About how the competition arc ended, it's something rather unexpected for Aruto to lose, though it does show that a defeat isn't necessarily an end, he walks towards us with grim determination. This shows while Gai may have won the competition, he still has not won the battle, and he'll not win the war. About technology being an obstacle to human development, even Gai's actually being hypocritical to use Naki to do his bidding too. I took Gai's stroking his ego more seriously here than just parodic stake or such, and it shows that, it's much harder to fight against a villain that has the public on their side, it takes much more to stop Gai than just beating him up. It has proven to only make things worse at every point as it further convinced the public to believe him over Aruto.

Yeah, there can be some debates about if Humagears are in the right or in the wrong, in or out of universe instead of following Aruto's steadfast belief of them, or despite that Gai's the one responsible for Ark. But Fuwa's story here also supported Humagears in how the previously one of the most anti-Humagear person lets go of his grudge against Humagears here and focused on the responsible one in Gai and ZAIA. So even Fuwa had stopped pinning blame on Humagears, showing that Humagears aren't the deadly tool, outer circumstances made them a deadly tool (mostly anyway, MC Check It Out from previous episode, sorry, was the few exception to go rogue on humans by his own volition, but that's why his data wasn't restored and he only got slight sympathy from Aruto).

Regarding the fight, other than superb choreo, I also kinda like that the series aren't holding back to put down female enemies. And yeah, in contrast on how Fuwa's a man of action of his refusal to be a tool, more disappointment for Yua here is her insistence to not be a tool, but she keeps working against ZAIA without considering anything else, other than how "she's not brainwashed". Newsflash though, there are more type of being used as a tool than just being mind-controlled.

Didn't talk about this before, but because I like the suit I gotta have to. As Jin was revived from the dead, Burning Falcon also contains Phoenix motif. The name of his Progrisekey also had some theming on Jin's character. Previously he used ForceRiser, and he was forced to serve Metsuboujinrai.net; after his revival, he acts more mature and independent, and he uses SlashRiser can be interpreted as him slashing/severing his ties from the Ark while maintaining his loyalty to Metsuboujinrai.net.

Yeah, about how Vulcan was the beginning, this was the one that I really liked, his final form Rampage Gatling. With the reveal of how Naki's within Fuwa, Rampage Gatling has duality in how aesthetically, the cybernetic left side of Vulcan's Rampage Gatling form represents Naki's consciousness within Fuwa, and the normal right side represents himself, like W. And Rampage Gatling is also the secondary Rider that gets the final form that combines all previous powers, which was typically done to main Riders before, but not here.

Fuwa is my favorite character from this show. I really love his determination and stubborn defiance in the face of anyone he thinks is on the wrong side. He has some great Rider suits, too.

That is a hot take. There's furniture in this arc that comes off better than Yua, if you ask me.

I'm going to keep this short (watch as I continue to make an essay).

Now, Fuwa, my favorite character in this show, gets his Final Form, Rampage Gatling. And my gosh this is an amazing suit, really does remind me of Cross-Z, which isn't a bad thing, is just such a great suit, mixing every other Progrise Key Animal into one form, which you'd think would be something for the Main Rider. And his role here is just perfect! He really does move past his hatred towards Humagears, almost finding a middle path, which sure, there's some factors like the A.I.M.S. chips (which I completely forgot about), and Yua working with Zaia (and got trounced amazingly in a glorious fight, courtesy of Rampage's debut), but overall, I enjoyed Fuwa's journey.

It's almost impossible to believe that Gai is running the Metal Cluster Hopper Strategy again, after Aruto took the last cursed power-up and repaved a street with Thouser's face. The last time wasn't even some minor variable that Gai hadn't accounted for; Aruto won by being the exact same person he always was!

There's some humor - and a little bit of character work - to Gai's absolute blindspot on how much shit he can make people eat, but as a storytelling choice? Not the best!

Yeah, I didn't really have a space to talk about it, but I adored Aruto internalizing Hiden's defeat as his defeat, but deciding that he just needs to do a better job of advocating for Humagears. He didn't look at intolerance as a failure of society, he looked at it as a solvable problem, one that needs to be met head on and eventually defeated. It's Fuwa's lesson from a half-dozen episodes ago: if people have been taught something bad, teach them something good to counteract it.

