Welcome, Riders, to another Weekly Ride Review! Join Ethan for time travel, the moon becoming eclipsed and a “Fire” guest appearance from Oomori Hill!
Summary?
This week’s episode opens with Hotaro, in class, reflecting on how everyone has been mind wiped to forget Mr. Minato after his apparent betrayal. He’s reminded that he needs to fill out his career form, something Minato encouraged him to do in the first episode. Meanwhile, in the alchemy classroom, Geryon is informed of his Malgam’s regeneration.
Hold on, let’s pause for a moment.
You know what, it’s a new year and I’m going to change up how I do my reviews a little. Let’s be honest, if you’re reading my review, you’ve likely already seen the episodes I’m reviewing, right ? An exhaustive summary is not always needed, is it? Let’s try things a little differently, today. Time for a do over… Timelord, would you mind?
Welcome, Riders, to another Weekly Ride Review! Join Ethan for time travel, the moon becoming eclipsed, a “Fire” guest appearance from Oomori Hill!, and a little bit of Déjà vu!
Episode Recap
This episode sees Hotaro be sent back in time by Daybreak, using the TimeLord Chemy, in order to get a treasure from his past self so that he can transmute it, using his alchemy, into his own Gotcharigniter. This, he’s doing, is all so he can beat the Moon Malgam and save the rest of the Gotchard gang that were jumped and captured by the Malgam. During the time travel mission, Hotaro learned a lot of important things, such as that he’s always been able to hear the Chemies and do alchemy and that everyone thinks Rinne’s father is a traitor because Geryon messed with their memories.
After witnessing Fire Gotchard’s debut and obliteration of the Moon Melgam/capture of Neminemoon the gang decide not to give up finding and capturing Chemies and will continue to support Hotaro as Gotchard. As a result of this new determination, Rinne, Hotaro, Renge and Sabi form the Ichinose Kitchen Alliance named after Hotaro’s family restaurant and vow to keep working together for a better future.
We also fully find out Daybreak’s deal (we will get into that don’t worry) and Spanner wasn’t about this week. I assume he spent the time brooding and healing his wounds from his last beat down.
What’s Good?
There was so much I loved in this week’s episode! I know I say that pretty much every time but I don’t know what else to tell you. Firstly, let’s talk about the big thing, Gotchard Daybreak and their whole deal. Last week, I ended off by by throwing out my theory for what his deal is:
“I’m going to just throw out there my thoughts on who Daybreak is. I think he’s future Hotaro from a future where he didn’t get any powerups past the Igniter and couldn’t stop Geryon. He has come back via Timelord to change the past. I know that Timelord being able to do that is something confirmed with the next episode preview.”
Me – The Weekly Ride Review gotchard ep 17
I pretty much called it! I really need to start making articles when I have theories like this, my hit rates looking pretty good so far. Enough bragging, back to the review. Everything with Daybreak this episode was great, honestly, and the way they revealed it all in little parts right up until he disappeared, like how our Hotaro did to his past self, was great. I loved the parallel.
Moving on to Hotaro and his time heist mission; this was such a fun way to learn a lot of important information. My biggest issue with the episode is that Rinne really should have been there for the reveal about her dad. I love how the reveal with younger Hotaro was paid off from a couple of episodes ago. I love the how the reveal about Rinne’s dad and Geryon’s memory manipulation is not outright stated to be what caused Minato’s betrayal and we are left to put the pieces together. It’s just all very solid stuff.
Lastly I want to talk about Fire Gotchard and its debut. Incredible. I like that it’s not just a speedster form; it clearly has the limitation that it can only move in straight lines, probably because of its big back thruster. I don’t think we have had a speedster form with that restriction before. Perhaps a different Chemy combo will fair differently, since the Igniter can be used with any pair but, as it stands, I like that there’s a clear limitation to the new form. Also I cant not mention that I loved this week’s Rider Kick. Oh my gosh, that was so incredible! I actually got chills! Hilariously, and super nerdily (I love it), someone actually ran the numbers on that kick…
A Mach 22 Rider Kick! That’s nuts! No wonder the Moon Malgam turned to dust like a Dragon Ball Z villain.
Conclusion
Normally there will be a ‘What’s Bad?’ section with this new format where I would go over my issues with what I’m reviewing but there really wasn’t much – only that one grievance about Rinne being left out of the big reveal involving her dad. So, I’m cutting it this week and bringing this review to something resembling a nice ending. This was an amazing episode of Gotchard which, again, is something I know I say every week but it’s true. Just great stuff. I can’t wait for next week and seeing Rinne’s Rider debut in series.
Thank you to my brother, Gaige, for taking the picture of me and TimeLord and thank you to Timelord for the help with this review.
What did you think? Did you also think this episode was Fire? (sorry I had to!) What did you think of the new review format? Do you think Daybreak could return or will another Hotaro from another timeline show up to help him? I look forward to reading your replies in comments below. As always, I’ve been Ethan: writer, reviewer and best friends with of all the Chemies for The Toku Source and I’ll see you next time.
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