Kamen Rider Zero-One E19-20 Review: Apple Cider

Kamen Rider Zero-One, Episode 19: She's A Home-Selling Humagear; Episode 20: That is 1000% the Best House

A bit late about this, but I didn't really have a whole ton to say about episode 19, really. Episode 19 is a solid tokusatsu episode, but I don't find that it's... it's kind of samey with a lot of the previous episodes. It's really weird that we seem to be up to stretching out this competition out for a two-parter each round, and I felt it was bizarre after the madcap dash to end the post-Dodo Mestubojinrai.net storyline before new year's. As we continue the company competition arc, this two-parter's theme is selling real estate. We get a lot of the same beats as episode 17 -- Gai, Aruto and Izu on that open-air cafe, Gai talking shit about robots and talking about human evolution, Gai threatening the human working for him to not fail or his career will be fucked, "Death" showing up to transform the human into a Raider, and eventually the nice Humagear getting transformed by the Ark into a rampaging Magia because of mistreatment by asshole humans.

Our human guest-star of the week is called Arayashiki Tatsumi, and he's... he's amazing at chewing the scenery, let me say that much. The actor is great at just hamming shit up, even if the character's basically just a right detestable cunt. We get a brief flash back and forth to a random bit where he confesses to his co-worker that he sells houses because he was stuck in less than ideal living conditions or whatever, but man, Arayashiki's long, extended abuse of poor Sumida Smile at the end of the episode, mocking her, dragging her around and tossing her into a pool... it's pretty terrible. And that's not counting him being convinced to sabotage the competitor's houses either!

Sumida Smile is our Humagear of the week, and she's... well, she's a nice little house-selling Humagear, and at this point we've sort of seen other variants of the nice, demure Humagear who just wants to help people around a lot of times. Smile's all right. We sort of have a neat showcase of Smile going around showing people to their prospective houses, noting things like the house having a nice environment to raise children and whatnot, whereas Arayashiki spends most of his time Wolf of Wall Street-ing in his office, talking over a phone and promising great investments. It's a neat contrast, I guess, even if I don't neccessarily think that Arayashiki's methods should be villified. Before the sabotage, anyway -- "Death" shows up and slaps a Raidrise belt onto Arayashiki when he gets stressed after a meeting with Gai, and he later turns into the Whale Raider to blow up the house that Smile is selling.

We get a pretty cool sequence with Zero-One and Vulcan (who shows up) fighting the Splashing Whale Raider, who has this awesome giant water-controlling fan-spear thing, and we even get a brief bit of camera angle manipulation from the tip of the spear. Fuwa is all caught up with the Raid Riser stuff thanks to the conversations with straitjacket Horobi, and Assault Wolf gets a pretty cool, if short, fight scene against the Whale Raider, who escapes. Then the house-selling competition continues, Team Hiden gets the help of a carpenter Humagear, and we get a brief argument about these dang robots taking human jobs and shit. And turns out that... Gai might be actually be a bit more aware that the malice from humans will affect the Humagear around them or whatever, and he's intentionally fucking with Arayashiki to get him to cause Smile to go crazy or something? It's weird and pretty convoluted.

We then get the aforementioned horrible scene with Arayashiki bullying poor Smile around, calling her a faker and a soulless robot and it's a bit hard to watch as Smile just numbly gets dragged on by this wildly angry man, while Aruto tries his best to stop Arayashiki from dragging Smile around only to get pushed back multiple times. Smile, of course, gets infected by the Ark, and turns into a Neohi Magia, who wants to exterminate evil, malice-filled humans. And that's sort of terrible but on the other hand Arayashiki does deserve it, y'know?

And the suit acting in the next fight is great. Unlike the other Magia, poor Smile/Neohi isn't even rampaging around, not really. She's screaming and yelling and doing things like punching the ground and just flailing around in confusion, only really attacking Zero One or Thouser if they get in her eyesight. It's a lot harder to watch compared to the far more hostile Magia from last episode. Gai shows up with his umbrella and gives a brief speech about how Humagears are only useful as tools and self-sentience is dangerous, and we get the three-way fight between Thouser, Zero-One and the Neohi Magia, and I absolutely love how Aruto tries to stop the fight, blocking Thouser's attack towards the Magia and slicing apart the Neohi's tentacles when they attack Thouser. The fight is pretty great, but eventually Thouser Jack-rises Zero-One's shark powers, and summons the massive hologram CGI saw-tooth blades of Biting Shark to murder the shit out of poor Smile. Gai talks some trash about how Aruto is a shitty, naive president of a company, and then leaves Aruto.
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Episode 20 continues on with this, with Arayashiki and Zaia having a massive lead on Hiden in terms of sales. Is it still a fair competition, though, with all of the sabotage going on? Smile gets restored pretty quickly, and we set up the episode's conflict pretty quickly. Some huge business mogul called Ohsiro Ginnojo is prepared to spend a huge amout of money in order to buy a house after retiring, and both Arayashiki and Smile go off to meet him. Of course Arayashiki's the kind of dick who would insult his competitor in front of the customer, by the way.

