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05-16-2021, 01:38 PM | #191 |
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Honestly, I feel like Wataru when I write comments on this thread, given how little reaction my comments get.
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05-16-2021, 01:41 PM | #192 |
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I'm sorry! I do appreciate them! I just don't have a lot to say about the factual nature of the posts. (I'm usually more talkative when it comes to opinions?) You are doing a great job! Like Wataru! You're both underappreciated!
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05-16-2021, 02:17 PM | #193 |
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The second-to-last scene in the episode is Otoya serenading Yuri by moonlight, and the final scene is Yuri approaching Zanki to flirt with him. The audience is absolutely supposed to be, at least to some degree, invested in Otoya's attempts to win over Yuri. The placement of those scenes is to make you care about the Yuri/Otoya/Zanki love-triangle.
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KAMEN RIDER KIVA EPISODE 09 - “SYMPHONY: IXA, FIST ON”
I really liked the start of this episode. I liked Wataru realizing that he’d built himself a prison of Almost Bloody Roses over the last eight episodes. It’s a ballsy cold open, the hero of the show feeling so disappointed in his art that he needs to watch it be destroyed. It’s sad, and awkward. Wataru throws a little fit. It’s childish and slightly obnoxious. I get it, though. It definitely fit this episode, a story about how much we care about art and the ways we try to protect it. Quote:
Because, like… Oomura is maybe just misguided? There’s a lot of time in this episode given over to adding nuance to the monsters of Kiva. Oomura is a decades-long murderer, but he’s also someone who clearly cares for Wataru. He believes in the work they’re doing, and treasures the music that work could create. He just cares about it to, like, a fanatical degree. He doesn’t come off like someone who’s thrilled to battle a Kamen Rider. He comes off like a craftsman who regrets his choices. He’s not exactly innocent or evil, and that’s a way more interesting story to tell.
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So, of course, he has to fight Nago. The eventually-returning Nago officially takes up the mantle of IXA in this episode, the infuriatingly obvious choice made by the higher-ups at W.A.K.E.U.P. (I like the suit! He looks like Kamen Rider Catholicism, and that's exactly right for the secondary Rider of a vampire show.) There’s a nice move made by this episode to at least have Megumi argue for her candidacy, even though this is a franchise that’s always going to have some handwavey reason why the strong, capable woman can’t be a Kamen Rider. (Kiriko can’t be Drive why, exactly?) Here at least, the frustration caused by Nago’s inevitable coronation is sort of the point, where him shouting Henshin feels like a huge mistake. His inflexibility matched against Oomura’s inflexibility makes for a fun thematic concept, as well as an eventually tragic outcome.
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The 1986 portion of the episode adds more of those details, as Zanki meets up with the other members of the Monster Squad to talk about why he’s working with Yuri and the rest of W.A.K.E.U.P. It’s a scene that’s mostly about later payoffs, considering we know that the kid is a Gillagoon and we still don’t know what the other monster is, but it does manage to fill in some more backstory. All the other monster races, the Clawolves and Gillagoons and Yummy Mummys (?), they were all nearly wiped out by the Fangires. The Monster Squad is all that’s left, and Zanki’s like Hey What If We Worked With Humans To Kill Fangires. It’s a very Inoue take on teamwork, more about briefly-aligned goals than about deeply-held altruism. It makes Zanki a nicely pragmatic antihero, someone who can be counted on but not trusted. I dug that scene for how it added some new shades to the monsters, slotting in well with the tragically misguided Oomura.
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05-16-2021, 02:31 PM | #194 |
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Ixa is one of those Riders that makes me wish I liked this series more. I don't have a lot of love for the suit or anything - it's pretty good - but the belt being a weapon, and that weapon being a knuckleduster? I'm glad Build used this concept later because it's a hell of a cool one!
