Kamen Rider Zero One E02 Review: Secret Identity Drama

Kamen Rider Zero-One, Episode 2: Are A.I. The Enemy or Allies? 

I'm not sure how regularly I'll be doing episodic reviews of Zero One, but I feel that as another introduction and an expansion of this new world in general. A lot of this episode feels like it's just going through a lot of similar beats to the first episode, except this time the episode is not quite as burdened to really sell Aruto's character to us. This episode ends up having a lot more time to explore other topics. The horror of having a friendly Humagear transformed into a monster, as well as properly introducing the AIMS organization and how they relate to Aruto. Plus actually kinda-sorta allowing Aruto to actually kind of be a CEO for a change.

It's... it's all right, I guess? I still really don't care too much for Aruto's bad comedy and exaggerated over-acting, although I'm not sure if that's partly because I don't fully get the puns he's making. This episode does give him two interesting mini-arcs, though -- it seems we're going back to, at least for a while, a superhero-with-a-secret-identity deal going on. I honestly don't think any Kamen Rider in Heisei really had much mileage with secret identities other than Faiz, Kabuto and Drive. Thanks to Izu's very helpful advice, Aruto ends up hiding his secret identity from both his employees and the paramilitary organization AIMS, which, of course, predictably led to him being shot at by Isamu (who we'll get to later) and mistaken for a Humagear. That scene with the Zero One running to the side of the building, de-henshining and them going through a very hilarious Golden-Age-Superman "where did the robot man go?" "That way!" sequence was funnier than it had any right to be. 

Other than the interaction with AIMS, Aruto also ends up basically having to kind of act as Hiden Intelligence's PR dude, being a CEO and all, and it's... very simple? I guess as a kid's show, you have to keep the intricacies of running a company in very simple terms. "Deal with this bad press, or you get fired!" and Aruto ends up basically dealing with it by... uh... recording Jin transforming Mamoru into a violent Magia? That's honestly such a way-too-simple way and there really wasn't much conflict between the beginning of the episode where Isamu and Jun are all "deal with PR!" and the end of the episode where Aruto goes "I dealt with the PR!"

Far, far more intriguing than either of those two storylines is the Humagear Mamoru, who used his body to protect random civilians during the first Magia attack, and who Aruto totally befriends and gives a little scarf thing. While Abs-crusher dude from the first episode was certainly likable to the audience and his brainwashing was tragic, Aruto himself doesn't really have much of a reaction because he wasn't sure what's going on. Here, Aruto witnesses first-hand the transformation of a nice, happy Humagear into an evil monster, and is even told by Izu that the transformation is not reversible. Ultimately this leads to a pretty neat speech as Aruto talks about how he's going to be responsible for them. I'm not sure how Mamoru ends up getting cured at the end of all this, and I'm sure it'll be explained in the next episode, but it did seem like a particularly cheap 'out' for what could've been a bit of a sad, dramatic mercy killing scene. 

The other big event in this episode, of course, is our secondary rider, Fuwa Isamu. This episode focuses more on him out of the AIMS duo, saving Yua for next episode, and Isamu... Isamu's kind of there? He shows up, acts like a belligerent dick to both Yua and Aruto, and then we get the revelation that he's absolutely pissed at Hiden Intelligence apparently covering up a horrifying event called "Daybreak" where a bunch of Humagears went wild and rampaged, and it's apparently covered up. He's basically out for blood for every single Humagear (which includes Zero-One in a typical 'oh no the superhero is thought to be a bad guy' sequence), and honestly, is kind of a massive dick where his commanding officer Yua is concerned. The Daybreak stuff is interesting, and probably mixed into the whole Metsubojinraidotnet storyline, but I dunno.

Isamu ends up transforming after an unintentionally hilarious scene where he struggles so, so hard with the wolf prog-rise key... and honestly, I know in-universe they're supposed to be like these super-advanced pieces of technology, but the visuals of a man really, really shouting and yelling as he tries to flip open a toy meant for children above the age of three is hilarious as all hell. That bullet-themed transformation as he punches the bullet and the armour pieces snap into place is badass, though. We don't really get much resolution to his character other than "well, he can kill monsters now", and that pretty awesome ominous scene where Vulcan and Zero-One glare at each other through a massive melted hole through multiple containers. And, in true Kamen Rider fashion, the super-serious secondary rider turns out to have a goofy side to him, because he's the only person who finds Aruto's bad jokes to actually be funny. Okay? He still comes off as kind of unlikable, but I think it's kind of intentional. 

Jin and Horobi are... kind of just there. They talk about something something singularity and something something extinction, but are just kinda there. That music that plays in the background when Jin and Aruto face off against each other is one hell of a sinister theme, though. I like it. 

