[Fish Sandwich]

My thoughts on this one ended up being surprisingly scattered, so even though I was hoping to do a nice big writeup like last week, it's back to bullet points for now:

- My overall thoughts, as much as I can condense them, still go first though. I liked the episode a lot! Everything leading up to Aruto becoming Zero-One again, I thought was extremely well done. Violently jerking the show forward into a new era with an implied timeskip, I think that was a smart move for a show so many of us have been feeling was getting stale. The characters are all in different positions, some radically altered, and catching back up with everyone was great. The scenes with Aruto and Jin were some of the best raw drama this show has had in ages. Truly excellent character-building.

- That being said, as satisfied as I am with how Jin is moving here, I have a few issues with that. One, if he ends up a straight ally who's come to accept Aruto's views by the end of the series, he's just going to be Parad 2.0, and I don't want that. Two, establishing him as being willing to use his new mind-control powers when he first came back doesn't jive the best with his stated belief in the liberty of HumaGears, and unlike in the first part of the show, it doesn't seem deliberately written to be hypocritical. More like it's just something we're supposed to forget about. Third, and this is the big one, they could've just had Jin come back after the competition. Or at least right at the end. I said if the show didn't give me a reason MetsubouJinrai had to be back in the middle of the previous arc by the time it was over, I'd be upset, and upset I am. They didn't contribute anything to those few episodes in-between their return and right now. They didn't disrupt the last two rounds, they didn't mess with Fuwa any more than Gai could've. Heck, none of Jin's new merchandise is even out yet, so not even that angle makes sense! Having Jin's new motivations already mostly laid out was definitely to this episode's benefit, but once again, it's the amount of space between point A and point B that's more the problem.

- I was way into that climax right up until the most poorly timed commercial break I've seen in a while. I don't know who decided to edit it that way, but if you put the CM in the middle of a scene like that, you're supposed to only show Zero-One survived the explosion after. As it is, the way it's put together, with the audio and everything... I don't know, it felt way less impactful than I was hoping for.

- I'm sure at this point it's karma for picking Zi-O Trinity as best suit design of 2019, but the use of Rising Hopper here ultimately felt more cruel than anything. Metal Cluster Hopper has been the only form Aruto has been using forever now. Just let him kick around Thouser and his goons in his base form! Nobody takes Gai seriously anymore anyway! I feel like there was a sort of symbolism, with Aruto and the show both going "back to basics" in a way, after the big competition arc, and that gets muddled by having him use the form that debuted IN that arc.

- I also miss Shooting Wolf, but that's secondary. Uh, no pun intended. Just, in general, I really wish this show got some more use out of its many forms. Takahashi is still writing this like Ex-Aid, where every Rider only had a few forms, that were all direct upgrades to one another, but Zero-One had this excellent, really well-rounded set of base forms that just... totally got the shaft by a dozen episodes in, and I'm so sad about that. I get that it's hard to get the permits to film bike scenes now, you know? I don't complain about Zero-One only riding the Rise Hopper twice. But I don't see what's stopping the show from having fight scenes where Aruto has to make creative use of a wide range of powers, instead of just hitting things with whatever his latest "STRONGEST FORM EVARRRR!!!1!!!1!!" is. Minus some more points for having Metal Cluster Hopper do the swarm thing again, muddling that symbolism too. All they had to do was have the grasshoppers for the Rider Kick fly out of the sword instead of the armor!

- Despite the underwhelming writing going into a lot of the action, I do think the fight choreography in the climax was notably above even Zero-One's impressive average. Action directors still aren't a thing I'm very familiar with, but whoever handled this episode did a great job. Very kinetic. Very cool.

- I like the irony of Yua finally being back with AIMS just in time for Fuwa to leave, because he hates being a tool.

- On which note: Yua, are you seriously letting Gai make you work the camera for his YouTube videos, now? How demeaning can this line of work get? It's bad enough he took your ShotRiser and Key away for reasons I'm not entirely clear on. Somebody needs to take a lesson from Ultraman Taiga!