[Fish Sandwich]

Probably the strangest episode of Gavv there will ever be?

There's an obvious logic behind it, mind you. It's the episode airing right before the movie comes out, so if you need a quick refresher on Gavv for whatever reason, they made a clip show that'll give you a solid enough gist of the series in a relatively short amount of time, while also trying to make it interesting enough for the established fans by spelling out some things clearly for the first time, tying a large chunk of the premise back to the premiere in a really cute way, and hinting at things to come on screens both big and small.

All in all, I'd say it's actually quite the success as far as this whole genre of episode goes? The section with Shouma and Hajime catching up really is a solid way to lend some weight to basic flashbacks about Gavv's form changes, simply because it's just kinda nice to see that kid get some proper closure after all this time. And, perhaps connected to the episode's script being credited to Toei's famous universal pen name for its producers, there are a few touches that made me happy as someone who reads the production blog every week. Hajime gets to make that unused tagline about picking up a Kamen Rider into an actual used line, and Shouma gets to read some of his diary out loud, making those cute little anecdotes into something that tiny bit more than a mere freeze-frame bonus or extra on a website. Lots of little joys like that abound in this episode, and they start to add up after a while. There's a respectable effort to *build* something further, to the capacity an episode like this can, rather than merely mentioning again things that have already been built.

That also happens on those couple of occasions where the exposition goes beyond what's previously been explicitly said, which I'm a little more mixed on? I always thought it was significant we were only ever *told* Shouma's father was dead, for example, but apparently it wasn't *so* significant that a recap episode can't be the place we get something more concrete on what went down? Usually when I have a complaint about how something fits into the long-term structure of Gavv, though, it ends up making sense to me *in* the long-term, so I don't expect this to be any different. It seems strange to me now, but probably won't later.

What the "strangeness" I referred to earlier actually comes from is how, despite all the logic behind the things in this episode, it still has this very unusual, downright dream-like flow? From the decision to open it as though it's a rerun of the premiere, to how Shouma and Hajime leave the episode about halfway through. There's this almost anthology style to it, where we can basically cut away to anybody anywhere at complete random -- even if they're dead -- with transitions smooth enough to make the individual sections seem much more connected than they really are. It's weirdly avant-garde for a clip show, and I was honestly really into it? Gavv definitely doesn't need more than one episode like this, and it maybe didn't even need the one, but as a one-off thing, I'm grateful for the unique flavor it brings to the series.