[Fish Sandwich]

One more episode of Shinkenger down... and two of Kamen Rider Decade.

So the actual Shinkenger episode takes place in-between the Decade ones, but it's largely its own thing about Chiaki, and where he's at in his character arc. It's pretty great. As usual, this show handles the characters spectacularly. Just a darn good story all around.

The Decade two-parter is what it is. It's written by Kobayashi herself so the Shinkenger flavor here is entirely authentic, so to speak, which is very nice. The focus is pretty distinctly on the Decade crew though. It's kind of crazy looking back to think the idea of Sentai and Rider crossing over used to be a novel, fresh concept. Remember when people were genuinely hyped for the first SHT movie?

Especially given that this was the first time they tried something like this, I think this two-parter is actually pretty dang good. The whole concept of Decade made the premise very natural, with him simply traveling to the Shinkengers' world instead of some vague, nonsensical notion that they just already exist in the same universe. The story is also actually a story, which is more than you can say for a lot of the things that have come since. It's something of a microcosm of Decade as a whole, focusing very specifically on how he's out of place no matter where he goes.

It's nothing particularly special (at least not anymore), but everyone interacts nicely and frequently, with both sets of characters feeling important, and there are some genuinely great moments here and there. To this day I still love the conversation between Tsukasa and Takeru during the climax, and the whole theme of family and Tsukasa learning that he sort of does have a home gives the story some much appreciated cohesion, not to mention a nice heartwarming scene at the end.

Of course, this was Decade, so I'm sure the entire revelation was promptly forgotten next week.