[Fish Sandwich]

Welp, I just finished Blade for the second time. Hoo boy, how I love this show.

My mind is a little blown by how well it holds up. I don't know what I was expecting, but it's just such a tight, engaging story. Basically everything established at the start comes back into play towards the end in a way that's insanely satisfying, which is extra impressive considering they're the work of two different writers. But no, even seemingly throwaway details like the media not reporting on the Riders' battles get explained way down the line.

Speaking of the Riders, that solid writing results in each of them having a very clearly defined arc, which is one of those things I pay a lot more conscious attention to nowadays and thus struck me on the rewatch.

Kenzaki is obviously just amazing. He's arguably the single most genuinely selfless Rider ever, but the way he's written keeps him grounded enough to still feel believable. Namely because he's kind of dumb. Like a lot of real people, he's not great with words and thus is incapable of giving self-righteous lectures to people. He doesn't even fully grasp his own motivation for fighting until halfway through the show. Instead, his heroism is conveyed mostly through his actions, and all throughout the show he keeps pushing himself further and further to help others against increasingly bad odds. Between that and the show establishing almost right away his unusually high compatibility with the Rider System, the conclusion to the series is essentially spelled out for the viewer before they could possibly grasp the significance. I don't even know if it counts as foreshadowing or not. The narrative just builds on itself, and it does it well.

Garren is also awesome. I've never actively considered Tachibana one of my favorites but every time I see an episode (or 49) of Blade, I can't help but question why that is. All of his plotlines hit the mark well, and his character might have the most depth out of anyone in the show. His character is so complex he's actually the in-universe first Rider despite being Blade's sidekick out of it. And also he's just one of BOARD's eggheads who was thrust into the role purely through circumstance in place of the original, intended guy. Needless to say, Tachibana has a lot going on, and while he isn't any sort of super scientist, being an intelligent guy does inform his personality in how much he overthinks stuff compared to the other Riders. He can't take the simple approach to life like Kenzaki, and is way thus way more prone to questioning things, which causes him a ton of anxiety throughout the show. But when he does make up his mind, he's undoubtedly a force to be reckoned with. His last stand of sorts in episode 47 is one of my favorite moments of the whole show. As is pretty much all of 15. Or any other number of awesome Garren moments. There's a lot of them.

Chalice is also great, but I struggle to go into depth about him when what makes him so likable is so self-evident. He takes a fairly stock character archetype and makes it work extremely well. The mysteries surrounding him drive a lot of the plot and like with Kenzaki, the show spends a lot of time early on giving you all the pieces to a puzzle you probably won't know you're supposed to be solving for a while. Ideally, anyway. I think the cat's pretty thoroughly out of the bag by this point, but even if you know what's coming, the process of getting there is a whole lot of fun.

Leangle was a surprise favorite of mine this time around. There's two major keys to this. First is that his tryhard bad guy dialogue is one of the areas where Excite! Subs shines. You just can't appreciate how adorably hilarious his dialogue is with decade-plus old TV-Nihon subs. I'd go around quoting stuff like "I'll show that damn clone a thing or two...!" if I could come up with enough excuses to. The other, way less ironic thing is that his arc was paced out way better than I remember it being. His character is pretty much constantly evolving right up until the very penultimate episode and none of his phases quite overstay their welcome in my opinion. And I mean, guys, come on, he's the Strongest Rider. How can you hate him? So what if they never added his Category Ace to the shots of the cards that open and close each episode? It not like that means he's weak or anything! Right?!

No but seriously, this whole revisit to Blade has been amazing. I could keep going on and talk about stuff like how much I love the varied personalities of all the high-ranking Undead, or how awesome the overlapping way plot threads are introduced and resolved is, but to keep things a lot shorter I'll sum it up by saying I can't wait to watch Blade again in another 8 years. You know, or sooner. Probably sooner.