This part of the episode has the typical nice message that Kamen Rider shows have. Ginnojo makes it clear that his wife has just passed away and he just wants somewhere peaceful, but still big enough to handle his children and grandchildren when they come to visit. And faced with an older customer like this, obviously Arayashiki's huge speech about the expensive house being in the middle of downtown or having huge profit prospects isn't going to fly, and we get to see that Arayashiki's so tunnel-focused on 'big person = big house' mentality that he lost sight of what makes a house important. Meanwhile, despite Aruto's attempts to gently nudge Smile towards the profit-making mentality, all Smile wants to do is to bring smiles to her customers, which is why she selects a cheap, way-under-the-budget cabin in the woods she means to renovate. All the sappy talk about how it's the right place and how it's ideal and low-maintenance for a senior citizen while affording a large amount of space for visiting family isn't something you really can't say no to if you have a heart, though, and I do like that it's the same emotion that Aruto's going through.

Because, surprisingly, instead of just making bad puns and beating up the bad guy, Aruto actually goes through a neat sequence of character development! Clearly caught within his own desire to win the competition (he knows they have to turn a profit) but also at the boundless, innocent enthusiasm that Smile shows in selling the happy house, this episode gives us a nice scene where Aruto is just mulling over Smile's idealistic approach versus Gai's "a president that can't turn out profit has zero worth" speech. And I really do like that Aruto was this close to trying to get Smile to be a bit more profit-minded, but just doesn't have him the heart of a soulless corporate overlord. Thankfully Izu and her apple cider shows up and gets Aruto thinking about the textbook definition of a company president and everything, and he decides to not be a soulless, profit-driven machine.

While all of this is going on, we have the Fuwa B-plot, which involves him mostly being angry and getting up to the captive Horobi's face about a blurry photo, and Horobi matter-of-factly says that he can't dang well identify the mysterious person without seeing her face. Fuwa ends up wandering in the main plot just as we see Arayashiki basically show up next to the carpenter Humagear (Oyakata had a bit role in 19 that was kind of unremarkable, but does set him up for this one) while he's trying to renovate the cabin in the woods, and then beat him to the ground and stomp on him. This leads to the now-familiar berserk scene as yet another abused Humagear gets access to the Ark and transforms, this time turning into the Mammoth Magia. Perhaps a bit more disturbingly is how it's clear in this scene that Arayashiki knew what was going to happen, and it's not enough that he blow up the cabin like he did later on, he also had to essentially drive Oyakata insane to do it. We get a three-way fight between Fuwa's Punching Kong form, Arayashiki in his Splashing Whale Raider form and the berserk Mammoth Magia. Gai shows up just to turn into Thouser and blow up the Mammoth Magia (and leaves?) while the Whale Raider blows the hell out of the Hiden cabin.

Fuwa tells Aruto about the identity of the Splashing Whale Raider, and... and Izu, being the smart cookie in the room, tells them to call off the competition since Arayashiki is clearly cheating. But a couple of errant lines from Smile about just wanting to sell the customer a happy house gets Aruto to beg Fuwa to hold off on arresting Arayashiki until after the competition. Which... it's nice and all, Aruto, but mabe you can still sell the house after the competition is canceled or re-scheduled, y'know? Because Arayashiki's sabotage extends to all the other sales that didn't happen in episode 19, and you don't really need the competition to sell Gennoji his house.

After an impromptu show-off of five Oyakatas because these are robots and there are multiples of them, the Hiden cabin is restored, and, of course, Gennoji ends up picking the Hiden cabin becuase of the aforementioned fact that, y'know, Smile thinks more about the customer than about profits. While this whole speech is going on, Fuwa gets distracted by the appearance of "Death", and gets led into a warehouse, with some dizzying camera effects going on. I guess it's supposed to represent Fuwa himself getting hit with some vertigo or headaches or something? It's not clear and Fuwa sort of disappears after that scene, so we don't really see if he arrests Arayashiki after the events of this episode or not. He better!

