[Fish Sandwich]

Quote:

Originally Posted by DreadBringer

At least the donuts are still inside the pack, so it can still be eaten technically, just that it's flatter.

I suppose that's one way of accepting the present! (Also, there's a lot of cute little touches in Haruto's performance I like in the scene after the fight where everyone heads to Yamagata's house, but now I'm imagining how amusing it would've been if Haruto spent the entire scene eating crushed donut chunks out of that bag the whole time, just to add yet another layer to that gag.)

Quote:

Originally Posted by DreadBringer

I still don't understand here about the claim of Haruto being a standout compared to other noble heroes here, as yes, they'd save unlikable people too

It's a nuance I'm probably going to spend the entire thread struggling to articulate clearly, but part of what I'm getting at in that paragraph is how all that stuff is implicit in Wizard's formula in a way I don't think is necessarily true of most other Rider shows. Most if not all of them also do stories where the hero is shown to help people in ways that go beyond fighting, or extend even to people who less morally upstanding characters (or viewers, I guess!) might write off -- and I love that kind of thing in every Rider show -- but the whole Phantom/Gate dynamic inherently means Wizard stories tend to actively be about that, all the way through, rather than having it be a single narrative thread that may or may not even connect directly to the monster action. So I feel that showing how much Haruto cares about Manami helps emphasize how much he cares about all the Gates he protects, and the overall simple structure of the two-parter in turn helps to emphasize how a Wizard plot, when reduced to its absolute most fundamental elements, comes down to how much worth even a single person's life has.

Quote:

Originally Posted by DreamSword

So just I tried a plain sugar doughnut for the first time.

And I won't lie, I totally get why Haruto loves these. Surprisingly good!

So, I can't imagine I'm ever going to get a chance to mention this within one of the actual episode posts, but, even though I might be projecting here, my impression of Haruto's refusal to eat any donut from Hungry that isn't plain sugar has always been that it's a sign how much he respects their craft, rather than the apathy it might look like at first glance?

Like, it's easy to slather enough toppings on a pizza or frosting on a cake and make it seem appetizing, but you know you're dealing with someone truly skilled at what they do when they've perfected the bare essentials so finely that any additional gimmickry seems like a distraction rather than a complement.

...Or maybe Haruto is just a picky eater! Either way, this reminds me that, in spite of everything I just said, I've never actually had a plain sugar donut before. Maybe I should reward myself when I get to the end of the thread or something.