[Fish Sandwich]

I haven't ever directly mentioned Suga in half a year, have I?

Goes to show how compact I'm actually managing to keep these posts, I guess, because I actually think he's one of the most compelling presences in the whole series. A lot of that probably comes from the consistently strong performance Shintarou Asanuma always gives in the role.

There's a sort of natural charisma there that makes Suga's superficially friendly demeanor just believable enough to potentially distract a viewer (or Hanto) from his constant refusal to properly engage emotionally with literally anyone around him. Suga treats the other characters in this show as though he himself only thinks of them as fictional characters -- occasionally endearing tools of no real consequence, existing to be moved around in ways that suit his tastes. As such, he recognizes people's feelings within the specific context of how they can be used, but good luck getting him to grapple with the reasons a clone of Shouma he's raising might want to call him dad ...at least not unless he comes up with a way to leverage that to his ends as well. Really, given the emphasis Gavv puts on empathy and sharing and all that, Suga is, in his own way, at least as much of an antithesis to those themes as the Stomach family.

One of the other things that makes Asanuma's performance so fun to watch is all the little touches he always puts into even the smallest scene, and apparently it was even specifically his idea to have Suga forget for a moment what Kamen Riders are supposed to say when they transform, which was maybe my favorite beat in this whole episode. It's such a perfect way to emphasize how little this all means to him. For people like Shouma, Hanto, and Lakia, becoming a Rider was an event that marked the start of a new chapter in their lives, and a commitment to fighting in the name of what they hold more dearly than anything. To Suga, Bake is just another experiment he happens to be occupied with at the moment, and he's only doing the fieldwork himself because Hanto running out left him shorthanded. Rather than feeling unmotivated or underwritten by comparison, it ends up working extremely well as a deliberate contrast to the heroes, all while fulfilling that crucial purpose of moving the story along.

There's still a lot that's mysterious about Suga, but now that he's been forced to become a more active participant in a story he seemingly thinks of himself as being above, that momentum is sure to start shaking things up quickly. Between hints of a specific grander purpose Suga is working towards, Sachika and Hanto meeting Dente so that all Shouma's allies have been properly introduced to one another, and of course, Hanto finally learning the truth of how thoroughly he's been manipulated, it definitely already feels like a lot of the old status quo of the show's first half has been completely uprooted just by this one episode, and that's coming after all the other developments lately that have accomplished much the same. Although of course, one thing that hasn't changed is how fun this show is to watch week after week.