Arayashiki walks out angrily out of Gennoji's office after his defeat, and Aruto runs up to him, trying to get Arayashiki to think about his own goal and career as a house-salesman, similarly to how Aruto has had time to reflect about his goal and career as a company president. Of course Arayashiki is a shit, pushes Aruto away and turns into his monster form. At this point, though, Aruto pulls out the biggest gun in his arsenal and transforms into Shining Assault Hopper, and as a pretty neat slow rendition of the opening theme plays in the background, we get Aruto absolutely owning the Whale Raider, zipping and outspeeding all of his water attacks, leading to an awesome shot of him appearing right in front of the Whale Raider and shotgunning him in the chest. Aruto even offers a hand to Arayashiki at one point to stop the fight, but eventually has to unleash a Shining Storm Impact finisher to blow him up.

Arayashiki isn't dead, unfortunately, but he ends up admitting he lost sight of what was important and gets a flashback of how happy he was with his family despite living in a cramped house. Which is nice and all, but someone please arrest this fucker. I also do like the resolution of the episode as Gai and Yua shows up to claim both the whale key and also talk about how Zaia still won the competition since the minimal-profit sales that Smile made didn't really benefit the competition at all... and while it's cold-hearted, there is some point to the fact that businesses -- and someone responsible for heading a company -- really can't be sentimental all the time and turn a blind eye to profit and results. It's going to be interesting; I wouldn't put it past Kamen Rider to be all smiles and dreams > soulless profit all the time, which is a pretty message but very impractical to actually have in real life... and it seems we're going to reach an answer in subsequent episodes that lead to more of a middle ground between the two? Obviously being a soulless evil corporation is bad, but it's also not particularly beneficial or responsible to not think of profits at all.

Random Notes:

• Throughout episode 19, one of the stylistic choices unique to the episode is random gigantic introductions of companies and the salespeople with massive kanji, and I'm not familiar enough with what this is trying to homage, if anything. It disappears in episode 20. 
• Finally, Thouser's Jacking Break looks a bit more appropriate for a power-stealing ability, actually manifesting the giant CGI saw when copying Biting Shark in episode 19, and a gigantic kong fist that splits into tiny kong fists in episode 20. 
• I do like the little detail that apparently in the time between the first emergence of the belt-less Magia and now, Izu and Aruto scanned all the Humagears for any abnormalities in their programming -- and they also put in new programs for circa-episode-20 Smile. It doesn't help, but at least they're trying something. 
• One of the more awkward usages of reused props in this episode -- the cast of Zero One are using repainted Progrise Keys (or is that the Hiden Risephone?) as cell phones, and it just looks so awkward, clunky and obviously a prop, it works a bit fine in the interrogation scene in episode 20 since it's Fuwa and Horobi, but was especially jarring any time it's one of the civilians like Arayashiki using it like a phone. 
• For lack of a better name, since the shrouded lady that's clearly part of Metsubojinrai.net is the "death" part of the four kanji, I'm using that as a stand-in for her name. 
• We get a neat little tsk-angry face from Izu at one point during the Aruto/Gai conversation and it's adorable. 
• 
  
• The Gimmick Watch:
• "Wave! Raid rise. Splashing Whale! An Aqua current that encompasses everything aroud it. " It's a bit hard to listen to the English text-to-speech for the Raiders, huh? Thank goodness for subs. 
• Apparently, the Splashing Whale's finisher is called "Splashing Bolide". 
• I actually do like the fact that the large amount of collectible Progrise Keys that we saw in Gai's office is going to be used as monsters-of-the-week instead of just one-off forms that won't really matter after their debut. I love Build to bits, but its insanely large amount of forms ended up being redundant when the actual mid-season power-ups show up, and it's nice to see them make better use of the collectibles.
• Tatsumi's way of slurring his "100% pwaaa-sentoh!" is hilarious, not just in the way that he says it, but because Gai shuts him down immediately afterwards because it's not up to his 1000% creed.
• Aruto gets a random super saiyan hair at the reaction of 500 million yen. He and the carpenter dude have way too much fun hamming things up this episode.
• The first time Arayashiki slaps Oyakata in the face, I thought we were going to get some TNG-style "Data's a strong superman robot despite looking like a twig", and am disappointed to not see Arayashiki get beaten up by an old carpenter.