Kamen Rider Kiva E45 Review: Time Trippin' Ride

Kamen Rider Kiva, Episode 45: With You - The Last Transformation

We continue with Wataru's journey through 1986 as we get a neat sequence of Emperor Kiva fighting against Dark Kiva. During the brief scuffle King gets so insanely angry that his rampaging energy blows away both the Dark Kiva armour and Kivat-II, transforming into his true form, the Bat Fangire, and King's rampage forces Wataru to retreat with the wounded Otoya in tow. Otoya thanks Wataru for the assistance in fighting King, but then spouts some of his cheesy lines, including, and I quote, "a man who is late for a date is as worthless as an empty can". Of course, the bickering between the two Kurenais end up with Kivat II showing up, delivering a message from Maya, that she and Otoya can never meet again.

Maya hangs out in the sports stadium that was the set of a bunch of the eariler Kiva episodes, and talks to Kivat II. Kivat II is apparently mostly neutral, and as such is about as loyal to Maya as he is to the King. A quick dicussion, however, reveals that King threatens baby Taiga's life, and that's the hostage he holds over Maya. Otoya gets absolutely angry, and he vows to defeat King and rescue Taiga for Maya's sake. It's pretty on-brand for Otoya, I guess. Kivat II likes this enough and offers to lend the Dark Kiva powers to Otoya... but like many other Kamen Rider superpowers, Kivat II notes that a human can't survive using Dark Kiva's power, and it's going to be a last-ditch effort for otoya.

Maya asks Wataru (who can turn into Kiva without, y'know, dying) to help out, but Otoya refuses help from someone who's clearly trying to curb his freedom, and goes off to save Taiga and the Monster Trio. Wataru, of course, goes off to help out anyway and we get another Emperor Kiva versus Dark Kiva fight, until Wataru ends up taking a blow meant for Otoya and falls down. At this point... Kivat II disengages from King's belt, and flies towards Otoya, and King's all shocked at this betrayal. Kivat II's answer is that he hates how King has been treating Maya (which is pretty abusive and shitty) and allows Otoya to transform into Dark Kiva. And so we get Dark Kiva fighting against Bat Fangire, and it's pretty neat, but the fight sort of ends and the Kurenais sort of bugger off.

Otoya then kung fu chops Wataru in the neck to knock him out, and Wataru wakes up to talk to Yuri... and ends up sort of confiding in Yuri about all of his failures. Yuri gets enough of the gist of Wataru's problems, having been a character who's struggled with expectations and her own massive self-image issues, and Yuri ends up telling Wataru that even if he changes the past, Mio wouldn't want that since otherwise Mio wouldn't have met Wataru and wouldn't have developed all the memories. Yuri compares it to her own previous relationship with Otoya... and eventually Wataru grows from his pain and accepts that it's okay to move on, and the last shard of Mio's corpse shatters and apparently moves on.

The message is neat...except the comparison with Otoya and Yuri is just a relationship that just didn't work out. Mio is kind of dead. Sure, Wataru wanting to commit effective suicide and a massive time-retcon is kind of too drastic and kind of stupid, but if he can travel back to, say, the time frame of episode 42 or 43? Why wouldn't he take that chance? There's a neat message of accepting that a bad ending doesn't invalidate all of the good memories that has preceded it, and the 'move on from things that aren't 100% your fault' bit is kind of neat, which I guess is appropriate for Kamen Rider Kiva in a nutshell, kind of.


Otoya also meets Maya, with Maya warning Otoya that using Dark Kiva for a second time will surely kill him, but Otoya gives this whole speech about risking his life for her, and tells Maya to 'receive his life'. It's kind of a pretty silly thing to do, especially since Otoya actually has help in Wataru, but it's, again, kind of on-brand for Otoya. And then we get a rapid cut to Otoya rampaging through Castle Doran, stealing the three Monster Trio Fuestles, and escaping before King can really do much damage to him. It's so abrupt it's kind of hilarious.

