[Fish Sandwich]

Hey, I hope you all aren't tired of melancholic tracks from Kiva yet, because today I'm starting off with yet another one, played here throughout Wataru's conversations with Kengo and Taiga. The show seriously has like a million of these, and they're all so good!

And perhaps more exciting than usual for Die, next up is Maya's theme, which is naturally part ominous, part beautiful, and entirely captivating. Works surprisingly well for a scene where she's cheering her son up, to boot.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

Like, maybe it’s the Pride Month talking

You know, it's funny that you should mention this, because now that I think about it, it was almost exactly a year ago you were saying this about Faiz:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

This was a super interesting show to watch during Pride Month, you guys!

And I mean, like, that quote is straight up from June 28 of last year, and this entire Kiva thread even started almost exactly a day before the one year anniversary of your thread for Faiz. Kinda neat how that lines up. A little freaky, too, but also neat!

Anyway, yeah, I'm a Faiz fan, too, so it probably goes without saying themes like this tend to really resonate with me. (渡は渡だもの) I don't remember much about my initial reaction to this episode, but I definitely quite liked what I caught of it looking back through. Such as!

- It's a good episode for Wataru, but it's maybe a great one for Otoya? It's a big showcase for his biggest positive quality (that's also the root of lots of his negative ones), which is how he's truly got as open a heart as a person could have. It's not even only with Maya here; the episode makes a whole point out of how the Arms Monsters can't bring themselves to follow King's orders and kill Otoya because he's just too dang nice to them. It's utter insanity for Otoya to look at Jirou like he's an old pal by this point, but because it's Otoya, you can almost believe it.

- One little touch that I find helps bring that across a lot is how Jirou ends that scene in the bath crying while still in his monster form, and Otoya doesn't really react to anything but the crying. It's definitely only shot that way for the sake of the audience, because it's funnier if it's still a scary werewolf monster bawling his eyes out, which is one of many great Ishida touches here (see also; Riki's cartoonishly large hammer), but even if it's probably not meant to be taken super literally, I like the implications there all the same.

- You mention Wataru telling Taiga no after Kengo in "the very next scene", but one other extremely cool bit of Ishida magic that I don't want undersold is how both those conversations are the same scene, with Taiga seamlessly reacting to something Wataru says to Kengo in the middle (the music doesn't even stop), which, combined with the change in lighting, really smoothly communicates to the viewer that Wataru is having this conversation twice without needing to waste time actually showing two extremely similar scenes. Just a real clever way to show those exchanges.

- Maya reacting to Yuri threatening to destroy the Bloody Rose if she doesn't fight her by just going "you're not being very cute today" is such a perfect moment for both of those characters.

...And that oughta do it! I will say one big missed opportunity is that the scene in 40 where Kiva saves Nago and Kengo before walking off saying he's done forever totally should've made it a point to not use Emperor Form. It would've made Wataru transforming directly into it here that much more impactful (he's breaking the metaphorical chains again), even though it's not the first time that's happened anyway.