[Fish Sandwich]

For the record, Fuwamallow Form is totally the non-gummy-related one of Gavv's many looks I was most immediately enamored with when we started seeing stuff about the show revealed. I'm not even a big fan of marshmallows in real life, but the eye-catching stark white on the black/silver undersuit looks great, and the concept of just a big puffy man taking on evil was absolutely the thing that started to get me to understand the appeal of this year's typically Has No Right To Actually Be Cool motif for our main hero.

So I was looking forward to seeing it in action, naturally, and it didn't disappoint. Swinging around on its own sound effects is brilliant; despite the (also typical for Rider) wonky CG, I like that it can also become bigger puffy man to do some major damage; I also *love* that its adorably awkward huge mittens are canonically incapable of properly holding a weapon, which is the kind of thing a form like this would usually go out of its way to avoid demonstrating.

All that being said, I also think Poppingummy got the most interesting action here. The catharsis of those Agents getting almost literally steamrolled by Gavv is as palpable as it is in huge part due to how the fight leading up to that point does a good job emphasizing how simply having two opponents to deal with puts Shouma on the back foot. Between that, a creative use of the breakable armor, and that cool shot of it on that tree for more of that wild appeal, it's an episode where both the base form and the new flavor of the week get their time to shine, which is basically my ideal of how multi-form heroes should work.

The story tying all this together is once again equal parts sweet and sad. The first episode, with Gavv making sure a child can be reunited with his mom, laid out Shouma's heroic motivation as basically giving people the happiness he can't have himself, and after three episode in a row of the people he protects calling him a monster, this one comes along to twist the knife that much more cruelly. Shouma once again finds a place he feels comfortable living, only to have the rug pulled out from under him by the main villains, putting a new level of pressure on our hero by making him feel his mere presence alone puts the people he wants to protect at risk. It's an effective way to start tying the Stomach family into things more actively, revealing a lot about Shouma's past more clearly than before, while also working on an emotional level simply in the moment, because like, I wouldn't mind if Shouma could just be happy living with some kind old folks! I wouldn't mind if Shouma could just be happy anywhere, for that matter! So much like I just said about the balance of different forms, I think this one also did a solid job creating a narrative that exists to push the overall story forward without forgetting to still work as its own thing.