[Fish Sandwich]

EPISODE 29: "Crossroads"

This one starts with an absolutely killer cold open. This will be another fairly busy episode, so I don't know if you can say it establishes the central concept, but it is under a minute, and has no dialogue whatsoever. Central or not, it tells you one of the most important things to know about this story, and it announces it with some real impact.



That's right, Chouno's back! And he's being written by Arakawa this time! I told you this show doesn't forget about characters. Although we'll have to wait a bit to really find out what he's been up to lately, as after the opening, the other big plot thread for this one is established, as Pops admires the latest additions to his Unidentified Lifeform #4 scrapbook, featuring his fancy new gold versions. The purple one, the green one, the blue one, all looking shinier than ever! No red yet, though. This is another bit of structure the series did I really love. If you'll notice, the introductions of the Rising forms have gone in reverse order, gradually working their way back to Kuuga's main form, and I think that's super smart. It's like a countdown. Rising Mighty is a big deal. It has to be, and the show knows it. Oh, and while we're on the subject of that scrapbook, I do find the pictures in the articles about #4 kind of funny. This is obviously not something you're meant to read into, and the show gets points for making the pictures extra blurry and washed out for that guerilla photography look, but it's still blatantly just screencaps from the episodes, which means oddities like a photo of Rising Pegasus from a rooftop nobody but Kuuga was on, and a shot of Rising Titan about to stab Garima from her perspective. Pretty sure she wasn't holding a camera in that scene!

Over at the university, Sakurako is still racking her brain over that whole "the sun will be swallowed by darkness" thing, but that's quickly interrupted by the arrival of Jean, who also happens to be bringing along another returning character. Turns out Mika's back for these ones too! She's in Tokyo to see Gouram, and of course Jean is all too happy to oblige, because he's cool that way. There's also confirmation here that Jean is aware that Yuusuke is Kuuga, having been told by Enokida offscreen at some point, continuing a trend of #4's identity being the very definition of an open secret. Jean apparently also hasn't been stopping by to see Gouram as much lately as he normally does, a subject he seems pretty uncomfortable having brought up. Yet another plot point that'll take a second to wrap back around to, but for now I'll just say Gouram probably wasn't the real reason he was going to that lab every day. Oh, and on a totally unrelated note, Enokida is keeping busy as usual, working on a variety of ways to deal with the threat of the Unidentified Lifeforms, one of which is that mysterious new bike, glimpsed here only in shadow. Yeah, Rising Mighty wasn't the only thing the show knew how to build hype for.



The latest Grongi to get in on the game seems to be more into the concept then usual, as his shtick in human form is dressing like some kind of gambling gangster, choosing the locations for his murders by playing roulette. You might expect a slick guy like that to have a pretty subdued monster form, but it's quite the opposite. Go-Gamego-Re is a beefy armored turtle whose weapon of choice is a huge supply of heavy stone ball-and-chains, that he lobs huge distances from the tops of buildings onto the unsuspecting people below. I'd like to say this is the most brutal we've seen the Grongi get, but honestly, I'm not sure this guy would even crack a top 5 list. Not that he isn't begging for Kuuga to put a stop to his killing spree all the same.

Before we get there, though, Yuusuke discusses the status of the Amadam inside him with Tsubaki and Ichijou. Tsubaki confirms once and for all here that, even though he meant it as a joke, him using the defibrillator on Yuusuke was the thing that lead to the Amadam being able to harness electrical power, and thus the Rising forms. This might sound like redundant information, but this scene goes much, much deeper into the subject, with a key point of concern being how thoroughly the Amadam is making itself a part of Yuusuke's body. Tsubaki even warns him the strain on his right leg will be particularly bad if he uses the new power with his red form, but Yuusuke is all smiles as usual. Because after all, he doesn't have a care in the world, right? He never worries about becoming nothing more than a living weapon with no control over himself, right? He certainly doesn't let any of that get him down if he does. At least, he doesn't in public. But once he gets outside, in another great minimalist moment where the show lets the silence speak for itself (there's not even music), the look on Yuusuke's face, so far removed from his usual bright expression, tells us everything we need to know about just how seriously he does take things.



