Let a brimming melody ring out—for us, who will never end.
He is a once-in-a-millennium violin genius, not simply a warrior.
He is a shifting, uncertain being, like Michel Foucault, whom no identity could contain.
He is “the strongest untransformed Rider,” having wielded two diametrically opposed powers: one embodying human technological might, the other the sacred power of the nonhuman Fangire and a “father’s love” grounded in blood ties.
He has an artist’s blood in his veins. His speech, his path through life, and his ideas are outrageously chūnibyō—full of adolescent grandiosity—and leave an indelible impression. Yet it is precisely this absurdity that makes him extraordinary.
He is “empty,” just as art often draws us into a realm of “emptiness.” Yet this emptiness influences Wataru twenty-two years later, playing a decisive role in his eventual discovery of a place within the symbolic order, and thus in his becoming truly “human.”1
He, Otoya Kurenai, has broken the shackles of fate.
Otoya Kurenai, Untamed: Artistic Truth
Unbound by heaven, unbridled by earth,
Neither joy nor sorrow in the heart.—Prophetic verdict on Jia Baoyu2
Seeking sorrow and resentment without cause,
At times he seems a fool, at times a madman…Perverse in conduct, contrary by nature,
What does he care for the world’s slander!—“Two Lyrics Mocking Jia Baoyu, to the Tune ‘Moon over the West River’”
Whenever I put on my headphones and quietly listen to the lilting, flowing violin piece “Otoya Kurenai,” the narrative world of Kamen Rider Kiva opens within me, stirring an unbroken stream of memories. Music really is the most abstract art, yet at the same time it is so concrete that it is “hard to put into words.” The value of music, and indeed of art, ultimately lies in its ability to express and carry humanity’s truest feelings about existence—what Aristotle called “artistic truth.” These feelings about existence are our apprehension of transcendent realities such as fate, calamity, and good and evil. Masami Iwasawa in Angel Beats! cannot go on singing wild, extravagant rock songs forever. Her truest feelings can find expression only in “My Song,” steeped in loneliness and struggle.
Otoya’s faith lies in art, in the violin, in music. He is an artist who makes his life into art, with some of the characteristics of Baudelairean dandyism. He dresses flamboyantly, always maintaining the posture of someone giving an artistic performance for all to see. He goes his own way and speaks with outrageous insolence; “at times he seems a fool, at times a madman.” Countless memorable sayings come from his lips: “My illness is lovesickness, and you are the cure”; “You suffer from delusions.” Without quite meaning to, he takes an ascetic path, enduring the agony of transformation in a restroom so that the woman he loves will still see him as effortlessly dashing. He battles Jiro behind Yuri Aso’s back. He chooses Dark Kiva without hesitation, even though that choice leads to his tragic death and end. As death approaches, he resembles what Hayao Miyazaki called a “clear-eyed nihilist,” like Jiro Horikoshi in The Wind Rises: “The wind is rising… We must try to live!” Even with a thorough understanding of his fate, he keeps a clear-eyed grasp of reality, remains fearless, calm, and lucid, and entrusts Wataru to Jiro.
Otoya Kurenai always finds perfect solutions to difficult problems. He solves the problem of his son’s upbringing, resolves Megumi’s inner fears, overcomes Mami’s difficulties with playing the violin… These problems are solved not through psychology, moral instruction, or even force, but through “art”: by accurately feeling and expressing the “pain” people encounter in life. Artistic truth is not a truth that floats on the surface, nor is it judged by scientific logic or ethics. Those are merely “truths” that come after “originary truth.” What art pursues is a truth steeped in “feelings about existence”; artistic truth that reaches into lived experience is the truth that resolves human predicaments. Without Otoya’s guidance, Yuri Aso might have remained trapped in her own imaginings, unable to see reality, while Mami might have kept doing something she did not want to do merely to meet her parents’ expectations.
To “speak” our pain is an act of decision: to gain an understanding, evaluate what has befallen us, determine what to accept or reject and what to avoid, and make choices about our future.
—Wang Defeng, The Philosophy of Art
Subtitle: “The voice of the heart.”
Subtitle: “The voice of the heart.”
A Contrast: Keisuke Nago’s Collapse
Keisuke Nago moves from “narcissism” to collapse, then to “recognizing his own vulnerability.” As Wataru’s mentor, Nago resembles ambitious humanity engaged in the Enlightenment project, attempting to build a perpetually prosperous society through its ever-growing ability to conquer nature—only for world wars and the nuclear cloud to shatter its naïve fantasy of linear progress. His famous line, “Hand your life over to God,” epitomizes his extreme narcissism. Humanity has proved to be a creature eking out its existence in the cracks: the critique of religion, Darwin’s theory of evolution, and Freud’s unconscious have crushed human narcissism. Environmental catastrophe, world wars, and the nuclear peace hypothesis have in turn made an utter mockery of the light of human reason. Having escaped ignorance and constraint and gained their freedom, people now begin to fear the ethical responsibility that freedom and reason bring. They begin fleeing freedom, trying to return to the arms of some god.
