Kamen Rider Kiva E02 Review: Flashbacks

Kamen Rider Kiva, Episode 2: Suite: Father & Son Violin

So the second episode is... interesting. We delve a bit more into the dynamics, and moreso than the first episode, I feel like we have a better thorough-line between the 1986 and 2008 time periods beyond the vague "oh, Kiva fights the Horse Fangire that got away 22 years ago" connection in the first episode. This episode also tries to establish the character dynamics a bit better, which admittedly wasn't told particularly well in the first episode. We also move betwen the 1986 and 2008 scenes a lot more rapidly as parallel scenes are shown, which I felt flower a bit better. For the sake of expediency, I'm going to still be mostly be breaking down the episode between the two time periods.

The 1986 plotline basically has Yuri being dispatched to deal with a Fangire hunting female violinists, and she is sent to guard this exact one lady-violinist... and turns out that while she is trying to guard her, turns out that everyone's favourite womanizer Otoya is there, and he's a violin coach. It's mostly a series of creepy-flirter hijinks as Otoya keeps thinking that Yuri is trying to get the two of them alone so that they can bone, while Yuri's straight up dealing with a missing person thing. Of course, turns out that the violinist Hitomi isn't the true target of the Fangire, but the Fangire itself! After a bit of a bait-and-switch with a random pedestrian, we get an action scene between Yuri and Hitomi, and, of course, Otoya charges in to interrupt the battle again because he thinks that the two pretty ladies are fighting over him. Over the course of this battle, Hitomi's violin gets damaged with a massive hole in its center, and the point in the episode that this happens is around the halfway mark of the episode -- revealing a huge deal about the unseen owner of the violin-with-a-hole that Wataru was trying to fix in 2008, and tying the past and present plots together. Pretty good show!

The Octopus Fangire, of course, escapes. Is this going to be a running theme in 1986? All the Fangires escapes because none of them can transform into a chain-suit vampire dude? Otoya ends up revealing that he might not just be an airheaded douche, and in the process of sorta flirting with Yuri, pickpockets her chain-knife, and eventually hunts down Hitomi and proves to be relatively competent. Otoya doesn't win (seems that none of the 1986 cast is allowed to), so, um... yeah. The setup for the villain is interesting, but ultimately I kinda wished that the 1986 sequence has a more solid conclusion beyond "Yuri and Otoya fail".

In 2008, Megumi is essentially confirmed to be part of a Fangire-hunting organization, presumably the 2008-era version of the 1986 organization that Yuri belongs to. Her boss is buff, his identity kind of a spoiler, and we get a brief mention of another one of their allies, Keisuke, who would probably want to slay Kiva himself.

Meanwhile, we are quickly introduced Hitomi's mysterious violin as early as the first scene with Wataru, with an interesting ominous note from Kivat about how apparently Wataru's dad is a violin maker who may or may not have made a deal with the devil to make a violin, basically dropping huge hints that Otoya is, well, Wataru's dad. Wataru doesn't really care much about his parentage at this point, though, and is tunnel-visioned into fixing the violin with a hole, even going so far as trying to chop down a random soba stand sign (Shizuka just goes along with it?) and eventually coming into contact with Megumi when he tries to steal a table from Mald'amour. Megumi being kind of trying to really pry into why Wataru is such an introvert is kind of pushy, and honestly pretty damn rude considering they've met like once before, but it does help to essentially bring Megumi, Shizuka, Wataru and the cafe owner into sort of a circle of people that have interacted with each other.

And then after getting the table, Wataru fixes the violin, and hands it over to its owner, Hitomi -- who makes her first appearance in the 2008 scenes. Hitomi gets angry after seeing Megumi's picture in a magazine, though (and, again, it's a hint from the show that Megumi is Yuri's daughter) and ends up targeting her. They fight in a stadium (which I swear shows up in every other tokusatsu show) and chokes the hell out of Megumi. And, of course, we get a Kiva scene where that poor, poor violin gets blown up once more. A sign of early Kamen Rider episodes is a whole load of bike stunts, and this one has an interesting one where Kiva on his bike fights against the Octopus Fangire with her random giant spiky wheel roller blades feet. It's honestly pretty cool, and after a sequence involving vehicular combat, the Octopus is smashed onto a parked car, Kiva does the rider kick (marking his symbol on the ground this time) and that's the episode.

Overall, I feel like splitting the episode into two parts does sort of make each individual story feel a bit more incomplete. The 1986 story really doesn't feel like it has much of an ending, and the 2008 story ends up feeling like the cast genuinely doesn't have much involvement in anything other than Wataru wanting to fix the violin. For the audience, though, there's definitely a more complete story, even if it does revolve more around the Octopus Fangire -- it's just kind of a weirdly paced one where both the 1986 and 2008 stories end up feeling somewhat light in terms of story at times. Not a bad episode, though -- we're still early on in the series and it's clear that we're still trying to establish the two respective main casts of the two time periods. 

Random Notes:

• So are we just going to see the super-elaborate Castle Doran sequence every time Kiva kills a Fangire? Because that is nowhere nearly as cool as seeing the Kiva moon-jump every episode. At least this time around we get to see through Castle Doran's interior, and it's trippy, with people playing chess or something. 
• So the cliffhanger from the first episode is resolved by Kiva casually blocking the darts and just walking away. Okay then.
• Seriously, though, Wataru using that massive saw to try and steal a shop sign and acting like it's the most normal thing to do in the world is fun. 
• The cafe owner covering the cute dog's eyes when Megumi is arguing with the two kids is hilarious. 
• I'm actually glad that they didn't make Otoya too much of a badass, because it'd be extra-bad for poor Yuri for having to lose every episode to the Fangires despite being part of a well-trained vampire-hunting secret society, but if this random bloke (who, to be fair, is probably some sort of superhuman or has plot-relevant powers) ends up stealing from her and beating the monster with her own weapon, it'd really suck for her. 
• Know Your Fangires: The one this episode is an Octopus Fangire, which is pretty obvious. Pretty interesting design in that it doesn't actually feature any dangling or whip-like tentacles, something that most toku octopus monsters tended to have. 
• Hitomi is played by actress Umemiya Masako, best known in Kamen Rider for playing Takizawa Midori, one of the supporting characters in the Takeshi organization that supports Hibiki. She's the tinkerer one!