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06-20-2021, 12:44 PM | #631 |
Kamen Ride Or Die
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I don't care much for Emperor Form, and I never got the hype behind Supernova. But I'll tell you what's a design I fell in love with at first sight: Saga! And a song that I've yet to get tired of listening to? Roots of the King!! Absolute criminal that my favourite snake-ufo-castle themed Rider has been so neglected among all the flux of recent Kiva-shelling merch, hmph!
Also hey! Snipe is way cooler than Kengo! (But will that Taiga be cooler than this show's Taiga in the longrun for you? I'm curious to see...) Quote:
I will always be a fan of little short stories that elevate and explore the themes of the series (Shinji and Ryoko forever), but it's a more enjoyable second half when the stories are internally generated. Quote:
Sort of on the subject of Saga as well, I mentioned how the suit is a clear counterpart to Kiva, and that got me to consciously realize for the first time that's it's specifically a counterpart to Kiva Form, with the top-heavy armor and relatively plain legs. (Oh, and Kiva's base form is literally called "Kiva Form", by the way, which I will never not love.) I guess most of why I want to mention this is because that random thought allowed me to put together something I found moderately interesting about Emperor Form's fighting style. As I very briefly touched on earlier in the thread, Kiva Form tended to be more about punching dudes, but reflecting the much more balanced armor layout, Emperor's fights often place a huge emphasis on him kicking monsters, which can be seen both in its debut, and in this episode. Sort of a neat way to differentiate them, if weirdly specific. (Maybe it's because Takaiwa finally could move his legs a lot easier again with the Emperor suit...?)
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06-20-2021, 01:20 PM | #632 |
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I mean, This Time It's Personal, you know? This isn't a random person who betrayed another random person. This was Wataru getting his heart broken by a girl he liked. A girl who is engaged to his childhood friend! Wataru is dealing with it as well as he probably can in the immediate aftermath. He's not a saint, you know? He's a sweet boy who is trying his best to navigate a horrible situation.
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KAMEN RIDER KIVA EPISODE 34 - “NOISE: MELODY OF DESTRUCTION”
The smartest thing it does is focus in on Wataru’s problems, and then reexamine those issues through different characters. It makes sure that Wataru is central to every story, even the ones he doesn’t really interact with. It feels like this is his show, which has frequently been a problem. Quote:
From there, he lets Taiga try to cheer him up by… spending an afternoon on an amusement park outing with him and Mio. It’s my favorite recurring gag on this show right now, Taiga trying to be a good guy to people he is emotionally atomizing. (When he’s on his lunch date with Mio and is like It’s So Cool To See You Love Me Like I Love You, while she’s a second away from sobbing her eyes out? Hilarious!) Mio tries yet again to let Wataru know that she prefers him to Taiga, but Wataru is quick to deflect it, talk up Taiga, and then act like everything is going great.
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Mio’s and Yuri’s are the bigger ones, with Mio suffering under the yoke of Queendom, and Yuri suffering under the yoke of cuckqueandom. The Yuri story is zero percent subtle, just scene after scene of Yuri sitting in the dining room while her boyfriend and a supernaturally-gorgeous supernatural executioner make the most erotic musical instrument 1980s Japan had to offer. Mio’s stuff is equally repetitive, with her looking for outs and getting nothing. She does schedule a meeting with Maya, however, and I’m very much looking forward to whether or not they can see eye-to-eye.
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The other big Brave Face storyline is KENGO! Kengo’s back! And he’s basically Snipe from Ex-Aid! Which is another way of saying he’s no longer Here To Make Friends! There’s really not much more to Kengo’s story this time than his shocking reappearance, violent attitude, and militaristic makeover, but it’s still a hell of a return. Beyond the questionable timeline (so Kengo became a brutally-efficient operative for W.A.K.E.U.P. after a month of training?), I really don’t mind the changes the show made to Kengo. There’ll always be a place in my heart for the very sweet and supportive friendship he had with Wataru, but this is an Inoue show. I am not going to be mad at Kengo returning as a bloodthirsty asshole hiding his desperate need to make friends, especially if it makes me think of Snipe. Hard to call it an improvement, but I don’t mind it as a substitution.
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All that, and I didn’t even touch on Bishop’s interest in Wataru, Taiga’s interest in Kiva, or the Super Fangire being created by a former W.A.K.E.U.P. scientist. It’s an overstuffed episode! It’s still got a solid thematic core, but it’s got a few too many plates spinning right now.
