[Kurona]

Talk about an absolutely phenomenal episode. The whole concept of accepting your bad side is a potentially very simple and basic one, especially for a kid's show; but they don't pull their punches with it and go in just hard enough. That scene where Sougo's alone with his mirror self taunting him in the clock shop was really something. Does Ryuki go in this hard? I got the feeling that this 2-parter's callback may primarily be in tone, and if so that makes me very excited to watch Ryuki.

Absolutely loved the overall message, too. I could have done with being told something to this effect back in my super nihilistic days; that just because there are base negative elements it doesn't negate all the positive stuff. I always find optimism is best when it doesn't ignore the clear problems people actually have; telling someone "it's all good actually" isn't necessarily very helpful when said someone may know very well that they have had dark thoughts and that they don't fully consider themselves a great person. This is a very difficult topic to handle, most especially for a kid's show; but I think they pulled it off pretty damn well. Zi-O's slowly been getting better, but I never for a moment thought during the Fourze/Faiz 2-parter that this show would produce one of my single favourite episodes of the entire franchise. Absolutely fantastic.

... well. Except for the fact that this new form pretty much kills the Heisaber. I LOVED that thing!