[Fish Sandwich]

Valkyrie's pretty great! It doesn't surprise me that they went for orange as the suit's trademark color, considering Yua and Fuwa are very much meant to be a pair. Vulcan contrasts Zero-One's design well enough, but it's not really a Ryuki thing where we're dealing with some main triangle here. Aruto's got his whole completely different fluorescent yellow thing going on (to the point his alternate forms keep the Rising Hopper armor just to keep the color), and the AIMS Riders get this movie-poster blue/orange dynamic going on with their shinier metallic colors. It's all about contrast -- hence the whole cat/dog thing -- and that extends to the characters as well. Like, you'd definitely have to try way harder to find something they do have in common, beyond their occupation? Even the direct honesty that comes as an upside of Fuwa's constant emotional intensity is contrasted by the shady actions that come as a downside of Yua's much more calculated approach to life.

So yeah, I definitely remember really liking this episode at the time. It does a great job building up the principle characters in exactly the way I expect from Writer-san, but I distinctly recall being surprised how much I enjoyed the guest-character plot here, because I remember the patients of the week in Ex-Aid rarely managing to grip me all that much. And also Valkyrie is really cool, so who even cares about that! Genuinely my favorite debut fight out of the three Riders so far. Going back to the whole "contrast" point, they do *such* a great job getting across that Yua is the only Rider right now who really thinks about how to approach a fight, as opposed to the heroic bumbling and vengeful fury of our other heroes.

REALxEYEZ is pretty great too, if that needs saying. And even though she isn't the sole lyricist for it, this was also the first Rider opening since Drive to have Shouko Fujibayashi write for it, so just on that level alone, I would already like it.