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06-20-2021, 01:46 PM | #633 |
Kamen Ride Or Die
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I.. was saying this because Mio seems to fare better regarding this to Wataru judging from your comment before, though it makes sense as Mio's the one who put into this difficult situation while Wataru doesn't know fully yet about the situation. I don't know yet what makes you label him as 'not a saint' btw (moreover you continued with 'sweet boy'), though otherwise, I wouldn't want for negative traits to be overlooked, but I'm also not keen into using personal (not saying this is right) argument to make someone (mostly those with 'Rider sensibility') look more ulterior than they're; it's sometimes used to paint something as more realistic.. but it's scummy view. From what I read too, Wataru not spitting out about his relationship with Mio to Taiga is a form of him being nice.
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Yuji was a lead character whose personality and goals completely inverted in the final four episodes. Kengo's a supporting player who the show spent a few episodes deconstructing before bringing him back as Kamen Rider Snipe. It's a big swing, but it's a little less abrupt, and it certainly isn't as central to the show as Yuji's turn was.
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06-20-2021, 08:15 PM | #634 |
I have a problematic type
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I'm appreciating the show's pacing as we move into the mid-30s. The love triangle stuff is taking up multiple episodes, but it doesn't feel drawn out at this point and there are still consistent developments with it. There's definitely a version of the show where Taiga gets introduced earlier and the triangle gets dragged out for 5-10 episodes, but bringing it in this late in the game does add some urgency to it that the Otoya/Yuri/Jiro triad lacked.
In general, I'm finding that the modern era is more engaging for me right now. Otoya and Maya making a violin while Yuri angsts downstairs is an important plot point, but the forward momentum is a lot slower than what we're seeing in the present. Also: damn it, Otoya, if you're going to emotionally cheat on your girlfriend at least have the common decency to do it while she's not sitting there watching it. That's still bad, but at least its polite. Nice to see that the Fangires are finally, 30+ episodes later, showing some concern about this new Kiva guy that's running around killing them. |
06-20-2021, 08:33 PM | #635 |
Kamen Ride Or Die
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I'm appreciating the show's pacing as we move into the mid-30s. The love triangle stuff is taking up multiple episodes, but it doesn't feel drawn out at this point and there are still consistent developments with it. There's definitely a version of the show where Taiga gets introduced earlier and the triangle gets dragged out for 5-10 episodes, but bringing it in this late in the game does add some urgency to it that the Otoya/Yuri/Jiro triad lacked.
My headcanon is that this is all a very specific kink of Otoya and Yuri's, and it's just that no one told Maya. She's the victim here!
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06-20-2021, 09:52 PM | #636 |
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KAMEN RIDER KIVA EPISODE 35 - "NEW ARRANGEMENT: FLYING ROSE”
I really wanted to like this episode! There's a thing it does with Wataru that is in my Top 3 Wataru things for this series! But I didn't like this episode! It's all over the place, unfortunately. Kengo's in one scene to be installed as the new IXA, and then that's all we see of 70% of the 2008 cast. (Megumi! Poor Megumi!) Jiro randomly appears to Wataru to give him the next instruction for his plotline. Yuri's in the most thankless role she's had yet, and that's saying something. The Super Fangire never coheres as a villain, despite an early-episode twist. (She just... she isn't about anything. She's just a victim who becomes a crazy power-mad monster. It's not saying anything about this show's themes or plots!) It ends with a bunch of CGI nonsense, and I'll never ever care about that. It's sloppy, and overstuffed, and it lacks a throughline. All of that would be forgivable if I thought the show landed its big Bloody Rose moments, but I don't think it does. And I like some of it a lot. A lot. The idea of Wataru playing the song his dad always plays, and then adding more music of his own to the end of it... brilliant. Such a perfect encapsulation of Wataru's journey, and a lovely visualization of how Wataru draws strength from his absent father. Incredibly touching, and a thrillingly constructed scene. It just... it just doesn't connect to the rest of this story at all. Wataru's dilemma in this story wasn't that he lacked direction, or that he couldn't live up to his father's legacy, or that he couldn't feel his father's presence in his life. That's all general Kiva stuff, but it's nothing that was going on in the last two episodes. What was going on in the last two episodes was that Wataru had his heart broken, and he was pretending everything was fine. Bloody Rose cracked because he was denying his pain. But this episode has the resolution to that problem be a random confession to Taiga in the middle of the episode, and makes the emotional climax something that could've landed at the end of nine or ten other stories. It's nothing specific to this story, and that sucks. It makes a huge emotional breakthrough from Wataru into something generic and perfunctory. It's a beautiful moment that feels haphazardly shoved into this episode. The Otoya story is sort of the same thing. It's him testifying to his love of humanity, when we're in the middle of a story about him neglecting his girlfriend for another woman. It's a great Otoya moment, something drawn from long-form characterization, that somehow feels dropped in from nowhere. It's possible that you could look at Otoya's story as being about Suffering For Art, what with him looking like Maya's a literal vampire now, but it'd be another random metaphor in an episode that can't keep a coherent theme. God, I felt so let down by this one. It's getting back into the value of art, the way a family of artists (like, say, tokusatsu writers) deal with their dedication to art, how art has life-destroying and life-saving properties... but all of that comes out of nowhere, when we've had an episode and a half of metaphorical adultery and emotionally-repressed teenagers. It's all stuff I wished the show spent more time talking about, but it inexplicably opted to do so midway through this episode with almost no setup. Just shoddily constructed. Some good ideas, but clumsily executed. If this was how they wanted to address some of these themes, I'd've rather they stuck to the romantic melodrama.