If we regard the conflict between humanity and the Fangire—the “struggle between good and evil” in which Nago takes part—as a metaphysical game of truth, his abrupt change of attitude on learning that “Wataru is Kiva” gives us a sense of the absurdity behind that game. To a considerable extent, moreover, the Wonderful Blue Sky Organization is driven by its president’s private grievances, not by some transcendent grand purpose we had previously imagined. Narratively, this catches us off guard, as though everything done before were meaningless, futile, absurd. Within the earlier, simple theme of “good versus evil,” this game of truth had seemed entirely reasonable: we needed only to dispel ignorance and evil to attain truth and harmony. Yet in the end we cannot help asking: if the Fangire can turn so abruptly toward reconciliation with humanity at the very last moment, what was the point of more than forty episodes of fighting? Nago charges like a wild bull into the maelstrom of battle. Perhaps its meaning really is as simple as Wataru inadvertently reveals: “just collecting buttons.” Never mind anything as transcendent as “God.”
In fact, many works catch us off guard in this way. Isn’t the war in Angel Beats! built on a fragile illusion born of misunderstanding? In Kuuga’s battle with No. 0, didn’t we expect the coolest special effects in the entire series, only to see two men in their human forms punching each other bloody in a blizzard, with none of the “ultimate” feel of Ultimate Kuuga at all?
What we get in the end is an engaging family drama and a drama of personal growth. The problems are resolved through the characters’ “awakening.”
Subtitle: “At last, I’ve got it.”
Betrayal: Rebelling against Humanity’s Ultimate Questions
The birds and the beasts often fought one another. When the birds had the upper hand, the bat would say, “I belong with the birds. I have wings just like you.” When the beasts had the upper hand, he would say instead, “I belong with the beasts. I have gray fur and teeth like a mouse.” Afterward, the fighting ended, and he was on good terms with both the birds and the beasts. The bat’s constant betrayals eventually made both sides loathe him. Neither would be his friend, and so he hid himself in a dark cave.
—Kamen Rider Kiva, S.I.C. novel
No fable could better sum up the figure of the “bat” in this series.
In the fable, “betrayal” is the core around which the bat’s self is constructed. If we group changes of identity, thought, and conduct under the heading of “betrayal,” then Otoya Kurenai has been traveling the road of betrayal from the very beginning. He tells several women at once, “You’re the woman I’m destined to be with,” stripping “destined” of its exclusivity. The harm Wataru discovers in the wake of Otoya’s many misdeeds likewise comes from all manner of absurd betrayals and irresponsibility. We do not call him Kamen Rider IXA, nor do we call him Kamen Rider Dark Kiva. Unlike most Kamen Riders, he is not constrained by his Rider identity. Most importantly, of course, he betrays the woman he pursued so desperately—Yuri Aso—and ends up with a woman who “can understand his art”: Maya. But there is an even greater betrayal. He betrays everyone, everyone connected with him, including Jiro, Yuri Aso, and Maya. In choosing Dark Kiva at last, he also betrays his own life. Indeed, Kivat-bat II himself symbolizes ceaseless betrayal: with no fixed master, he betrays King to support Maya, then betrays Maya to support Taiga.
Betrayal means disrupting the established order; betrayal means disrupting order and entering the unknown. Sabina could see nothing more marvelous and enticing than entering the unknown.
—The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Here “betrayal” expresses a way of thinking: striving to break free of the constraints of the symbolic order—identity, responsibility, and the rest—trying to transcend one’s own finitude and view life from the perspective of infinity. Perhaps only an unconventional “artist” like Otoya Kurenai could handle such a radical outlook on life. At the same time, betrayal here means betraying the constraints of one’s identity, betraying a fictitious order, and becoming one’s true self rather than a self made up of layer upon layer of restrictions. In this state, we discover how much we actually share with other species; there is really no need to produce so many constraints through alienation. In the end, what we imagine far exceeds what is actually there, while the series keeps calling out for us to pursue “the real.” In such a limit-experience, crossing a threshold, we feel an entirely new possibility opening at the boundary. Such an experience opens up beauty. Of course, betrayal here does not contradict steadfast pursuit: Otoya’s betrayals consistently follow a single thread—the music within him, his own heart.
Subtitle: “Whether human or Fangire…”
Subtitle: “What matters is the soul.”
We once thought the world was full of richness and diversity, with many paths open to us. Yet when the question actually confronts us, we can choose only a very few of them.
Without comparisons to draw on, there is no way to test which choice is better.
—The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Otoya’s “betrayal” seems to rebel against this fate. Remain rigid and set in one’s ways for a lifetime, or boldly open new doors into the unknown? Otoya chooses the latter.
But can humanity really break free of fate’s constraints? There are always ultimate questions confronting us. Does God exist? Why can physical things exist rather than nothing? Can an “other” really be understood by an “I”? Can we achieve mutual understanding and communication? We are always imagining another person in our minds, trying to understand them. For Otoya, Yuri Aso may be no more than a mirror reflecting his narcissistic self-image. Maya, however, may be the lover through whom Otoya truly “leaps into the other’s situation and thereby comes to live alongside others.”
