Kamen Rider Kiva E01 Review: Baku Baku Beating Heart

Kamen Rider Kiva, Episode 1: Fate: Wake Up!

This is one of those "I've got notes written down, and basically have parts of the series ready" set of reviews that I'm saving for when I'm busy IRL -- I've essentially been watching Kiva on-and-off alongside some other shows since, oh, August or something, scribbling down notes per episode for a potential review if things got a bit busy for me, which it did. As you can probably gather from my very erratic update schedule in the past couple of weeks and how everything I've done tended to be things like monster reviews or Hunter x Hunter ones that I did a while back and only edited recently. Well, things are going to be pretty busy for the next couple of months so I'm not sure if I'll be able to watch any of the superhero shows or read the manga stuff I do in a timely fashion, so, yeah, have a couple of older episodic reviews. Kiva's one that I kind of have prepared for a bit, but there are a couple of others that I wrote in the past for shows I watched that I jot down rough drafts of in my laptop but I never published -- I might very well end up posting if I really don't have time. Depending on how fast I edit the drafts, I'm also planning to dole up a couple of other minimal-effort-for-me-to-watch shows, which, if real life doesn't come crashing down around me, I should be able to get up sometime this week or the next.

I may or may not do a normal write-through of Pokemon Sword/Shield or Warcraft III Reforged. It depends on if I ever got the time to play them in a timely fashion.

So yeah. Expect reviews of my old regular stuff like CW superhero shows, other superhero shows and movies I might've missed, or manga to be a lot more sporadically interwoven into these older shows and longer articles that I can drum up in commute or during idle moments at work and don't require me to watch anything new.
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One of the Kamen Rider shows I haven't actually watched is Kamen Rider Kiva, the 2008 season, and... I genuinely don't know a whole lot about it. The Kamen Rider series tended to be huge on cameos, and Kiva's shown up in every single show afterwards in a movie or a special, so I know some aspects of what he's all about... but I'm genuinely unspoiled about Kiva! So since a new subbing team is currently re-subbing Kiva with good dialogue and Blu-Ray definition, I've decided to slowly jump into the show. This is my reaction and review as I experience Kiva for the first time, and it's... well, it's a lot less stressful compared to doing massive series review. I didn't choose Kiva because I'm a huge fan or whatever, it's just... well, one of the shows I haven't watched. So let's see what's it all about!

So Kiva's all about vampires -- or, well, Fangires, as they're known here. And one unique thing about Kamen Rider Kiva is that it follows two time periods, with each episode going back and forth between the year 1986 and 2008, and, as far as I can tell in this episode, something that happens in the past is going to be ultimately resolved in the present day. It's an interesting format, and I do like the way that the first episode does try to hammer it down, showcasing a younger dog growing up into an adult dog, or the wear and tear on a door that was scratched up during a fight in 1986.

The episode opens up in 1986, with a very Gothic-style opening. A funeral in a church, the corpse suddenly coming to life, and there's definitely a huge them of mosaic patterns running up a Fangire's body. The design of the Fangires in general is such a weird take on traditional vampire lore, and those ethereal fangs that come out of nowhere and murder a people by stabbing their neck and rendering their bodies invisible is a pretty interesting feature. Some lady with a combat outfit named Yuri shows up, declares that "God has erred", and fights the Spider Fangire. The Spider Fangire handily defeats Yuri and escapes, and I really do hope that the reason why the 1986 cast keeps losing is less "she's a woman" and more "she's not a Kamen Rider". This franchise does not have a good track record at writing good female characters, although I'm willing to give this show the benefit of the doubt.

We cut to 2008 pretty quickly, and we meet our main character, Kurenai Wataru, who's... perhaps the fucking weirdest main character in Kamen Rider ever. He's bundled up in a thick jacket and a medical face-mask, he's oh-so-shy that he communicates with a notebook full of prepared phrases, and he's just such a weirdo that he goes around trying to collect fish bones from cats and creates hideous concoctions in his house (with dog poo, at one point) in an attempt to make violin varnish. He's essentially helped out by his lady friend Shizuka, who's basically serving in the capacity of the parent of a weird kid. Also among Wataru's buddies is Kivat Bat the Third, who uses a mixture of CGI and props in order to turn Wataru's toy belt into essentially a sidekick. What a weird-looking bat, by the way, and I actually do love the fact that we really didn't have any sort of explanation yet as to what the fuck Kivat is.

After this introduction to Wataru, we get ta bit of moving back and forth between the 1986 and 2008 casts, and it's... interesting. The 1986 cast in this episode isn't super-duper interesting other than the revelation that Maid'amour, the cafe that shows up in both time periods, is actually the base of a fangire-hunting organization that Yuri is part of. We get to see Yuri attacking a sleazy CEO who brings his secretary to a secluded location, but instead of anything rapey, turns out that the CEO dude is a Fangire who wants to eat her. Yuri's badass enough and we get some neat motorbike stunts as Yuri faces off against the Horse Vampire, but Yuri ends up being chased off by the CEO's bodyguards and ended up having to pretend to be lovers with a random lovable-lecher dude who seems a bit too dense and thinks that Yuri's totally hitting on him. This dude, Otoya, ends up interrupting a subsequent battle when Yuri fights the Horse Fangire with a cool chain weapon, allowing the Horse Fangire to escape.

