Kamen Rider Kiva, Episode 25: Fanfare - the Queen's Awakening; Episode 26: Metronome - Miraculous Memory
We're back with episode reviews of Kamen Rider Kiva, then! It seems that as we reach what's basically the halfway point of Kiva, we're going to go through a bit of an escalation in terms of the storyline? And I guess it's a good point as any to take stock on the series as a whole. This is basically my first romp through Kiva and I know scant little about anything that goes on here, and it's been... interesting. On one hand, I do kind of enjoy the cheery-gothic vibe that Kiva has, and as much as the execution does admittedly leave much to be desired, the 1986/2009 flashback style storytelling does offer kind of a unique way to explore the lore and history of these characters. The music is fantastic, as is expected from a show that has music as one of its core themes, and the suits and general special effects are not bad for a late Phase I Heisei series. The actors are also pretty competent and charming, which is probably the biggest praise I can heap on Kiva and the reason the show still manages to make me continue tuning in despite its often-problematic handling of its cast, particularly its jerkier members and its female members.
Anyway, this episode! The 1986-era plot, for better or for worse, has Otoya and Yuri basically shack up together. It's honestly debatable how well-written and how organic the Otoya/Yuri romance is, and for me is that they really don't do enough? Like, obviously Otoya's a better choice compared to Jiro, but we went from "Otoya's not a complete scumbag and cares in his own way" to "Yuri's head-over-heels in love with her OTP" and it's jarring, to say the least. Anyway, after a bit of lovey-dovey omurice stuff, Yuri gives Otoya the gift of a watch which Otoya will cherish all his life and it's undoubtedly going to be important in the upcoming plot of the two-parter. They have a bit of a debate on whether to go on a date to the beach or to hunt down and murder Rook. Obviously, beach > murder.Oh, and also, Jiro apparently returned the Ixa Knuckle to the WBSG chairman dude whose name I can't recall at the moment, and also Yuri and Otoya have reported Jiro's not-quite-Fangire monster form.
Anyway, Otoya ends up meeting up with Queen Maya once more, and Otoya gives his usual pickup artist line about destiny and meeting multiple times... but Otoya's at least faithful to Yuri, noting that his fate now lies with someone else. It's at this point that Rook shows up, hunting flowers, and Otoya mistakenly believes that poor helpless goth lady Maya's the target because Rook "always targets women". Okay? Maya's absolutely confused about the state of things.
Unseen by Otoya in the chaos of things, Queen Maya tells poor, baffled Rook to continue playing his game, and Rook basically just attacks Otoya, who fights back first with the Ixa Knuckle, and later on as Kamen Rider Ixa. Rook absoultely overwhelms Otoya so bad that his knuckle malfunctions and he gets zapped back into human form, but Maya stops Rook from deling the deathblow, noting that she "wants to try and understand what's going on." And... and it's kind of obvious that we're going through the ironic route of the villain tasked to murder any Fangire who's in love with humans is going to fall in love with a human herself. It's kind of the obvious vampire story route and I'm all for that.
The problem, though? Is that we had to resort to the absolutely tired amnesia plot device to do this. I'm never a fan of amnesia unless it's done well (Build and Agito did it pretty well) but this seems to be a cheap way to shoehorn in another love triangle plot without making Otoya be unfaithful and a jerk. Anyway, Otoya's amnesiac, and Maya pretends to be "Yuri", his love interest, and that's the cliffhanger. More Maya's great, but I'm not a fan of this plotline.In 2008, Mio and Wataru are having sort of a date and discussing bento shops and stuff. Megumi shows up and teases them for going on a date. Nago quite literally barges into this conversation just to tell them that they're a bunch of shitty perverts who's only got hanky-panky in their sick, disgusted minds and they should take the time to think about what they can do for humanity and everlasting peace in the world. I shit you not, that's exactly what happens. Nago's an absolute dick, and it's made extra-hilarious by the fact that Wataru and Mio's easily one of the most chaste couples ever.
