[Fish Sandwich]

You know, I don't think I touched on Yuri's absence at all talking about either of these episodes, and that's something I'd like to fix, because the more I think about it, the more I like what the show did here. It's this really nice bit of synergy with the needs of the plot and the more meta subtext.

First of all, not having Saikou around to save Mei obviously requires Touma and Rintarou to finally take that next step, but then if you think back to how Yuri's habit of unhelpful erratic behavior started, it was during the stretch of the show where he basically WAS the de facto sidekick secondary Rider for Saber. Saikou got introduced as Touma's last remaining Rider ally right as everyone else left, and constantly bailed him out throughout that arc, so reestablishing that Saber and Blades can get the job done as a duo just like old times by straight up forcing them to rely only on each other was honestly a pretty brilliant move.

(Although if I may nitpick the suit choices again – did we ever actually get to really see a cool team-up between Dragonic and King Lion? I obviously get the nature of these shows demands Elemental be there, but those two upgrades were clearly designed to complement each other, and I feel this would've been the perfect opportunity to make use of that. Like, would've anyone have been disappointed to see that, besides Bandai?)