Not a big fan of Otoya, obviously, although the actor has enough charm to make what would otherwise be a creepy character into one that's actually pretty hilarious. I know enough of the actor's work, particularly as Kamen Rider Grease, to know that the actor's at least competent enough to actually sell the character of 'a pervert, but ultimately a good guy'. Not a super-fan of the

The 2008 plot follows a typical victim-of-the-week storyline, with Wataru ending up meeting a pretty photomodel called Megumi, who, in a hijinks-filled encounter as Wataru goes around scrounging for fish bones, ends up dispelling Wataru of the notion that he can't breathe the world's air. Wataru is apparently worried that he's a filthy, dirty human, which, well, is pretty much a nod that he's a Fangire, or at least thinks he's a Fangire. Kamen Rider builds itself on basically its heroes taking powers that are originally evil and using them for good, so while this first episode doesn't spell it out, it's pretty obvious.

Megumi ends up being scouted by the very same dude that's the Horse Fangire in 1986, a neat nod to the trope of vampires being charming immortals, and, again, in another pretty rapey-if-not-for-the-context-of-a-bloodsucking-monster, the dude manages to trap Megumi in a dark room alone... but turns out Megumi has a mini crossbow dart gun, repeats the same catchphrase that Yuri says, and ends up fighting the Horse Fangire.

Of course, Megumi doesn't have her name on the title of the show, so it's up to Wataru and Kivat, whose Fangire-senses active, and they run down the street and transforms straight into Kiva. It's a pretty interesting show where the main character is already Kamen Rider, becoming said superhero through unknown means, and we'll peel this origin story back as it goes on -- so many Kamen Rider shows tended to go for an origin story as the first episode, and I'm curious if Kiva will end up making it interesting.

The fight is honestly pretty typical first-episode fight where everything is exciting and high-budget, and I get to see through a transformation sequence -- Kivat flying into Wataru's hand and biting down on his wrist (gabu!), dark veins running up his body, and then the neat little tune that plays as Wataru's body morphs and visibly bulks up into Kamen Rider Kiva. The fight goes on as the two combatants go through a car-carrier truck, including a sequence where Kiva fights upside-down while hanging on the truck with his legs, and since this is the first budget we get a fair bit of wanton destruction as cars are pushed around and crash onto each other. Ultimately, it's time for the obligatory Rider Kick, and, man, Kiva's rider kick is one that I've seen many times when he cameos in other series, and it's pretty cool. Kivat shouts "WAKE! UP!", the chains on his right leg breaks and bat wings appear, he jumps up, there's a bit where he is suspended upside-down as the moon appears out of nowhere, then there's the rider kick, followed by a gigantic Kiva symbol being etched onto the wall as the Horse Fangire is smashed and killed. It's just such an insanely elaborate but cool sequence, and I wonder if it'll be repeated every episode.


And then... some bizarre CGI dragon-box creature appears out of a chunk of a skyscraper, flies off, the halves of the building magically fuse together like a Jenga tower, and the bizarre dragon-that's-totally-a-transforming-toy shows up and chomps down on the soul of the Fangire? Okay, what? Castle Doran is a weird thing. It's just such a bizarre, hilariously goofy sequence that felt like it came from a completely different show than the smooth, clean fight between Kiva and the Fangire a couple of minutes ago.

The episode ends, of course, with Megumi recognizing Kiva as "Kiva", and then shooting him. Oh no, cliffhanger!

Ultimately... it's a very interesting first episode. These things are tricky in general, and I feel like Kamen Rider Kiva wastes no time in trying to get its audience familiar with the concept of a flashback-and-present-day storyline going on at the same time. These sort of shows are pretty tricky, as Arrow and Lost and their respective track records on using their flashback gimmicks would show, but I'm interested to see what Kamen Rider Kiva does with it. I'm slightly worried about how it seems that both Yuri and Megumi seems to going to fall into the "badass women that will have a poor track record" trope, and Wataru doesn't really sell himself as much of a lead other than being kooky and weird. We'll see. If nothing else, the suits and general vampire-themed vibe does interest me a fair bit. I'm not sure how regularly or how I'm going to review this series going onwards, but I did enjoy this first episode.

Random Notes:

• I didn't mention it during the show, but Kiva has a huge Western-music theme, particularly violins and orchestral instruments. In addition to violin piece sequences, the background music for Kiva is pretty damn awesome all around. Also love that little jingle as Kivat bites Wataru, or the piece that plays when Kiva does his moon-kick. 
• Between the chains, the metal, the broad shoulders and the striking red-black-silver-with-yellow-eyes colour scheme, Kiva does have one of the prettiest suits in the history of the franchise. 
• Almost all episodes in Kiva starts with a word related in some way to musical terms. 
• The opening theme song for this show is Tourbillon's Break the Chain, which is a pretty catchy theme. Baku baku beating heart indeed. 
• Kiva's supposedly short for "King Vampire", but the way the word kiva is pronounced is a pun on kiba, meaning fang. 
• Kivat has a violin-shaped little nook nailed to a wall for him to hang out in, and he's even got a little violin-shaped soap holder for him to swim around in while Wataru's taking a bath. 
• The weird thing that Kiva inserts into his belt is called a "Fuestle" according to the wiki, and it's apparently a flute-whistle thing. Certainly doesn't look like one!
• Know your Fangires: the one for this episode is the Horse Fangire, and he's got a nasty-looking set of four jaws. Real horses do not look like that! The Horse Fangire is played by Kyo Nobuo, who's far better known as Kasumi Ishuu (Kuwaga-Raider) in Ninpu Sentai Hurricaneger, as well as Kamen Rider Neo-Alpha in the far more recent Kamen Rider Amazons.
• We also get the Spider Fangire in the prologue scene, although he isn't dealt with in this episode.