[Fish Sandwich]

Valen pointing a camera at a fight scene with Gavv like he's me looking for a screencap to use every week was unexpectedly relatable.

What was no less relatable, but much more expected, was the strong human drama in this one, which was especially suited to Kamihoriuchi's talents as a director. Not that I think that big two-hander scene with Shouma and Hanto would've suddenly turned out bad under anyone else, but there's an atmosphere to it that I definitely suspect is his doing, and that enhances the strong performances of the two actors, who are reading dialogue from an extremely strong script to begin with.

There's so much fantastic emotion from both characters all through that conversation, both really having their respective paths in life reflected in the things they're each saying, and it all makes me as happy to have this new version of the status quo as I was to have the old one.

The show also pulls that slick little trick of exposing Shouma's identity as a Kamen Rider to Hanto, but pointedly saving for later the revelation that he's a Granute with a direct blood relation to the main bad guys. For one thing, it immediately reassures the viewer that it isn't like they just resolved the relationship between these two before even hitting the halfway mark, and that's nice. Just in the moment though, the way that hesitation is itself important characterization for Shouma, how he still feels that fear and maybe even some shame and all that, it makes the episode a lot richer emotionally. It's very happy in that Shouma and Hanto utlimately only become closer now that they share each other's secret, but there's that sadness underneath that Shouma still can't feel comfortable sharing himself completely.

It's just kind of a great episode all around, really? I loved Sachika here, too, for example. She's basically at least as much of a powerhouse as the actual Riders, even if her form changes don't come with potato swords or chocolate guns. In the information age, being *that* adept with social media is frankly as impressive as any amount of fighting, and probably much more useful on a day-to-day basis. Hanto is very smart to rely on her help with that kind of stuff.

Needless to say at this point, the action didn't disappoint either. Gavv rides his bike again, they made sure to do the eye thing for the first big double transformation, the chocolate-coated swords were a perfectly Gavv kinda way to highlight the teamwork going on... heck, despite the wildly different context, Shouma gets a dou suru in there, so even that (kinda) checks out! Again, really hard episode to go wrong with!