Nago's dickishness is sort of part of the plot of the episode. WBSG Chairman, while working out in the gym, talks about how they're developing a power-up for Kamen Rider Ixa, but while the Ixa system is performing well, Nago's not the ideal user since he's a shit who overestimates himself and doesn't understand his own weakness.
Meanwhile, Mio's day gets absolutely ruined! She tries to deliver bento, but her customer gets fucking Fangire-murdered. She runs back to her working place, but her boss and all her coworkers also get freaking murdered! This leads to Mio, in panic, meeting Wataru and breaking up with him for no reason at all, leaving poor Wataru confused. Shizuka (who I truthfully forgot existed since she's absent for the past couple of episodes) has no idea who Mio is, hahahaha, that's actually funny! Wataru, you sly, sly dog.Anyway, Mio's walking all confused and muttering about how this isn't her fate... when another member of the Checkmate Four shows up. Bishop! Bishop's the smart, bookish guy of the group, sort of bringing to mind characters like Brain from Drive, and Bishop talks about how they cannot suppress Queen's powers and whatnot. He gives Mio a hit-list of all the human/Fangire couples, but Mio burns the list. It's neat.
Of course, the Fangires are apparently more organized than the ambiguous "each member of the Checkmate Four kinda has a job" that they had seemed to be, and our good buddy the Spider Fangire shows up with his weird hand puppets and a buddy (the silent, brutish Shark Fangire), chuckling about how a useless Queen must be eliminated. Presumably, they're working for Bishop? They attack Mio, but Mio gets rescued by Megumi. Megumi's arrival sends the Spider Fangire's creepy stalker fanboy tendencies into high gear and he charges in all excited with Megumi, who slaps him down.
Anyway, this was a pretty interesting episode. The two-parter seems to be focusing a lot on the two Queens of the different time periods -- the 1986 Queen who's starting to experience emotions and becoming curious about humans; and the 2009 Queen who refuses outright to be a Fangire hitman. Toss in the fact that they're actually seemingly trying to do something with Nago's character into the mix, and the always entertainingly scenery-chewing Spider Fangire, and it's actually a neat start to a two-parter. Shame about the amnesia plot, though.
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The 1986 storyline for this episode is... it kind of went where you expect it to. And I suppose it's sort of important for Maya's character development from a soulless killing machine into someone who's at least a bit more empathic, signifying perhaps the start of a heel-face-turn.
Basically, Maya impersonates Yuri, claiming that, yes, she is the
Yuri that Otoya is completely in love with, and plays along with
Otoya's desire to go to the beach and find a missing object and stuff.
Maya stops Rook from killing Otoya, noting that she's intending to try
and unlock the 'secrets of love' and figure out why all of these
Fangires keep falling in love with humans. Eventually, as Otoya keeps
diving into the ocean to look for Yuri's missing ring or whatever, the
real Yuri shows up in panic looking for her missing boyfriend and has a
bit of a conversation with Maya about how "love keeps people going" or
whatever. Maya eventually leaves, leaving Yuri meeting the
nearly-drowned Otoya (who, of course, got the ring) and also apparently
being deprived of oxygen while he was drowning caused Otoya's memory to
come back. Okay, sure. It's a pretty bland storyline, and it definitely
would've flowed a lot better without the amnesia plot (maybe rearrange
the order of events so the Otoya/Maya friendship thing happens before he
becomes an item with Yuri if the showmakers wanted to avoid showing an
unfaithful hero) but at least it's quick and over with. In 2008, poor Mio is having a far more terrible time as the new Queen. Bishop confronts her and tells her that all this is essentially 'tough love' to have Mio properly awaken as Queen, something that must happen before the new King awakens. Mio's argument is that she doesn't really think that loving humans is all that grave of a sin, but since the Checkmate Four is sort of a psychotic vampire club, Bishop warns Mio that even entertaining such a thought, that their little doctrine might be wrong, could easily be constituted as a crime worthy of death.
While all of this is going on, we get to see the Spider Fangire creepily obsessing and stalking Megumi, who herself is hard at work looking for where Mio has disappeared off to. We get confirmation that the Spider is working for Bishop, whose job, I guess, is 'internal management' and making sure Queen awakens properly or something?
