[Sh Ranger]

For the last time, Gochisousama deshita!

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Originally Posted by Matrixbeast

Was this episode the first time Gavv rode his motorcycle while transformed?

I think you're right. While I've complained about the candy-type Gochizous in the past, I have to admit, that Spyhunter reference was surprising!

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Originally Posted by DreadBringer

Though outside of back to base form tradition, I don't know about Gavv Poppingummy anticlimatically killing off Lango with one attack at the end, as Shoma's burning determination is manifested in AmazinGummy form, which he doesn't use yet during his final fight.

Amazingummy is a mortal Gochizou and can only be created under special circumstances, making it essential to defeat the strongest enemy Bocca. It would be wasted on a chump like Lango, who Gavv has already beaten before.

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Originally Posted by Mesnick

But I have mixed feelings about the last clash between Shouma and Lango. Lango's position is very unconvincing and smells more like an attempt to logically justify banal jealousy. It is difficult to understand what happy future Bushe took away from him. I can assume that Father Stomach was going to quit the production of Dark Snacks, but then it was worth voicing this directly. Or was Lango just afraid that his father would do this?

On one hand, bigots are inherently illogical people who will spout all kinds of nonsense to deny that they're wrong. On the other hand, Lango made more effort to justify his prejudice in the Over/Master arc, claiming that humans are weak and therefore inferior from the perspective of Granute society. However, this was proven wrong in the following episode when Gavv kicked his a**. Not only that, but he is forced to rely on Gavv's power to defeat Bocca. It looked like he was starting to acknowledge Shouma, but instead, he insists until the end that Shouma is weak, which makes himself look completely stupid.

While I can see the intention of contrast between Shouma who has changed a lot and Lango who has stayed the same, this doesn't feel like a thematically fitting confrontation for the show's final boss. Lango doesn't have any grand vision, he was born in to a "privilege" his family never should've had and all his methods to reclaim what Bouche "took away" rely on leeching off the ideas of Zombu, Nyelve and Bocca, since he has none of his own, other than poisoning and backstabbing when his opponent is too strong. Certainly, he is a pathetic man who survived this long by mere luck.

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Originally Posted by Mesnick

Once, back in university, I came across a bagel without filling. It wasn?t the kind of bagel I picked up by accident. There was a cavity inside for the filling, just an empty one. But despite my disappointment about this, the bagel turned out to be delicious.

What was the point of the previous paragraph? Well, it seemed to me that the conversation about Gavv should start with a story about food. So let?s continue in the chosen direction. There is a theory that in order for your criticism not to cause aggression, it should be the filling in a sandwich of praise. That is, you start with a compliment, then express a remark, and end again with a list of pluses. This approach supposedly allows you to overcome hostility and make criticism truly constructive. In practice, I can say that it doesn?t work, and you will still be called a hater, ignoring all the praise.

This is true. There are shows that are loved deeply by so many, that lesser praise like "it's good" risks getting dismissed as hate. As someone who mostly enjoyed Gavv, I do think it seems a little overrated, but maybe some of that is due to Gotchard, Geats and pre-emptive Zeztz haters exaggerating about it.

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Originally Posted by Mesnick

But even when Ryubei just drinks tea and hugs a cat, it still looks more natural and charismatic than Lango sitting in a dark conference room or standing on a roof. Although, perhaps, this is the merit of the cat ��

For sure. The worst part about Gavv is that the adorable cat from the OP doesn't have more scenes!

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Originally Posted by Mesnick

Furthermore, I wish Shouma and Dente's different views on Bush were not limited to two sentences. But these are just trifles, and I'm starting to get a little carried away collecting them.

It's interesting how Shouma never loses his resentment despite Dente's image of Bouche as a loving father, yet neither of them are completely right or wrong about him either. Bouche did terrible things with good intentions and this indirectly became the reason for Shouma's first big development of realizing that depriving happiness is wrong. For a posthumous character, he had a big presence in the plot. Considering how much Dente loved his family, he would be sad to know that only his youngest grandnephew and grandniece-in-law survived.

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Originally Posted by Mesnick

Now let's move away from philosophy and talk about the action. It is gorgeous. The active use of both real and CGI environments makes it unique in each episode. I could list my favorite moments for a long time, from the stretch between containers to Gavv running on thrown knives, but then I would have to remember them all, so I'll move on to the costumes.
And, in my opinion, all the battles about them are a dispute between blunt and sharp-edged.

The environmental fight scenes in Gavv are honestly some of the most creative and impressive I've seen in Rider, especially with how the snack powers can be combined for surprising effects.

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Originally Posted by Tokumonkey

The most interesting moment of the episode, for me, was the moment when Hanto offered a nonviolent ending to Liselle and Jeebh, and Jeebh *almost* went for it. Jeebh has struck me for a while as one of the show's unfulfilled creative intentions: it's felt like they'd intended to do something interesting with him, but never quite decided on what.

I thought it was fitting how Jeep found love once more and performed a heroic sacrifice for Liselle as Theta did for him. However, it really bugs me that he never got a final confrontation with Shouma, considering how much they parallel each other. To a lesser extent, there were no scenes between Sachika and Liselle, but at this point I'm used to Sachika mostly being useful in the background. Even though Jeep found a reason to live beyond revenge, I still would've liked to see that acknowledged in dialogue between them, like we got with Lakia's speech to Glotta.

Hanto's role here is probably the biggest disappointment about the final arc for me. The entire first half of the show was all about Shouma's and Hanto's dramatic volatile relationship and yet, Hanto's last emotional moment was with Lakia, not Shouma. And as Valen, his last henshin is to clean up the leftovers (although, feels like every villain after Bocca's death is a leftover) after they refuse his offer of a peaceful resolution. Perhaps the staff are aware of his minimized role though, which is why he's going to the protagonist of the upcoming Guilty Parfait.

Overall, Kamen Rider Gavv is a Komura show, with dynamic heroes and stale villains. And I'm okay with that! I appreciate Komura's care for character interactions, at least for the main ones we're supposed to care about. This meal she and Takebe have cooked tasted no less and no more as good as I expected, but it was good and I look forward to eating it once more in the future. Compliments to the chefs and finally, here's my Reiwa Rider Ranking:

1) Gotchard
2) Saber
3) Gavv
4) Geats
5) Zero One
6) Revice