YMMV / Kamen Rider Kiva

• Awesome Music:
  • The OP. Epic guitar riff is epic.
    "Baku baku Beating Heart! Katobashite Kick it Up! Baki baki Burning Heart! Kimi koso One and Only!"
  • Emperor Form's Leitmotif, Supernova.
  • And before that, we had Destiny's Play. As well as it's Re-Union Edit.
  • Saga has his own awesome Leitmotif: Roots of the King.
  • Generally, everything TETRA-FANG (including Koji Seto/Wataru himself) made. To give one an idea of how awesome the music of this series is in the Heisei period: apart from Den-O's all-too visible Wolverine Publicity, only the Kiva soundtrack has proved popular enough to warrant a reunion concert years after the show.
• Badass Decay: When Kengo is given IXA, Nago loses a lot of his cool. And gets punched a lot.
  • But then he gets it back, and he spends most of the rest of the series beating the crap out of the second most powerful Fangire, Bishop — a Fangire who handed Kengo his ass on a platter.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Keisuke Nago; some detractors sees him as an "offshoot to Kusaka", who has caused a lot of drama, and had gained little comeuppance to compensate. What makes it worse is that he feels 0% guilt over his actions, including playing the driving part in his father's suicide. While fans of the said character sees him as a "better version of Kusaka", due to his decent Character Development in which makes him a better person, especially after he learned that the present-day Kiva is an ally to humanity.
  • Mio, the main love interest introduced halfway through the show. Some enjoy the romantic tension she provided between her, Wataru, and Taiga and quite a few enjoy the revelation that she was the Pearshell Fangire and Queen of the Checkmate Four. Others feel that her introduction marks a radical departure in tone and quality for the show overall, with the drama surrounding her detracting too much from the main plot and the effects she has on the main cast being an example of Toshiki Inoue's love for focusing on teenage melodrama at the expense of everything else.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Shoodoran appears out of nowhere to help the regular Castle Doran in #8...and is never heard from or mentioned again.
• Complete Monster: While the Fangire race are the major antagonists in the series, there are 4 specific members who crossed the ultimate lines:
  • The ruthless King/Bat Fangire is the lord of all Fangires and original Kamen Rider Dark Kiva, using his position to annihilate the Merman and Franken races and persecute Jiro, the last of the Wolfen. Discovering his wife has fallen in love with Otoya Kurenai, the King tries to force her to kill Otoya, and when she refuses to do so, the King offers the surviving members of the races he meant to exterminate a chance to live if they kill Otoya for him. Transforming them all into conscious weapons for trying to escape from him, the King captures Otoya and torturously drains him of his life energy to feed his living castle. Threatening the life of his own infant son to prevent his wife from seeing Otoya again after he escapes, the King's actions disgust even his most loyal servant to the point that he aids Otoya, giving him the power to destroy the King.
  • Bishop/Swallowtail Fangire is King's calm, psychopathic right-hand man. A firm believer in the superiority of Fangires, Bishop informed the King of his wife's love for a human, resulting in Maya having her powers taken away from her. Trying to force Mio into embracing her fate as the new Queen, Bishop burns a Fangire in front of her when she refuses to kill him for having loved a human, later telling her that she must kill her Love Interest if she wants to be a true Queen. Under Taiga's orders, Bishop uses his powers to awaken Wataru's Fangire blood, almost making him murder his own friends. Seeing Mio as a failure, Bishop assassinates her and pins the blame on Wataru, fully intending on leaving him depressed. Proudly confessing his crimes to Taiga, Bishop is kicked out of the Checkmate Four and uses a magical crystal ball to drain the souls of multiple people. Planning on bringing the previous King back, Bishop revives the defeated Fangires and orders them to murder every human they come across, sacrificing his own soul to complete the ritual just so he could become one with the King and "destroy everything".
  • Rook/Lion Fangire is an excitement-seeking sociopath who murdered Yuri Aso's mother twenty years before the work takes place, leading to Yuri's hatred of Fangires. A genocidal maniac, Rook drove the Wolfen race to near-extinction, leaving Jiro as the sole survivor. To sate his boredom, Rook invents a game in which he must eat a selected group of people within a given amount of time, eating ice cream if he succeeds and punishing himself with electric shocks if he fails. Inventing a new game, Rook decides to do good deeds before getting himself killed, not out of a genuine interest in kindness but merely to keep himself entertained.
