[Fish Sandwich]

Faiz 33-34:

Hey, we found a guy lame enough to use the Delta Gear! Sure, this Mihara kid is a little rough around the edges, but you never know, give him some time, and he could shape up to be a real hero!

Look, at least that's one thing going right. Everybody else is once again having an extremely crappy time in these episodes. Especially Takumi, who has had his biggest fear in life made reality, which is a pretty big kick in the teeth. The guy himself said he doesn't have much self-confidence early on in the show, and he really wasn't kidding. He blames himself so hard for everything that's happening, he calls up Yuuji basically because he wants someone to beat him up.

34 is also where *the* big twist of the whole series happens, and while I think I'll avoid touching directly on what it is for now (this is your cue to go watch Faiz if you don't already know), I can say I think it's totally brilliant. It has an utterly massive impact on the narrative, and really ties a lot of the show's themes together. Best of all, the way it's foreshadowed is in this perfect sweet spot, where going back through the show, you'll notice details and changes in context that make it clear this was planned from the start, and yet, the show is sure to play its cards so close to its chest that you're extremely unlikely to guess what's going on ahead of time, because there's also a more obvious, equally important surface level to everything happening that you'll naturally be focusing on. It can be hard to do a plot twist that makes sense, and is also genuinely surprising, so I give major props to Faiz for pulling it off.

Of course, I think everybody knows the deal here already, and it's hardly something I can dodge talking about, so I'll probably be getting deeper into it soon, but for now, please enjoy this picture of a cute dog:



W 33-34:

This arc is unique for being written by Kazuki Nakashima, who would of course go on to write Fourze. Alongside Riku Sanjo and Keiichi Hasegawa, no less. I think someone at Toei realized what a dream team they had going with Double. Anyways, the point is, I think it's fun to note that these episodes are from a first-time writer for the show, given that they lean very heavily on digging into the past, retroactively fleshing out Kirihiko a bit more, and in the process offering some further closure on that front. It's a good two-parter. I also loved the way the Yesterday Dopant's gimmick of making people repeat their actions was executed. I feel like a worse version of this would make it really grating by like, flashing back to the original events every five seconds like we forgot or something. I'm not totally sure, but at any rate, it felt pretty clever, and is another winner in the long line of wildly unique villain gimmicks in this series.

I'd also like to take this time to finally mention Philip's whiteboards. This is another one of those seemingly little things that, even just on a subconscious level, does wonders to make the show's world feel lived-in and real. Even when attention isn't called to it at all, they're filled with info relevant to whatever topic Philip is currently hot on at the moment. Which means here that, after Philip notices Shoutarou is attracted to this story's client at the start, those things are plastered with jumbled writing about romance. At the start of 34, you can see behind Shoutarou in one shot what appears to be a bullet-pointed list of his personality traits, which includes "half-boiled" as its own item three separate times. All while a completely serious, normal conversation plays out in the foreground. It's great that they put so much effort into literal set dressing. It's the sort of thing I'd love to see collected in a guidebook or the like. If nobody on set ever took clean photos of all these things, it's nothing short of a tragedy.

All of this applies equally to Shoutarou's reports at the end of arcs, by the way, which also have way more written on them than is actually in the accompanying narration.