Kamen Rider Zero-One E06 Review: Parent and Child

Kamen Rider Zero-One, Episode 6: I Want to Hear Your Voice

The guest stars for this episode actually made a brief appearance in episode 5, which I genuinely appreciate -- it's not something that they had to do, but it does really help make it feel like we're seeing these characters interact in a proper world as opposed to bouncing from one self-contained episode to the next. The Humagear of the episode, Kanazawa Seine, is voicing ALL the roles in the Perfuman Tsurugi anime, and that even includes cat meowing sounds. She and her manager Tazawa Seiji end up getting arrested by AIMS due to violating an A.I. act code, because Seiji has modeled Seine after the look of his long-dead daughter without her consent. The reason why should really be painfully obvious to anyone, even dumb ol' Fuwa, but apparently that's still something that is going to get the poor old man arrested.

Parent and child relationships are the theme of this episode, and it's not just the relationship between Seine and Seiji either, or Izu's general "I must google these human emotions" deal, because for the first time, we're getting some focus on the Mestubojinrai.net dudes. Confused after the revelation of the previous episode, Jin keeps wondering what 'son' means, and how this re-defines the relationship between him and Horobi, but Horobi distracts him by basically telling him to go off and steal Zero One's prog-rise keys.

We then get the obligatory action scene as Jin now outright targets Aruto, unleashing an Onycho Magia upon them. We get a pretty cool transformation sequence of Fuwa doing a spinning jump to transform and punching the bullet, but while Vulcan was busy fighting the Onycho Magia, Jin manages to steal the Flying Falcon key. During the fight, as Jin runs and prances around, he gets to see the Trilobite Magias attacking Seiji and Seine, and in the process of the fight, poor Seine is damaged. Jin was very much willing to turn Seine into another Magia, but when old man Seiji does the whole yelling about "don't touch my child", Jin ends up being utterly baffled about the whole 'child' thing.

Vulcan's Punching Kong form ends up driving off the Onycho Magia, and we get a pretty cool sequence of Zero-One summoning his bike from his satellite, and going through a neat Mario-and-Yoshi moments as he jumps off the bike, transforms into Biting Shark, and then slices the shit out of the Onycho Magia. It's all genuinely a pretty awesome sequence, but it's, of course, all for naught as the Onycho Magia wasn't even holding the Flying Falcon key. Jin's stolen it, and, well, Zero-One's down one less key.

The AIMS' mysterious boss ends up giving Yua the Lightning Hornet key (twice as powerful as the Rushing Cheetah, apparently), because, hey, here's a power-up device. Jin and Horobi meet each other again, and Horobi tells Jin that, no, they don't have the usual "parent protects a child" dynamic because Jin is strong enough to take care of himself.

Meanwhile, Aruto and Izu are being a pair of emphatic, nice people, and they end up basically witnessing and realizing just how much Seiji is trying to essentially help relive his daughter's final wish of becoming a professional voice actress. It's arguably a very unhealthy way to cope with death, but honestly, Seiji's actor does an amazing job conveying the sheer grief of a desperate father. Fuwa, meanwhile, continues to be a massive dick, just wanting to do nothing but arrest arrest arrest.

Eventually, the confrontation happens in an open stadium where there's... a voice-acting competition? I'm not sure if this is how voice acting auditions are done, but it does feel kind of weird. Seine ends up randomly malfunctioning and seeing memories of her real, human counterpart. It's... it's pretty creepy, honestly, since we're not given much of an explanation. Seiji modeled her appearance and mannerisms after his dead daughter, sure, I get that, and Humagears in this show have enough of a 'soul' to act on emotions, but where did the memories come from?

Jin, crazy man-child with stunted emotional growth that he is, shows up and begins to shoot his real-ass gun in the air and just sending everyone into a panic, and he is about to turn Seine into a Magia. But as Seine is being transformed by the Zetsumerize Belt, everyone keeps yelling at Jin that of course a parent will do anything to protect their child. (We get a beautiful flashback to Aruto's robo-dad dying to protect him) The utterly confused Jin tries to rip off the belt from Seine, perhaps learning empathy for the first time... but Seine gets transformed into the Frog Magia, easily simultaneously the goofiest and creepiest monster suit from this season so far. Then it's mercy-kill time, and Aruto transforms into Zero-One.

While Aruto fights the Frog Magia, however, Horobi shows up and Jin is initially happy that Horobi's there to 'protect him'... but instead Horobi's there because it's too early for Jin to leave the nest, and slaps a belt on Jin, forcibly causing him to transform. Jin's acting is great in this scene as we really do feel like he's hurting and being forced to transform. We now have confirmation that Jin's also a Humagear, and as he's taken over by Metsubojinrai.net, the transformation sequence as Jin transforms into Kamen Rider Jin looks absolutely painful. From his static pose as his undersuit manifests, to the way that the belt seems to forcibly pull the parts of the suit together... pretty cool stuff.