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06-21-2021, 03:16 AM | #637 |
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So here we are, at the debut of Kiva Flight Style in show. And though this song wasn’t specifically written to represent it (I think that was the update of Destiny’s Play), given that the whole theme of the episode is Wataru connecting with Otoya’s music, here’s Wataru’s version of “this love never ends”
I wonder how Taiga felt about Wataru having that suspiciously Kiva-looking emblem on Wataru’s bike. And as for the episode itself, all I can say is “Don’t you just hate it when someone puts random swords in your drywall?” |
06-21-2021, 03:28 AM | #638 |
Filthy SU/FE Trash
Join Date: Jul 2016
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tfw I came too late to gush over Emperor form (The ONLY Ultimate form I like as much is Mugen Damashii from Ghost) and the best ultimate form theme BY FAR
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06-21-2021, 12:48 PM | #639 |
Standing By
Join Date: Feb 2020
Location: USA
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All of that would be forgivable if I thought the show landed its big Bloody Rose moments, but I don’t think it does.
And I like some of it a lot. A lot. The idea of Wataru playing the song his dad always plays, and then adding more music of his own to the end of it… brilliant. Such a perfect encapsulation of Wataru’s journey, and a lovely visualization of how Wataru draws strength from his absent father. Incredibly touching, and a thrillingly constructed scene. It just… it just doesn’t connect to the rest of this story at all. Wataru’s dilemma in this story wasn’t that he lacked direction, or that he couldn’t live up to his father’s legacy, or that he couldn’t feel his father’s presence in his life. That’s all general Kiva stuff, but it’s nothing that was going on in the last two episodes. What was going on in the last two episodes was that Wataru had his heart broken, and he was pretending everything was fine. Bloody Rose cracked because he was denying his pain. But this episode has the resolution to that problem be a random confession to Taiga in the middle of the episode, and makes the emotional climax something that could’ve landed at the end of nine or ten other stories. It’s nothing specific to this story, and that sucks. It makes a huge emotional breakthrough from Wataru into something generic and perfunctory. It’s a beautiful moment that feels haphazardly shoved into this episode. Plural? Mio fits the description, but the only other main character who's a teen here is Shizuka and she doesn't seem very emotionally-repressed. Quote:
BTW, what do you think of 2008 Maya's gothic hermit fashion sense? Maybe he assumed Wataru was a Kiva fan like Kengo. Or maybe he didn't notice, like how Nago didn't notice Kivat rotated 180 degrees, or how people never notice Tridoron under the SCU emblem. People in this franchise can be very unobservant sometimes.
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06-21-2021, 01:05 PM | #640 |
Kamen Ride Or Die
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I would like to talk about what Flight Style represents for Wataru's arc though. This is what I meant earlier regarding how Emperor Form isn't at its full power yet and this is another step towards reaching that potential, which was significant enough for Maya to detect it from her cave. It's thematically appropriate as well, since conventional vampires are capable of transmogrification in to bats. There's still more to see of Emperor Form!
I don't like that CGI BatDragon, though. Just... I don't! I can't! I'm sorry! Quote:
I haven't really thought about it before, but I suppose the Bloody Rose story does seem a little tangential to pretty much everything about the Wataru/Mio/Taiga triangle, even if that was the catalyst for it. I think it's still a good story though, for how it allows Wataru to make more progress in getting closer to Otoya and understanding something new about himself. But yeah, I suppose it might be at the expense of the main plot, as you say, since even Wataru's confession to Taiga about his feelings for Mio is just a small thing that sets up the next part. Taiga's not going to step aside when he believes so strongly in his birthright.
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Other than that, I can't say her 2008 cavewear made much of an impression on me. Maybe next time!
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