[Fish Sandwich]

Hey everyone, guess what time it is!



Time for me to take back what I said about the CG not being awful. I must've been confused after the first episode because Build's effects were even worse, but these two guys clunking around here didn't look any better than WizarDragon, and that was like 6 years ago.

The episode itself was great though! The first episode of Zi-O to feel more or less like a normal episode, and much better for it.

The main trio's characters are more or less fully established now, and Sougo especially is starting to shape up into something actually kind of interesting. We even get to see hints of him becoming more than just some loser high school kid someday, between him getting his brain in top gear to solve the big mystery, and his overall genuine heroic attitude throughout the episode.

Emu was utilized extremely well, and while it probably helps that Kento Shimoyama has experience writing him from Go-Rider, his character actually gets to shine through, which is hopefully a sign that Sento and Ryuuga's underwhelming appearances were indeed just down to those episodes having to do all the setup for the show.

If someone who hasn't watched Ex-Aid saw this (and there are definitely people out there in that position), they'd actually get a decent idea of what made Emu such a cool dude. I especially loved how as Ex-Aid he's consistently shown to beat the crap out of everyone. You really get the feeling that he could've easily trounced all the monsters himself if his powers weren't taken away from him. I was kind of expecting him to do some speechifying about changing fate or making people smile or something, but even without that, this episode does exactly what a guest spot like this ought to. Remind everybody why the old guy is cool without stealing the new guy's thunder.

As for more minor things, the gag with the finisher this time got me WAY harder than the already pretty funny one for the Build Armor, if only because the idea that those split-screens were physical objects is something that would've never occurred to me. That was super inspired. I also liked Geiz showing up to a place on a bike. Which is as minor as a minor point can get, but after countless episodes of Kamen Rider where characters need to get to a place in a hurry only to show up on foot, that made me unbelievably happy.

Although for all this praise I gave this episode, it's clear next week is going to be jumping through some hoops to give us a Fourze-themed episode with a pinch of Faiz. Or maybe just a Faiz-themed episode in Fourze's setting? I have absolutely no clue until it airs, but hopefully it pulls off whatever it's trying.