[Fish Sandwich]

I gotta be honest, I definitely felt more for Hanto in this one than I did for Lakia.

You can throw the guy's many failures in his face all you want -- you can even literally throw them in his face, apparently, if the comedy-driven episode you're in happens to be directed by Kamihoriuchi -- but a man with the strength of character to own up to those failures the way Hanto does can by no stretch of the imagination be considered an idiot! ...Which is why I think it says a lot about how astonishingly poorly these two get along that Hanto's first instinct in that conversation is to try justifying an action he already realized months ago wasn't justified before remembering to instead point out that he made amends for the mistake. All because Lakia's first instinct around Hanto, in turn, is to treat him like the inferior lifeform he used to think of all humans as.

It's sort of the overall joke that makes the entire episode's concept come together quite well -- these two guys who just innately become worse versions of themselves in each other's presence, not because of any particularly deep grudge or disagreement, but simply because the entire tempo they each live their lives at is so foreign to the other guy, as exemplified by Hanto's undercover investigation gone wrong.

Especially considering this is Hiroki Uchida's first stab at writing for this show, I think the script here does a real good job mining that dynamic in a way that's not only quite humorous (this is maybe the first Gavv episode that could qualify as an outright farce?), but also fleshes out the relationship between Hanto and Lakia in a way that will no doubt later prove useful dramatically as well. We already have a strong grasp on what Gavv is like hanging out with Valen or with Vram, so I like that we're finally getting a proper story with Valen and Vram hanging out to crystalize how distinct every pairing in this show's triangle of Riders is.

A lot of the humor here really is great though, even putting aside long-term story relevance. The creativity of the Vram/Valen transformation is off the charts, and yet, I somehow found the much smaller joke of Gavv doing his usual lean to gently set down a shopping bag even more amusingly innovative? You're kind of spoiled for choice in this one, is my point. Not every last gag landed that hard for me, but they come at such a rapid pace I always got to the next one that did before I had time to notice.

It's the kind of episode that demonstrates the benefits of a status quo calm enough to even still have situations where the transformations don't *need* to be hugely dramatic all the time, but, on the other hand, it also does a good job making sure you don't forget how the bigger picture stuff is currently being shaken up, *and* ends the goofy Valen/Vram plot on a note that tantalizingly suggests this is already leading to much bigger things than it looked like at first. I didn't expect to be disappointed by this episode or anything, but it still impressed me more than I thought it would.