[Fish Sandwich]

To this day, there are few power-up debut episodes in Rider I'm more personally fond of than the ones about a ringed wizard fighting an immortal bird for the first time, which happened to be written by Junko Koumura. So really, there was never any doubt for me that she'd stick the landing for this pair of episodes, especially with the setup being so strong. If anything, the "problem" with this episode is the highest form of praise I think I can give a power-up episode that isn't for the final form -- "are you *sure* you shouldn't be saving this for the final form???"

It doesn't help that Caking Form already has that energy going in its design? First of all, it's like, how much room is left to go *up* after becoming a king? And then it's got the spiffy white and gold version of the undersuit, the silly yet highly elegant frosting armor and crown, the strawberry bling all over, complete with the red eyes that just pop... honestly, I'll be shocked if any form that comes after this ends up vibing with me more? (Mind you, "as much" wouldn't surprise me at all, with this show's track record.) It's a form I already liked before seeing it in action, and in action, it's everything I could want. The Whip Soldiers in particular were an inspired way to make the royalty motif more meaningful, and they add that crucial distinguishing element beyond simply being very strong.

The other part of that final form energy comes from the narrative, which is everything I think you can reasonably ask for from this genre of episode. It's a real culmination of everything the show has been about so far, building the new form up into a physical representation of the themes and character growth that got us here. I'm actually quite glad I already mostly explained why last week, because that saves me a ton of space here. The final piece is that the cake this time is one Shouma made himself, for someone he cares about, which is the perfect reason for it to create a Gochizo more powerful than the rest. The lesson he learns is that while there's great joy in receiving kindness, the joy of paying kindness back in turn is even greater. If Gavv is a coming-of-age story, then that shift in perspective is absolutely the biggest step yet Shouma has taken towards growing up.

Because doing one thing at a time extremely well is rarely enough for Gavv, however, there's also the flipside to all of this, that I didn't expect going in, which is how Shouma's triumph over Siita and Jiip turns out to potentially be a lesson in the consequences of paying back misery with more misery. I might be jumping the gun with so little to go on at the moment, but it absolutely comes off to me like when Shouma looks at Jiip in the aftermath, he realizes that, to some extent, he's looking at himself. Another child of the same abusive household, forced to endure the pain of losing the one person in the world they knew truly cared about them. There's the argument that it's deserved karma, with all those two have been gleefully complicit in, and Shouma clearly recognizes that fundamental difference between them before the fight, but the ending perhaps leaves him (and maybe us; definitely me) to ponder if it's really okay for it to be that simple. If this is really the kind of hero he wants to be.

Stellar outing for Gavv, needless to say. I think the fact that even the ramune Hanto was given in a throwaway moment last week has a payoff here tells you a ton about how tight the script is. Like I've said before, and will probably say again, it's tough not to just endlessly ramble on about episodes with this much going on.