[Fish Sandwich]

(Fish Sandwich also watched Kamen Rider Zi-O - EP40)

Kinda sad to say, but I've basically forgotten most of the non-Grand Zi-O things in this episode beyond "Everyone was hanging around a hospital I think...?" It's good to be reminded it was doing some very Den-O things with its drama, even if, yeah, evidently it didn't connect with me all that much either.

It's a pretty killer debut for a final form though! Grand Zi-O has never been one of my favorites or anything, and specific to Zi-O, I ended up liking Trinity way too much, but as a design, I very strongly feel it's essentially the objective correct thing for the final Heisei Rider's ultimate form to look like? King Form *is* one of my favorites, and considering we already ripped off Climax Form, I don't see anything wrong with tapping into that same brilliance. Sougo's a king! He should totally be all gold and regal looking, and have a clock beard and statues of every Heisei Rider including himself! Everything about Grand Zi-O makes perfect sense, and on that level -- how difficult it is to find fault with -- I am pretty fond of it.

As for the episode around that debut, in that case it's Zi-O II that's already stolen my heart, but similarly, I think Mouri wrote something that was very fitting for the stretch of the show it's capping off. It's relentlessly fun, with the idea that Zi-O's growing power might not be good taking a back seat to watching him summon loads of old Riders and Imagin antics and what have you. Again, like so many of the episodes lately, it's one that just kinda leaves you with a good feeling, you know? Even that undercurrent of foreboding associated with Sougo's BGM goes away in favor of a rocking Rider Chips jam, which I would be upset about, but like, the fight is too happy for the usual motifs. That elaborate transformation and subsequent fight scene clearly had a massive amount of effort placed into them too, so I'll go ahead and mention that this episode was directed Takayuki Shibasaki, who seems to excel at putting together sequences that involve a ton of digital effects work like this one. Probably not too surprising that this is the part of the episode that stuck with me!

(Also, I can kind of think of a reason why Yuuto would ask Sougo if he's actually Sougo, but I'll just keep that thought to myself for now.)

Oh, and about Geiz Revive, since that's come up: I've never understood why the "he got used to it" explanation is so objectionable? My interpretation of what Woz said about it damaging Geiz's body was always that it basically just causes an immense physical strain to use those powers, rather than the Ride Watch like, pumping poison directly into Geiz or something, and going by that theory, the idea that he'd gradually adjust to that (exactly like the exercise comparison Shirakura made!) isn't so far-fetched, right? Keep in mind right after he got it, he was also fighting Zi-O, Another Zi-O, and Woz a whole bunch in a really short span of time, so he actually was exerting himself more than normal to begin with.