[Fish Sandwich]

This episode got me laughing hysterically at the most minor thing right out of the gate. It was Sayo's premature excited smiling every time Kusaka even began to move his mouth to talk. I'm not even sure how much that was meant to be a gag, but I found it utterly hilarious.

This is hardly unusual for Kiramager, but I thought the comedy in this one was one of its biggest strengths. Much like episode 30, the whole gang acts utterly manic for most of the episode, with the rest of the team being *so* completely absorbed with Sayo's dating life, and it's adorable. I love how much it feels like these people are just regular friends excited to support each other outside of being super heroes, and I love how much of that is expressed here in the usual assortment of background sight gags. I feel like I need to rewatch the episode to catch all the weird stuff Shiguru and Takamichi were doing, even. It's even more densely packed than usual, and that extends to the monster of the week plot as well.

Now, while great comedy has proven to be more than enough to carry an episode of Kiramager, where things get less usual with this one is that it was directed by Kiyotaka Taguchi, who has been doing absolutely incredible work on the Ultraman franchise in recent years. I suspect the relevance of that will be a lot more obvious in the next episode, but what surprised me about this one is how immediately identifiable a lot of the language was outside of the material involving giant monsters and miniature sets. A lot of the way shots are framed and everything felt straight out of what I've been seeing in Ultraman Z, and while it's one of those things I struggle to articulate, the overall flavor here felt unlike the usual Sentai fare. The weird underground lab where freaky sci-fi experiments happen definitely helped, admittedly. It's a welcome bit of variety, and I look forward to seeing how things escalate in the second part.

The story helps build that hype very well, too, with a turn towards the more dramatic, but it's hard to say too much about it right now beyond how promising it all seems. Garza has been in desperate need of something to remind us he's a serious threat again for a while now, so I'm pretty ecstatic to see him working his way back into the spotlight. But again, best to save all that talk for next week, when I actually know where this is going!