[Fish Sandwich]

Hey everyone, guess what time it is!



Well, first of all, it's time to do something I was going to do back when Decade was transforming into him last year, and note how freakin' good Agito looks on camera even all these years later. It's seriously the single most refined, elegant, awesome looking base form any Rider has ever had. It's not even necessarily my favorite, but it's just that great.

Kinda like this episode, which blew away the high expectations I had.

First of all, Nobuhiro Mouri is back in the writer's chair, and has apparently made it his mission to immediately reinforce what I said back during his first stint on this show about him having a much crazier vision for Zi-O. What's the plot here? Another Agito zombie apocalypse? Yeah, sounds about right. Although even that it isn't as crazy as the biggest surprise this episode: character development for Tsukuyomi! What a novel concept.

It's like now that Zi-O's cast has firmly established their ability to stand on their own, we can have amazing episodes like this where both them and the guest characters get to truly shine without either one stepping on the other. I don't think it was a mistake doing the early tributes the way they did, but it's impossible to deny that seeing Agito here was way cooler than seeing, say, Ex-Aid back in episode 3. There's tons and tons of proper shout-outs to Agito here (the return of Shouichi's Agtio-Sense was probably my favorite), and between that and the chemistry of Zi-O's three Riders, which by this point has been refined down to a science, this one is a real winner.

And do you know the best part? Did you see all those really interesting, very kinetic shots throughout the episode? Turns out the director for this arc is none other than one Teruaki Sugihara, who you might know as the main director for a little show called Lupinranger VS Patranger.

I'm beyond pleased with this episode, and as usual for Zi-O, the back half of this story promises to be even better.