From there, Kuuga ends up in the usual intense fight with the monster, which ends up being huge trouble for Chouno. It turns out, in the time since we've seen him, he's been moving in a positive direction, pursuing an interest in art, with plans to apply with his latest piece for a chance to be used in a commercial. Right away, I love what this story does with Chouno. It's a direct result of the growth he had in his debut, so credit where credit is due, but it's easier to sympathize with him, and understand his deal, because this time, we see him trying to put the work in. He's making a very obvious and sincere attempt to move forward, and the specific choice to center that around art is the perfect way to convey all of this to the audience precisely because it's a little stereotypical. You see a guy pouring his heart into a drawing, and you kinda don't need any dialogue at that point. There's a beautiful visual metaphor in there too, that might even be one of my new favorite shots in this whole series. Remember how Chouno was flashing his switchblade in the cold open? He could've just been doing that for no reason other than to alert the audience that he's in the episode, but there actually is a reason for it. He's using the knife to sharpen his pencils.



It's absolutely brilliant. That knife is the symbol of the darkness that's been consuming Chouno, so to have him take the knife, and make it into a tool that serves a constructive purpose, something that builds and creates instead of harming and destroying, making the darkness into light, I mean... I said Inoue didn't quite get Kuuga's storytelling style back when he wrote those first episodes of his, and this kind of stuff from Arakawa is what I'm talking about. This is two scenes, each under a minute, both without any dialogue at all, and they're getting this much across. It's amazing. It also totally gets me rooting for Chouno, which is why it's probably not a good thing the Unidentified Lifeform rampaging through the city is blocking the way to where he needs to go to submit his drawing in less than half an hour.

THUMBS UP COUNTING CORNER

Hidden internal angst or no, you can't stop Yuusuke from doing what he does best, and Tsubaki certainly believes in him.




Total thumbs up count: 51+2 = 53

EPISODE 30: "Fate"

Kuuga's fight with Gamego isn't going great at the start of this one. He switches to Titan Form and tries the usual power walking thing, but not only are the hits Gamego lands on the armor strong enough to make him flinch, Gamego is smart enough to exploit what seems to be Titan Form's biggest weakness, with Kuuga taking balls to his entirely unarmored stomach, and face, in quick succession, totally knocking him off balance. This is another super intense bout, with two opponents throwing everything they have at each other. Kuuga gets back up and attempts to turn the tables with Rising Titan, but Gamego barely cares about what would normally be a fatal stab wound for a Grongi, and when Kuuga is unable to maintain the Rising power any longer, he gets thrown back so hard, he ends up in Growing Form yet again. Ichijou finds Yuusuke unconscious, and has him taken to Tsubaki. Meanwhile, Chouno is desperately running to make it before his deadline, but any hope he has of getting there in time is pretty thoroughly dashed when Gamego knocks him out just as cold as Yuusuke.

Ichijou, determined to carry as much of the burden as he can, asks Enokida to get him some of the fancy new bullets being developed for use against the Unidentified Lifeforms. They're not meant to work without equally fancy new guns to handle the recoil, but Ichijou probably doesn't care about a sprained shoulder or two if it means repaying Yuusuke for even a portion of what he's done for them. This is another episode that really focuses on the impact Yuusuke has had on the people around him, with Tsubaki getting to do a lot of the heavy lifting on that front. Despite his eccentricities, Tsubaki takes his work seriously, and as such, he has a more direct understanding of what kind of suffering Yuusuke goes through than arguably anyone else in the cast, maybe even including Yuusuke. In a conversation with Sakurako, he stresses that Yuusuke's ability to recover from injuries unnaturally fast puts a huge strain on his body, and that those healing abilities have only gotten more potent over time. Meaning, just like back in episode 6, Yuusuke is probably holding back a lot of pain getting back up like nothing happened. Sakurako simply takes this to mean they all have to give their all too, which shows some growth from how she used to feel about him risking his life as Kuuga.

