Kamen Rider Zero-One E03 Review: Of Valkyries and Sharks

Kamen Rider Zero-One, Episode 3: That Man, the Sushi Chef

Y'know, I don't want to be that guy that is all about social justice and everything. And I recognize what a massive leap it is to have a female rider show up as early as the third episode of a series. But at the same time, I really can't help but think that poor, poor Valkyrie ends up getting the short end of the stick in that she doesn't even get to beat the villain-of-the-week, and her finisher is reserved to blow up a bunch of the disposable mooks. Instead, the action highlight of the episode ends up being Zero-One's Biting Shark form. Which, admittedly, is still pretty dang cool, but also they kind of "did Valkyrie dirty", as the cool kids say nowadays.

That complaint aside, though, this is a pretty solid episode, and I feel like now that we're sort of past the stage of shoehorning in exposition and the gimmicky toys, we're moving into a more case-of-the-week rhythm going on. I really do appreciate it being a faster-paced villain-of-the-week and not making it a two-episodes-per-minor-villain like many Heisei series, by the way. This episode's conflict is a relatively simple one -- an ornery old sushi chef clings stubbornly to his tradition and the 'heart' of his cooking style, while Aruto, Izu and one of their Humagear, a chef named Ikkan Nigiro, tries to win his heart over. Like Mamoru and Taro from the previous two episodes, Nigiro is pretty inquisitive and really do want to be a good happy robot to make his human buddies happy, wanting to get a heart and everything. And just as Nigiro ends up impressing the old chef with his willingness and dedication to train... and, of course, gets transformed into a Magia and presumably destroyed in the ensuing fight where Valkyrie engages a bunch of lesser Magia.

I'm not sure what the tone of this series is meant to be. Aruto certainly angsts and gets visibly disturbed when poor Nigiro gets turned into one of the Magia mooks and ends up blending into the mass of transformed murder-machines, but the final scene of the episode essentially ending with the chef, Aruto and Izu buddying around the newly-rebooted chef Humagear feels pretty jarring, especially after all the talk about how "they're not dispensable!" Likewise, I feel like the old chef's talk about how humans and Humagears get together depends on the individuals ends up ringing a bit hollow when they essentially boot up a replacement Nigiro at the end of the episode. Maybe I'm reading too much into this and it's meant to symbolize them 'saving' Nigiro, but I dunno. Not a major complaint, honestly, but it still feels off to me.

With this being Valkyrie's debut episode as a Kamen Rider, Yua ends up getting a fair bit of screentime. She starts the episode seemingly being nice to Aruto in that sushi place, noting how Humagears are nice and valuable, and that they should live in harmony... but then ends up talking about how they're valuable as tools in the final act of the episode, about how they can just be restored from a backup if needed be. Which is certainly a nice little middle-point to take between Aruto's "all robots are my buddies" and Fuwa's outright "kill 'em all" mentality. I just really hope we get more of her motivations defined, although with the enigmatic scenes at the end of the episode, I do feel like she's going to be set up for some intrigue for a while. That's a pretty badass scene at the end, where she reveals that she's been using Nigiro as a tool to spy on Aruto and learning about his identity as Zero-One. Time will tell if she's evil, if it's just the AIMS head that's evil, or how they relate to Metsubojinrai.net.

Aruto basically spends the entire episode sort of being a good boy protagonist, nothing wrong with that -- although his jokes and antics certainly continue to grate. I am certainly pleased that this episode certainly does tone down his gesticulating around and keeps most of his jokes as bad puns... and Izu trying to deliver Aruto's punchline at the end is a better joke than anything Aruto's ever done. Also neat is Izu seemingly going off to do her own thing, accessing a computer dimension thing and contacting the satellite in order to create countermeasures for the Neohi Magia. Sure, the scene where the Progrise Key is being essentially 3D-printed is a bit goofy, but it does help to build up whatever story we're going to inevitably get about Izu and Aruto's grandpa.

Metsubojinraidotnet continues to just be sort of there, with Jin and Horobi noting about how Zero-One and AIMS aren't a threat for now, and how they will have to gather data for the mysterious Ark project, which is the weird glowy machine ball in the lake. They're all right. Also all right are the minor antagonists of the show, which is the dastardly bunch of vice-president CEO led by Jun whatshisface. They're sort of like an obligatory presence to give Aruto's CEO day job something concrete to gain victories about, and honestly feel pretty basic. Although, again, as a children's show, I really don't expect the running-a-company part of this series to get expanded upon too much.

The action scenes of this episode is pretty neat, particularly with the squid-based Neohi Magia delivering some fun sequences with his tentacles -- which also end up leading to some neat comedic moments of Vulcan accidentally freeing Zero-One from the tentacles. The first action scene in this episode (Zero-One vs Vulcan vs Neohi) is kinda generic and low-key, but they clearly saved a fair amount of budget and effort, both of the CGI and practical kind, for Valkyrie and Biting Shark's debut... special props go to the low-angle shots of Valkyrie zooming all around the place with neat dynamic angles, or the scene where Valkyrie does a backflip-kick of some poor mook that gets sent crashing onto a pile of trash.

Overall a pretty neat episode. Now t

Random Notes:

• Izu bouncing in the background trying to look at the video is so precious I can't
• Also precious is Jun's robot aide, Shester, who attempts her damn best to join in the hammy-evil-villain-laughter scene, but gives the perfect delivery of a robotic ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.
• We finally get the theme song for the series and it includes the lyrics, in English, "Four-oh-four not found". Glorious. Also, it's actually a pretty upbeat rock piece, which I have been missing after the past four openings have been relatively chill. There are like a couple dozen analyses of the opening's visuals because Japanese shows tend to spoil parts of their show in the openings, but I religiously avoid these things and just enjoy the openings as "yep this be cool".
• The Gimmick Watch:
• Shot riser. DASH! Authorize: Kamen. Rider. Kamen. Rider. Shot rise. RUSHING CHEETAH! Try to outrun this demon to get left in the dust.
• FANG! Authorize. Prog-rise! Kirikiri-bai! Kirikiri-bai! BITING SHAAAAAARK. Fangs that can chomp through concrete.
• The voice actor doing these voices had such fun with the high-pitched Biting Shaaaaark, and the text-to-speech stuff are particularly cheesy for both Cheetah and Shark. 
• Biting Shark's finisher is called "Biting Impact", while Rushing Cheetah is called "Dash Rushing Blast". Neither are particularly cool or funny. Those wrist-saw-blade things are sure not what I expected from a 'shark bite' attack, though. 
• Know Your Magia: This week's Magia (who's some random barbershop Humagear) is the Neohi Magia, named after the ancient Triassic-to-Cretaceous era cephalopod genus Neohibolites, from the order Belemnitida. 
• Nigiro is played by an actor who played a minor character for three episodes of Drive, and more memorably as the first host for Kintaros in Den-O. 
• Very curious that the tentacles of the Neohi Squid hits Nigiro, but completely ignores Izu. Is it just main character plot armour, or a hint of something else? 
• I'm not the biggest fan of how the 'basic' Rising Hopper armour pieces sort of slide away and hang off the side of the side of Zero-One's head to make way for the Biting Shark faceplate. They did it in Den-O, too, and I always felt that this sort of transformation is kinda messy. 
• I didn't actually notice until this episode but the CGI grasshopper and shark buddy break apart into DNA strands before attaching to Zero-One as armour pieces. That's cool.