Anyway, we get yet another King-vs-Kurenais fight, and Wataru goes off to rescue Taiga while Otoya as Dark Kiva continues to battle King. In the process, Otoya drops the Fuestles and unleashes the Monster Trio, who escapes into the woods. Okay? Otoya unleashes "Wake Up One", summoning a giant blood red moon and it's basically a punch version of Wataru's original finisher. It's pretty cute. King summons one of those giant CGI chandelier monsters (a Sabbat?) and it stabs the sleeping Castle Doran with vines and has Doran sort of rampage around. Wataru then transforms into the monster bat Kiva form or whatever, and ends up slicing the giant Sabbat and getting a pretty cool landing pose as he blows up the Sabbat...

But while Wataru is doing all this, King uses his flying arm gauntlet things to hurt Otoya, eventually causing him to fall to Maya and Wataru's horror. Oh no!

Some of the parts of the main 1986 storyline is great. Even if I still don't fully agree with the Mio stuff, at least the episode tries to make it look like there's a neat message about moving on or whatever. And it's a pretty good message. Just because Wataru ends up accidentally killing Mio, he still has to live with it, as well as the memories associated with Mio, to honour her memory... but on the other hand, this show just can't make their protagonists anything but spotlessly squeaky-clean, and in 2008 we get the revelation that Wataru didn't actually kill Mio. It's Bishop, who walks up to the wounded-but-alive Mio to deliver the killing blow, in order to let Wataru believe that he killed Mio and take him out of the board via depression.

Understandably, Taiga is less than pleased at this revelation, and it's particularly stupid for Bishop to even say this considering that Taiga has been consistently showing that he's pretty in love with Mio in most of his screentime. Taiga beats the fuck out of Bishop, stepping on his chest and uses his tentacle powers to drive Bishop off, and Bishop also gets pissed, using a crystal ball to murder a bunch of random humans and absorb their souls. Nago shows up, delivers a pretty badass line ("every fiber of my being bursts with justice... Ixa, burst forth!") and we get another Ixa versus Bishop fight.

Ultimately... it's a neat episode. It's a huge, climactic one, and I do like the team-up moments between Otoya and Wataru. I also do like Otoya's resolve, as well as the Wataru/Yuri conversation. The message is a bit muddled, but the actors deliver their roles well and the emotions certainly run high thanks to the pretty neat acting and the music. Which, I suppose, is a huge, huge reason as to why I manage to last so long into reviewing and watching this show. It's certainly not the best out of Kamen Rider's catalogue, between the sexism and poor pacing and abrupt characterizations, but there are a lot of neat smaller moments like these that make me do like Kiva a fair bit. This episode is a neat one that's mostly just fighting against King, and I really kinda wished that King has a wee bit more of a personality beyond just being arrogant and cruel, but eh. This one's a pretty solid one. 

Random Notes:

• In perhaps the best joke in the series, Wataru visits Cafe Mal d'Amour in 1986 briefly and mentions how the cafe master hasn't changed in 22 years. Of course, the actor doesn't even bother changing his look and he doesn't have the excuse of being an immortal monster like Jiro or Maya!
• Know Your Fangires: King is the Bat Fangire. Obviously. It's a very cool monster suit.
• I really wished that the previous episodes that focused on 1986's Checkmate Four at least highlighted Kivat II's displeasure at the King a bit better.
• So if King's natural Bat Fangire form seems to actually be stronger than Dark Kiva, why does he like to use it so much? Wataru's basic Kiva armour does have chains that imply that it's sort of like a seal for his power, but just what the Kiva and Dark Kiva powers are end up being so dang ambiguous other than the fact that they are passed down through the bloodline of the Fangire Kings. 
• Does that mean that both Wataru and Taiga have 'natural' Fangire forms of their own? I mean, I guess we briefly sort of glimpse Taiga's tentacly form in this episode and in the flashback when he attacks Shima, but I wonder if Wataru does have an actual natural Fangire form, or if he doesn't have any owing to his half-blood status, or if Kiva is just his natural Fangire form.
• I am surprised that these time travel episodes don't play up Wataru's insane hero worship of Otoya that's kind of prominent in some of the early episodes a bit more. 
• We get explicit confirmation that Kivat III is Kivat II's son, but their meeting is very short and mostly just an acknowledgement of each other instead of anything that's actually eventful.