[Fish Sandwich]

This ruled. Ex-Aid is on such a roll now that all the characters are in place.

- Still really happy to see Level 1 action, still really confused as to how the stage select works. Even just one throwaway line would REALLY help me out here.

- Also happy to see Level 2 action, but it's a bad sign when my immediate thought was "wait, why don't they just go straight to Level 3 like they did 5 minutes ago?" I guess there's no real winning here.

- Dang! I was totally gonna call Kiriya's sob story about his buddy not actually being a lie back when episode 4 aired but I didn't feel confident enough.

- On that note, loved all the character stuff with Kiriya, and this episode has cemented his place as my favorite Rider in Ex-Aid, which is a big deal given I'm usually the guy singing the praises of the lead Rider every year. They did a lot of work this week to let the viewer understand his bizarre mentality a bit more, and his actor did a fantastic job throughout conveying stuff through body language. You can really tell whenever he goes from being his usual jokey self to having moments of genuine emotion.

- That being said, I'm a bit torn about the ending. On one hand, that was a clever move on the villains' part, and is the first thing Parad has really done the whole series. But on the other hand, it's kind of an abrupt left-turn reset button kind of deal. But on the OTHER other hand, dragging this arc out a bit longer isn't necessarily a bad thing, and it was great seeing how Kiriya clearly feels frustrated at the end when the one time he tires to open up a bit totally backfires on him. It could be mistaken for reverting things back to status quo, but the whole reasoning behind his actions is different now, with the end giving the impression he's simply resigned himself to being "the untrustworthy one", regardless of whether or not he wants to be.

Also, holy crap! Look at all those words I just wrote about actual plot stuff. SO happy there's some substance behind the show now. The first 5 episodes were fun enough, but last week and this one have really added in the element of character I felt wasn't quite there at the start. I really can't wait to see where this all goes.

EDIT: Really minor thing here, but I'd just like to mention that those "giri giri" jokes from Emu were surprisingly funny. Especially the fourth wall breaking one.