[Fish Sandwich]

First of all, episode 16 has one of the best gags in Blade, and I really want to take a second to single it out. It's this brilliant exercise in escalation, aided by being staged in a brilliant way. I mean, I could pick this sequence apart for days, it's so good.

It's like everything that makes Kenzaki so darn lovable packed into one scene. He's just sleeping on the couch like any self-respecting freeloader, and when Karasuma barges in during the middle of the night wanting to know where the belt is, he pulls Garren's belt out from under his blanket with a drowsy smile on his face, which is funny, but it's even funnier when Karasuma tells him that's not the belt he's talking about, and Kenzaki responds by reaching back under the blanket to pull out his own belt, and the smile grows into a prideful smirk, like Kenzaki is just so satisfied with himself for heroically cuddling up with the Rider belts at night to ensure their safety. Where it gets hilarious is when Karasuma explains he means the new, probably evil belt it's super important they don't lose track of, and Kenzaki promptly flops onto the floor. I'm not sure if the funniest thing about that part is how long he ends up lying there, or the fact that he shouts "WEEEI?!" as he's doing it.

On a more serious note, I've always loved the way the show builds Leangle up. It's pretty rare that a show puts in this level of work in advance to set up the big additional Rider. Maybe it's just because they obviously had to complete the playing card motif, but Mutsuki's been in the opening this entire time, even before he starts being credited (the visuals also eventually changed a bit to show his face more clearly), and the whole idea of creating a new belt has been driving the plot since only around half a dozen episodes in. Heck, that little clip of that newscast or whatever from before the show premiered that I posted after episode 4 even felt the need to call out that an fourth Rider was coming eventually. They were not playing coy about this in the slightest, so it really feels like a bit more of a momentous occasion than usual to finally get to this episode, which just on its own still does some really fun stuff with the concept of an evil Rider belt. In particular, I love seeing Kenzaki almost become Leangle for a second, which is a fun sort of "what if" scenario for the show to highlight. Although I suppose just the year before in Faiz, this kind of thing was a lot more than hypothetical. Still, it's really neat how the scene makes a sort of horror setup out of what will turn out to just be a normal feature of Leangle's transformation, which is that the usual energy wall thing comes to the person transforming instead of them having to run at it like Blade and Garren.

Plus, major bonus points for the first we see of Leangle being on his bike. AND this is the episode where Chalice drives his up an entire stairwell! It's almost like the show is called Kamen Rider or something!

And while I'm talking Leangle, I just want to get this out of the way since Switchblade brought it up earlier, but Garren is definitely the weirdest name of the bunch. "Leeangle" is a completely real (if obscure!) word that means exactly what it's supposed to. Meanwhile, Garren is deliberately corrupted to the point nobody can seem to agree what exactly the original word even was. It's not even a contest. Dadi's got this one in the bag.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

Yay!

Yeah, the next three episodes are a whole Inoue trilogy, the first of a few sets of episodes he does for this show.