[Fish Sandwich]

Another really good episode, though much like what happened with 4 and 5 I liked last week's better. Basically they should just rename the show Kamen Rider Lazer and make it about him.

- Does anyone else hate the movie promo openings? When you have these things for no less than three movies a year and for at least four episodes each it means around a quarter of the series doesn't get to use the normal one. It's especially frustrating here since Ex-Aid doesn't really have any "disposable" shots that are clearly just filling a space until more toys/characters show up. I know this is a minor thing to go on a tangent about but it bugs me every year.

- I like how the VotW didn't feel like a total afterthought for once. For a show that was advertised as a drama "revolving around patients" I was kind of expecting more self-contained plots than we've been getting. Not that it's a bad thing, mind you.

- The Vending Machine Bugsters continue to be really unimpressive. You can just tie them up? Seriously?! The upside is that it sort of makes Taiga look like a tactical genius for actually exploiting how wimpy they are, especially when he uses it as a distraction at the end.

- They did some cool stuff with Snipe this episode. It was nice how he'd sort of been irrelevant since his debut so it feels like this very proper moment of like "Hey you guys weren't paying attention to me. Big mistake." when he suddenly takes total control of the situation and effortlessly plays Ex-Aid and Brave. Good on him for stealing those Gashats too, that means no more skipping to Level 3 (until Emu starts skipping to Level 5 next ep, but hey). They didn't go as deep into his backstory as they did with Brave and Lazer's Level 3 debuts but they made the information that was given count. I guess a huge part of his motivation is feeling rejected by the CR crew? Sure seems that way given the look on his face when Hiiro tells him he's not fit to be a Rider, along with everything else that would explain about his behavior. Although it begs the question of how much of an a**hole Taiga was before all this happened. If he was always such a bad seed they probably wouldn't have recruited him in the first place, right? Hopefully they delve into that a little more in the future. Especially since it seems he was the ONLY Rider for a while. There's a V-Cinema somewhere in there, I know it.

- Wow, the qualifications for being able to use the Gamer Driver are an actual plot point? After Drive I was SO not expecting that to be any more than some handwavy thing that never gets mentioned again. I sort of wish they had hinted more directly at it being surgery earlier though. It feels a little out of left field as is, but whatever. I'm sort of reaching for complaints at that point. As long as the payoff is good it's not important.

- Only tangentially related to the episode itself, but hey, that's was totally Kouta's actual voice in that Heisei Generations trailer! Given how spotty Toei's track record with replacement voices is (*deep* OOO's in Super Hero Taisen Z is still the stuff of legend), this makes me insanely happy.

EDIT: Also, since these episodes are so jam-packed I'm always forgetting something, Jet Combat's jingle is totally a Jetman reference, isn't it? That's a really nice touch, if a bit random.