[Fish Sandwich]

Really liked this one! Sugihara's direction was completely spectacular as always. That shot FreshToku pointed out with Vulcan definitely just lying on a table is a perfect demonstration of the kind of results he can get with surprisingly simple methods. This is the same guy who gave us that bike chase way back in episode 2, after all. What action there is in this one more than lives up to that same standard, and it also continues to carry the standard of weighty drama from the last few weeks, even keeping some continuity with the continued no background slo-mo shots of Ark-One, and the completely original idea of Azu being the sort of devil on Aruto's shoulder, which, despite the audio fading in and out not quite giving the effect I think was intended (the transitions seem jarring in a way that wasn't entirely deliberate in spots), was a touch I appreciated.

On the writing front, it's like "where has this Writer-san been hiding the last 8 months?" You know Yuuya Takahashi is writing an episode of Kamen Rider when the script manages to line up four different yet connected dramatic speeches all happening at once. I'm sure there are going to be people watching this episode saying that's a bit much, but this sort of controlled chaos is what I learned to love about his writing on Ex-Aid. It's over-the-top drama with surprisingly delicate, refined construction. The episode does good work getting to that point, and, crucially, all four of those scenes are pretty killer in their own right.

Just about everyone is given something meaningful to do here. Yua is maybe the weak link, as ever, admittedly. It's hard to get the full sense of satisfaction from her ending up anywhere when we never got a sense of where she wanted to end up, but it's still nice to see her not getting disrespected, and it was smart to have Gai merely facilitating other people's big scenes instead of getting his own. Fukuzoe gets his big moment here, and while I hate to indirectly further damn Yua's character development, I actually think the show built up those side characters just enough for their bits here to land well. The "number one at being number two" line, I mean, come on. That's just good stuff right there. Horobi gets chewed out by Ikazuchi, which is more of a good showcase for Horobi than anything, but Ikazuchi is fully channeling that passionate discount Ryuuga Banjou energy in that conversation, so he holds his own.

Fuwa and Aruto, though, that's where it's at. It's a confrontation that really acknowledges the growth Fuwa has had over the series, and has some great meaningful callbacks to earlier episodes, like Fuwa flipping that question of "what's your dream for after this?" from episode 25 back on Aruto. It ends up being a great fight that, at a glance, seems to enforce the whole "Vulcan is the real main Rider!" theory more than ever, but under that surface, everything he's saying there is reaffirming how much Aruto and his journey have been central to the show. Both of them come out looking pretty good.

Er, well, I mean, Aruto isn't exactly looking "good" good, but you get the point. It was a bit surprising to see Zero-Two again, but my interpretation of that was that, in-universe, maybe Aruto is trying to avoid hurting Fuwa too badly or something, and, on a meta level, it reminds us he still has access to Zea to make what happens later seem less abrupt than it might've otherwise.

I think I've hit the point where I'm going to get even more rambling than I already am, so I'll just wrap this up now rather than make a huge mess trying to string together every random thought I had. It's a good episode! New Horobi looks sick! I'm looking forward to seeing how this wraps up! I'm also holding Oomori to that promise the finale will somehow be unlike anything Rider's done before!