[Fish Sandwich]

This episode gave me some conflicting feelings that I'm kind of struggling to sort out, which I guess is at least a bonus in the sense that I can more easily identify with Hanto's dilemma here.

Like, I'm about to pass judgment of some kind on this story, and even as I'm writing, I don't know exactly what the overall tone is going to be? There's a lot I have to say that's very positive, and a lot I could say that's going to sound quite harsh. The strangest part is, the thing I loved most and the biggest thing that bothered me directly contradict each other? I think it's amazingly commendable how cohesive the script of this one is, yet by the end, it also felt like the individual pieces weren't working together as well as they ought to?

All the elements are put into place really well. Pretty much everything is feeding into that central theme of people holding grudges, even when it's something like Lakia's scene with Dente, which a much less thoughtful version of the episode might be content to have as a purely mechanical aside that's only there for the purpose of explaining why Vram gets to be in the fight with Jiip. That kind of thing is always great to see. I was impressed by how it felt like all the scenes were actively propping each other up in that manner; how it was all pulling in that one direction the entire time.

But then -- also -- the episode gets to the point where a very smooth transition establishes Gavv and Vram's fight with Jiip and Valen's "fight" with Kenji as this explicitly connected thing, calling attention to the way each of those threads is a reflection of the other, as though it's building to some magnificent crescendo that'll tie everything together as a truly unified statement... only for it to mostly play out as two separate resolutions?

Assuming for a second it isn't a problem with my selfish expectations, I think it might be a problem with how it's all assembled? Narratively, there's still a contrast going on between the empathy of Hanto putting a child's future above his own past and the way Jiip's stubborn inability to truly move forward results in imagery of him burning in the flames of eternal damnation by the end, but especially compared to how things started, I have this nagging feeling the episode missed an opportunity to connect those things using the structure too, using the way it's edited together and paced out and all that to increase the emotional impact?

It's a tough call though, because even as is, the episode definitely has some solid emotional impact! It's less that I'm not satisfied, and more that I feel what's already here could've been polished fairly easily into an unmistakable series highlight level of two-parter? All the beats in the story make sense, there's a strongly defined central theme that lets it explore the characters in neat ways, it moves the overall series story forward too... again, in theory, all the pieces are right there where they need to be. I'm pretty sure my overall opinion on this episode will thus eventually settle into one that's more firmly positive, but in the immediate moment, I can't deny I wanted more out of it, despite all that it was already giving me.