[DreadBringer]

The victim of the week format this time.

As usual, now they're using something to detect the MOTW and visit that place. In this case, Chemy Riser. This was the role that some female leads in previous Rider series had, like Hirose's Undead Searcher and Tsukuyomi's tablet. Guess apparently it won't be something people see as contributing, and seen as "just there" for that, and same goes for this episode cuz I've seen Renge and Sabi being viewed as useless still.

When not relating to Chemies, as seen in the household, Hotaro acts more grounded. Or even mostly when not in the academy like when interacting with Koichiro, That's what personally I liked more for Hotaro's behavior than his hyper shouting when Chemies are brought up. I think he can act similarly to humans that he also wants to help, to Chemies, when it's about him viewing them as equals. Hotaro is once again the newcomer in sports, pro wrestling here, so he's still sucking at first rather than picking up quickly.

Supana doesn't appear much, but now as a typical jerkish anti-heroic secondary Rider, his morally questionable side is now shown in him trying to take someone's Chemy by force despite it being something precious to Koichiro. As usual he still has soft spot to Rinne only to back off when Rinne joins in defending Wrestler G.

As usual Rinne puts rules above anything else, only being there to warn Hotaro about breaking it, both times of using alchemy to humans, the yakuzas, or objecting to Minato erasing Koichiro's memories. Aside from coming right after Geats that objected to that.... the writer being the one that wrote Ultraman Nexus makes this seem like deliberate to revisit this in his new series - TLT Memory Police forcibly erasing the memories of anyone knowing the Space Beasts. Tamami apparently claims Rinne says a lot of good things about Hotaro.

Renge and Sabi gets along quickly with Hotaro, being all concerned about him when Gorilla Malgam injures him and actively cheering for him against their rematch. For Renge, she seems friendly but I feel slight patronizing air from her too in her treasure boy nickname and her reaction to learning Hotaro's a Kamen Rider. For Yugioh (GX) comparison, I got the vibe of Tag Force 3 Mindy/Momoe as partner who though is cordial to the player (like Asuka, unlike Jasmine), she still views them as lowly Osiris Red through and through. Still all assumption for now though.

Koichiro shows that Chemies also can bond with benevolent humans to become allies like Asahi G, not only to malice as Malgam. Antwrestler gives me Monster Buckle vibes, and this time the fight has the least alchemy magic so far, focusing on physical combat. Gotchard is down from Windmill Back Breaker, yet Hotaro unmorphed keeps going and asking for more after repeatedly got hit by that attack in his training.