[Fish Sandwich]

Going with the track from Otoya and Yuri's big scene by the water today, which you might note is basically a slower, more moody version of the track I picked for episode 10. (Which also plays here again when Otoya dumps the Ixa Knuckle into a fire in front of Megumi, which nicely helps make the plots parallel each other that much more.)

While this comes with the caveat that, again, I haven't sat down to watch the full thing in a while, I think there's definitely a very touching, emotional story going on here with a focus on personal weakness that fits perfectly with Kiva's overarching themes... and, yeah, if you stop to think about why this particular version of it is being told, it's also pretty easy to draw some unflattering conclusions. I think I'm also of the opinion that it works better for Yuri, but then, Megumi gets to slice up a monster with the Ixa Calibur in the end, and I can't pretend I don't find that awesome.

I was also looking forward to you getting to this episode in particular, because back in April, when it seemed like almost everyone who ever worked on Kamen Rider was coming together on Twitter to express their gratitude for being part of the franchise on the 50th anniversary, Megumi's actor made a post calling out a quote from it that sums up the moral. First of all, it's just kind of a nice statement ("Accepting your weakness leads to true strength"), but why I really wanted to bring it up is that, from what I could tell, the exact words she used weren't actually used anywhere in the episode, which I took as a sign of how much that was all coming from the heart, all these years later, and I just found that rather touching.