  • Tohru Miyake/Rhinoceros Fangire tricks young people into believing he'll help make their dreams come true to lure them in so he can steal their life force. After killing them, he takes an item from them that relates to their dream as a trophy to put in his "Dream Graveyard". His choice of prey is based solely on a love for crushing the dreams of young people and nothing else. Even Wataru, who had generally tried to find the good in everyone, even Fangires, found his actions unforgivable.
  • Kamen Rider Kiva: King of the Castle in the Demon World: Arc/Kamen Rider Arc is the ancient ruler of the Legendorga and a mortal enemy to all the other Demon Races for his genocidal behavior. Countless years after being sealed within a coffin by the first Kiva, Arc invaded the body of death row inmate Takashi Sugimura when he accidentally found his coffin, preventing him from aging or getting executed for 22 years. In 2008, Arc helped Sugimura in breaking out of prison by releasing an energy blast that killed all the officers around him. Reunited with his loyal subordinates, Arc places Sugimura in a catatonic state until he's fully revived within him, resuming his role as the lord of the Legendorga and planning on annihilating humanity. Using the power of the Mummy Legendorga to enslave humans en masse and start a Zombie Apocalypse, Arc magically reproduces the screams of his victims with his own instruments to enjoy their suffering. When Wataru finally reaches Arc, he forcibly baptizes Wataru into a Half-Fangire Half-Legendorga creature to make him his own pet as a more sadistic way to end Kiva's line, ordering Wataru to murder his own father.
• Designated Hero: Otoya Kurenai. His good qualities perk up few and far in-between each other, and he tends to think with his other head around women.
• Draco in Leather Pants: King and, to an extent, Bishop. Both of them being attractive helps in that regard.
• Epileptic Trees:
  • There were plenty, of course, but one of the most common got subverted surprisingly thoroughly. Since 1975's Kamen Rider Stronger, it's been standard operating procedure for seasons of Kamen Rider to have females who get powers to die. Since it's made clear very early on in Kiva that Yuri was going to die soon, most fans assumed that this would happen as a direct result of her getting and using the IXA powers. Come mid-season, she gets the powers, uses them in battle, kicks complete and utter enemy ass... and nothing happens. The show never really explains how she died; many fans at this point assume something relatively mild, like a car accident.
  • Does Wataru have a Fangire Form at all, and if so, what Fangire is he? Unlike his half-brother, who's heavily hinted to be the Snake Fangire, no hints are given.
• Growing the Beard: The story really picked up speed after about 20 episodes, with the introduction of Mio and Maya.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • #27 opens with Kivat saying something about time travel being a possiblility, even stating "I'd like to return to that day." Tomokazu Sugita would later return for the second season of Haruhi Suzumiya, infamously known for Endless Eight...
  • Speaking of Kivat's voice actor, one episode starts with him attempting an impression of Norio Wakamoto, referencing his role in The Movie. Sugita's dubbing of Ohja/Strike is basically the same thing. And then there's this.
  • Fangires are essentially vampires made of stained glass, which is known to sparkle. There's also more than one Muggle and Magical Love Triangle eventually.
  • Ixa in '08 needs special Fuestles to take command of the Arms Monsters. As we see in #30, Otoya has pre-emptively outdone him in that aspect.
  • #32. Taiga's angle is revealed to be merely stemming human progress, and his current target is someone who's created a new element, a metal which can stand up to a laser.
  • The Hyper Battle DVD. A child transforming into Kiva.
  • In the non-serial movie, Wataru becomes a high school student. 3 years later, we get a high school student who's a Kamen Rider.
  • One of the main criticisms of Kiva is how much Emperor Form is used throughout the second half of the show compared to Kiva's other forms. 8 years later, in Kamen Rider Ghost, the main character using his final form too much compared to his other forms ends up being a plot point, and something that the main character doesn't want to do.
  • Kazumi's dogtags reads Otoya's name in Goroawase Number: 907101080^note Ku-Re-Na-I O-To-Ya. The real kicker is that he's portrayed by the same actor as Otoya, and comparisons between Kazumi and Otoya are too obvious to ignore right down to using a Deadly Upgrade (in Kazumi's case, transforming into Grease Blizzard).
• Ho Yay: A lot of the things Taiga and Wataru do in episodes are particularly suggestive (there's some serious Ho Yay and Bro Yay going on here).
  • Forget about Taiga and Wataru, essentially every male main character takes a bath together at least once during the series.
