Kamen Rider Kiva E13-14 Review: Serial Killer vs. Serial Pervert

Kamen Rider Kiva, Episode 13: Unfinished - Daddy Fight; 14: Pomp & Circumstance - Thunderstrike Purple Eye

Another day, another two-parter. Nago basically has a bit of a breakdown in this episode, although it's really hard to sympathize with him when he goes around pushing poor Megumi (who's just trying to help) to the ground twice over the course of the episode. He really just ends up being so utterly broken by his defeat at the hands of Kiva, isn't he? He's been rather unlikable all series long, though, so I really find it hard to pity him all that much. The actor does an amazing job at portraying Nago's prideful breakdown, though, and he ends the episode being arrested by the police.


The 2008 storyline isn't super-duper exciting, but it's certainly a much-needed break after the more intense Kiva/Ixa fight in the previous two-parter. While some stalker dude with glasses (who's pretty obviously a Fangire) is stalking Kengo's band, Wataru ends up going through a bit of a career crisis. Kengo is so happy to have found a nice buddy, and while they are bonding over okonomiyaki in Kengo's apartment, he waxes lyrical about dreams, about how he wants to have their band make it big... while Wataru clearly has no interest in building a rockstar career. It's not just his shyness either, because as we learn in one of Kiva's many bathtub scenes, Wataru's real goal in life is to be a violin-maker.

And, well, ironically, its the Fangire essentially showing up in front of Wataru and posing as a talent scout, asking Wataru (but not Kengo) to come and work for him, because Wataru has talent. Eventually, Wataru calls Kengo over to his house, and sort of lets him down politely, and I absolutely love these two supportive friends. Wataru gives this whole impassioned speech about how rock did help save him from a bit of a funk in the previous two-parter, but his ultimate goal and dream is to be a violin maker. Kengo does end up being a bit resistant at first, but the sight of Wataru playing a tune on the violin and he realizes that forcing his dreams to Wataru is selfish, and it's such a wholesome resolution to their little conflict. After Nago being a massive douchefuck throughout the past four episodes, it's a much-needed break to see a bunch of friends just being nice to each other. Eventually the Fangire approaches Kengo, offering him a chance to make it big, but also asks Kengo to supply some money to help fund his 'debut'. Wataru and Kengo are dumb enough to just be all excited and work in a construction zone to build up funds, and they ignore the significantly-smarter Shizuka warning them that this sounds hella fishy.

The Fangire turns out to be one of those monsters who have a certain type of people they like to eat, and in this case, it's someone who's passionate about their dreams. The Rhinoceros Fangire eats some unfortunate painter (who's stuck in the same sort of 'build up funds for his debut' scheme), and we get the obligatory battle between Kiva and the Rhinoceros Fangire, but that's mostly about it.

The 1986 storyline, on the other hand, gives a bit more revelations on the whole mystery surrounding Jiro, and I think he's faking the side-effects he has as Ixa just to get some brownie points from Yuri? We get a rather bizarre sequence of Riki and Ramon doing a simultaneous massage-and-shoe-polishing sequence, while they basically dump a fuck-ton of exposition on us that I really felt could've been done better. We learn that they are the last survivors of the Wolfen, Merman and Franken race, all of which were wiped out by the Fangire, and that, uh... Jiro has a plan to revive the proud Wolfen race, and as we learn later on, it's to make Yuri fall in love with her and then make babies with her. Ooooooooookay.

Otoya, meanwhile, confronts Jiro and stops him from killing another coffee-smelling victim, calling himself 'the ally of all human women', and the two get into a bit of an argument over the fact that Jiro is a fucking man-eating monster. A comment about how Jiro should 'stick to monster women' end up with a pretty brutal scene of Jiro beating the ever-loving fuck out of Otoya, and it's interesting... is Jiro getting the Nago treatment, only a lot creepier because instead of being a deluded dumbass, Jiro's actually a schemer?

