Kamen Rider Kiva E46 Review: Bow to the King

Kamen Rider Kiva, Episode 46: Full Stop - Farewell, Otoya

Last we left off, the two Kurenais are fighting against King, and Otoya is knocked down in an over-dramatic fashion. He's not dead yet, though, and we get this pretty neat sequence of King absolutely dominating the battlefield. King beats up a shocked Wataru and knocks him around silly, while Otoya pulls out his backup plan, the Ixa Knuckle, and turns into Ixa. We get King fighting Ixa for a bit before Ixa gets decisively beaten, and Wataru turns into Emperor Kiva to fight King again... and Otoya tells Kivat II to bite him again. It's a circle of rescuing each other, and as Maya screams bloody murder Otoya gives a badass speech about how this is their first and last job as father and son, about how men fight to protect what's important (but so do women...), and repeats his 'receive my life' bit.

Also, the scene has a nice little back and forth between Dark Kiva and King fighting in their transformed state as we flash back and forth to Otoya's human self doing the stunts, meant to represent Wataru seeing his father's real self or something... but Kouhei Takeda totally did those funny expressions while he's doing slow-motion karate on purpose, isn't he?

Anyway, the two Kivas unleash a combination of "Wake Up Two" and "Wake Up Fever", trapping King between the green Dark Kiva symbol and a double rider kick, backdropped with a moon, and King gets absolutely blown apart, reverting back to his human form. That's... that's about the expected ending, I suppose, and it's pretty badass. King's not done yet, though, and is about to attack the nearby Maya, yelling that she will join him in hell (holy shit) but King's shadow blast ends up being repelled by baby Taiga, who repels it back to King. King mutters something about how a 'new King is born'.

Apparently, this event ends up sending Wataru back to 2008, and as Wataru's form disappears, Otoya gives a grand speech about how he's not going to die from his wounds, and that he's going to protect people and bids farewell to Wataru... and after Wataru disappears, Maya lampshades that Otoya's just acting all cool and he is actually dying after the wounds of using Dark Kiva so many times.

We actually cut to the 2008 scenes at this point, and only go back to the 1986 cast at the end of the episode, but it's a pretty sad and genuinely well-done set of scenes. I still don't agree with a lot of the writing decisions done for Yuri, Jiro, and both of the 1986 love triangles, but evidently the scenes and characters are charming enough for me to go "aww, this is sad" as Otoya meets up with his former lover Yuri in the rain, dancing and prancing around with his umbrella and the two sort of trade barbs at each other. Otoya asks Yuri about the recipe for her omurice, admitting that it was delicious, and Yuri gives the expected 'secret ingredient is love' reply. Otoya dances in the rain a bit, tells Yuri that he's glad that he met her, tells her to smile, and that the rain will stop soon enough... and then Otoya's umbrella falls onto the ground.

Otoya also shows up next to the Monster Trio, telling them to do some good and repay him, telling them to please help out his son after he's born. This is the pact that binds Jiro and the others to Wataru and turns out it's a lot more informal than what the show originally implies. Otoya then leaves after another snarky back-and-forth with Jiro, and it's like... is he a ghost or a half-ghost or something through these couple of scenes? Whatever the case, we get to see Otoya make the love omurice for Maya, play his violin song one last time, before falling and finally passing away. It's a death we saw coming, and Otoya hasn't been the most likable character, but god dang these series of scenes leading up to Otoya's death was well done.

Oh, right, Wataru returns to 2008. It's kind of a bit of an odd bit because the 2008 scene starts off with a bunch of wackiness as Nago runs around asking Megumi to sign a recommendation so that Nago can be the chairman of the Blue Sky organization and unify it, and I absolutely love that Megumi rips it up... and Nago, without missing a beat, pulls a second one out of his briefcase because he expected Megumi to do that. This sort of continues in the background for a bit until the expected battle part of the episode.

Bishop has sort of taken over as the last arc villain to be defeated prior to the final Wataru/Taiga confrontation, and he's playing piano like Ganondorf in a church and ranting about how he will make all of his brethren rise up again, and he summons a fuck-ton of the previous Fangires that have appeared in the show. Wataru re-states his mission to protect the music within everyone, shows up in front of a Warthog Fangire about to murder Shizuka and a mere angry glance from Wataru is apparently enough to scare off lesser Fangires. Wataru carries Shizuka on his back, and at one point even beats up another Fangire without even transformign.

