Kamen Rider Kiva, Episode 17: Lesson - My Way; Episode 18: Quartet - Listen to Your Heart's Voice
A bit of a simpler two-parter, especially after the previous Ixa-drama centric episodes. And... these two are pretty simple? It's not that these are bad episodes, since they are pretty standard fare for Kiva, but after a series of episodes that just gave us more and more revelations (pacing problems notwithstanding), it is pretty jarring to return to an entirely self-contained two-parter. In a way, though, it is kind of needed to sort of 'cleanse' the palate after the huge drama, but on the other hand, this two-parter is sort of... bland and predictable, I guess.
The 2008 storyline gives us some much-needed focus on Wataru as a character. So far Wataru's mostly been reactionary as a protagonist, and even his most major character moments involves other people (Nago and Megumi in the episode where they fought; Kengo in the talent scout episodes; the Frog Fangire). This episode sort of reduces the 2008 side-cast to just a couple of brief appearances by Megumi and Shizuka, leaving most of the storyline taken up by Wataru, Kivat and the guest star, an archer lady.
Anyway, after the events of the past couple of episodes, Wataru is utterly depressed about how so many of the nice people he met turned out to be Fangires... mostly Dai-chan/Rook and the Frog Fangire, but combined with Nago Keisuke being a massive jerk-off, this basically put poor Wataru's morale in an all-time low, and he sort of leaves his house to go on a trip, freaking poor Shizuka and Megumi the fuck out. This leads to Wataru meeting a lady practicing archery at a beach, who Wataru and Megumi sort of end up to calling 'granny' or the very rare 'Kurasawa-san' throughout the episode, just to make her real identity as someone from the flashback sequence of the episode a huge surprise. I guess it's actually a decently built-up surprise if you weren't fully paying attention to storytelling tropes, though, and I'm not going to give the episode too much grief for that.
Of course, the archer lady is being targeted by an evil Fangire, getting brief traumatic moments from visions of two invisible fangs. Simultaneously, while all of this is going on, Nago is being a massive psychopath as he goes around on his day job as a bounty hunter, beating up a criminal called Sakaguchi... but throughout this two-parter it's clear that Nago's losing even more of his marbles, ranting about how he NEEDS the buttons from Sakaguchi as the criminal is arrested by the police. Of course, Sakaguchi turns out to be the Seastar Fangire, and attacks Wataru's arhcer-lady friend.
Eventually, after scenes of Nago being a moron and Wataru silently angsting on whether he should fight or not, the fight ends up in the good ol' Tokusatsu Stadium, where there's a three-way fight between Kiva, Ixa and Patrick Star. Interestingly, though, Ixa shows off another power of his own -- whistles that allow him to briefly steal Kiva's weapons. It's called "Garulu Fake", apparently, when Ixa steals the Garulu Saber. Because Nago's a dude that really doesn't want to admit defeat, he ends up attacking Kiva throughout the climax of episode 17 and the cold open of episode 18, allowing the Seastar Fangire to escape and hurting poor, poor Wataru. Nago Keisuke is a dick, if you haven't realized yet, and now he's just a crazy motherfucker without a shred of moral to really stand on. Ixa completely fails in actually neutralizing either Kiva or the Seastar Fangire, though, ending up with Nago going crazy and angrily punching a wall until his knuckles bleed. Poor Wataru, meanwhile, is also going through a similar crisis, collapsing on the ground muttering about how he doesn't want to fight and all he wants is to make violins.
And this leads to Wataru moping around his house, talking about how he should let Ixa kill the Fangire while he pointedly ignores the music coming from Otoya's Bloody Rose violin. Thankfully for the archer lady, the Wonderful Blue Sky Group at least try their best to protect the people from Fangires. Megumi sadly proves predictably not amounting to much but a distraction, and Ixa manages to beat the shit out of the Seastar Fangire, wailing on him as a Kamen Rider and later in his human self... and the police has to quite literally tear Nago away from Sakaguchi while Nago rants about wanting to take a button and a trophy and shit. Nago's gone fully loony, so much that over the course of the next couple of scenes, he assaults an entire police convoy just to break and attack Sakaguchi and steal his button while clearly going demented-insane as he laughs and acts like a manic. I can totally see Nago being a main antagonist in the next couple of episodes, with the Ixa gear hopefully being passed on to someone more worthy like Megumi.
After this event, Wataru ends up realizing that his inaction led to the archer lady being so wounded that she's clearly struggling with her archery, but she's still persevering and practicing, and ends up telling Wataru about one of Kiva's main themes -- the 'voice of my heart', and doing and following your passions. It's at this point, of course, that -gasp- the archer lady of 2008 and the little girl from 1986 are actually the same person, which... isn't that huge of a revelation, really, but it's nice. 