Jiro's still kinda cool, but he's clearly leaning more towards being villainous as he ends up killing another person on-screen, and Otoya confronts him while he gives a bit of a rant talking about how he's a proud Wolfen and how Yuri will bear his 'proud pups'... and, most of all, 'she wants me'. This leads to Otoya attacking Jiro to protect Yuri from him, and ends up stealing the Ixa Fist in the process, and transforming into Kamen Rider Ixa -- and proceed to beat the fuck out of Jiro, with the episode ending with Otoya-Ixa unleashing a Ixa Knuckle Rise Up giant fireball attack at Jiro.

The 2008 scenes are mostly fluff, but very wholesome and fun fluff. A lot of the tension this time is in the 1986 cast, particularly with Jiro showing his more sinister side and attacking Otoya. Overall it's a pretty interesting setup, and I'm genuinely excited to see just how Kiva is handling all of these morally ambiguous characters like Otoya, Jiro and Nago. There are certainly some weak parts of the episode -- I felt like the whole 'we three are the last survivors of our random Halloween monster racs' bit could've been built up and revealed a lot better, but it's otherwise still a relatively solid episode.

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Part two of this story is another pretty interesting episode, I feel. As usual, the cliffhanger is resolved pretty quickly, with Jiro escaping and Otoya collapsing from the side-effects of the Proto-Ixa armour. The 1986 storyline basically picks up on this, with Jiro telling the rest of the Wonderful Blue Sky Group about how Otoya stole the Ixa armour. Yuri ends up confronting Otoya about this, who acts like his usual goofy idiot self in order to hide the side-effects from the Ixa armour.

The 1986 scenes basically has Yuri and Otoya spend the entire episode together and... for some reason, they end up in the massage and shoe-shine place that Riki and Ramon work in? I dunno. That was kinda random? Jiro's stalking them, though, and eventually Otoya slips up and has to hide in some forest to recover from his wounds which is when Jiro decides to attack. We get Garulu versus Proto-Ixa round two, and Otoya's declaration that he's going to protect Yuri is pretty admirable (even if he really should've tried to tell Yuri that Jiro is a werewolf monster thing). Still, the sudden arrival of Basshaa ends up fucking Otoya over. He gets defeated by Basshaa's balloon spit bubbles, and eventually falls, with the cliffhanger this episode being Jiro about to murder the fuck out of Otoya.

I kinda feel like the Jiro/Otoya/Yuri storyline really could've stood to be a bit more... serious? I felt like there was always a bit of a disconnect between the wacky hijinks and the more serious angsty drama, and this is one situation where I wished the buildup to this episode was a bit better... particularly on the part of Otoya not telling Yuri or Shima about Jiro's true identity. I dunno. It's not Faiz-level of ridiculous poor communication, I suppose.

The 2008 storyline takes precedence as far as screen-time go, although it's essentially just a villain of the two-parter. We do get a pretty chilling scene-change as we get to see the Rhinoceros Fangire set up a fucked-up shrine to the people whose dreams he's stolen in 1986... and then we cut away to 2008, and his shrine has basically tripled in size, marking a large amount of people who died to his dream-stealing fuckery. The storyline really does play out like how you would expect, though -- Wataru wises up to the fact that Kagawa is a scam artist at best and a Fangire at worst, and attempting to converse with Kengo about this causes Kengo to get angry and argue with Wataru for interrupting his dream. Wataru's solo investigation ends up with him finding out the Rhinoceros Fangire's whole deal, leading to a fighty-fight.

Kinda wished that the Rhinoceros Fangire didn't have quite such an idiot ball, though, as he basically just shows up and transforms in front of Kengo with absolutely no subtlety, and other than Kengo's brief moment of suspicion, there's no real resolution to the actual friendship-and-trust theme. I really wished that Wataru was able to properly expose the scam parts, or Kengo ends up believing Wataru and putting his foot down, or something, instead of Miyake being stupid enough to reveal his true form in front of Kengo. We also get the debut of Kiva's final Arms Monster form, the Dogga Hammer, which... is actually pretty hilarious. It's a giant hammer shaped like a fist, and there's an eye in the palm of said fist. I genuinely felt like this was a far more underwhelming debut compared to Basshaa or Garulu, though.