Megumi and Nago take a break from their comedy act and also help out to beat up the Fangires, with Ixa blowing up a Horsefly Fangire before facing off against Bishop again, and... Bishop is sort of paired up and set up as Ixa's "rival" over the past couple of episodes, huh? In the process of this fight, Nago takes a blow to the head to protect Megumi from Bishop, and manages to drive Bishop away... and it doesn't seem to be actually all that different from regular Fangire fighting until Nago realizes that his vision is blurry! Oh no!

Wataru, meanwhile, ends up wanting to 'finish this' and shows up next to Taiga near Mio's grave. Both brothers have placed flowers there, and Taiga and Wataru basically say their respective viewpoints. Taiga is a king who wants to rule over all Fangires; Wataru wants cooperation between the two races. Now they will fight so 'another Mio won't happen' or something. We get a neat fight between Emperor Kiva and Saga as they circle each other and fight in the plains, but this fight gets interrupted by a massive swarm of Fangires led by Bishop, who tells Taiga that this is where he dies. Bishop rants about how neither one of the brothers are fit to be king, and that he'll decide who the next king will be. Okay, sure. I think they stretched out Bishop a bit too long since he sort of feels more like an annoyance at this point, but he's a neat enough of a villain that Idon't mind it that much. I suppose next episode will deal with Bishop before we have a proper Wataru/Taiga showdown, then?

Overall... I'm not sure if the fights are just really that same-y, but neither the Kiva-vs-Saga or Kiva/Dark-Kiva-vs-King fight are that exciting. Like, it's still neat since it's an eventful battle, but there's just a huge sense of... seen it, done that, y'know? King is also ultimately sort of just there as a villain, and while imposing and threatening, isn't all that complex of a character. Still, episode 46 is a massive, massive payoff, and for all of the problems regarding the writing of his character, Otoya's send-off is handled pretty well. It's a neat close to the 1986 chapter, too, since we've spend three episodes almost entirely focused on it. I guess we're going to wrap up the 2008 storyline in a huge climax, then!

Random Notes:

• Jeez, we know Otoya's dead by 2008, but man, that spoilery title. It's dumb. 
• So since Otoya's dead by this episode. Wataru has to be conceived prior to this episode. And since things are sort of non-stop tension ever since King finally decides to step out of his castle, I guess Otoya slept with Maya at one point prior to breaking up with Yuri? He totally cheated on Yuri, didn't he. Or was Wataru conceived off-screen when Otoya's half-dead between his farewells to the rest of the 1986 cast? Either option is honestly on-brand with what Otoya would do, I suppose.
• Megumi's list of Nago's bad points: he is an egoist, he has a superiority complex, he loves to complain, and he is antisocial. Nago's response is an immediate "I repent!"
• The last time the time door was in action, it's only after Nago did the change that he wanted to that he was transported back to 2008, but this time around I really don't think Wataru changed the past at all, with the most important reason being that King isn't around in 2008. It's more like Wataru participated in what is the past, instead of changing it like Nago did. Y'know what? I'm going to stop talking. I'm not trying to figure out the lack of consistency in Kamen Rider time travel. 
• Yuri was looking for poor Buruman, who apparently escaped and got lost in the rain. Poor dog!
• Apparently, some time between this episode and 2008, Jiro, Riki and Ramon subdued the rampaging Castle Doran, which is just sort of flying around wily-nily after being freed from the Sabbat last episode.
• "Unifying the Wonderful Blue Sky Organization" is such a laughable thing for nago to want to do considering how we really haven't seen much of the group, and how utterly ineffective the group has been (sans Nago, Megumi and I guess Kengo that one time), and how they are like four people operating out of a cafe. 
• Does Shizuka still not know that Wataru is Kiva? It's so weird, she knows about Kivat and Tatsulot, she's met the Blue Sky Group, but I don't think she finds out that Wataru is Kiva.