[Fish Sandwich]

I really appreciate all the layers the characters in Donbrothers have. I guess maybe that's a particular talent of Inoue as a writer. It's hard to imagine many other shows where you can have a character go from being upset that a creepy stranger is staring at them, to being disappointed that the creepy stranger isn't staring at them, and have that change in attitude feel this smooth in barely over a minute. Because the whole reason that gag is so funny is that everything in there is 100% Haruka. Those reactions seem like complete contradictions at a glance, but every last bit of it is so firmly rooted in her well-established presumptuous self-confidence. She doesn't like someone basking in her obvious brilliance without her permission, and she likes someone not basking in it at all even less. The only unexpected twist in that entire sequence is who the model for that sketch turns out to be. The crooked yet lovable nature of this show's principle characters is something I continue to love about Donbrothers.

Another one of those things, on a more minor note, is that we continue to have scenes of the heroes performing more minor acts of do-gooding, with Shinichi getting a scene in there just so he can get a balloon for some kid. I feel like I can't adequately describe why I like a moment like that so much, but I don't know, it's just neat seeing him use his amazing superpowers for something so mundane, that's also still pretty heroic? Actually, I guess me calling that "heroic" at all probably explains exactly why I dig that so much. It's all about helping people in my book, and that can be about a lot more than just hitting a bad guy. So yeah, the idea of Shinichi going around the neighborhood every day stopping traffic accidents and fetching lost balls or whatever, that gels with me a lot.

Which makes this the episode for me, I guess, because we also have a whole sequence dedicated to Tarou and Sonoi, of all people, taking a moment out to play firefighter and rescue some people from a burning building. And "saving people from burning buildings" is like, the definitive hero situation for me, for a few reasons, so I was already excited about this just when I saw it in the preview last week. It's an awesome bit, and a great use of a classic Inoue staple, where two characters whose alter egos are sworn enemies meet unaware of each other's identity, and ironically get along quite well. I love this sort of dynamic a lot, not so much because of the tension it creates (although that can be great too), but because of the questions it begs. You see these two have so much in their personalities that overlaps, and how much of a great duo they make, and it gets you thinking about the whole nature of conflict in general. Like, man, wouldn't it be kinda cool if these two could just get along that way? Won't it be pretty tragic if their opposing views eventually cloud out everything they ever had in common? Don't you kinda hope that they could find a way to reconcile those differences that won't come down to violently hitting each other to "prove" their particular sense of righteousness? Of course, there are plenty of other ways you can read into those scenes, too. Perhaps the show is working towards the idea of tempting Tarou to the dark side, even, but at any rate, people finding out they relate to others in unexpected ways is another running theme in this series that I'm already very invested in.

Oh, and speaking of realizing you're more like someone else than you think, AND being tempted to the dark side, we've got the material with Tsuyoshi and Tsubasa in this episode. Which is, uh, only the actual main plot! That I'm just now starting to talk about! (There is *so* much to dig into with Donbrothers!) It probably goes without saying at this point, but naturally, I was a big fan of all that too. The way this unlikely duo hits it off surprisingly well as soon as they find something they have in common was very sweet, and like I just talked about with Tarou and Sonoi, very very poignant for what is clearly a major focus of Donbrothers thematically. I have no idea whether or not the show actually wants to do some kind of soap opera thing with Miho and Natsumi yet, and thankfully, with drama this good, it kinda doesn't matter which way that goes right now? These characters continue to be fantastically well-realized, and I'm excited for what's next, no matter what actually *is* next. I mean, just about the last thing I expected from this series was closing out an episode with Tsuyoshi realizing he's okay with condemning a man to death, and yet, as soon as it happened, all I could think about was how interesting a new wrinkle in his character that is. And also how scarring that might be for the kids watching this show, but hey, that's also something you can expect from Inoue!