[Fish Sandwich]

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Originally Posted by Kurona

in the infamous "what is OOO's final form" arguments, one answer I remember seeing was "all of them". And I can't remember if it was a joke or not, but it's actually a very good answer because this is how the forms are handled -- by episode 6, OOO has already gotten as powerful as he can ever get with one exception.[/I]

This is how I've come to look at it, and, again, I could go on for days about how well OOO handles these things, but I always find it funny that the episode title here explicitly calls GataKiriBa the Strongest Combo, especially when the term Strongest Form tends to be used interchangeably with Final Form among Japanese fans. It's easy to assume the title is only trying to say Combos in general are strong, but given that every debut episode will include "___ Combo" in its title too, and only one of the descriptors is equally impressive, part of me thinks the answer to that debate was secretly right there all along.

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One small thing this does help is making her friendship and support with Takeru shine that much brighter. She doesn't believe in Ghosts, or Ganma, or Eyecons or any of the rest of it; she doesn't actually believe Takeru died and he needs this adventure quest to restore him back to life. But despite all that, in that previous scene where Takeru breaks down, she sees how much it's effecting him and comforts him and supports him the best way she can.

I wouldn't even call that a small thing. When you put it that way, it was arguably extremely important the show give her that bias to overcome, or otherwise everything she does to support her friends becomes something to take for granted and dramatically inert. I believe I pushed back on this a bit in Die's thread for Ghost (you know, an eternity or two ago), and I feel a little bad about it when I basically completely agree with what you're saying and why you're saying it, but Akari went from being one of my least favorite characters in the show to one of my favorite Rider heroines ever pretty quick, and in retrospect, in execution, I don't think there were any major problems with how she was handled. She gets a lot of development and a lot of great scenes early on, and it'll be interesting seeing how you react to them on another go-around of the show.

Anyway, this is low-key one of my favorite Ghost episodes. You think Rider shows have good premieres and that Ghost nailed that, but I've always believed the second episode is secretly one of the most important, illustrious positions in all of the franchise. It's the show's first real chance to dig into what it wants to do and be about, and Ghost did that pretty much perfectly. I remember not particularly being grabbed by the first episode way back when it aired, but this one grabbed me for sure. I love the elaboration on the themes (Infinite Potential™ gets mentioned! In the second episode!), and some of the slower scenes that there wasn't time for in the lightning fast-paced first outing. Like you said, Takeru's whole breakdown feels super genuine, and always sticks out to me when I think about why I like how this show writes its characters.

...And also, the way Takeru says "KANTAN NI IU NA YO!" always makes me crack up for some reason. Like, it's not even a poor line reading, and I think Shun Nishime did a wonderful job in that role, but it just always puts a smile on my face, the same way the "Kamen Rider Ghost" bit in the premiere does. Huh. I might be starting to understand why this show's opening narration is a meme.