Hanto excitedly goes to Boss Soji to tell him about his experience with the Granute, but he finds he is not in the office. He calls, but there is no answer. Remembering he was out on a stake out in place of him last night, Hanto goes to the location. But he ends up finding his things scattered on the ground.
However, Hanto is horrified to see Boss Soji has been Pressed! Even worse, he sees that it has snapped. He remembers the Kamen Rider warning not to snap the pressed person or they could die.
Hanto goes running to Suga-san and desperately asks him to save Boss Soji. Suga-san says no. Hanto explains that Boss Soji is his mentor and that he owes him his life. Suga-san merely offers his condolences.
Hanto laments not having gone on the stake out himself instead of Soji. That way, it’d be better if he had gotten Pressed instead. Hanto recounts how his mother was murdered and then his grandmother who raised him passed soon after. It was Boss Soji who was able to get him out of his dark place.
Suga-san now says he might have a way for Hanto to get his revenge. After finding a residue on the remnants of Boss Soji, Suga-san says they would be able to find the culprit. He explains that he has been developing a weapon to eradicate the Granutes. And all his research about Granutes has borne fruit. He was able to finalize this thing and it may be able to grant Hanto the powers he needs. However, it will require implanting a Granute-like trait to his body. Suga-san shows Hanto a gland that secretes a fluid unique to Granute biology.
Suga-san has no idea if it is even safe to do. Hanto says Suga-san just wants him to be his lab rat. Suga-sana insists this could be a win-win situation for him: Hanto wants revenge and Suga-san wants to develop a Granute-killing machine.
Hanto disagrees and he runs out.
On the other side of town, Shoma enjoys some candy for breakfast. He feels energy for the day as the Gochizo pop out of his stomach.
He calls all the Gochizo over and asks them all to patrol the city and call in anything suspicious by the Stomach Inc. As most of them leave, Sachika arrives and she notices the remaining Gochizos on the counter. She thinks they are cute toys and suggests the call then “Gochizos”.
That evening, Shoma and Sachika are done of the day. She goes home.
Hanto sits by the water and remembers his mother’s death. But also when Boss Soji first helped him after a big fight in high school. Hanto was inspired to also become an investigative journalist like him.
Hanto refuses to take this lying down. He gets back to Suga-san and gives him consent to do the surgery.
Meanwhile, Shoma brings Uncle Dente some chocolates to thank him for helping last time. Shoma says he can bring more if he sides with him to protect humans from Stomach Inc.
Shoma hopes Uncle Dente can help with his evolution of powers. Uncle Dente says sure he will do it for the snacks. He gives Uncle Dente a Gochizo to be their communication link. Uncle Dente is impressed with Shoma’s attitude.
Over in the Stomach world, the twins visit Nyelv to get his help against the red Gavv. He says he cannot help because has taken an interest to him.
While Shoma and Sachika are working to promote a ramen restaurant,
The Gochizo comes to alert Shoma about seeing a Granute in the wild. Shoma excuses himself.
The Granute is a street magician. And is about to eat a woman, but Shoma jumps in to save her. And the woman’s boyfriend thinks he’s a creep.
Shoma chases after the Granute who transforms to his Granute form.
Shoma henshins and they battle.
Shoma tries a Kicking Gummy Kick. But the Granute’s mucus protects him and he is able to escape.
But the Granute runs into Hanto who Suga-san has completed his surgery on.
Hanto confirms that this Granute pressed Boss Soji. He stumbles forward and locks in a Gochizo to the morpher Boss Soji has created.
Hanto henshins to chocolate-powered Valen.
Suga-san is excited to see the henshin is successful.
Hanto vows to do this for Boss Soji. He pushes forward through the Granute’s attacks and Shoma arrives and watches Hanto deliver a big Chocodon finisher.
As Shoma checks on the new Rider, Suga-san steals some Gochizos before leaving. Hanto vows to be in this for the long run and he asks Boss Soji to watch over him.
Having watched the whole thing, Nyelv thinks it is getting fun. And exciting,
Episode Thoughts
A very nice episode. Maybe not as impactful as the last two. But certainly a very nice debut for Hanto as Valen. Focus was definitely on Hanto. I do kinda wish they eased into his first henshin a little more. Like give us more about him growing up. Maybe some scenes with his grandmother after his mother died. And then more scenes of him and Boss Soji and how he was a mentor to him. Then it would add a bit more impact to this despair here leading to the desperate move to allow the shady Suga-san to cut him open and insert a strange thing inside him.
So things moved faster than I would have preferred, but it was still a nice debut nonetheless. I did not expect, but I appreciate the idea of Shoma and Hanto not knowing each other’s Rider identities. I don’t know that we’ve had that dynamic before. At least, not in the seasons I’ve watched. So I think the show can do a lot with that moving forward. Though the preview seems to imply they might already find out next week lol We’ll see!
Elsewhere in the episode, just very tiny tidbits with the Stomach Sibs. But a nice moment with Shoma and Uncle Dente. Glad to see Uncle Dente sticking around. And Shoma having, like, two different places to be able to go to and just “be” in (Hapipare and Uncle Dente’s cave home) is really great too.