Just about the only scenes that don't contribute directly to the main plot here are the two with Jean and Mika, which I can't think of a good way to work in anywhere else, so they get their own paragraph. It's just two short bits, the latter of which has them going to Pole Pole hoping to see Yuusuke, but since he's preoccupied, it doesn't amount to much. The former is a lot more juicy, with it becoming apparent Enokida and Jean are a little awkward around each other right now, not helped by Mika innocently bringing up how she was looking forward to meeting her based on Jean's glowing descriptions. That's as far as that goes this episode, though, so as much as I love talking about Jean, there's the whole rest of the episode to get back to.

Chouno's been brought into the hospital himself, waking up to realize, to his horror, that he missed his window. Instead of having him go straight to throwing a fit, he immediately tries to get on the phone with the company running the contest to see if he can still sort this out, but he gets hung up on before he can even try the old "a horrifying monster was blocking traffic" excuse. It's another great moment to build some more sympathy for Chouno, showing him still trying even once things have already gone wrong, but he still has his limits, and this breaks him a little. Yuusuke has already run off to go deal with Gamego, meaning this time it's entirely up to Tsubaki to try keeping him looking forward. He starts out friendlier than last time, sincerely happy to see Chouno making progress, having found out he's been getting his illness treated in the time since they last saw each other. It starts getting a little ugly when Chouno accuses Yuusuke of just smiling his way through life without any trouble, compared to how much he's been struggling. Again, Tsubaki's one of the few people who truly gets what Yuusuke is going through, so that remark gets under his skin a bit. Chouno insists that anyone would be as happy as Yuusuke if things always went as right for them as they do for him. Which, of course, shows how little Chouno is aware of what he's even talking about. Yuusuke's been battered, bruised, beaten, bitten, blown up, shot, thrown off of skyscrapers, poisoned, dead... you name an injury, and chances are he's had it at some point or another. Being #4 has been far from fun and games for Yuusuke. But his suffering goes beyond even that, and Chouno's about to learn why. His conversation with Tsubaki reaches its most tense point when he says he would've been better off letting Biran kill him back in episode 14, which makes Tsubaki lose what patience he has left, snapping at Chouno for his defeatist attitude. This causes Chouno to punch Tsubaki in the face. After this, Tsubaki has just one question -- how did it feel?



And of course, it felt bad. Chouno doesn't feel any happier having hit Tsubaki. He doesn't feel relief, or satisfaction. He lost control, and he lashed out, and the look on his face makes his regret clear. All of that is just from one punch. Yuusuke, though, this is what he deals with almost every day. It doesn't always show on the surface, but it's there, no matter how justified using violence to stop the Grongi is. He hates it, and Tsubaki knows this. He knows that Yuusuke really is scared of what he might become because of the Amadam, and he knows the reason he doesn't complain about it, even the tiniest bit, is because he puts other people's smiles first, no matter what. How much of an impact hearing all this has on Chouno is left up in the air for now, as Tsubaki leaves him with one other piece of information about Yuusuke to chew on. He really liked Chouno's drawing.

In his fight with Gamego, Kuuga is doing better than last time, especially thanks to help from Ichijou, who uses that new ammunition to disarm the Grongi. He succumbs to the recoil just like Enokida warned him about, but this action provides Kuuga the opportunity to load Gamego onto the Try Gouram's horns, and take him off to a slightly more remote location. You see, this time, Yuusuke is planning to use the gold version of his red form, and he's got a very bad feeling about what all that extra power might do. As such, he's had Ichijou evacuate the nearby area in case it might result in people getting hurt. Very, very good thinking on Yuusuke's part, because Rising Mighty's Rider Kick turns out to have exactly the kind of effect he was afraid of.



Yeah, now you realize why this show didn't want to do monster explosions practically. Kind of makes it harder to gradually up the scale over time. This is an insanely memorable form debut, obviously. It's ominous and intense, and a great way to end a very strong pair of episodes. The story here builds off of everything the series has established up to this point super well, and is packed with great moments. Using Chouno as a vehicle to remind us of Yuusuke's inner conflict was especially inspired, as it perfectly ties in to Rising Mighty's reminder that Kuuga's growing power isn't necessarily a good thing.

THUMBS UP COUNTING CORNER

Despite it all, Yuusuke is still keeping his spirits up here.




Total thumbs up count: 53+2 = 55