- As has now been pointed out, Okamoto filled the secondary Rider role for Kiva, since Makoto Itou's involvement with the franchise had dropped significantly? (I'm not entirely clear on the details there, but Zeronos was his last major role in Rider.) Playing a character as involved with the action as Ixa again must've been a bit of an adjustment for Okamoto compared to playing Kintaros the last year, too, as Wikipedia mentions him entering into a diet for the role extreme enough that friends were apparently worried he was ill when they saw him. - I don't think I liked it at first, but the Ixa belt's voice is something I appreciate now. It's highly distinctive, and the lifeless mechanical nature of it is yet another strong contrast between the two Riders. - As is the the whole emphasis on fists through the Ixa Knuckle, since of course Kiva has an entire bit of armor dedicated to Kicking things. I really can't stress this enough: they did an amazing job making these two polar opposites. - And you what, on the subject of belts, here's a fourth thing before I forget that too – how neat is Kiva's belt? I mean, the whole idea of a bat that bites you and then naps on your waist, upside-down and everything, that's such a wonderfully quirky concept, and it's so unapologetically blunt about the theming I can't help but adore it.
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05-16-2021, 02:42 PM | #195 |
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I'm going to assume that Shizuka has enough experience dealing with burning violins to be able to handle them without any long-term damage. It's one of those things you need to be onboard with if you're going to care for Wataru. I mean, Megumi had to figure that out the first time she went over to Wataru's house!
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05-16-2021, 07:06 PM | #196 |
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Yeah, Jiro is, at least for this time, not exactly good. He's like how Momotaros, Urataros, and Ryutaros started at first. Jiro eats woman daily. It's simple, he's still a Fangire, but recurring Fangire can have him change. And for the cliffhanger with Yuri flirting with Jiro, that's also likely one of the other Kiva sexist aspects for people as it seems to symbolize that no matter how much of a badass fighter Yuri is, the fact is woman exists only to fall in love with men and have babies.
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05-16-2021, 09:13 PM | #197 |
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KAMEN RIDER KIVA EPISODE 10 - "SABRE DANCE: GLASSY MELODY”
Oh, I loved this episode. It's all Oomura, basically. He's the perfect vehicle to explore multiple characters. (Only the men, though! Shizuka and Megumi never appear, and Yuri doesn't really have a plot in this one.) He's complex and sympathetic, but he's also embodying the hopes and fears of our heroes. Wataru is one of the bigger ones. The connection they found in the last episode blooms throughout this one. It was incredibly sweet, the way the exposition came about for Oomura's backstory. The episode starts with Wataru protecting a Frog Fangire from IXA, and then the next scene is Wataru and Oomura making a violin in the golden sunset; a father's pride and a son's devotion. It's so nice. It's just nice. Wataru's relationship with Oomura doesn't really change after he learns that Oomura's a Fangire, which is the perfect choice. When you've got one Rider like Nago who is Always Certain (he screams that he's always right and never wrong as he's storming out of a lunch with Wataru, totally normal thing that every sane person does, it's the new See You Later), the opposing force is to Ask Questions. When Wataru sees a person he respects turn into a giant frog (with pink buttcheeks), he's going to let them tell their side of the story. Oomura didn't stop being a Guest Dad just because he's a monster. Wataru's heroic enough to see people for their actions, not their reputation. He's hopeful that there can be good Fangires out there, because... I don't know, exactly. It's not really discussed, what Fangires mean to Wataru. We know what they mean to Nago (BURN IT WITH FIRE), and we know what they mean to Oomura, but with Wataru? Hard to say. I'd like to take him at face value in this one. I like him just being happy that there's the possibility for good in the Fangires, for no greater reason than There Should Be More Good In The World. Like, it's simple. Oomura represents Wataru's hope for goodness, but he also represents Nago's belief of the inevitability of sin. Nago's going to destroy every Fangire, because it's only a matter of time until they turn on humanity. And, hey, if the Fangires are reluctant to show their villainous desires? Well, Nago will be right there to give them a little push. I love that Nago taunts Oomura into losing his cool, and then, like, leaves? It's like Nago needed to break Oomura utterly, to show Oomura that he's a monster. It's not that Nago was looking for an excuse to murder Oomura, he was looking for Oomura to accept the rightness of