We lose ourselves in this harmonious, beautiful scene: Maya gently strokes Otoya’s hand as they slowly work on the violin, finally infusing it with a “soul of love” and completing Bloody Rose—a perfect creation steeped in Otoya’s prayers. For an artist, the distance between people may be all the more pronounced. Can we really understand one another? There is so much, so very much, in an artist’s heart that eludes our grasp.
I have no intention of answering these questions. We can give this all kinds of meanings: Otoya’s loneliness after so long without being understood; Otoya’s virtuosity on the violin; Otoya’s purity of heart; his tenderness, kindness, universal love, courage, and romantic spirit; his love for everyone, and the way this love dissolves the antagonisms and contradictions between all species… This is not difficult. Yet I believe that all language is powerless here. Any language would constrain what this “understanding” contains. What Otoya seeks, and what Maya understands, may be that impossible object-cause of desire which language cannot penetrate.
But even setting all that aside, perhaps Maya simply happened to meet Otoya at the wrong moment.
As the queen charged with eliminating those of her kind who fell in love with humans, she happened to grow curious about human love herself. When Rook arrived, Otoya happened to take her hand. She happened to have studied the violin, too.
Otoya happened to mistake her for someone else, allowing the two of them to gaze at each other for a moment. At that very moment, cherry blossoms happened to fall, as though sowing the seeds of their love. Just as Yuri Aso, fleeing a Fangire’s attack, happened to encounter a passerby—Otoya Kurenai—and became his so-called “destined woman.” Just as six coincidences lay behind Tereza’s meeting with Tomas.
Maya and Otoya originally belonged to two different worlds. They communicate through music and violin-making. Yet music is the most abstract art—how could it possibly allow communication? This is precisely what brings out the aesthetic value of the whole affair: through their actions, they are rebelling against something.
We always have an inner impulse to explore the world. We try to understand other people’s hearts, but can never fathom them completely. As soon as we begin to reflect on them, to grasp who they are, their true faces slip further and further away. In a sense, then, wanting to “understand another person,” or even to “understand another person’s art,” is one of the ultimate difficulties of human existence. Perhaps this is where its true aesthetic significance lies: humanity may end up battered and bloodied, utterly defeated in its attempt to break through its limits, but it keeps striving to the death. For Otoya Kurenai, art is his weapon.
“Did you hear my music?”
“I did. Your music will echo in my heart forever.”
“That’s enough.”
Subtitle: “That is my true… music…”
In the spirit of Dionysus, the god of wine, Foucault boldly ventures toward the limit-experiences of life, becoming another self and continually apprehending the boundary between life and death. Milan Kundera explores his characters’ possibilities, listening to the supernatural voice of “the wisdom of the novel.” They are all fighters confronting humanity’s ultimate questions. Humanity may suffer total tactical defeat in this battle, but strategically it will certainly win. “I think, therefore I am”: it would be better to say that the greatest meaning lies in the process of thinking itself, rather than in the answer—that unknowable answer. Otoya finally bids Yuri Aso farewell forever and falls into Maya’s arms, never to rise again. His failure is only to be expected. Dark Kiva represents a power that leads humanity to death; like the questions of ontology, it is an ultimate beyond humanity’s reach. Yet Otoya’s love for Yuri and Maya is engraved in their hearts forever, and, carried by the flowing music, takes part in the construction of Wataru’s self. Twenty-two years later, this power is still at work.
Never to stop exploring: this is a responsibility of artists and thinkers. Even if such exploration cannot give us a clear and final answer, how full of meaning the process remains—especially aesthetic meaning.
Perhaps this is one way to read the slogan of the whole series: “Break the chain!”
Subtitle: “I want to hear the music Maya plays with her soul, too.”
Conclusion
The world has already destroyed itself. It has deconstructed everything it had. All that remains is a jumble of fragments.
—Baudrillard
If no great path is yet visible, we might change our perspective as Otoya does: treat our own lives as art, and living as a process of creating artistic beauty. In Otoya’s way of living, we see how he turns his own existence into a work of art, achieving transcendence through thought and artistic creation while also incorporating ethical practice into his life. This opens up, to some extent, a way of thinking for us: when the world is so evidently absurd, why not immerse ourselves in the experience of living and enjoy life as an artistic creation?
Yet a life made into art is, after all, an ideal. We see Otoya’s repeated setbacks. We see him conceal the pain IXA causes, hiding in a restroom to endure it with his face contorted. We see his eventual death. Indeed, if we look at it from the perspective of the work, Otoya’s tragedy, like those of so many Kamen Riders, accords with Aristotle’s account of catharsis: the suffering tragedy speaks of is not inflicted on us, but offered to us as an image of suffering to contemplate. Aesthetic experience arises through quiet contemplation and being moved. In this contemplation, we understand that no truly perfect work of art exists. Yet it is precisely this imperfection that creates the perfection of the whole, and the imperfect parts, too, are subordinate to that whole.
Wake up! Break the chain!
References
- Kamen Rider Kiva: Official S.I.C. Novel
- Wang Defeng, The Philosophy of Art.
- Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being.