[Fish Sandwich]

Hey everyone, guess what time it is!



Well, it just might be time to bust out the tissues, because this was quite the emotional episode.

I mean, geez, where do I even start? This whole episode was pretty much perfect. Zi-O has always had a habit of nailing the conclusions to its arcs, but considering this one was double the normal length and directly dealt with some of the show's most central elements, it's extra impressive how nicely everything was tied together here.

I've been something of a cheerleader for Sougo and Geiz since really early on, so an episode like this that shows so strongly the depth I've been seeing in their characters is naturally going to be a huge winner for me. I'm a biased party, so I genuinely don't know how to explain that in a way that wouldn't degrade into me simply listing scenes and lines, so once again I'll let the episode speak for itself. Their chemistry here is great and all their interactions hit the mark dead on. A lot is communicated just through visuals too. Them both limping their way to their showdown already beat to crap says loads about them before they even start speaking.

There's still plenty to talk about beyond that, anyway. Woz's simple but effective plan to keep Geiz from pounding on Sougo was fun. I feel like Woz hasn't gotten to do anything super devious lately so his gambit in this and the last episode was a good refresher on why we all like the guy so much. Even his lame counterpart gets a chance to shine, between getting to be a total scumbag kicking the kid around and the revelations surrounding him and Swartz. Swartz himself is actually someone I'm now actively interested in seeing more of, too, so for that alone, I'd give this arc a gold medal.

The (temporary?) finale to the Another Zi-O plot was excellent, as well. I'm going to take this opportunity to finally single out Sou Okuno's performance as Sougo for praise. I maintain there's never been a bad lead in Kamen Rider, and while it was extremely hard for me to make heads or tails of his acting at first, he's really come into the role over time. His inflections during Sougo's speech to Hiryuu suggest a subtext to the lines that wouldn't come across as strongly if his acting wasn't good. I've been noticing stuff like this a lot from him lately. The awkwardness he had early on is thoroughly gone at this point.

I guess that about does it for my thoughts? What else could I mention? I thought Another Zi-O's monster army was a cute gimmick and seeing Zi-O and Geiz take them on was so fun I'm not even going to complain Sougo didn't go straight to Zi-O II. That's something. Or how about my realization that part of the reason I love Zi-O so much might be because its comedy isn't deliberately overdone the way the past five or so seasons have been? Honestly I could keep gushing forever at this rate. For f***'s sake, I just got done spending a month raving about how great these episodes were, and the very next one is promising Kenzaki AND Hajime? It's crazy to me that Red Buster showing up was one of the least exciting things that's happened in this show.