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Thread
:
Kamen Rider Die watches Kamen Rider Kiva
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05-09-2021, 06:32 AM
#
80
DreadBringer
Veteran Member
Join Date: Jan 2020
Posts: 1,290
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Kamen Rider Die
KAMEN RIDER KIVA EPISODE 03 - “HEROIC: THE PERFECT HUNTER”
This is an episode full of action (Nago!) and drama (that moment when you figure out your parents are human), but, like,
Otoya
.
He’s so exquisitely awful that I honestly can’t hate him. I should, probably. Okay,
definitely
. He’s grotesque, with his debauchery and dismissiveness. He’s horrible for virtually every single second of this episode. There’s not a single redeeming thing he does in this part of the story.
But, like, I was
dying
. He is so ridiculous that I can’t begrudge him his absence of morality. Everything he gets up to in this episode is so over-the-top, so cartoonish, that it’s hard to find fault. Getting mad at Otoya for fleecing rubes or stealing hearts is like getting mad at the
weather
. It is doing the thing it was created to do, and any lives that get wrecked in the process… well, we live in an imperfect world. Much like Jean-Ralphio’s predictably deplorable life choices on "Parks and Recreation", Otoya wins me over by being so jaw-droppingly,
enthusiastically
terrible, that I end up applauding him for it. He is a bad person, and I am a bad person for enjoying it this much.
Though you frighten me with your proud declaration of bad person for this stuff, I'll still say; people can like any kind of characters, no matter what their alignments are, because interesting, deep, or enjoyable isn't related to alignments (although I wish for toleration for any kind of characters, not declaring certain character as bad because "it's not my type I like"). What people can't is 'whitewash' them and excuse their morally bad aspects. People can like them and find them interesting while acknowledging the negative traits.
And in the inverse talking about the character's flaws and show objections to them ≠ hating the character.
DreamSword says that it's not a problem when the show itself acknowledges that what a character is saying or doing isn't 100% okay, well, the media, the show tend to give those characters the comeuppance or at least (if they're competent enough to escape), the well-deserved scorn, it's the fans who tend to defy that.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Kamen Rider Die
Of course, that’s just me, and I ain’t his kid. Getting Wataru involved in a story where he has to accept the reality of his dad’s past (the scene where Wataru, beaming, describes his dad as some pillar among men, was so
adorably wrong
that it made me root for that kid) is a nicely relatable story. No matter how great your upbringing was, there’s a point in growing up where you have to see your parents as real people with real flaws, and that’s tough. It’s disillusioning, having to accept that someone can be both a good parent and a not-great person. In this one, Wataru isn’t just confronted with the idea of his dad maybe tipping poorly at a restaurant, or cheating at a board game. Wataru is presented with
massive binders
of his dad’s malfeasance, and gets to hear first-hand accounts of the lives his dad ruined. It is more than disillusioning; it’s completely demoralizing.
And for Otoya as parent, well, for Wataru to be born, you have to be faithful to 1 woman, and keep that until you're married, as both father and mother are required to make the child born. That'd be the opposite of what's Otoya doing here, which is taking someone's woman away in a violent way (picking fight with him), and later seeing another woman, ditches that woman (for the relief of his victim) for that another woman immediately. Like I said before I know little about Kiva, but Otoya may've redeemed after that to actually stay faithful to 1 woman and start a family.
And again I want to ask for the contrasting reaction between this and a previous series. Here, you think Wataru facing the reality of his dad's past is relatable and this part has him apologizing to others for Otoya and likely blaming himself for their misfortunes, but before in a series like Blade, you think the idea that something someone's father did without knowledge and prevention gives enormous weight equals to them being unable to function as a person and that you can't relate for "I Must Atone For My Family’s Misdeeds"? That parents aren't extension or reflection of the child and thus is their own people and responsible of their own actions?
