Kamen Rider Kiva E15-16 Review: Amnesiac Crazy Man

Kamen Rider Kiva, Episode 15: Resurrection - Checkmate Four; Episode 16: Player - The Rules of Cruelty

In this two-parter, we've got the first of what I assume is going to either be the main antagonists of the series, or at least the quirky miniboss squad that's a bit more threatening other than random Fangires. Which is a neat bit of escalation that the series certainly needs. The 1986/2008 flashback gimmick and the mystery on, say, how Jiro went from a serial killing werewolf into Wataru's butler, are all pretty neat, but at 15 episodes into the series it's mostly just mystery and slight revelations here and there, without much presence on the bad guys' side. Kamen Rider likes to take things relatively slow-paced early on in practically every season, but at some point things needs to pick up and in this two-parter, we get a pretty interesting way of introducing our villain of the fortnight, Rook of the Checkmate Four.

In 1986, we get the honestly kinda anticlimactic conclusion to Jiro and Ramon about to murder Otoya, and they... sort of just leave because Yuri is arriving, calling out for Otoya. Jiro claims that a Fangire attacked Otoya, and they use this as a reason to take the Ixa fist back. Otoya gets hospitalized for a while, although the damage done to his body ends up being apparently good news for the WBSG, who are able to monitor the damage Ixa does to Otoya's body. Otoya also ends up learning from Yuri about her vengeance and dead mom thing.

And then we get introduced to some crazy dude with a mullet and the tattoo we've seen in Yuri's flashback going around about penalty games and then ripping cables out of a utility pole and electrocuting himself... and then standing back up and going "Whatcha do for fun? Try dying!" and randomly murdering people in the street, and later we learn that he goes around with his own rules, setting a timer on his watch and a condition with which he selects his victims. Balloons, pink shirts, recently winning a lottery... it's arbitrary, and it's pretty unsettling as he goes around with "game start!" and "game clear!", treating himself to farfaits if he kills in time, and electrocuting himself with landlines if he fails. Clearly one of those crazy, unhinged villains that's actually pretty common in these superhero shows, and while it's kinda filler, it does help to establish Rook's personal little code pretty early on throughout episode 15.

Oh, by the way, not only did this Rook fellow kill Yuri's mother and every member of her staff, we quickly learn as Jiro himself gets a flashback of Rook murdering every single person in his tribe as they were escaping.

We then cut away to 2008, where we see the very same man almost drowning in a river when he tries to save a crayfish, and getting pulled out by Wataru and Shizuka. Apparently, this fellow isn't just dumb, he straight-up has amnesia, and it's pretty interesting to see this person in two time periods, with the audience knowing full well that this Rook fellow is a crazy serial killer in the past... but he clearly survives full well to 2008, and just how much is changed? How did he get amnesia, and is he truly reformed, or is he playing dumb? Should he even be held accountable for the sins of the past before he got amnesia? Gee, you could almost BUILD a whole series' premise out of some dude with amnesia and a dark past.

Wataru and Shizuka bring the amnesiac Rook home, and despite their discussion on whether they should just bring him to the police (they should!) this is a television show and they decide to just let Rook stick around with them, giving the amnesiac man able to drink an entire bowl of boiling mushroom soup the nickname of "Dai-chan", or "Biggie", or "Great" depending on your preferred translation team.

And the juxtaposition back and forth from the 1986 version of Rook being this unhinged serial killer with a fucked-up game gimmick, while 2008's Dai-chan is just a huge, lumbering sweetie who's very clumsy and doesn't know the best, but means well and acts like a huge child, helping to fix a bike and befriend the daughter of a restaurant owner.

Eventually both timelines end up with their respective conflicts. Kiva needs to have each of its episodes end with Kamen Rider Kiva transforming at least once, and I feel like this is a point in the two-parter where it feels particularly shoehorned in. For the 2008 part, Dai-chan just randomly gets a headache and reverts into his Fangire form, and we get a brief fight between the feral Fangire and Kiva in Garulu form. In 1986, it's a lot more natural as the WBSG is hunting down Rook, and Yuri acts as bait briefly, before realizing Rook's identity as the Fangire she's looking for. Poor Yuri gets brutally thrown into a tree and knocked unconscious because this show doesn't let her do anything interesting, but at least she's not the only one getting worfed in this episode. Jiro arrives, and I absolutely love Matsuda Kenji's growls and hamming it up as he swears bloody vengeance for the death of his clan, transforming into Garulu and quickly into Proto-Ixa to fight against Rook, which is what the cliffhanger for 15 is.

And in 16... the 2008-era fight gets resolved very quickly when Rook gains a bit of sentience and escapes, leaving Kiva baffled, and we immediately cut away to Wataru, Shizuka and Dai-chan playing volleyball. It's kind of a bad and awkward transition, and it's just another rather awkward transition to Eriko, the girl that Dai-chan and Wataru helped with the bike, meeting them and inviting the trio to her father's restaurant, where Dai-chan quickly befriends the family and ends up getting a job as a dough-kneader. And it's also very clear that Eriko has the hots for the nice, bumbling muscle-man, and her dad's happy to be a wingman, begging Wataru and Shizuka to let Dai-chan stay with them because he needs an heir for the restaurant. At least Dai-chan and Eriko have a genuinely good time together, and the episode spends a decent amount of time showing them interact and be adorable sweethearts.


In 1986, the cliffhanger fight goes on for a bit longer, but eventually Rook beats up Ixa-Jiro, causing the Jiro fist to be taken by Yuri. We do get a neat little back-and-forth between the 2008 and 1986 scenes in this episode, though. After 2008!Dai-chan gets adopted into the loving family, he keeps seeing things like skateboards and fountains that reminds him of events in 1986, and then the episode itself flashes to 1986, where, say, the skateboard thing turns out to be one of the 'games' that 1986!Rook does to murder people.

