Kamen Rider Zero One E08 Review: Horobi's Katana

Kamen Rider Zero-One, Episode 8: The Beginning of Destruction Starts Here

So this episode is our very first two-parter, after a series of stand-alone episodes. It's actually pretty surprising, considering a lot of the Heisei-era shows tended to either be almost-exclusively comprised of two-parter story arcs or being completely episodic, and I'm definitely up for it if Kamen Rider Zero-One and the rest of the Reiwa era is a lot more flexible with swapping back and forth depending on the needs of the story. 

That said, though, the setup of this episode really does end up feeling like yet another Humagear-of-the-week, with the guest star this time around being the White-coat Angel Mashirochan, an absolutely lovely Humagear doctor, and in the midst of Aruto's antics, we get to see just how much more effective robot doctors and nurses are -- even if I'm not sure measuring a patient's weight by lifting them up with super-strength is kosher. And honestly, in a job where efficiency is key and where real-life medical staff tend to be overworked all to hell, it's actually a pretty neat bit of world-building for sure.

We get a bit more of comedy as Aruto goes through his failed-comedian routine in the hospital, before Fuwa goes through his routine, talking about how shit robot doctors are and how it makes him feel not quite right inside. He's a racist man, isn't he? Of course, Mashirochan immediately saves a random pregnant woman from falling, just to disprove Fuwa's point. 

While this is going on, we get the return of good ol' Dodo (Antatsu-chan, Assassin-chan, whatever you want to call him -- I prefer 'Dodo'). Horobi apparently recreated Dodo from a 'saved' previous iteration, but Dodo's attempts to hack a Humagear nurse in the hospital ends up being absolutely foiled because of the good security system or something, while Dodo continues to make funny faces. We get to see a whole lot of extinction-themed speeches from Horobi and Jin, talking about the large amount of humans they have to extinct-ize. So they decide to target Yua!

We also basically have the confirmation that Yua's mysterious Man In A Shadowed Room (tm) boss is a member of Zaia Industries, and it is Zaia that has been producing the other Progrise Keys that AIMS has been using. And their latest project is the Giga, a bunch of giant robots that could, theoretically, show up and reverse-hack rogue Magia. They look like a cross-breed between a Gundam and the giant Time Mazine from Zi-O.



The Metsubojinrai.net boys attack the AIMS facility, fighting against Yua, and we get a pretty cool sequence of an upgraded Dodo Magia (he's got swords!) and Kamen Rider Jin (who did get to dash into the Giga hangar and apparently attach a Zetsu-driver to one) fighting against Valkyrie's hornet form. It's kind of poor showing for poor Valkyrie and she does get tossed around a lot in this episode. Normally I would say that it's another showcase of the showmakers of a tokusatsu show using the lady as the sub-par fighter, but I'm not going to make that comparison now -- Valkyrie is outnumbered in all her fights in this episode, and it's not like we get a 'Vulcan/Zero-One is absolutely better'. While Valkyrie is busy fighting Dodo, Horobi steals a bunch of briefcase weapons, including a new toy, the Attache Arrow, which Jin shows off by using to knock out Valkyrie.

And... yeah, as Aruto, Izu and Fuwa show up, and they check up on the Giga, they... didn't think to look a bit further? I guess they sort of make a point of showing that our main characters considered the hack, but it still felt kind of an idiot ball on AIMS' part.

Yua ends up getting a check-up and an arm sling from Mashirochan, and, of course, Fuwa takes this time to go on a rant on those filthy robot doctors is 'bad for your health', causing Yua to snap at Fuwa and tell him to shut up and 'keep [his] biases out of this'. So far, Yua does fall pretty neatly in the pragmatic middle ground between Aruto's robot-love and Fuwa's robot-racism. Of course, it's at this point that Mashirochan randomly suggests that maybe Fuwa could get a brain scan if he's not feeling well -- something she's not about to say. The cast of the show attributes that to Mashirochan's care for her patients and humanity causing her to transcend her programming and her potentially gaining sentience, but it's my personal opinion that Mashirochan just none-too-subtly made a snarky insult at Fuwa's assholishness.

