Kamen Rider Kiva E03 Review: Button Collector

Kamen Rider Kiva, Episode 3: Heroic - the Perfect Hunter

Again, I'm not sure how in-depth I will be reviewing Kiva, and I debated combining my reviews of episode 3 and 4 together, but eh. I'm not doing a lot of reviews in the next couple of months, so having things a bit more spread out is probably good.

This episode is... interesting? We get the debut of Nago Keisuke, another member of the Wonderful Blue Sky Organization, and one that's assigned by Megumi's boss to deal with Kiva should he be a problem. Wataru, meanwhile, continues to bumble through his day, trying to awkwardly give a gift to the shop owner in exchange for the violin table from the previous episode, as well as trying to turn away newspaper subscriptions, and apparently the adorable dog from Cafe Mald'amour likes Wataru, awww.

Eventually, though, the conflict happens, as a random lawyer lady shows up and wants to talk to Wataru about his father's victims, dropping the bombshell (for the audience) that Wataru is the son of Kurenai Otoya. Shizuka notes that the stature of limitations in terms of pressing charges is gone, but the lawyer lady wants to hammer home the moral obligations of Kurenai Otoya's son.

So what are Otoya's crimes? We are treated to a montage of Wataru meeting a bunch of Otoya's victims, and Kurenai Otoya's a sweet-talker who got some of them to invest in businesses, or to lose to him in gambling, or whatever -- technically mischievous and not outright evil things, but they did put those random victims into a pretty sorry economic state.

And then we cut away to the introduction of Keisuke Nago, who is... a bounty hunter! Who collects buttons! Nago fights against a foreigner mafia man, beating up his goons and ripping off his buttons, and... the scene's cool, but it also moves back and forth between the badass beating-up-of-gangsters and the somewhat wacky circumstances of the criminal's over-acting and waving aroud a wooden sword. The chase accidentally involves Shizuka, who gets held hostage (with... a wooden sword?) but Nago, of course, swoops in all heroic and shit, beating up the gangster, saving the citizens and asking the policemen to transfer the bounty rewards to the funds for starving children. He's cool, get it? The rest of the 2008 sequence is basically a setup for the next episode, where Megumi ends up confronting a Fangire in a stadium. Wataru-as-Kiva shows up and engages in a short fight, but gets distracted when the Fangire growls out Otoya's name (is Otoya the former Kiva?), and the Fangire escapes.

In 1986, just as the episode is talking about Otoya in the present day, we get to see Otoya randomly flirting with like multiple ladies, going from a lady who's with a rough-looking gentleman, then immediately abandoning said lady to drop a one-liner with a different lady, and then getting immediately distracted by Yuri. Who just wants her chain-whip weapon back. They then fight a Fangire together, who escapes, but this puts Otoya in the crosshairs of the Wonderful Blue Sky Organization, who considers recruiting Otoya. And that's about it for the past-scenes, since the rest of the episode essentially takes place in 2008. Presumably we'll catch up with the rest of the 1986 cast in episode 4, then, the second part of this two-parter.

Ultimately, a much slower episode. A good chunk of the episode is devoted to Wataru -- and the audience -- being forced to try and think about Otoya and just what kind of person he is, at least from what we've been shown. And, well... he is kind of a douchehole, y'know? Just because he's charismatic and pretty doesn't suddenly absolve him of a lot of his sins, but Wataru seems to have held his father in a pretty high regard, so I'm curious how this is going to happen going forward. Nago's introduction is pretty neat, if a bit over-the-top, and we get some hints at what might happen in the later parts of the 1986 storyline in regards to the connection of Otoya and Kiva. 

Random Notes:

• Know your Fangires: This time around it's the Moth Fangire, which I briefly thought was a mosquito due to its massive proboscis. The fact that it uses its scales to attack, Pokemon-style, pretty much confirms that it's a moth (moth scales are very much a popular method of 'attacking' in Japanese culture), though. 
• One of the montage bits has Wataru talking to one of Otoya's victims as they try and hold their ground against a massive stormy wind that blows them away... only for a couple of kindergartners to walk past the wind no problem. It's probably meant to be funny or a parody or something, but I just don't get it. 
• The random German-speaking gangster that Nago arrests is implied to be kind of an otaku for Japanese culture similar to Johnny Maxima from Ex-Aid, having a little booth in his otherwise ordinary office modeled after a traditional Japanese house. 
• I don't know enough about Nago to say for sure, but I guess "Be reborn. Atone for your crimes." is his catchphrase?