[Fish Sandwich]

I wish I had more to say about these episodes, as I remember them being quite good on a rewatch while also vaguely recalling getting weirdly burned out on Den-O watching them the first time, either of which would give me fun things to talk about if I could only remember those pesky details.

But I can definitely chime in just to add on that, yeah, Kintaros is pretty great. When you have a big ensemble of quirky, morally flawed characters, I often gravitate towards the obligatory decent normal-ish one (see Kenzaki in Blade for reference), and while it's to the credit of Den-O's strong characterization that Kintaros isn't quite my favorite, he's an extremely welcome presence for the cast who only grows on me more and more with time.

Axe Form itself is a somewhat similar story, where I consider it my least favorite of Den-O's main forms, and yet the more I think about it, the more I realize it might secretly be my favorite? I mean, it is a REAL tough call with designs this good, but Axe Form has a sort of knight in shining armor vibe going on with the visor and the gold that makes it... I'm still not quite sure how to put it. It just looks super stalwart, I guess, and that means it's a perfect expression of what I love so much about Den-O's forms, which is that each of them actively feels like a different character, rather than a different suit of armor for one guy. Extra impressive considering it's just backwards Sword Form, too!