So a straightforward episode. Not bad at all. I would’ve preferred they did a few things differently. But a solid episode nonetheless. A very positive six episode stretch so far for Gavv!
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11 thoughts on “Recap: Kamen Rider Gavv, Episode 6 – Transformation is Bitter Chocolate”
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Man, Hanto’s really getting put through the wringer, isn’t he? I thought his Kamen Rider debut would be him saving and freeing his mentor, but NOPE! He’s straight-up dead. His mentor was the one warning him against trusting Kenzo too, and him being gone drove Hanto straight to him….
I liked that this episode gave Hanto the spotlight, as it should have. Not to say Shoma didn’t get any moments, namely in his interactions with Dente, aka Mr. Clothes Are for Squares. 😂
We got some focus on Nyelv too and got a bit of a “feel” for him. I mean, he was the one behind giving Hanto the motivation to become a Kamen Rider in the first place by orchestrating his mentor’s death. And unlike with Gurotta, Nyelv’s not beautiful enough to make me like him no matter what he does; I’m looking forward to seeing him get that smug smirk knocked off his face.
And it seems like, for these early episodes, the season’s giving each sibling a chance to be the major threat for 1-2 episodes in order from youngest to oldest. So the next 1-2 episodes are probably gonna have Gurotta as the threat (Yay! 😍). And the following episodes will focus on Lango.
I’m glad this episode let us see a lot more of Kenzo. There’s definitely some sort of mystery being built around him. At this point, I’m certain he’s a Granute pretending to be a normal human, not least of all because he runs quite fast for a guy carrying a cane around.
He knows WAY too much about Granutes to be just a humble researcher. There was also… something else. I don’t if you caught it (it was a sort of “blink-and-you’ll-miss-it” moment), but when Nyelv was talking to the Twins, he mentioned something about Stomach Inc’s “great inventor,” whom he’s excited to see more from. This inventor apparently created the means for Granutes to disguise themselves as humans and turn them into Hitopresses…. And after that, the scene cut straight to Kenzo about to start Hanto’s surgery. I think they’re indicating that he and Nyelv are in cahoots.
Not to say that Kenzo’s necessarily any sort of lackey for the Stomach Siblings. My guess is that he’s an independent Wild Card villain with his own ambition playing both sides, like Evolto from Build specialized in doing when he was at his weakest and forced to rely on Soichi as his host. Kenzo could easily be playing on Nyelv’s arrogance and scientific curiosity while also playing on Hanto’s desire to fight back against Granutes and his need for revenge…. And if he is indeed the Wolf Granute from Hanto’s flashback, who’s implied to have a Red Gavv and thus be a half-human like Shoma whose true self isn’t accepted by either world, Kenzo being an independent threat playing everyone would make PERFECT sense.
It would also neatly explain a few things: 1.) Kenzo being excited to see the Red-Gavved Shoma for the first time despite his immense knowledge of Granutes making it hard to believe he’s never encountered one before. 2.) Him being more than happy to develop and provide Hanto with the means to wipe out other Granutes. And 3.) The Hitopress technology not working on half-human hybrids like Shoma, which the Stomach Siblings were shocked by. If he’s a hybrid too, then Kenzo wouldn’t ever want that technology to be used against HIM now, would he?
Oh that’s an interesting comment. The scene with the Stomach Sibs really just go by so fast. It will be interesting to see when they get a bigger focus.
I’m actually quite content with not getting much from the Stomach Siblings early on. We don’t want them suffering from overexposure in the beginning like the Deadmans from Revice did now, do we? Besides, imo, they’re already quite compelling villains by virtue of them being a family and having a very personal connection to Shoma. Plus, it makes sense why they’re not on the field actively fighting Shoma as of yet; they do have a business to run, after all.
And anyway, such an approach has so far been allowing the season to really focus on and establish its 4 main protagonists: Shoma, Hanto, Sachika, and Kenzo (though Kenzo, of course, is likely gonna wind up being something of a Villain Protagonist. Lol).
Talk about short critic. 🙂 It was a good episode for Valen’s introduction and Suga’s character is kinda weird: is he an ally or a foe?
About the “maybe not as impactful”, it can apply to Hanto’s mentor’s death: the character only lasted a few episodes, so we had not much time to care about him: had he died in mid-season or Xmas, it woulda been better maybe. But it’s not much a big deal.
Oops, I have no idea why the rest of the comments got cut off.
I was watching this episode while eating chocolate 😂 BTW this episode was more brutal than we think,dead on the first minute, surgery without anaesthesia, painful newbie debut which looks actually realistic
I think they are saving dente to be the Christmas victim hanto is probably gonna face something on valentine’s day because of he is valen
I did not connect that Valen related to Valentine’s Day, one of the biggest days for chocolate until you said it here lol
Maybe. Dente will be killed off sooner or later anyway.
Ngl, this episode worries me a bit about the pacing. But we’ll see.
*fingerscrossed*!