Kamen Rider Den-O 47, thoughts on Kiva
Jan. 6th, 2008 08:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
estiriseOkay, some thoughts on Den-O 47, then a small bit on Kamen Rider Kiva. Needless to say, spoilers for Den-O, what little we know of Kiva, and a small one for Kamen Rider Blade.
Ah, episode 47. Tail-end episodes in KR series tend to blur together for me; the only one I think I remember is KR Blade 47, in which Tachibana changes his mind regarding a rather important plot point. (Which still makes no sense, but what the hey.)
So, to episode 47 of Den-O. The characters celebrate New Years, Yuto gets stuck in a very ugly outfit, and three characters perfect the art of instant outfit-changing.
If I have gathered what's going on in the plot correctly (and I probably haven't - subs are my friend), the gang is celebrating New Years. Ryotaro, Kohana, Naomi, and the Taroses celebrate on board Den-Liner, and then Ryotaro celebrates with Airi, Ozaki, and Mihara (and has a moment in which we're reminded that yes, Ryotaro still has bad luck). Deneb in Yuto shows up, praying that Yuto suddenly will start liking Shiitake, which of course, Yuto isn't pleased about and ejects him. Yuto and Ryotaro discuss things.
Owner goes to a rematch with stationmaster, and is busy with that the rest of the episode.
Kai, in the meantime, is a bit pissy. He dusts one imagin, is annoyed with another, and sends an army to the past. We don't know about the army point yet, but skyscrapers start going to pieces, which alerts Yuto and Ryotaro to the fact that there's something going on. Kai tosses them a card, and they have a discussion, no doubt about the fact that Kai's trying something.
So, Ryotaro goes to the past, and faces the army, which he finds out is an army. He fights them, but is quickly getting overwhelmed, not being the world's best fighter. Yuto, in the present, defends Airi.
Much to Ryotaro's surprise, Kintaros shows up in the past, takes the belt off of Ryotaro in order to transform himself. He reveals that (in a flashback to early in the episode) he got Ryotaro to say a wish, and he accepted that wish. I'm not sure what that wish was, because all I got out of it was that it involved the Taroses, and whatever Kintaros did, he considered the contract complete. So, he transforms, fights the Imagin, performs a very neat Dynamic Chop, and then detransforms. Tossing the belt and the pass into Denliner, he gets Ryotaro to get back on board, and the Denliner goes off, leaving Kintaros in the past and Ryotaro going to the future, back to help things in the present.
In the meantime, Kai gets access to Airi, and does the scary memory-reading thing that he did to Ryotaro. Yuto is still fighting, Ryotaro is in transit, Ryuutaros and the others are not very happy, and Airi is in big trouble.
And of course we leave on a cliffhanger.
What startled me the most is that Kintaros, the big honorable bear Imagin, essentially seems to have tricked Ryotaro into making a wish that he could grab onto. At least I'm assuming that he tricked Ryotaro, because Ryotaro doesn't seem to expect to see him as flesh out in the past, and he had to be reminded of what he'd said. I've said before that Kintaros would find a way to force Ryotaro into a wish if he needed to, but I somehow wasn't expecting him to do it here.
It's easy to forget that Ryotaro is a contract holder, mostly because he's never made a wish (at least not one that the Taroses acknowledged) in an entire year. He's been lucky in that the Taroses are either interested in fighting or just want to hang around, or are Ryuutaros being Ryuutaros. The last time someone tried to get him to wish was way back in episode 18, which is probably why he forgot that any of them could, if they needed to, get him to make a wish. And Kintaros used that because he felt the need, I think, to be out there, fulfilling his promises.
I'm not going into Kiva speculation very much, except for one bit that I found interesting. Heisei Kamen Rider has a tendency to have heroes that are meant to have their powers, or are, in a way special enough that they could adopt their powers. Kuuga had foresight of the belt (IIRC), Agito was Agito, by and large the Faiz crew had a certain trait in common (and the belts worked better with people with that certain trait, if they worked for people without that trait at all), Blade's Riders were mostly normal with the right personalities (and in one case, with the right genetics), at least two of Kabuto's were born to be Riders, Ryotaro was a Singularity Point, and the trend continues with Kiva, whose protagonist is apparently not full human. (I skipped Ryuuki and Hibiki here because they were luck and training, respectively.)
According to certain press materials, Wataru (the protagonist of Kiva) has a human father and a Fangire (the villains of the series) mother. (I've seen various spellings, I'm going with Fangire for the moment.) This makes him a sort of parallel to Eiji of Boukenger, who fought against his mother's kind too. Except in this case it'll be all Fangire. What interests me (to the extent that I gave in to a muse to keep my excitement at bay) is that while Wataru's father was a hunter of Fangire, he still had a child with one. Is it a loving relationship like Eiji's parents, or did something else happen? We don't know if Wataru's parents are still about, all we know is that Wataru makes violins. It'll be interesting to see what happened with Wataru's family, if he knows of his heritage at all, or if he was raised to be ignorant of that heritage.
