W question: What was the point of Kirihiko?

[musashi03]

I remember them saying that it looked like a blotch of blood though

That's what I meant.

 

[KamenRiderHeaven&Hell]

I still think he was one of the best characters in W and I think the point of him being in W was just to be another character and I think it was real sad that he died too early I thought he was actually gonna keep on fighting side by side with W and maybe even meet Accel, but it didn't happen too bad and another thing they never mentioned him again or nothing that was sad as well

 

[Lynxara]

Someone back in the old W talk-up thread had this really good analysis of Kirihiko where he embodied was one of the basic character types you tend to encounter in drug trafficking. All the other Sonozakis fit other basic types of dealers and users. It was neat.

In practical terms, I felt his role in the show was as a POV character to introduce us to the Sonozakis. His death helps establish the venomous power dynamics among Saeko, Wakana, and Ryubei that become more important in the show's second and third arcs.

He was incredibly likable, but that's why he had to die. When a show decides to let every likable character just hang around forever because he's likable, you get transparent Gundam SEED-style writing where bad things are only ever permitted to happen to unpopular characters.

There's no point in killing off characters nobody likes, they won't be missed. They won't have impact. It says a lot about how well-written Kirihiko was that over a year after his death, people still feel badly about it. That's how much people should like a character before you kill him or her off.

 

[zenieth]

i find it funny because when W was airing, for the first half of the first arc people called kirihiko, ineffective and basically saeko's whipped lapdog.

With a lot of booty shots

 

[musashi03]

There's no point in killing off characters nobody likes, they won't be missed. They won't have impact. It says a lot about how well-written Kirihiko was that over a year after his death, people still feel badly about it. That's how much people should like a character before you kill him or her off.

Yeah, but the problem lies with the way Kirihiko was written right after his death. I felt bad for Kirihiko not just with his death, but with the (almost) complete ignorance he received with (almost) all of the characters in the world of W postmortem. Even in the Hyper Battle Video, he was completely made fun of (yeah I know the purpose of the HBV was really just to have fun), but poking a stick on an unresolved issue kind of shows that the writers just had to go along with something they probably unintentionally forgotten.

The way he was easily forgotten the next set of episodes kind of make things feel very rushed, which is why people are saying he got killed off pretty quickly. If the remnants of his memories stayed most of the time, then I don't think we could have had this issue at all.

 

[zenieth]

but there's no genuine connection between any of the W heroes and kirihiko. The only one you can argue is shotaro who only really starts seeing kirihiko as a misguided rival in the same story arc in which he dies.

 

[Lynxara]

I don't think there's any objective technical problem going on with Kirihiko's death... nothing I can think of, anyway. Trust me, I'll call W out for completely cocking things up when the show does (and there's a few ways it inarguably does). Kirihiko's death is, like, a textbook case of how you're supposed to handle character death in that particular genre.

I thought it made enough sense that there weren't episodes upon episodes of grieving. Part of Kirihiko's tragedy is that nobody was really left to remember him except Shotaro, who really only knew the guy for about a day. Saeko and the Sonozakis had decided they had no use for him and held him in contempt.

So giving his death a really soapy treatment would've been pretty forced. I guess you can make an argument for keeping Kirihiko around until the cast could grieve for him to give the audience catharsis, but I'm not sure truncating Weather or the final arc in service of that would've been a great decision overall.

I think it's more logical that Kirihiko died the way a lot of overly-ambitious drug dealers ultimately do, in lamentable obscurity. Liking the character so much you felt his net movie appearance was somehow disrespectful is... well, I can't imagine feeling so strongly about the dignity of an imaginary person, so I can't say much about that.

I do think that maybe Rider shows have shied away from meaningful character death for so long that they've attracted an audience that's just not familiar with the narrative device and not sure how to deal with it. In older shows and especially in Ishinomori's manga, deaths like Kirihiko's were all over the place and just part of the genre's appeal. Modern shows typically just don't kill people save in extremely Shakespearian ways.

 

[musashi03]

I never said the problem was his death, but the way it was handled. Yes Kirihiko might not have the lasting connection with the heroes enough that he'll be considered a hero by anyone of them or be fighting in his memory, so the best path for it to take was for his death to be considered as one of those unjust deaths and would continue to linger through the story-telling to emphasize that his death was truly unjust. But the way it was showcased was that his death was nothing more than a hiccup and was easily forgotten by all of the characters other than the episodes where he was referenced as Saeko's dead husband (which never truly felt real or concrete) and with the Yesterday Dopant arc. All I felt was that they really just had to cut off Kirihiko to insert additional characters like Isaka and Terui.

With the argument that they cannot delay Isaka and Terui just because of Kirihiko is something that bothers me a bit, because as much as those characters were awesome, wouldn't Kirihiko fill in the gap those 2 characters were made for anyway? I mean I think it would have been a great twist for Kirihiko to turn Rider instead of somebody who came out of the blue (yeah I know his story pretty much ties up all the loose ends in the Museum backstory). I just felt that they really could have handled Kirihiko differently and may have left a better impression to the fans who found it abrupt.

I never really liked the character so much for me to feel disrespected with the way it was handled in HBV, but I find it the way I find Tsukasa and company to be poking on their inside jokes in their HBV. It pretty much turned into an inside joke which made me felt like the writers made a mistake and that the only way to address it now is to turn it into positive energy by making it humorous. "Laugh it off" as they say.

 

[zenieth]

you're putting relevance on him that was never there. He literally was just saeko's dead husband. The unjust death was ryu's family, people he was connected towards. You really just retailored your post cause it says the same thing

 

[lazycoconut]

i find it funny because when W was airing, for the first half of the first arc people called kirihiko, ineffective and basically saeko's whipped lapdog.

With a lot of booty shots

That's just a double standard on the part of the fandom. If a female character got plenty of fanservice, and was abused by her husband, people would feel sympathetic towards her and she'd be popular. With Kirihiko it was just "LOL he's a pussy" and people making out that it was somehow his fault Saeko was violent to him

I do think that maybe Rider shows have shied away from meaningful character death for so long that they've attracted an audience that's just not familiar with the narrative device and not sure how to deal with it. In older shows and especially in Ishinomori's manga, deaths like Kirihiko's were all over the place and just part of the genre's appeal. Modern shows typically just don't kill people save in extremely Shakespearian ways.

Much as it upsets me, because I adore him, it does seem like OOO will give us a meaningful character death in the form of Date ... So maybe Rider will revisit the device