- Written By: Shogo MutoDirected By: Kazuya Kamihoriuchi
Nanba starts acting on his plan to subjugate Touto and sends a battalion of Guardians to attack while Blood Stalk causes a tower to manifest in the middle of Japan after allowing Pandora's Box to absorb a panel holding five Best Matches. What can our protagonists do about this situation?
Episode Tropes:
- Cassandra Truth: Yes, the Riders that allied with Touto won their battle against Seito and would have nothing to worry about if Mido was still Seito’s Prime Minister. However, the only people who knew this were the people who were there and the people who watched the fight happen, and since Seito’s Hard Guardians attacked Touto and President Nanba (posing as Mido) made a point to spread fake news to the media about Seito winning the proxy battle, Prime Minister Himuro can neither disprove nor quell panic among people who believe that Touto lost because they would only have his word to trust and no solid evidence proving that Touto indeed won.
- Evil Tower of Ominousness: Blood Stalk appears early on in the episode to introduce Pandora Tower, a random structure that suddenly appeared at the intersection of the Skywall (that also destroyed several buildings in the surrounding area to construct itself). While the protagonists do not know that the section that they currently see is the result of one completed panel being added to Pandora’s Box, Blood Stalk does tell them that if Pandora Tower is completed, then Earth will meet the same fate that Mars did.
- Evolving Credits: The opening has once again changed to reflect that Sawa and Kazumi are now part of the main cast as well as showing spoilers for certain character reveals that have happened since #14.
- Happy Flashback: When Kazumi tells Ryuga of Mii-tan’s significance to him, he has a flashback to when it was just him and his employees working on his farm together, and watching Mii-tan’s newest videos as they are uploaded as a bunch of cheerful idiots.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: The fact that Kazumi doesn’t go into his cheerful persona when Misora appeared was a sign that the war was wearing him down mentally and emotionally since his faction isn’t safe.
- Protagonist-Centered Morality: Kazumi is emotionally torn at the fact that he cannot be in Hokuto to liberate his own country and prepares to leave so he can save what he could, but when discussing it, Sento, Ryuga, and Misora note that whatever they do, they’re met with a Morton's Fork situation of either saving only a fraction of Japan or losing all of it if they can’t stop the war, and they can’t exactly stop Kazumi from going back because it is also selfish of them to keep him in Touto to help fight since the war began because of Sento's and Misora’s actions.
- Serial Escalation: Nanba Heavy Industries’ new Mecha-Mook, the Hard Guardians, are much more durable than their previous Guardian androids and seem to be on par with the Sclash Driver Riders.
- Take a Third Option: Near the end of the episode, Sento talks about his initial plans in the war and how he intended for there to be no casualties or as close as he could manage to none. While he was ultimately unable to prevent people from dying, this is exactly why he continues to push himself forward in the war; to ensure that their sacrifice was not in vain and to find a way that doesn't end with an all-out war. This is enough to motivate Kazumi to stay with the protagonists until the end of the war.
- The Teaser: This episode opens without a recap of some sort to a juxtaposition of Nanba as Mido conducting an orchestra as Blood Stalk completes one of the panels for Pandora’s Box and the Hard Guardians storm Touto.
- We Wait: Ryuga literally waits for Kazumi at the path leading to Hokuto from the outskirts of the Skywall, and complains to Kazumi that he thought he was going to freeze to death.
- Weak, but Skilled: Soichi acknowledges while fighting Ryuga that Ryuga has a higher Hazard Level than what he does, but Ryuga admits that Soichi's powers that he got from Mars allow him to make up for it.
- Wham Line: The being that possesses Misora introduced itself as Vernage, the Queen of Mars.