[QUOTE=Kamen Rider Die;799693]Most of the rest of this one is given over to Megumi’s lack of satisfaction with her job, and that was a blast to watch. Her getting surly at Mal d’Amour (thank you, subtitles, because I could not figure out why Maid’Amour didn’t have a single maid) (also, naming the cafe in the gothic tokusatsu show “Heartbreak”... INOUE FOREVER!) at Wataru and Shizuka was nicely unnecessary, her just taking her frustration out on these two awkward children.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Kamen Rider Die
I really like how adversarial Megumi and Shizuka are? It’s one of my favorite beats, Megumi feeling pleased with herself for dunking on a child and then immediately feeling like a jerk for
dunking on a child
. Any time so far that this show has put Megumi in the same room as Wataru and/or Shizuka, it’s magic to me. I love that energy! I like how perfect that trinity of Wataru/Megumi/Shizuka is so far. Most of the scene is to set up Otoya’s history with W.A.K.E.U.P.*, the organization that employs Yuri and is trying to stop the Fangires (did not check the wiki), but there’s still enough cuteness and warmth to make the exposition and shifty-eyed This Is A Mystery stuff go down smooth.
Here lies another one of Wataru's problems. He's a doormat, he doesn't like to refuse people, and therefore has needlessly subscribing into several newspapers. And as you said Megumi dunks on a child, it's clear here as Wataru didn't cause anymore problems, and she just mocks his poor social skills. And Shizuka defending Wataru as trying hard to change should mean that not every of those bad words can be dismissed as purely banter, especially, especially that people like Wataru is commonly ostracized irl, with all the badmouthings like that, though I feel that Megumi's words to him are more like brutally honest parent.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Kamen Rider Die
Speaking of smooth!
Nago!
As comically heroic as Otoya is comically awful, and I love it just as much. He’s a one-man wrecking crew who believes in redemption and donates his half-million dollar bounty to underprivileged youths! I
get
why Wataru calls him Dad!
I want him to be my dad, too!
Seeing him take trophies and deliver uplifting threats… I love it. I love this dude being exactly the type of square-jawed hero Inoue would never write in a million years, so I can’t wait to see what the hell is actually going on with him. He’s either going to be horribly murdered, revealed as a monster, or slowly dissolved into a complete joke of a person.
I am good with any of those!
Well yeah, in this episode, Nago seems completely heroic and charming, although calm and collected. But from what I read, he's not all it seems. I haven't gone through it fully obviously yet of course, but he'd remind me of Yaguruma from Kabuto. At first glance too, Yaguruma seems to be the knight in shining armor type to fight off monsters and save people, while also being a good leader to his men, but he has plethora of dark traits later.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Switchblade
This is one of those things about Kiva that always bugged me and it's an unfortunate side effect of the show's split timeline premise. We almost always see the 1986 and 2008 characters confronting the same Fangires at the same time. It's a neat tie between the events, but it also means that a) we know that Team '86 is going to fail to defeat the monster. Again. And b) the monster was just left free to roam and do whatever it pleased for 22 years.
Now, I do have a theory about why the Fangires may have kept relatively quiet in between the two periods, but it involves stuff that happens much later in the series so I'm going to shelve it for now and forget to come back to it near the end of the show.
IMO, that'd mean it's not the problem of split timeline premise, but the Fangire handling though. The split timeline premise is of course, in line with phase 1 series being experimental, and thus making those seasons more controversial, but split timeline premise can be done without giving same Fangire for 1986 and 2008 timelines to fight.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Kurona
Anyway, uh. Otoya! This guy is the main reason I hate this season. Without him, Kiva... well, it wouldn't
work
, because he's so deeply baked into the themes and story of the show. But looking beyond him there's not too much in this show I'd say I hate; it's not one that ever works for me and not one I think is very good at storytelling (there'll be some later episodes where I think it's very unclear when the switch between time periods happens, and not in a way that's good artistically), but it's not... like... tuning in every episode to see Otoya being lecherous and creepy and misogynistic and demeaning in a way that would have Urataros and Drake being "hey, mate, bit too much". I can see why people would like him, but to me he crosses the line by a mile into being the most unpleasant character in the world to watch
I think Otoya is the closest to the Kuroto of Kiva. What do you think for the Kuroto fanbase by that?
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