[Fish Sandwich]

Yeah, this was a pretty great arc as I remember it, and I actually wrote enough about them to cover the barest essentials of why:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

These episodes are rock solid. The nature of the guest character's dilemma allows the show to start digging into its themes of memory to a larger extent than it has up to this point, and all the characters are used to great effect. Ryoutarou getting hit in the face by five different kinds of balls within seconds of one another is probably the most hilarious gag in the series so far, and seeing him reduced to limping around for the entirety of the back half shows why I love the guy so much.

Not anywhere near as profound as what you wrote, of course, and that post is from prior to me realizing just how significant Ishida's presence often is, but still. The show certainly bounced gracefully back from the prior two-parter.

This is also maybe the first of quite a few episodes to have super slick wordplay in the title that inevitably gets lost in translation, with both the words for "sad" (哀) and "lovely" (愛) being pronounced "ai", furthering the sort of... symmetry, I guess, of the two halves of it? I'm not sure I'll be able to explain that many of these in a way that's either informative or interesting, but as I mentioned earlier, I love me some Den-O episode titles, so I might try and point out details like this as you go along. I mean, apparently I do have a thing for linguistic analysis, after all.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Deepsea

Is it weird that these discussions about the visuals of the episodes are helping me understand what/how I'd want to shoot television if I ever get the chance to make it?

Oh, there is not a thing weird about that! I've been making it a point in these threads to yell out director names at every opportunity, and a huge part of why I do that is because, totally selfishly, it helps me gain a better appreciation for that sort of thing. The whole process of seeing Die dig into smart visual choices in a Rider episode, and then assigning a name to that and gradually figuring out what kind of individual style and talent specific directors bring – it's been a learning experience for sure. I gush about Ishida specifically so much because I've come to have a deep admiration for the raw emphasis on mood he has. If I were telling any kind of story visually, I would absolutely be taking inspiration from that, consciously or otherwise.