Kamen Rider Kiva, Episode 17: Lesson - My Way; Episode 18: Quartet - Listen to Your Heart's Voice

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.

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.
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.

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.
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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