• Memetic Loser: For almost a decade, Kiva himself was his, at least in the Figuarts side of the fanbase. Until October 2018, Kiva^note his base form, anyways hadn't received an official Figuarts while almost every other Kamen Rider (Including ones from Kiva itself) has already had one. Even one-off riders like Nadeshiko and Sangou have already seen a Figuarts release before Kiva. It's common to see fans joking about how certain Riders and Precures have received a Figuarts before Kiva^note the most extreme example being that Michael Jackson got a Figuarts before Kiva - not Man In The Mirror; Michael Jackson himself!.
• Memetic Molester: Keisuke Nago for what he does if you make a wrong choice after the IXA-cise segment.
• Memetic Mutation: See this page for examples.
• Nightmare Fuel: See this page for examples.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Otoya Kurenai was first seen as The Scrappy since most of his perverted tendencies tend to draw ire, and his possessive talk around Yuri is another factor which many viewers initially sees him as one. Until this traits disappear at the mid of season after he met Maya. Not only that, he is shown to be able to maturely such as sacrificing his own life to save Taiga and to make preparations for his future son's safety before he die.
• The Scrappy: Ryo Itoya, the Spider Fangire, has drawn a lot of ire for his stalker tendecies. He harassed both Yuri in 1986 and Megumi in 2008, and his creepy attitude doesn't help it either. Fans cheered when Mio, of all people, kills him in a spectacular way.
• Squick: Played with whenever Wataru searches for new ingredients for his violin varnish. One time he collects LIVE SNAILS.
  • Taken even further when he uses said varnish as a cooking ingredient. Knowing the kind of things he uses for varnish...
  • Hell, in Climax Deka it nearly gets him arrested!
• Tear Jerker: See this page for examples.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: IN SPADES. For every one plot that Kiva pulls off, there are two that get thrown away.
  • For starters, the show's basic setup (namely, the 13 Demon Races) should have allowed for a lot of interesting characters and significantly impacted what the world is like. Instead, we only really got to deal with the Fangire and The Masquerade is strong enough to ensure that next to nobody knows about the Demon Races, even when the city gets attacked by Sabbats.
  • It even goes down to basic features for the Riders. IXA only uses the fake Fuestles once in the entire show, likewise with Kiva using some of his powers (Dogabaki and Shoodoran for starters, though the former is a case of Real Life Writes the Plot) just once or twice.
  • Kamen Rider Saga; they could have done anything with it - have Taiga keep using it after he gains the ability to become Dark Kiva, and use DK as a super mode, introduce a new character who uses it to act as an antagonist/rival, give it to an existing character like Kengo ^note while the Sagarcs were created by the Fangires, it's never explicitly stated if a person had to be a Fangire to become Saga; for all we know, it could work like the Delta Gear and allow anyone to use it if they had linked with it...but no, as soon as Taiga becomes Dark Kiva, it's almost as if it never existed. To be fair, this upgrade was an 11th-Hour Superpower introduced in the final episode, so it’s more forgivable.
  • Wataru's status as a half human, half Fangire is brushed aside within a few episodes. To be fair, Wataru doesn't learn about his unique status until late in the series, but the writers could have continued to use this through the end.
  • The existence of people with mixed heritage arose much earlier in the show - Jiro wanted to marry Yuri so that she would bear his children and help repopulate his race. This plotline was dropped after Jiro's true self was uncovered and Yuri revealed that she was in love with Otoya.
  • The fact that nobody mentions what exactly happens to Yuri to cause her death somewhere in between 1986 and 2008.
• Vindicated by History: At the time it aired, its double-threaded past and present plot was accused of being difficult to understand, and it also suffered from Tough Act to Follow due to the popularity of the previous year's Kamen Rider Den-O. However, the Kiva tribute episodes in Kamen Rider Zi-O that aired in 2019 led to a large number of people revisiting the series, and it gained a number of fans as a result. In particular, it became a common opinion that the series is much easier to follow as an adult watching all of the episodes together at once than it is as a kid watching it one episode a week. It also helps that the head writer, Toshiki Inoue, is starting to regain his goodwill after the positive reception of Avataro Sentai Donbrothers.
• WTH, Costuming Department?:
  • Wataru wears a shirt that says "Stupid" in #17 and #22.
  • An example wherein Real Life Writes the Plot, and the problem wasn't stupid appearance: Kiva's default form is perfectly fine on its own, but the costume (and by extension the Arms Monster variations) was too heavy for Seiji Takaiwa to act in properly, and in fact he nearly died once due to the weight. This is why Emperor Form was overused for the series, as it was far lighter and easier to work with. Unfortunately, it came at the cost of trashing the rest of Kiva's powers.

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