The huge drama in 1986, of course, is that Jiro ends up confronting Otoya outside the hospital. Considering Jiro straight-up tried to lynch Otoya two episodes ago, Otoya's taking it relatively well and is just being his regular smarmy self. Jiro apparently wants to borrow Otoya's muscle to fight Rook, noting that he's part of Checkmate Four, the rulers of the Fangires, and that this is to protect Yuri -- the magic word that'll make Otoya do anything. Okay, then.

These two dudes end up straight-up meeting up with Yuri, but expressly forbid her from joining them because... uh... I got nothing other than "the writers are kinda sexist, and are really into the White Knight attitude". Otoya straight-up karate chops Yuri in the neck, knocking her out so they can steal the Ixa Knuckle and fight the woman's battles for her. Come on, at least bring her along, y'know? I know Jiro's kind of a villain in this sequence of episodes, but Otoya comes off less as a gentleman and more as an extreme busybody.

Their pretty assholish treatment of Yuri aside, though, it is pretty great to see Jiro and Otoya working together and doing a simultaneous henshin as Otoya becomes Proto Ixa and Jiro becomes his Garulu form. Yuri recovers quickly and arrives to chain-whip the shit out of Rook, but, again, the writers clearly don't want her to be a badass and she gets knocked unconscious in record time. Poor Yuri. Rook then grabs Jiro and Otoya and bash their heads together and toss them around. Rook has them on the ropes... but then his time runs out, and he sort of buggers off. Okay, then.

Meanwhile, in 2008, Wataru ends up encountering the Douchebag Supreme, Keisuke Nago, who rants to Wataru and Megumi (who's absent in 15 and a majority of 16, because she's busy working on investigation) about, again, how HE DID NOT LOSE, IXA LOST, with all of the smarmy attitude of a five-year-old kid who lost in a fighting game. Nago smugly notes about some mysterious weapon that's going to make Ixa even stronger.

From Megumi's photographs of unsolved murders, Wataru ends up recognizing a red-brick fountain that Dai-chan mentions in his flashes, but bringing Dai-chan to the fountain causes him to get a severe headache and transform fully into a monster, and despite Eriko's efforts, Rook goes and murders Eriko, her father, and everyone in the shop, before delivering a speech about how he's finally awakened after sleeping for 22 years, and he's Rook of Checkmate Four... and poor Wataru probably feels kind of terrible that he's awakened a monster by trying to do something good for someone he befriended.

Of course, any emotional fallout from this isn't really explored, because we just jump straight into action scenes. Wataru looks real angry, though. Kiva fights Rook and Rook ends up still getting the upper hand, impaling Kiva on his long fingers before summoning a bunch of 'souls sleeping in the earth', transforming it into another one of those weird chandelier monsters that the Prawn Fangire created from his dead butlers a while back. It's apparently called a Sabbat, as the Rider Wiki tells me. Wataru's kind of knocked out, so Kivat summons his own terrible CGI monster, Castle Doran.

Nago then shows up into this dick-waving contest with his terrible robot construction vehicle dragon, the Powered Ixer, who chomps Doran on the tail and tosses him aside and lobs Phantom Menace style catapult bombs onto the giant chandelier monster, and it's an interesting three-way fight between the three giant CGI creatures, I guess? Wataru being knocked out means that Castle Doran isn't fighting at full form, though, and it's the Powered Ixer that gets the kill against the giant chandelier, while Doran ends up taking Kiva back into his belly, leaving us with the final shot of Butler-Jiro carrying Kiva deep into the castle. Holy shit, we're finally getting a scene with the enigmatic 1986-era monsters who are now Wataru's power-up tokens actually talking to him!

Overall.. yeah, it's a pretty interesting two-parter. Rook is a pretty great villain, even if he's a gimmicky one. The amnesia ends up with a pretty tragic outcome and I kinda felt like the tragedy really could've been stretched out a bit more to be more sad, and I kind of wished we had more interaction between Wataru (who probably realizes he's fucked up, even if unintentionally) and the resurrected Rook. And as much of a problem as the pretty-sexist writing for the 1986 cast is, it's still a pretty exciting set of action scenes, I guess? They really need to stop doing that to Yuri, though, which really cuts down on my enjoyment a lot -- it's not just the attitude that Otoya and Jiro have towards Yuri either, it's the damn episodes themselves basically only having Yuri show up either to be a love interest or to say hollow proclamations of vengeance before the other characters take agency away from her. Hopefully the writing gets a bit better as we go on.  Ultimately, it ends with a huge resounding loss for our main casts in both time periods, which is a pretty interesting cliffhanger, and the fact that we're finally going to get some answers between the 2008 cast is going to be an interesting one. A bit of a more wobbly two-parter, I feel.

Random Notes:

• That pose that Riki is striking when he massages Jiro as they discuss his backstory is... very... tender. We'll leave it at that. 
• How the hell did the existence of the Fangires still remain a secret? Rook clearly isn't subtle at all at hiding whatever the fuck he's doing, and he seems to move from one 'game' to the next within the course of a day. 
• Know your Fangires: Rook's the Lion Fangire, and, uh, he's... he's got flags sticking out of his shoulders. I guess that's the 'castle' part of his design? It's very distracting. 
• During the fight of Garulu and Otoya-Ixa fighting against Rook, there's a bit where the two of them appears to be performing what's essentially the Double Rider Kick... and end up kicking each other in the foot instead because Rook ducked. Considering the absolutely poor teamwork between these two men, I'm not surprised. 
• Their attitude aside, did Otoya and Jiro quite literally leave the unconscious Yuri collapsed in the street? What the shit, y'all.