[Switchblade]

Tsurugi's outfit in this episode is one of the elements of Kabuto that stuck with me years after watching the show. It's not a new joke - Tsurugi is woefully inept at personing - but the execution of it is just goddamn brilliant. I will never get tired of that tiny yellow hat with the chin strap and little backpack and Tsurugi's assumption that he looks perfectly normal in them.

As for the main plot, it is so perfectly Kabuto that Renge's Road to Damascus moment comes through food. For a show that is ostensibly about guys in bug armor fighting shapeshifting aliens, there is a such a strong commitment to all of these underlying themes about food. It's like this is what Mai thought street dancing was to Gaim. There are some points here where I feel like the show could have easily gone into parody territory, but I think it really did work to build this part of the story around yet another food thing.

And we got the full (second) debut of Hyper Kabuto, which looks exactly like it did in the movie and in the last several episodes where it cameoed. And there's nothing at all ridiculous about it being destroyed but then replaced by its own future version - that's just science.

And finally, more delightful scenes of Kageyama's life sucking. On the one hand, it does feel a little sudden for him to seem almost addicted to TheBee, but at the same time I can totally buy that this is a guy whose sole identity was tied into the prestige and rank that he got from being a Kamen Rider. It's clear that no one actually respected him, so I can see why he's so desperate to get the power back. Of course, a guy like him doesn't know what going to hell truly is...