[Fish Sandwich]

This one... was not good.

Don't get me wrong, it's a relative thing, and a matter of context. If this was your first ever episode of Kamen Rider, you know, it hits all the beats. I actually really appreciate some of Hidenori Ishida flourishes on the direction here, like Izu giving exposition directly to the camera like a pseudo fourth wall-breaking "freeze frame", which are pretty fresh.

But as a fan of the series, I just watched this exact episode two weeks ago, and I see I'm not the only one who made that observation. Considering so much of my respect for Yuuya Takahashi as a writer is how perfect I feel the structure and pacing of Ex-Aid was, I have to wonder what the heck happened here.

I already have an idea. It's likely the back half of this plot actually will be different than the florist one, and this episode of setup was "necessary" to get us there, but that's not a satisfactory explanation. If that was going to happen, change something about the setup. Start us in medias res, or something. Have the personalities switched around, where maybe it's a more hotheaded Humagear going up against ZAIA this time. Do something!

As it is, this episode accomplished nothing but spinning the wheels, and it keeps up a trend that's starting to bug me about Zero-One where it feels weirdly averse to having too much drama. The plot to a Kamen Rider episode probably shouldn't start with two characters sitting down for tea and politely saying "hey, we should progress the current story arc". If the nature of Assault Wolf is still building to something, show Fuwa coughing a bit even after a brief transformation to remind us of the ongoing danger.

It also feels like the show is building up to some point about humans being the real monsters, now that they're literally becoming the monsters, which is rich in thematic potential, and I don't see why you wouldn't want to get a head start on that ASAP. Maybe have Horobi and Fuwa talk about that, instead of a repeat of the same conversation where Fuwa asks Horobi about his friends, and Horobi says he has friends.

Like, this one really rubbed me the wrong way, guys. I'm not exactly angry about it, and Zi-O had a bit of a dip with the Quiz arc at this same point between some great episodes, so I'm not too worried, but I expect better from this show, and bringing back Rising Hopper is not enough to placate me in this scenario.

I did really like seeing Rising Hopper though.