[Fish Sandwich]

Wait, his actor got the flowers?

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I mean... f***, where do I even start with this episode? Like, I really have no clue. I'm not even sure I liked it.

So like, I guess the whole thing was just one elaborate practical joke by Toei? Because, I mean, they clearly made Lazer specifically to be insanely likable, and then treated him as part of the main cast, and then for the episode he dies in, it literally airs on Christmas, and, just to further give the viewers the middle finger, they explicitly put "Christmas Special" in the title, and awkwardly glue the first half of some filler episode that was never meant to be into the second half of an actual episode and... my brain hurts. And also I feel sort of manipulated.

I'm... I'm suddenly appreciating how restrained Urobuchi was with Gaim. He would've never done anything like this. I can respect the guts Ex-Aid had, but between typical deathshadowing like highlighting Kiriya's sympathetic side really hard or having him and Emu patch things up, and the melodramatic rain from nowhere (the sky itself mourns Lazer's passing), it almost felt kind of overdone.

I mean, almost. I think I enjoyed the episode. Probably. Like it was probably well written? Except for the part where the tone is all over the place, but like, yeah, I liked the last 5 minutes or so a lot taken by themselves. Dan is a properly threatening villain, and Kiriya was Kiriya to the very end. Of course, it's easy to be threatening when you basically make the rules of the game. It would've been sort of awkward for Dan if his new Gashat didn't make mooks to stall the other Riders and they all just ganged up on him at once. Also, I love how Kiriya explicitly singles Emu out as he's dying to give his Driver to and also have a dramatic couple of lines before he goes. It's like he's indirectly calling Brave and Snipe out for being jerks.

But of course, in the dog eat dog world of a multi Rider show, I suppose we can't have two Riders on good terms for too long, can we?

I'll give Ex-Aid this, it's definitely Exciting, but surprising me a bunch and telling a good story are two different things, and it's gonna have to work pretty hard in the coming weeks to truly convince me getting rid of Lazer served a purpose beyond shock value and "he knew too much".

Although on that note, I guess he didn't know not to tell important secrets while the camera cuts away. Actually, I think that means he technically kept up his end of that bargain with Genm.