Speaking of nasty criminals, Nago is a rat bastard and reports to Commissioner Shima about how the Ixa Knuckle was stolen by a Fangire, but it wasn't his fault, it was straight-up Megumi's fault. Wow, not only did he refuse to admit his flaws, he even throws poor Megumi under the bus! Megumi's actually doing her job and hunting Fangires while you're bitching to teacher, Nago colossal prick! Shima has about the same reaction as I do, noting that Nago is a sorry excuse of a human being, and that he's not allowed to be Ixa until he acknowledges his flaws.
We get a pretty well-done scene where Mio finally decides to maybe accept her terrible job and appear before a Fangire dude and his girlfriend... and as Mio raises her hand, the Fangire man suddenly pushes his girlfriend away, begs the Queen for leniency, willing to submit to his punishment as long as his girlfriend is spared. Obviously Mio can't go through with it when she sees that display, and allos the couple to go away... straight into the path of a gigantic CGI Kamehameha courtesy of Bishop.
And poor Mio's just panicking at the sight of this, that there's no escape for her, and we get a brief moment of her going to Wataru's house, sort of looking for stability, and we get the obligatory violin playing sequence. Obviously this is just a shorthand for the writers to get Wataru involved with the plot, which has been exclusively focusing on the Checkmate Four people, but it does kind of showcase just how panicked and not in her right mind Mio is. The Spider Fangire ends up attacking Mio, crawling on the ground all creepy-like. Megumi and crybaby Nago show up, with Nago of course frothing and demanding that the Spider Fangire "return my Ixa!"
In perhaps one of the best and most hilarious and epic transformation sequences ever, the Spider Fangire just gives Nago this shit-eating grin, puts on the Ixa belt and goes HEN-SHIN. That was a wonderful face that the Spider Fangire makes. That's complete disrespect to Nago. That's glorious.
Nago gets the ever-loving shit beaten out of him by the Spider Fangire in Ixa armour, and somehow the Spider Fangire's able to pull out his stupid sock puppets while in Ixa form jsut to mock Nago. That's hilarious. Also hilarious is Megumi's plan to take out the Spider Fangire. Sort of flirt with him, talk about how she likes powerful men, and the stalker fool de-henshins to receive a kiss from Megumi... who proceeds to kick the creepy bastard straight in the nuts. That's glorious. Megumi rips out the Ixa belt away from the Spider Fangire while drop-kicking him, but it's a shame that the show writers are so fixated with the idea that Nago has to be Kamen Rider Ixa, because narratively it really feels pretty off to have Megumi just toss the Ixa system to Nago instead of using it herself. It'd be different if we actually saw Nago actually doing something to earn the Ixa belt throughout the course of the episode, but all he did was screech and cry a little. I'm not complaining too much because the end of the episode implies that this might be intentional for Nago's character arc.
Because
after the fight is over (which we're skipping over for a bit), we get
to see Megumi and Nago in front of Shima, and Nago appears to
have character development, apologizing to Shima and admitting how Ixa
being stolen was his fault and how he's totally resigning as Ixa... and,
of course, Shima allows Nago to keep it. Pretty boring, undeserved
character retooling, right? After all, Nago does jack shit throughout
these two episodes that really shows that he 'deserves' Ixa, and this
speech came right out of nowhere. And that's because it is. Only seen by
the audience is the absolutely asshole-looking knowing smirk. Nago is faking character development,
and that's such an unexpected way to take the character. He's an
unrepentant ass, and he's still refusing to change for the better and
he's just stringing Shima and Megumi along. I'm not even mad, at least
if you're going to have Nago be Ixa's wielder you could stand to make
him less one-dimensional, even if (and I hope this is the case) this is
building him up to be an antagonist. Well, moreso than he has been,
anyway.Following up on the battle after Ixa scares him off, Spider Fangire runs away and bumps into Mio and Wataru... and we get some hilarious gesticulating on the part of the Spider Fangire, ranting about how it's all Mio's fault that everything's shot to shit, and Wataru panics because he can't transform into his superhero vampire form in front of Mio. The Spider Fangire beats the fuck out of Wataru in front of Mio and it's sort of a parallel to how Kiva Emperor Form is activated -- only this time it's Mio's Queen powers flaring to life as she sees Wataru being brutalized. Mio activates her Queen powers (while Wataru's kind of unconscious?) and then when the Spider tosses Wataru into the river, at which point Wataru turns into Emperor Kiva off-screen and takes out the Spider. It's, uh... kind of iffy how somehow neither Mio nor Wataru see each other's superpower, but okay. There's a wee bit of disappointment that, again, it's the dude that ends up delivering the finishing blow in the fight, but it's quickly rectified in a later scene.