Of course, this heartwarming moment is interrupted when the Seastar Fangire attacks again (thanks to Nago being a doodoohead). Kudos to the archery lady, who straight-up holds her ground and goes full on Legolas on the Seastar Fangire, even shooting an arrow through the creature's head at one point. Wataru arrives and tarnsforms into Kiva, though, and this time we get him and Kivat blowing on all three Fuestles at once, giving us the pretty obvious Dogabaki form. It's a pretty cool scene that shows off all of the attacks and toys in a single suit, although mostly I just appreciate we get to see the leg-unchaning, bat wings and giant Kiva symbol exploding. That's about it, really -- a relatively simple story told over two episodes, but both Wataru and Nago do get a lot of great scenes, and as I mentioned before, it does really help to make Wataru feel more like a person. Not the most exciting story arc, but one I appreciate exists.
The 1986 storyline is... way more succinct. Episode 17 basically sets up the conflict. Yuri gets Otoya to teach a little girl to play violin. And while we do get a couple of PG-rated flirting (which is still creepy AF when it comes out of the mouth of an adult, as charismatic as Takeda Kohei is), ultimately episode 17 serves to set this up. A troubled(tm) little girl who has to join a violin audition but doesn't really want to play violin, and Otoya being a mentor that clearly doesn't give a shit. It's not a particularly gripping storyline, but, sort of like the Wataru side of the story, it does really try and focus on the man Otoya is when he's not being a white knight or trying to get into Yuri's pants. The execution is mostly just jokes, though, and it's testament to Takeda Kohei's acting power and general charming vibe that this storyline worked at all. So much of the episode 17 screentime is just hijinks and antics -- either the little girl telling Otoya where to shove it, or Jiro shoving a toilet plunger at Otoya's face. This continues on to episode 18, which ends up being billiard-based, with Jiro and Otoya quite randomly deciding to have a billiard competition to see who gets to inherit Ixa. Okay, then.
Surprisingly, we don't get a Fangire threat in 1986, and it's the victim that ends up showing up in both time periods, which I thought was kinda neat and a neat little difference. Eventually, Yuri gets angry with Otoya for kind of being a shithead and tricking the little girl into doing random chores or just hanging around them in the billiard bar, because all Otoya wants to do is impress Yuri and not teach the girl. And Otoya's lesson? Basically tell her to 'be yourself' and play the music from her herat.
A neat little display of the little girl's violin skills happen during the audition, where the kid's violin string snaps. There's a bit of a neat genius bonus involved when Otoya observes that she's not flinching and is continuing on with the remaining strings... something you can actually do on a real violin, since we're shown that it's the E-string that snaps, and the girl basically uses the A-string as a substitute for the snapped string. Bravo! Of course, Otoya's real lesson isn't how to play violin, but basically to tell the girl that he's already figured out that she doesn't actually want to play violin and is taking violin lessons mostly because her parents want her to... and leaves her with the moral to do exactly that, leading to her becoming an archer. Okay then!
Overall, not the most exciting pair of episodes. Not bad, though, and a pretty okay one, all things considered. Still not a big fan of the Dogabaki form, though.
Random Notes:
- The cliffhanger of the 2008-era monster trio meeting Wataru is utterly and completely handwaved aside with Wataru passing out, a brief discussion about maybe eating Wataru and freeing themselves from a debt, but Jiro stopping Ramon and Riki from doing so because they made a promise to Otoya. So in other words, we learned absolutely nothing new.
- Know Your Fangires: It's obvious if you know the animal that this two-parter's Fangire is based on, but otherwise, it's actually pretty surprising when I googled it to find out... it's the Seastar Fangire!
- I'm not a fan of DoGaBaKi form either. I kind of understand that it's sort of conceptually similar to something like Den-O Climax Form or Zi-O Trinity Form, but I really do feel like the Basshaa, Garulu and Dogga parts of the suit clash pretty badly with each other.
- That increasingly surprised and shocked face that Jiro has when Otoya breaks his billiard cue, but then proceed to get an impossibly lucky shot that downs two billiard balls in order has to be seen to be believed. I am such a fan of the 'comically serious' trope.
- A bit more vulgar, but I did like the scene where Jiro sticks a toilet plunger onto Otoya's face.
- I don't think it's ever mentioned, but why is Yuri so invested in getting the little girl to succeed in her audition?
- Considering them being sort of catty with each other in previous episodes, I do appreciate that Shizuka's first instinct when Wataru acts strangely is to call Megumi. I guess playing in a band together has made them buddies!
- Wataru very nearly smashes the shit out of Bloody Rose. I genuinely thought he was going to, actually, and that we'd learn something about that mysterious dang instrument.
- Kivat is apparently 'sick' throughout episode 18, which prevents him from actually going on by himself and gabu-ing the shit out of the Starfish Fangire. Was this something that they mentioned before, or is it just something to sort of handwave Kivat not doing anything?
- We get a brief discussion between Shiima and Megumi that they have contingency plans in place if a Fangire's human form gets arrested by the police. We don't see this being implemented, though, because Nago went crazy.
- Seriously, though, I know that while Otoya's clearly just making jokes, acts mostly like a nosy uncle and isn't really a pedophile, his line about how "all women are the same, age doesn't matter!" is creepy as shit.
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