[Kiwami]

Gotta hand it to the poor man’s Evel Knievel: At this point he’s a much more interesting and developed character than Shinnosuke. Looking back, the thing with his partner was rather unnecessary and irrelevant, the story arc with his dad’s murder case wasn’t that great either, it stood out only because of things like Nira and the Roidmude schemes more than anything.

But Gou got a nice character arc that resulted in a satisfying finale. I still can’t stand this guy no matter how hard I try, but at least he is a character with some interest.

It was a nice episode, didn’t hit me as hard as people who actually like the show I’d presume, but still some hilarious stuff. Like for example, Chase’s “remnants”. I love how they took a whole dump of electric scrap and scattered it across the set alongside rags of his clothing. That’s the Tokusatsu equivalent of the Mortal Kombat fatalities where 3 skulls, 6 ribcages and 200 bones fly out of an exploding body. Hilarious.

But yeah, the new form was half-assed and super lazy as expected. It was especially bad when this form gave Gou the power boost to defeat the guy the 3 Riders couldn’t deal with as a group before. Oh of course, it’s his “burning feelings” that win the fight. Sure.

And there’s really no excuse for this laziness, just painting the Mach suit completely grey and make the visor purple instead of blue and this would’ve actually looked okay. But this lazy kit-bash is just awful. I smiled when even Gold Drive was like “This makes no sense!” because it’s true.

Oh well, Drive’s over soon, but I do want to see Shinnosuke and Heart finally duke it out. I hope they do find a way to reunite the Roidmudes and give them a chance to live among humans.