Because the final scene of the episode is the pretty cool sequence showing that the Spider Fangire somehow survives Emperor Kiva's badass downward slash... only to meet Mio, calmly walking towards him. The Spider Fangire rants about how he wants Megumi and all that, and Mio calmly says "you're in love with a human woman, aren't you?" which is a development that completely blindsided me. Suddenly it's extra-appropriate and so perfect that Mio is the one that finishes off the Spider Fangire, finally finding a detestable person she doesn't mind killing. And it's even a karmic death for the Spider Fangire for all of the sliminess he's been doing all season, plus it's a far better sendoff for the recurring villain than just being taken out in an honestly samey Emperor Kiva fight. She does the same giant blood-moon (Mio's is pink!) and dark-of-night-falls-upon-you stuff, which is awesome as all hell. Mio even leaves a giant-ass Checkmate Four sigil on the concrete, like Kiva does!
And it seems that despite the catharsis of seeing a recurring antagonist get killed and taken out, I'm not sure what this means for Mio. She's killed a human-loving Fangire so presumably Bishop will hold back for the moment? But on the other hand, she's killed and that might be one of the winning conditions for Bishop; that Mio awakens as Queen whether it's killing some randoms or killing the Spider Fangire. Throw in the surprisingly exciting Nago situation into the mix, and I'm actually genuinely excited about all the plot developments here, which isn't something I've been for a fair amount of time in Kiva.
Random Notes:
- Bishop is played by Murata Mitsu, who is best-known for playing The Man, one of the main villains of Kamen Rider Hibiki who's introduced in the second half. Murata Mitsu would also later play secondary villain Legion in Kamen Rider Wizard.
- Rook gets a pretty hilarious line lampshading just how many Fangires and humans fall in love with each other, because it seems like every single time Queen shows up there's a couple that needed to be eradicated.
- Turns out that Mio doesn't know (or is in severe denial) about her role as the Fangire Queen, so that ominous glare she shot Shinji and Ryoko last episode was just kind of a red herring?
- Know Your Fangires: This one's the Shark Fangire, and not one I would've thoght to be obvious if it isn't pointed out to me.
- Emperor Kiva also seems to go through a long stock transformation sequence. Which I don't have as much of a problem of compared to the Arms Monsters forms, because it's a bit cooler, but it definitely could get old pretty fast.
- Creepy as he was, I will miss the Spider Fangire. He's such a hammy, over-the-top lunatic.
- Maya being the token 'good' villain among the Checkmate Four (or at least the one with the potential to sympathize with humans) is kind of an obvious development in retrospect; how else will the power of Queen fall to such a conflicted person like Mio in 2009?
- Bishop explicitly notes that 2009-era King has yet to have 'awakened', which sort of obliquely sets up the main villain of the 1986 arc to be that era's King, which can actually get defeated by the 1986 cast, unlike all of the other Fangires that would show up in 2009.
- I originally made a huge fuss about wondering why the Ixa belt could be used by a Fangire, somehow forgetting that one of the two primary users of Ixa in 1986 is a monster himself.
- Emperor Kiva's finisher this time aroud is the "Garulu Fever", where Tatsulot is connected with the Garulu Saber or something, so the Arms Monsters have some sort of relevance even with Emperor Kiva. In this case, Garulu Fever makes some crazy rocket-exhaust thing emerge from the saber to propel Emperor Kiva into the air so he can do a downward slash. Okay.
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