[DreadBringer]

The mid-season upgrade.

Hotaro's lesson here, due to his nightmare about killing Sabi, seems to be about being proactive rather than passively worrying. Tamami said that rather than worrying, he should try to look for the solution. It's true that worrying won't accomplish anything, and gotta look for ways to make the situation better (and... yeah, idealism is important as a drive for this, being cynical resigns yourself to worst case scenario), though I can also think that, one shouldn't impulsively take action.

As expected, Supana just goes after the easy solution of eliminating a threat regardless if it'd catch the innocent, like Michinaga before against Parasite Jamatos. It's just his superiority complex holding him back from the best case scenario, to decide that Sabi can't be saved and treat the students he sees as inferior as incompetent and jokes, when they have their own merits. Here Rinne isn't played up as the soft spot for Supana.

Though he has grievance to the Chemies, Minato is still a fair teacher through and through to let the students and give Hotaro guidance, and stand up against Supana. The executives of the Academy, now it gives me the vibe that Academy is also a secretly bad organization like others, with them not giving a damn about the student being in danger and only caring about capturing Chemies.

Even Chemies are subject to miscommunication. The plot here is about UFO-X only giving Exgotchalibur without explaining anything about it, thus Hotaro and friends have to seek out UFO-X to use it properly. Super Gotchard UFO-X has space theme like Fourze without uchuu kitaa, and he weaponizes the UFO to levitate and trap his opponents. His way of saving Sabi is "de-henshining" him by pulling him out of Dread so that Dread can be destroyed without someone caught in crossfire, though enough data is still collected for Dark Sisters. That seems to be a broken ability to Kamen Riders, dunno what is his upper limit of pulling someone out of their Rider armor, by this even Ohma Zi-O can have Sougo being pulled out of it.

Hotaro's compassion once again saves the day by having him befriend a lv. 10 Chemy and stops it from going wild, something out of the Dark Sisters mind to only think about subjugating Chemies by force. But this now earns him Minato's approval and Supana might've now acknowledged him a little. I wonder if this can lead into bad people like the Dark Sisters trying to act nice to someone to gain something in return, and getting frustrated when they don't get what they want like Hotaro here (and it can happen irl such as incels).