The fight then goes in a four-way fight as Jin swoops in with his blade wings to attack Zero-one, and as Jin and Froggy is about to rip Zero-One apart, AIMS arrives as Yua transforms into Valkyrie. Aruto, being a good man, still wants to find a way to protect Seine and return her to normal, but Valkyrie knows damn well what she's doing and she is going to murder this threat to humanity. After Valkyrie's cheetah form gets trounced by the random CGI frogs, Valkyrie transforms into Lightning Hornet, which has awesome energy Gundam wings, as well as the ability to launch CGI hornets out of her boob armour beehive decals. It's a badass scene all around as Lightning Hornet just flies around, dodging and weaving and absolutely dominating the fight against the Frog Magia, eventually unleashing an electricity-themed finisher.

Fuwa eventually arrives, and we get Vulcan and Valkyrie in their powered-up forms attacking Kamen Rider Jin. The CGI of Punching Kong causing a weird goopy wave on the ground is a bit iffy in this scene, I must say. But we don't get any real conclusion from this, and the Metsubojinrai.net boys escape. And that's the end of the episode, after a brief epilogue about how Izu and Aruto manage to arrange the movement of an AI with Seine's voice into an Alexa-esque thing. Which... probably still isn't super-healthy for Seiji to properly move on, but at least he's happy, y'know?

Ultimately, I feel like this might be my favourite episode of Zero-One so far. The theme of parent and child is done amazingly well, with the relationships between Horobi/Jin, Seiji/Seine and even Aruto with his robo-dad all portrayed and contrasted very well. Jin's utter confusion about being confronted with all of this, and the clear signs that Horobi's manipulating him, is also portrayed well. I did feel like the conclusion of the Seiji/Seine story was a bit rushed, but between the solid themes, the solid action and CGI, and the smooth debut of both Kamen Rider Jin and Valkyrie's Lightning Hornet form, ultimately this is a pretty well-done episode all aroud. 

Random Notes:

• In addition to Seiji and Seine appearing and meeting the mangaka during an audition in episode 5, Seiji was also the old man who was super-excited in being able to customize the appearance of his Humagear during Aruto and Izu's explanation at the beginning of episode 5. 
• The props team had a field day with easter eggs in this one:
• A poster on the main entrance of the voice-acting studio advertises a boxing manga with a main character who appears to be part-dragon, a clear reference to Banjou Ryuga, a.k.a. Kamen Rider Cross-Z, the dragon-themed secondary rider from Kamen Rider Build, whose original job was a boxer. 
• Said poster also had a bunny rabbit with a blue necklace in the background, a reference to Sento Kiryu, the main character of Build, whose main form was RabbitTank. Presumably that blue necklace is the 'tank' part of the equation.
• Eagle-eyed viewers also spotted a poster for "Magical Girl Koyomi" in one of the studio backgrounds. Koyomi, of course, is one of the main characters in Kamen Rider Wizard, and was a very magical girl! 
• The Gimmick Watch: 
• "Wing! Force rise. Flying Falcon: break down." Note the distinct lack of 'authorize' anywhere in Jin's transformation. The falcon swoops in and envelops him with his wings, which is pretty neat-looking. 
• "Thunder! Authorize. Shot Rise. LIGHTNINNGGGG HORNET! Piercing needle with incredible force."
• Lightning Hornet's finisher is "Thunder: Lightning Blast Fever!", and it's her version of a rider kick -- although instead of an explosion, Valkyrie's feet extends into a massive blade. 
• Know your Magia: Seine gets turned into the Gaeru Magia. Gaeru is just frog, in Japanese. At first, I thought it's a bit of a weird breaking of the pattern of extinct animals, but turns out that the vomiting out of CGI frogs is a reference to a specific extinct frog, the Rheobatrachus genus of gastric-brooding frogs, who incubated their young in their stomachs... but it still kind of makes me wonder why they chose the word 'frog' to assign to the key as opposed to the scientific Latin name like all the other Magia. 
• That one Trilobite Magia that crawls up to Seiji and Seine during the first attack has a really well-acted creepy crawling on all fours. 
• Presumably Jin's going to be the primary user of the Flying Falcon key. Is that why Zero-One doesn't have a finisher associated with the form?
• Aruto's phone app tells him to 'please watch your head' before beaming down the transforming cell phone motorbike from space.
• We haven't had a bee or wasp-themed rider since, oh, Kamen Rider TheBee, huh?