[Enchilada645]

Yeah I had a feeling this episode would be more your speed. We just really needed to sort of spend the last two episodes building up to this. Because what do you know? Taking vengeance and giving into hatred can sometimes cause ripples that affect everyone involved!

It was a good episode for the side characters, you get to see Raiden almost get through to Horobi, you get to see Fuwa and Naki try and get through to Aruto, Yua steps up, Gai even helps out a little bit. This is really their episode to shine while two characters are just steeped in hatred. I wouldn't even call Aruto and Horobi straight up villains at this point. They're basically two people consumed with grief and hatred who only want to hurt each other despite the fact that their feud could very well shake the world to it's core. So at best their antagonists.

Speaking of fights though, we get to Zero-Two once more having a 100% win streak, but not without the chance of it possibly losing. I mean if anyone was going to get some sort of advantage on Zero-Two, it being "I will break my transformation devices constantly to transform" Fuwa, is beautiful honestly.

And that's not just talking about how Fuwa is so desperate to not only stop Aruto, but also to just get him to see some kind of sense. He'll take the beatings, he'll take the pain the form gives him, and he'll try and reach out to this guy who's hurting. Cause like, as cool as his new haphazard form is, the writing is on the wall, Fuwa is not winning this.

I also like the choice to use Zero-Two in this instance and it having the Ark Scream. You can still tell Aruto is influenced by the Ark, but you can tell he's trying to hold back, especially after last time. Like yeah he easily was able to walk through all his allies, but then he killed Jin with Ark-One. And I think that's why he chose to don Zero-Two this episode, because at some level deep down, that's a form that won't kill Fuwa.

Overall a fantastic episode and now you see Bandai's ingenious idea and the start of Geats' Desire Driver roots. Where you can just slap a new faceplate/attachment on a Driver to make it something completely different via Horobi's Zetsumetsu Driver.