And... let's talk about the action a bit. Kamen Rider shows always kind of have a track record of having some pretty awesome action scenes in the first couple of episodes that they don't keep up for the rest of the series. The bike scenes at the beginning of Wizard and Build come to mind, or the huge CGI action sequences at the beginning parts of Ex-Aid, W and Den-O that sort of peter out as the series went on. And, well, it's even sort of a meme that a lot of the modern Kamen Riders honestly barely even use their bikes anymore. It's a valid criticism for sure, but maybe in the Reiwa era things will be slightly different? Maybe? Regardless of how things will happen in the future, though, this episode does have some pretty great bike sequences, with Zero One's bike rising up above a bunch of cars to drift into pursuit of the villainous monster is pretty awesome. There's a lot of all right CGI here, too. The Kuehno Magia crawling up the walls of the office lobby like a spider, the entirety of Vulcan's transformation, and the badass melted-containers... sure, Kuehno's physics-defying boomerangs are pretty iffy, but the action in the rest of the episode is pretty solid. 

Ultimately, it's the second episode and I probably shouldn't be super-duper critical, but I dunno. This one felt a bit more flimsy, I guess? The production quality's pretty great, though, and the action scenes and how they managed to incorporate the merchandise advertising is neat, but I wonder if these first two episodes would've worked better if they were the same story line extended over two episodes, with a better incorporation of Isamu into Aruto's storyline, and a better exploration of the whole "holy shit, the poor robots are being forcibly brainwashed into being violent and evil, and there's no way to save the civilians without killing them" deal. It's kind of a missed opportunity in my opinion. But hey, ultimately, still a pretty dang solid episode.

Random Notes:

• Man, guys called "Mamoru" get fucked up all the time in Kamen Rider shows, huh?
• There's definitely a bit of W, Ex-Aid and Drive vibes with some mysterious event that happened in the past, while company cover-ups sort of remind me of Faiz, Gaim and Amazons. People have compared Isamu to other 'destroy everything, all the monsters are evil' secondary riders like Ixa and Mach. And early Kabuto too, I guess. 
• Bullet. Authorize! Kamen-Rider, Kamen-Rider, Kamen-Rider, Kamen-Rider. Shot rise! Shooting wolf! The elevation increases as the bullet is fired. The gratuitous English isn't as funny this time around, but god damn is Isamu punching the bullet to make the suit pieces form around him badass.
• By the way... there are a lot of ceilings that got destroyed in this episode, yeah? Zero One's grasshopper buddy completely fucked up his company building's glass ceiling, while the bike-phone blew apart the ceiling of the parking lot they're in.
• The Gimmick Watch:
• This isn't the first time we've got a fake-iPhone that transforms into a bike. Kamen Rider Build has a transforming bike-phone of his own, but Build's phone goes through a Transformers-style size changing, whereas Aruto uses his phone-sized-phone to summon a bike-sized-phone through his satellite in order for it to transform into a bike. 
• Vulcan uses the AIMS Shot Riser to transform. The gun yells SURP-RISE when you shoot it. This series really loves the word 'rise'. 
• When activating the bike, we get another glorious text-to-speech robo voice saying "Changing to super bike. Motorcycle mode." and then, of course, when the giant phone transforms into a bike, "MOTORIZE", because, this series loves the word 'rise'. 
• Zero-One's super attack this episode is activated with the hilarious text-to-speech "Ready to utilize: Grasshopper's ability", which is also hilarious. His attack here is Rising Kaban Strash... which is probably some pun or other. Vulcan's attack is the more mundane Shooting Blast. 
• Know Your Magia:
• Some very delightful prehistoric creatures here! Fedex Magia guy turns into the Kuehne Magia, named after a family of extinct flying lizards, the Kuehneosauridae, who lived in the Triassic period. 
• Mamoru is turned into the Ekal Magia, named after the Ekaltadeta, a genus of prehistoric rat-kangaroo-like marsupials. In practice, though, his suit is modeled more after something like the saber-toothed tiger. 
• Which, I guess, using extinct animals plays into Metsubojinrai.net's whole 'make humanity extinct' mentality. 
• Fedex Humagear dude is played by Teramoto Shogo, a suit actor that's been in the Tokusatsu industry for a while. In the Kamen Rider franchise specifically, he's been active since W.
• I didn't mention how ridiculously over-the-top Vulcan stabbing the Magia with CG stakes and then summoning ghost wolves to blow it up, did I? Because it is gloriously over the top.
• Depending on the translation group, "Metsubojinrai.net" has been translated as "ExtinctionThunderstrike.net". I'm going to use whichever one interchangeably, but I do acknowledge that ExtinctionThunderstrike is probably exactly the sort of tryhard edgy name that these fools will use. 
• Two episodes in, and we still haven't gotten the opening sequence! We did get the theme song, "REALxEYEZ" played over the ending speech, though. It's neat.