[Fish Sandwich]

Well, compromise is a step forward, at least.

Speaking of steps forward, this episode did just about everything I hoped for to avoid making the mistakes the last two-parter did. Right away, the trial premise adds some much needed stakes to the drama. I wasn't asking for world-ending danger every week. Having the simple extra layer of a man potentially being imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit is more than enough to make the competition interesting. I also thought the way Gai talks Aruto into going through with it was very clever. He provides a very legitimate justification for Aruto, framing it as being about the potential good he'd be doing proving the defendant's innocence. It's also completely in-character for Gai, as he was most likely certain of ZAIA's chances, and merely trying to disingenuously take advantage of Aruto's inability to put his company before his heart.

So the premise! Aces! We're off to a great start!

Things get even better when we finally switch up the supporting players a bit. The prosecutor's stoicism is a great contrast to Arayashiki's smugness, and our Humagear for this arc is the President of Space, so like, yes. Houou Soldier and Yellow Buster, together at last! What more could I ask for?

So the guest cast! Also very strong so far!

Oh wait, I remembered what more I could ask for: Fuwa's plotline to actually do something. And sure enough, we get that here. Mind you, the show seems to be deliberately holding off on explaining what exactly happened with him toward the end of the last episode, but the overall situation with the Magia leaps forward here, with Aruto getting to have a chat with Horobi this time, where he begins to realize the horrible truth behind the recent string of monster rampages. Once again, this puts meaningful stakes back into the equation, and we get to see the main protagonist struggling with an issue that's clearly going to be a major theme of the show when all is said and done. It's also more great bonding between Fuwa and Aruto.

So meaningfully advancing the Magia side of things! Check!

All this, and the twist of a mystery villain in the Raider, with an obvious red herring, and an equally obvious real suspect that I'd still be okay with, because even if the twist is that simple, there actually was a twist this time.

So mixing up the format! Done and done!

What just might be the best part, though, is that this episode finally marks the return of Teruaki Sugihara on directing duties, which means more absolutely glorious, kinetic cinematography that manages to keep clarity even when things are getting shaky. There's all kinds of great bits I could mention, but one subtle thing that jumped out at me. It's similar to the trick I pointed out with Vulcan's debut in episode 2. When Zero-One goes chasing the Raider outside of that parking garage, the shot of him inside cuts from him running to the left of the screen from the right straight to a shot of the Raider, outside, also running from right to left. Because the shots are synchronized like that, they flow together super smooth, and your brain is almost tricked into thinking it only took them like two steps to get out of the garage, keeping the pace up by dodging the implication that they actually spent like a minute in-universe just running out before getting back to fighting, in a much more creative way then just randomly cutting to them in a different location.

Am I making that sound too elaborate? I probably am. It's like a couple seconds of footage that I squeezed a whole paragraph out of, but I really love this guy's style. It's hard to convey a lot of that without being able to actually show footage in motion, but there are some static shots I liked just as much. Take this classy bad guy lighting, for example:



Nothing too fancy, but you can't go wrong with shots like this, and you can't go wrong with this episode either.