[Fish Sandwich]

I feel like this episode was a little more "honey & vanilla" compared to last week's "sometimes bitter", so in that spirit, I think I'll try and focus on the colorful action here.

Since this is the first episode by a director other than Sugihara, it's liable to better indicate what can be expected from this show on a regular basis, and as such, it's quite nice to see that, even with Takayuki Shibasaki bringing his own style to things, the style of the show itself still shines through. Like, sure, those sequences of Gavv dodging around are 100% Shibasaki, which is fun on its own, but what takes it so much higher is that we're still doing fun bits like Poppin Gummy Form having chunks of its armor blasted off. It's something I expect to see drop off in frequency at some point anyway, but I'd like to hope the show always finds reasons to keep Gavv gobbling down collectible items in the middle of a battle, because if you're doing a Rider whose belt is a mouth, it's a perfect way to make every fight unique to that character's distinct flavor. Similarly, the juicy water beads flying everywhere and the sound effects written on-screen and all that.

Plus, of course, the action is also cool where it needs to be, balancing out the tone quite nicely. Although Gavv's monstrous nature is always highlighted nicely in how wild he can look (Shouma's transformation literally involuntarily throwing him into that hunched stance, even!), Yuuya Nawata's suit acting brings an inherent elegance to his movements that also just makes Gavv look plain awesome. I'm especially fond of the little yoga stretch before going for the finisher, or whatever that even is. The point is Nawata makes it look real slick! All that and we even got Shouma riding in heroically on his bike here. What more could you ask for?

In my case, I mean, I'd ask for a good story around all that, but naturally, with Koumura writing, I got one. I found the script here did a lot of really graceful things to get across a lot more than just what it was actively saying. A lot of broader plot threads continue their development quite smoothly, and in the short-term, this specific episode explores the idea of how wrong it is to make yourself happy at someone else's expense in a way that feels uniquely geared to this show. Because, like, the bad guys in every superhero story are usually doing that, right? So it shouldn't feel too special, but you dig into it through a regular guy who eventually also maybe learns a lesson about humanity's inherent kindness, all while making time to give the viewers at home some good dietary advice that will hopefully keep Shouma from collapsing in the middle of the street every week for the next year, and suddenly, you've got yourself a tale that could only come from Kamen Rider Gavv.