Meanwhile, on the 2008-era WBSG (I really should've abbreviated Blue Sky a lot sooner), Shima bails Nago out of jail, and like the shithead that he is, Nago keeps insisting that he did no wrong. Shima refuses to take Nago's shit, though, and bluntly asks him if his defeat at Kiva has made him crazy. Nago's response? "I did NOT lose, it was Ixa who was defeated!" Dude's gone super mental, and honestly, it's entertaining. For whatever reason, though, Shima decides to show Nago a new upgrade to the Ixa arsenal, which is... uh... some bizzare erector-set dinosaur or something? It looks like this backhoe robot dragon from the fan-made Pokemon Uranium game. I'm not quite sure why Shima is still tolerating Nago and his stupidity, instead of giving Ixa to Megumi. I dunno -- I do enjoy Nago when his mind is fraying like this more than I do the self-assured jerkwad from a couple of episodes back, though. He's entertaining, if nothing else.

Overall, a relatively simple episode, I feel. The 2008 plotline for both 13 and 14 is extremely straightforward, the Nago stuff was buildup, and the 1986 stuff is content to pace its drama and mysteries pretty slowly. Not the most exciting episodes, but pretty neat. 

Random Notes:

• Apparently the 1986 Ixa used by Jiro and Otoya is called in the fandom as "Proto Ixa" or "Ixa Prototype"? The real difference, of course, is that 2008-era Ixa's eye visor thing opens upon transformation. 
• Know Your Fangire: This week, it's the Rhinoceros Fangire, which I genuinely wouldn't have guessed -- while watching the episode, I thought it was some sort of toucan or horned beetle. 
• Playing the Rhinoceros Fangire is Jinbo Satoshi, a character who's played a major antagonist in Kamen Rider Ryuki as professor Kagawa Hideyuki (a.k.a. Alternative Zero, a pseudo-rider in the show), and would later show up in Kamen Rider Fourze as the recurring asshole teacher Satake Takashi. 
• Otoya doggy-paddling with that board is hilariously dumb and adorable. 
• Nago's breakdown in front of the police is hilarious. "I am the strongest! How dare you defy me!" and later on, "Let me go! I am Nago!" The police has the absolutely most hilarious response to this -- "so what?" What a fucker. 
• Jiro's normally calm and collected, with the most excited expression we get out of him being anger or irritation, but he absolutely gets full-on ham in chewing the scenery when he gives his motive rant to Ramon and Riki. 
• Jiro almost kills some random girl who smells of mocha. 
• Kivat apparently gives amazing head massages with those adorable wings. 
• Instead of Kivat giving us random violin history trivia, we get kanji trivia this time around, set to Otoya as Proto-Ixa blowing up Jiro: "if you put the kanji for person and dream together, they form 'fleeting', human dreams are easily shattered."
• It's understated and I completely forgot about it when I wrote the main bulk of the review, but Shizuka apparently called Megumi between episodes and asked him to investigate Miyake. Good job, Shizuka!
• I am not a fan of Kiva's Dogga Form. The colours kind of clash with each other, the weird chunky Optimus Prime square-chest-chunks just plain don't work with the rest of Kiva's sleek look, and it just looks pretty bleh overall. The powers are pretty neat, though -- it sort of freezes the enemy in place with the eyeball, then a giant Stand-esque fist shows up to smash the frozen enemy into pieces. 
• We get a rare bit of Kiva's upside-down fighting when he first shows up in the warehouse to protect Kengo.
• That random bit where the Cafe Mal d'Amour owner gushes about how Jiro can't possibly be a bad guy since he likes coffee and the Onyako band, and for Jiro to deadpan pull out his subscription card or whatever with the most disinterested "right" is pretty funny. 
• Somehow, Wataru apparently managed to survive against the Rhinoceros Fangire long enough for Kivat to go from their house to the Fangire's lair.