[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER KIVA EPISODE 32 - "NEW WORLD: ANOTHER KIVA”



One of the things I like about Inoue's Kamen Rider shows is that, for an endgame, they're really less about villains and schemes than they are about systems.

Which, y'know, not to say that there aren't villains; this is still a superhero show, so there are obviously going to be supervillains. It's just that the threats that need to be overcome are indifferent systems that the heroes and villains alike both chafe under, where individual choice and self-determination become death sentences.

With Kiva, it's a show about love. Romantic, familial, platonic. It's about one-to-one affection. So the systems that are working against our characters are ones that don't value love as a concept. They value patriotism, or fidelity to a culture. Suggesting that love conquers all is tantamount to treason.

It's here that we find Mio and Wataru, caught in a very familiar interspecies battle that tests their ability to follow orders when they want to follow their hearts. It's a lot of what we'd seen in Faiz, with Team Faiz and Team Orphnoch getting all hornt and then questioning the inflexible edicts of the previous generation. Mio likes Wataru, but she's destined to marry the Fangire King. Wataru likes Mio, but he's also trying to stop the Fangires, whose Queen is Mio. It's a very tokufied Romeo & Juliet, and it works better than I'd've thought.

I think it worked for me because of how ground-down and boxed-in Mio is by her role as Queen. She's got these rules that she has to follow, a society she's now beholden to, and none of it's making her happy. We don't get to spend a ton of time with Wataru and Mio lately (some cute bandaging in this one, that's about it), so an episode that adheres itself to Mio's duties and the cruel indifference of the culture that supplies them really makes her affection for Wataru seem like an oasis worth hiding in. It draws strength from how shitty she feels in every situation except being with Wataru.

She's even glum in her first meeting with Taiga, and I imagine that he's all anyone's going to want to talk about from this episode. For my money, it's a good one by dint of treating Mio's concerns as worthy of documentation. It's a great one for Taiga's debut.

Does any creator in Kamen Rider land a debut as reliably as Inoue? Taiga's premiere is a goddamn riot, starting with Wataru being forced by Nago to "train” by acting as a bounty hunter. It immediately goes sideways, since Nago's instruction to a very sweet boy who barely interacts with strangers and weighs about 100 pounds soaking wet was Go Arrest That Criminal. I get that Nago's unable to see his own flaws, but he is able to see Wataru's flaws, right? There is no way this mission is going to end in Wataru succeeding, no matter how angry Nago gets at Wataru's polite attempts at hunting bounties. (Nago gets SO MAD, and it's a highlight of the episode. He's shouting across an outdoor restaurant at Wataru, waving a chair around to motivate a foot chase. It's terrible, terrible mentoring.)

So Wataru chases after the bank robber, and catches a beating for his troubles. As he's getting a beatdown in a playground, as if he were a child, who should return but his missing childhood friend, Taiga!

It's an absolutely memorable reintroduction, with Taiga saving Wataru, admonishing a criminal for spoiling the tranquility and safety of a playground, absorbing a beating, staring down a criminal with such inner strength that the criminal flees in terror, and then celebrating his reunion with Wataru by building a sandcastle with him. It is incredibly sweet, which is why it's a mild bummer that Taiga is both trying to woo Wataru's girlfriend, and also King of the Fangires. Pretty big step down from Kengo!

(With this episode's debut of Taiga and last episode's emotional scouring of Kengo, along with Shizuka's disappearance post-Kengo, I like the subtle sadness to the way Wataru is only ever allowed one non-work friend. No wonder he's so psychologically fragile and prone to moping! The only way he gets a new friend is if an old friend abandons him! OH MAN!)

A lot of what we get from Taiga this time is... I sort of like how it doesn't pretend he's going to be a great guy? This isn't Nago or Kusaka, where we need to wait a couple episodes to figure out he's a villain and/or a lunatic. Right away we're shown that his friendship with Wataru is exactly as Wataru remembers it, but that he's also fully dedicated to his role as King. He's going to make the best of his marriage to Mio (he's trying to impress her, but it's more about him bragging than it is trying to understand her), and he's definitely going to keep murdering any humans who could be a threat to the Fangires.

He's got a real interesting energy, for a villain. (I'm assuming he's a villain? He seems pretty villainous, but on this show, what does that even mean? I'm pretty sure Jiro slots in as a hero in the '86 stuff, at least from how the show portrays him.) Unlike Mio's barely-hidden despair at executing Fangire traitors, Taiga seems to view his role as, like, a hero for the Fangires. He's confident and fulfilled, giving his kill orders with an air of nobility. He's able to have affection for Wataru, and even to save a stranger from a beating, while still working to keep humanity from becoming a threat to his people. It's a very neat way of approaching a story about indifferent systems, to have the face of them be Kamen Rider Privilege, basically. He's benefitting from an unjust system, so he can't see its injustices. He only sees justice.

Besides Taiga and Mio, there's a little runner with Otoya, and it feels like something that'll matter more next time.

Yuri's going full-on domestic in the aftermath of Rook's defeat and she is terrifying Otoya with statements like I Am Going To Quit My Job And We Should Get Married. Otoya fell for a warrior, and he became a warrior for her, but now it's all just ironed shirts and matrimony? Is that who he is? Is that who Yuri should be?

But then he runs into Maya, who plays his violin just like he would. (Oh, she learned to play the violin 300 years ago from Vivaldi, nbd.) She has a connection to Otoya that's maybe deeper than Yuri's, and she blows on his fingertip with such erotic force that the soundtrack drops out. She's got Otoya's number, which is a way bigger problem when he discovers that she's also a Fangire. I'm sure that'll be a front-and-center problem for next time.

Incredibly solid episode of Kiva! I loved the exploration of the forces that pin in our heroes and villains, and thought Taiga had a perfect debut. There's even a new Kamen Rider coming up, maybe? Pretty good time to be a Kiva viewer!