Nago murdering him. Nago can't win unless someone else loses, and that especially applies to arguments about the capacity for change and forgiveness. Fangires aren't Nago's archenemy, moral relativism is. Nago, of course, gets the final blow on the Frog Fangire. Kiva was never going to take him out, and we ain't at the point in Heisei where guest-star monsters get to go make art in peace. (Cubi! I hope you come back for that Ghost/Saber thing!) That just left IXA. (Also, this is the IXA introduction story, so it was always going to end with IXA killing Oomura. Always.) The whole IXA Calibur (yeah, I got it) Rise Up thing was amazing, IXA using the power of the sun to defeat his adversary. It's the obvious flip on the eclipse finishers Kiva uses, but it's also so classically Nago: a nuclear furnace of unstoppable force, washing out shadows and nuance, blinding in its horrifying intensity. Kiva is all moonlight and serenity; IXA is all sunlight and force. It's a great showcase for IXA, and as demoralizing as you'd assume a Nago Wins finish was going to look like. And it's sad. It's so sad. Oomura gets to die in slow motion, using his final breaths to tell Wataru that he believes in him, because this whole episode wasn't poignant and beautiful enough. It's an ending that's as complex as Oomura ended up being, where Nago's fatalism and Wataru's empathy meet in the middle. Oomura couldn't keep his rage at bay like he promised, but he was still someone who deserved pity. He cared about art, and he wanted to bring more of it into the world. He wanted to be more than people's expectations, and while he couldn't quite reach those levels, the fact that he tried made him someone to root for. It's why Otoya gave him a second chance at life in 1986. It's Otoya who comes out the best in this episode, which is why I'm talking about him last. After this, there's no higher point to end on. It's an episode that redeems Otoya by taking him away from his worst impulses (Yuri; still had a killer comedic scene with her in the beginning, absolutely great rapid-fire jokes, he asks her if she thinks he looks like a liar and she goes Of Course and he goes Fair) and letting him focus on his craft. It's that mirror to Oomura's story that I really respected, where they're both men that want to be artists, but they keep getting in their own way. I think Otoya is self-aware enough to see that parallel, his own womanizing and Oomura's possessiveness for the Black Star, and how those things keep them from being their best selves. Otoya can sympathize with Oomura as a man with weaknesses. He can also connect with Oomura as an artist, and it's here that the episode made me a believer again in Otoya. The last few episodes have been all Creep Otoya, and no Sensitive Otoya. Here, outside the harassment of Yuri and the rivalry with Zanki, Otoya's free to talk about art with another artist, and you can see how that humanizes him. He's contemplative, quiet. When he goes to smash the Black Star, to end Oomura's rampage for good, he can't do it. The violin is innocent, and it deserves to exist. It's Otoya finding the heart of a thing, seeing past its reputation for its actions, and finding something to cherish. His son would make the same decision 22 years later, and that thread is what this show does best. Getting to see the ways Wataru's positive qualities were handed down from his father, that the connection Wataru is always reaching for was already in his grasp... it's like Oomura's lesson about Wataru's violin-making. When this show tells this kind of story, one only it can tell, it's outstanding. It is sublime, it is smart, it is moving. I hope it ends up taking Oomura's words to heart.
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05-16-2021, 09:33 PM | #198 |
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Yeah, this two-parter is pretty dang good, from what I remember. It's Kiva's take on one of my favorite toku plots, "but what if there was a good monster?", from the guy who wrote Faiz, so, I mean, I don't think I need to explain that to you, but it's a properly emotional story. And as such, I can think of no better track for this one than what plays during Kiva's subverted Rider Kick.
(Meaningful subversions of formula like that are another one of my favorite things in a toku plot, by the way. That moment was another thing I'd forgotten about that instantly reminded me why I don't hate Kiva as soon as I saw it again.)
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05-16-2021, 10:52 PM | #199 |
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"Luckily", we have IXA.
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05-17-2021, 02:13 AM | #200 |
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Honestly, the little subtle nuance that IXA’s victims don’t release the same puffs of light that Kiva has a castle used almost entirely to store (which an enterprising birdy tells me is the Fangire’s soul) kind of makes for a subtle statement on the difference in power between Wataru and Nago.
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