You and I have talked about this elsewhere, but I did enjoy this story confronting the They're Stealing Our Jobs fallacy that conservative politicians like to spin up. I wish it'd been more of a focal point, but there's some interesting stuff in here about immigration, unskilled labor, capitalism, and how intolerance gets weaponized for political/financial gain.

I still don't love how this show avoids any insight into Yua's character (this episode is Fuwa literally screaming at Yua to defend her actions, and her defense is just NUH UH YOU ARE), but I sort of liked how they used her lack of development into a counterpoint to Fuwa's journey. Fuwa doesn't have a dream, but he'll keep fighting for his freedom until he has one. Yua, on the other hand, is so deep in her subjugation that she can't define herself without being under Gai's thumb. She can't even conceive of the concept of a dream, because her identity is 100% a lackey, a tool. Fuwa sees enslavement as a prison, Yua sees it as a comfort.

I laughed pretty hard when a well-meaning Aruto informed a skeptical crowd that the Humagears don't rampage nearly as much as they used to. This is... not a great pitch!!!

It's a very cool suit! It's probably my favorite of Vulcan's suits to date.

The next episode A New Arc thing tells us that Aruto will be Zero-One again sooner than later, but I like how his mission and dream aren't dependant on that role. He's okay going grassroots for a while, changing the system one person at a time. That sort of dedication is more interesting to me than him detonating hacked robots or whatever.

Well, two things.

First, the show establishes that Humagear recordings aren't exactly bulletproof evidence. If Aruto used Izu's recording to try and tarnish Gai's reputation, Gai would inevitably turn it around on Aruto. In a PR battle, Gai's always going to win.

The second thing, though, is that Gai's increasingly public machinations are useful in portraying his confidence, bordering on overconfidence. He doesn't need to hide in the shadows; he wants to be seen as humanity's savior. Having Gai theatrically demonstrate Hiden's weaknesses is exactly where his character is at by this point in the series.

I get it! I'm glad you were willing to state your criticisms in detail, and I appreciate the insight into your experience with these episodes.

Right? Golly, what a fight scene. Movie-level quality, but with so much more emotional energy to draw from. Almost can't believe that they capped this arc off with a massive Fuwa victory, but it's so smart of them to do so.

Absolutely. It's nicely subtle, how Fuwa isn't suddenly like I WAS WRONG ABOUT EVERYTHING and dedicates his life to saving Humagears. He's willing to make individual judgments, and keep his solutions to what works for him instead of forcing them on others. It's a neat view of how intolerance can be rehabilitated in more realistic terms, you know? People don't do 180s in their lives when it comes to ingrained beliefs, but they can sort of step back and try and see individuals instead of monolithic blocks. Fuwa's getting better because he's owning his emotional state, rather than making it some other group's responsibility.

Him tearing open the Rampage key is hilariously over the top, and it's the perfect button for his big speech. I genuinely hope the Vulcan/Valkyrie movie ends with him learning that you don't actually have to do that for the Shotriser to work.

It's a great episode for the most charismatic actor on the show! The range of his performance in this one is stunning. Screaming, terrified, defiant, revitalized, heroic... dude does it all in one oversized episode!

Oh, are you watching next episode previews now?? A few threads back (I don't remember which) I recall you saying you intentionally skipped those

I never do, but this one was given so much gravitas in the episode that it seemed rude to skip it. It will not be a regular thing!

Everyone loves Fuwa (as do I he's great (even if I'm not a huge fan of Vulcan Rampage)) but I do like Aruto's end-moment here too. Deciding that, just because Gai won the public victory, doesn't mean he's won any kind of moral victory, and striking out alone to do good when his entire company gets swept out from underneath him, it's just the capstone to the whole arc. Fuwa gets the big battle climax, but somehow Aruto stuck with me a little more here?

I think it gets discussed a little less because it's exactly what we expect from Aruto, despite being entirely welcome and absolutely invigorating. There's more of a surprise to Fuwa having an emotionally-aware epiphany about how he's always had control over his own destiny, but he kept shifting control over that destiny to his various grudges, which is the sort of thing that's bound to draw praise. Like, my money was on him accidentally lobotomizing himself by trying to tear the Naki chip out of his own skull, so you are damn right I'm going to want to talk about this show going a different direction!

But, yeah, Aruto's finale is a stellar pivot from Fuwa's evolution back to the larger themes the show is trying to excavate and explore.

I loved Aruto's ending here myself but it's difficult to talk about why I love it without spoiling future developments a few episodes down the road