I took it as a follow up to Keiwa and Neon's talk earlier the episode about whether they needed Ace or if they could save the world AND get their wish, that Keiwa was willing to take the chance of Ace loosing. Coming after Ace was finally honest with him and gave him the new power up, I thought Keiwa was finally deciding to play competitively

For all we know, ace and keiwa could have planned this whole thing out behind the scenes. Keiwa kills the big boy, ace loses, then ??? and they win!

I’m still kind of laughing how they treated it like some great twist that Ace let Buffa grab the driver that was just left on the ground and ignored for, like, 20 minutes.

So maybe we will get a scene like that in the next ep with the same cool music playing as Ace explains how he told Keiwa to essentially eliminate him, and we can all be impressed at the great plan.

I was thinking that Ace’s wish to be part of the staff seems like a good defensive wish. Like, if he lost and returned to the world without that desire, he probably wouldn’t end up in a depressed rut like Keiwa or Neon. So it could all be a master plan to lose.

But I gotta say too that, plot armor term shouldn't be misused like that. Plot armor is when a character advances without explicit reason because the plot requires it, like a normal human (no, not humans in Rider form) surviving a direct and clearly superhuman attack at full output (not just casual swat), and they aren't established as something else than normal human (but has important role), but Ace won multiple DGPs because he's actually that strong, skilled, knowledgeable, and clever, likely from the hefty amount of experience too, that isn't plot armor.

I'd predict that the DGP would deal with his "play DGP until I die" wish by purposely launching a Jamato attack in an area Ace is present (his Star of the Stars of the Stars wish would make it easy to track him) so Ace can be murdered, and likely DGP's reset would make an exception for him like Keiwa's parents.

Win just doing a job is also kinda a reveal in this episode. Though it was my perception too before that Win has blind loyalty to Game Master as he claims his orders are absolute, and that I felt Win pulls rather sadistic expressions when trying to off Ace before or when he gloats which gave me an impression some personal things are also involved.

Kinda hoping this'd be true, as Ace also got stupid complaint last week of not taking the Driver (he can easily do that before honoring his promise to Keiwa), but it got answered here. Even without that reveal character types like Ace can still be brushed off, but it'd be far more detrimental for character types like Keiwa which is already infamous for giving impression of kindness being inpotent (and I feel, turned off people from virtue). They're going for kitsune/tanuki contrast, and there's a saying that "the fox has seven disguises, but the tanuki has eight".

E̶x̶-̶A̶i̶d̶ ̶a̶l̶s̶o̶ ̶h̶a̶d̶ ̶s̶o̶m̶e̶t̶h̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶w̶h̶e̶r̶e̶ ̶E̶m̶u̶ ̶c̶o̶n̶s̶p̶i̶r̶e̶s̶ ̶w̶i̶t̶h̶ ̶K̶i̶r̶i̶y̶a̶ ̶a̶f̶t̶e̶r̶ ̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶r̶e̶t̶u̶r̶n̶,̶ ̶p̶l̶a̶y̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶a̶l̶o̶n̶g̶ ̶w̶i̶t̶h̶ ̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶l̶i̶e̶s̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶g̶e̶t̶ ̶M̶a̶s̶a̶m̶u̶n̶e̶ ̶o̶f̶f̶-̶g̶u̶a̶r̶d̶,̶ ̶i̶n̶c̶l̶u̶d̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶n̶o̶t̶ ̶t̶e̶l̶l̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶T̶a̶i̶g̶a̶.̶

Yeah, I'm glad they decided not to go with 'Keiwa hesitates over killing the monster because "What about Ace?"', which was what I thought they were going to do this week. I think it plays better this way - Keiwa and Neon are seemingly the only ones that remember the world is actually in danger and it's not just a fun competition (hello Michinaga), so him going back and forth on it vs eliminating the problem monster to save people would be more of a regression than him and Ace trusting each other now?