Rating Poll: Kamen Rider Kiva

They changed the name cause Horse
Orphenoch was threatening to sue
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< The Next | Kiva | Decade >

What did you think?

***** TENSION FORTISSIMO
30
36%
**** WAKE UP FEVER!
27
33%
*** Bridge between worlds
14
17%
** Evil Fangire
8
10%
* Marked for death by the King
4
5%
 
Total votes: 83
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wisdomcat
Hyakkiyakou wo Buttagiru
Posts: 158
Joined: Sun Apr 19, 2015 7:51 am

Re: Rating Poll: Kamen Rider Kiva

Post by wisdomcat »

Yeah Adness Entertainment did the filming to Dragon Knight. They did it okay but it wasn't great. It was paced fine but 40 episodes is never enough for an toku show.
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Gallus Faberge
7X
Posts: 72
Joined: Sat Feb 20, 2016 2:20 am

Re: Rating Poll: Kamen Rider Kiva

Post by Gallus Faberge »

So i just rewatched all of Kiva and had to lower my rating. I only saw it once when it aired but i did remember loving the fangire designs and the gothic themes as well as some of the episodes. But now....

Characters:
Wataru and Otoya was in overall very interesting characters and i did not see very much wrong with them. Yet then we have the ladies who were very inconsistent in their motives and fears. Yuri was too afraid to fight fangire when she got the opportunity to fight with IXA? Megumi got a sub conscious block because she was hesitant to fight as IXA? Nah, it's just Inoue's poor writing and sexism. I'm happy they removed him after Decade. Despite this, the females do have some very interesting arcs and episodes that i enjoyed. The worst offender is Nago though, as his character is extremely inconsistent throughout the series. In the beginning he is set up as the person most likely to turn into main villain, but then at episode 19, his psychotic megalomaniac nature disappears and he turns into a mostly comic relief character, with no arc or character growth whatsoever, even though he is one of the main cast.
On the subject of main cast we also have Kivat which never got a background or a proper characterization or personality. He got to say that he was Kivat the 3rd at one point, but we never found out more about him.

As i mentioned, the show seems to have gotten to revamp a lot of things starting with episode 19, and the plot with the arms monsters were quickly wrapped up, somewhat. Now Inoue has never been good at handling more characters than 4 at a time, and you can tell from the episodes where 4 of the main cast have important roles, but the rest are just turned into "yes or no men". Then there are minor characters such as Shima who we are suddenly supposed to care about and be sad about in the episode where he turned into a fangire. But since he never had a character arc or anything, it all just felt like an extremely boring episode since we had no connection to the character.

World building:
There was very little world-building, Inoue is very bad at implementing any sort of world-building. We have Fangire and the Blue Sky association. Fangire eat people by turning them into liquid and drinking them, leaving a glass-like shell behind? I'm just assuming from what we've seen. The Fangire have a King, Queen, Bishop and Rook that "rules" them. It's unclear what Bishop and Rook's roles were. The Fangire are capable of roaming around in broad daylight randomly without any repercussions from the human government, which is just poor writing as the fangire just appears randomly due to monster of the week insert. Kivat and Sagarc are... something? (I know they are explained as their own races in supplementary material, but that is something that should have been said in the series). The Blue Skye Association have a chairman and get funding from rich people, nothing more is explained about it. Why do all the monsters eat humans? Soooo many questions.

Story
The series started of interesting with Wataru as a recluse who was starting to open up to the world. This coupled with Nago's descent into his megalomaniac madness was an interesting duality. But then came episode 19 and everything got a reset and the writer did not seem to know what to do. Though i have to say that each episode was very interesting to watch, despite the lack of consistency. I liked the plot with Jirou and the arms monsters, even though Jirou turned into a comic relief in every other episode. Then we got to the King and the love triangle arc which was okay, but it was poorly handled in some aspects. Haga Yuria (Mio/Queen) can't act so she seemed out of place with all of the other characters. A lot of the episodes are driven by a necessity or trope requirement which is often shoehorned in. This made other characters, like Tatsulot or fangires just seem out of place as well.

Conclusion:
Kiva had A LOT of potential, but it was squandered by bad and inconsistent writing. Some was probably due to corporate meddling, like Nago's personality. The episodes were entertaining as stand-alone episodes, but they don't hold up well together as a series, except from the characters Otoya and Wataru. I'm torn between a 2 and a 3, cause i really liked Otoya, Wataru, the designs of the Fangire, Suits and Kivat. Plus Nago saying Ra-i-shi-n-gu was hilarious. But i'm gonna give it a 3 for actually developing the females a lot, despite the inconsistencies.
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