Ah, episode 47. Tail-end episodes in KR series tend to blur together for me; the only one I think I remember is KR Blade 47, in which Tachibana changes his mind regarding a rather important plot point. (Which still makes no sense, but what the hey.)
So, to episode 47 of Den-O. The characters celebrate New Years, Yuto gets stuck in a very ugly outfit, and three characters perfect the art of instant outfit-changing.
If I have gathered what's going on in the plot correctly (and I probably haven't - subs are my friend), the gang is celebrating New Years. Ryotaro, Kohana, Naomi, and the Taroses celebrate on board Den-Liner, and then Ryotaro celebrates with Airi, Ozaki, and Mihara (and has a moment in which we're reminded that yes, Ryotaro still has bad luck). Deneb in Yuto shows up, praying that Yuto suddenly will start liking Shiitake, which of course, Yuto isn't pleased about and ejects him. Yuto and Ryotaro discuss things.
Owner goes to a rematch with stationmaster, and is busy with that the rest of the episode.
Kai, in the meantime, is a bit pissy. He dusts one imagin, is annoyed with another, and sends an army to the past. We don't know about the army point yet, but skyscrapers start going to pieces, which alerts Yuto and Ryotaro to the fact that there's something going on. Kai tosses them a card, and they have a discussion, no doubt about the fact that Kai's trying something.
So, Ryotaro goes to the past, and faces the army, which he finds out is an army. He fights them, but is quickly getting overwhelmed, not being the world's best fighter. Yuto, in the present, defends Airi.
Much to Ryotaro's surprise, Kintaros shows up in the past, takes the belt off of Ryotaro in order to transform himself. He reveals that (in a flashback to early in the episode) he got Ryotaro to say a wish, and he accepted that wish. I'm not sure what that wish was, because all I got out of it was that it involved the Taroses, and whatever Kintaros did, he considered the contract complete. So, he transforms, fights the Imagin, performs a very neat Dynamic Chop, and then detransforms. Tossing the belt and the pass into Denliner, he gets Ryotaro to get back on board, and the Denliner goes off, leaving Kintaros in the past and Ryotaro going to the future, back to help things in the present.
In the meantime, Kai gets access to Airi, and does the scary memory-reading thing that he did to Ryotaro. Yuto is still fighting, Ryotaro is in transit, Ryuutaros and the others are not very happy, and Airi is in big trouble.
And of course we leave on a cliffhanger.
What startled me the most is that Kintaros, the big honorable bear Imagin, essentially seems to have tricked Ryotaro into making a wish that he could grab onto. At least I'm assuming that he tricked Ryotaro, because Ryotaro doesn't seem to expect to see him as flesh out in the past, and he had to be reminded of what he'd said. I've said before that Kintaros would find a way to force Ryotaro into a wish if he needed to, but I somehow wasn't expecting him to do it here.
It's easy to forget that Ryotaro is a contract holder, mostly because he's never made a wish (at least not one that the Taroses acknowledged) in an entire year. He's been lucky in that the Taroses are either interested in fighting or just want to hang around, or are Ryuutaros being Ryuutaros. The last time someone tried to get him to wish was way back in episode 18, which is probably why he forgot that any of them could, if they needed to, get him to make a wish. And Kintaros used that because he felt the need, I think, to be out there, fulfilling his promises.
I'm not going into Kiva speculation very much, except for one bit that I found interesting. Heisei Kamen Rider has a tendency to have heroes that are meant to have their powers, or are, in a way special enough that they could adopt their powers. Kuuga had foresight of the belt (IIRC), Agito was Agito, by and large the Faiz crew had a certain trait in common (and the belts worked better with people with that certain trait, if they worked for people without that trait at all), Blade's Riders were mostly normal with the right personalities (and in one case, with the right genetics), at least two of Kabuto's were born to be Riders, Ryotaro was a Singularity Point, and the trend continues with Kiva, whose protagonist is apparently not full human. (I skipped Ryuuki and Hibiki here because they were luck and training, respectively.)
According to certain press materials, Wataru (the protagonist of Kiva) has a human father and a Fangire (the villains of the series) mother. (I've seen various spellings, I'm going with Fangire for the moment.) This makes him a sort of parallel to Eiji of Boukenger, who fought against his mother's kind too. Except in this case it'll be all Fangire. What interests me (to the extent that I gave in to a muse to keep my excitement at bay) is that while Wataru's father was a hunter of Fangire, he still had a child with one. Is it a loving relationship like Eiji's parents, or did something else happen? We don't know if Wataru's parents are still about, all we know is that Wataru makes violins. It'll be interesting to see what happened with Wataru's family, if he knows of his heritage at all, or if he was raised to be ignorant of that heritage.
