[Fish Sandwich]

It's sort of nuts how much of the acting Eitoku gets to do in this one.

I'm happy about that, obviously, because as I mentioned before, I'm happy about Eitoku playing Vram to begin with, but despite his character also having a human face to him, you're looking at that character in one suit or another for pretty much the entire back half of the episode, if not a bit longer than that, even. It feels pretty unusual, but it also works so well I never even gave it a thought as I was first watching the episode?

I suppose part of the trick there is that the jellyfish monster, despite not having a face that emotes, *is* his untransformed state, so Lage Nine fighting Shouma before Vram fights Gavv is actually perfectly balanced in that sense.

I also probably wasn't thinking about it too much because it's just such an awesome and intense action sequence? Possibly some of my absolute favorite of the entire series so far. Sugihara directing never fails to bump the action up to that next level, but in this specific case, with Shouma entering the confrontation before having time to transform, and how cramped a lot of the spaces are, there's this extra sense of the odds being stacked against him. He can still do the same cool Gavv pose if he wants (great touch that he does, by the way), but without his belt, he's mostly powerless, while his opponent without his belt is probably still a cut above the usual monster of the week.

It's just super interesting for how much more visceral and different it feels than usual, and that still continues even after both of them do break out the belts. You still get touches of the usual flash and imagination, especially that sound effect shield move Gavv pulls, but the beats that most stick out, including that one, tend to do so because of how they're used to show Gavv being, well, beat. He's up against this absurdly tough dude trying to hack him up with a chainsaw, smashing up the building and splattering those beads from Gavv's armor all over the place.

It's very raw, and I like how the action feels that way, because the same word would adequately describe the more emotional conflict going on between the two characters the whole time, as well. They're both learning about each other throughout the fight. Initially in that classic Gavv "crossing t's and dotting i's" kinda fashion, where each of them swiftly and naturally catches up on a bunch of things the audience already knows (Lage Nine finding out why Gavv is called that being particularly fun), but once it gets into more unknown territory for the viewer as well, it becomes personal to the point that Shouma is already asking Vram for an alliance of some kind.

More than that, after finding out that Vram is another lonely character who has obtained power after experiencing great suffering, Shouma is asking Vram if it wouldn't be better to use that power against the system of cruelty that put him here to begin with -- essentially, the question the episode leaves on is if Vram wants to be a Kamen Rider, and that's a cliffhanger that gets me real excited about future events! It's also sort of nuts how quickly the show was able to start building up a dynamic between Gavv and Vram just by getting Valen out of the picture for a single episode. Hopefully Hanto isn't the jealous type!