[Fish Sandwich]

I think I'll keep this a little briefer than usual, but this was really good. Actually, you know what, let's go with the bullet points, I haven't done that in forever:

- The first Reiwa Rider show is... still pretty blatantly just another Neo-Heisei show. Of course, if your formula has been working for a decade, why change it, right?

- Aruto won me over way quicker than I expected. For the first half or so of the episode, I was expecting to come in here and say I loved his actor's performance (he seems way more natural than most Rider leads are this early on), but wasn't digging the actual character... only for the back half to actually present some solid backstory and motivation for him, and give him a cool dramatic scene where he gets to be serious (and again, I think the actor nailed that lead up to the transformation), all right there in the first episode.

- That being said, I didn't miss the wacky closeups and whatnot for humor after Zi-O largely stayed away from this kind of thing. It doesn't exactly annoy me, but it does come off as sort of a "cheap" way to get a laugh. Aruto's actual, deliberately cheap gags, in of themselves, I think were totally fine, on the other hand.

- Yuuya Takahashi does his thing here and so the episode effectively conveys a broad idea of pretty much the entire show's cast and world through fairly brief little moments, keeping the story from feeling bloated or unfocused while also still giving viewers things to dig into if they want. I know the "what time is it" thing probably got old during Zi-O, so please forgive me if writing さすが高橋さん accidentally becomes my running gag this year.

- Teruaki Sugihara does his thing here and delivers on some extremely dynamic action that's pushing right up against the boundaries of what an episode of Rider can actually do on its moderate, TV budget. That whole sequence with the bus had some shots that didn't totally look right to me, but the majority of them did, and the whole thing was this awesome high-concept kind of thing that I can't help but love.

- The actual theme song is good, and so is the not-theme song that kinda still seems like the show's actual theme between being at the press conference and in all the trailers. Apparently it's just his normal background music, but sometimes it has lyrics? We'll figure it out eventually.

- One final little thing: The armor on Zero-One's torso and head consistently looked more yellow, and the armor on his legs more green to me. It's obviously just a difference in materials, and how pronounced it is varies drastically from shot to shot, but, I don't know, I thought it was worth mentioning. I guess this is my big criticism of the episode? Yeah, I think we're in for a pretty good year.

- This didn't actually end up being that much briefer than usual.