[Magnugiga]

Gotta stick up for my boy Takkun here, and reiterate that he’s a classic case of 'not what he really seems', which is very atypical for a Main Rider. Even without hindsight from future episodes, those little scenes and moments with Keitaro and Mari eventually add up to convince me at the time that there are layers to his personality; that he’s not a plain selfish jerk that I had assumed he was (which might make the series less ‘fun’/more predictable, but also get the audience intrigued on what he’s really about!).

I love the climax for this episode, mainly because how perfectly executed the cross-cutting of scenes was in visual and thematic sense. Mari doubling down on what she wants to be, Takumi discovering who he wants to be, and Kaido letting go of who he used to be in multiple ways…. it just reflects the way both groups contrast each other in terms of their current standings. The pontification was pretty on the nose, yes, but still miles ahead and way more nuanced than your typical tokusatsu fare when tackling similar theme (which is typically just a character narrating the exact reason of their aspiration, e.g. “I adore my former policeman dad!” -> token flashback scene of that policeman dad smiling -> we’ve finished establishing the entire identity of that character!).

Incidentally, I love that there’s a whole segment dedicated to Mari’s professional struggle, how they managed to find the time for a side character’s profession/aspiration that you can’t immediately link to the Kamen Rider-ing plot, the way you can with a lot of side characters’ professions as journalists or detectives. Now that they’ve finished introducing and painting a (mostly) full picture of the core six characters, it made me appreciate this early 'arc' even more and how they're not afraid of constantly putting the plot on the backseat to have all these small character-driven moments.

(OoT: LAHM looked super terrifying, in a good and intriguing way, in that screencap above)