[Fish Sandwich]

Finally found the time to sit down and get caught up. There's a surprising upside I'm finding to the irregular schedule of this thread, which is that every time I come back to watch an episode after a long break, it's like being reminded all over again how utterly awesome this show is.

All four of these episodes are killer, and in retrospect, it definitely makes sense why they wanted to do a set of episodes beforehand that was mostly goofy fluff. It's like a moment to breathe in before they launch into this epic four-part crime drama saga dealing with violent feelings of vengeance and the uncertainty of the line between justice and self-satisfaction.

I loved every bit of it, naturally. Like, I am a sucker for this kind of genre and these sorts of stories, so to see Legend Heroes just kinda bring that all in out of nowhere, and do it so smoothly to boot, was a real pleasant surprise. Every one of these four episodes kept escalating the stakes further than I expected, and the result was always to the story's benefit.

Despite the inherent awkwardness of them evidently not building their singular robot fight set to have a "night" mode, that climax of 12 especially is something else entirely for this show. While I poke fun at the cheap robot battles (not that I don't love those scenes, mind you), having a moody showdown in the dark rain really felt like new territory for the series' production. Like a lot of cool moments in the show, you can see the legitimate talent shining through the occasionally amateurish feel, and this particular instance really sold a scene that needed an appropriate amount of weight behind it.

It'll be super interesting to see where Ta, uh, Cao Cao goes from here. Dude is basically all the absolute worst impulses of pre-character development Ryuu Terui and Shintarou Gotou combined, with none of the positive influences around him to mitigate that, and I find that idea fascinating.