Anyway, after a bit of a check-up in Hiden and a brief exposition dump about how AI might achieve 'singularity' and Fuwa being absolutely ready to shoot poor Mashirochan in the head (even Yua stands in his way), the discussion about Fuwa's aggressive shoot-first-ask-questions-never behaviour gets tabled because the hacked Giga giant robot has escaped and is smashing up the hospital. We get a cool scene of Izu joining the other Humagear staff in saving the patients, which I liked.

The Mestu-boys show up, and we finally get the revelation that everyone was sort of suspecting (Jin was essentially confirmed, but Horobi's a bit more questionable), but not quite sure -- they are both Humagears, and they're hiding their weird ear-mechanical-piece thing under their bandana and hoodie respectively. Horobi does a bit of a katana-swirling thing as he gives a big bad guy speech about how the humagear will inherit the earth after humanity's extinction, before ordering the Giga to mass-hack all of the hospital staff. Some great acting from the very hopeful (and subsequently hope-crushed) Aruto as he tries to plead with Mashirochan, only to have her deliver an absolutely unsettling laugh and transform into a Trilobite Magia.

And then we have an absolutely awesome four-way transformation scene, including a sequence where Aruto's hopper buddy slams in from outer space and stomps Jin's falcon buddy straight into the ground, and the two of them clash around a bit before the henshin sequence is completed. Absolutely love this sequence. The action scene that happens next is also pretty cool, and I love the casual ease of Vulcan's Punching Kong form just charging forwards and knocking two Trilobites to the ground. Eventually we get a 1-v-1 between Zero-One and the Dodo Magia, and we get Izu just tossing Progrise Key after Progrise Key to Zero-One as he goes through the shark, bear and tiger forms before blowing up the Dodo Magia -- pretty cool sequence.

While all of this going on, Vulcan and Valkyrie fight against Jin and the trilobite mooks and they enter The Warehouse (tm). Valkyrie and Vulcan eventually team up against Jin and knock him down... only for Horobi to do a badass walk in and show off his katana again (I can't decide if it's cool or ridiculous, to be honest), talking about the 'day of revolution' and whatnot, before slapping his own Force Riser and transforming into Kamen Rider Horobi. Fuwa immediately recognizes Horobi as the mysterious figure from the tour guide episode, realizing that Horobi is the person responsible for Daybreak, and he goes absolutely ballistic.

While Jin fights Valkyrie and holds her back (we've been having a lot of Jin/Valkyrie fights in these past two episodes, huh?), Fuwa goes all crazy as he gets to see the person who's essentially responsible for all the grief in his life, and he unleashes everything he has, and we get some amazing screaming as he machineguns Horobi down with his toy gun-belt, before unleashing a rocket-fist finisher thing... but Horobi's both the new toy being promoted and also the main villain, and he is, of course, completely unscathed. After a brief usage of the Hercules Beetle key to unleash an attack with his bow, we get a cool sequence of Horobi kicking Vulcan in the neck and then walking away as a ridiculously large explosion eats up the warehouse. We even have some kanji for "Sting Dystopia" show up on screen, which I thought was pretty damn cool.

And the episode ends with the cliffhanger of Fuwa being completely and utterly destroyed (and also ineffective) against Horobi, and the Metsu-boys having both a small army of magia minions and a hacked Giga. Overall, it's going through what's essentially 'oh shit, time to get serious' part of the show as we properly introduce a main villain, and I'm curious to see how things will go for sure. A pretty top-notch episode, for sure. 

Random Notes:

• Different translation teams name the giant robot suits either "Giga" or "Giger". I'll go with the former until we get a more definitive romanization of the Japanese. 
• I kind of feel like the X-Ray segment with Aruto in the very first scene is to quash any theories of Aruto being a Humagear himself. Or at least as a misdirection. 
• The Dodo Magia being reset to its previous, pre-death memory and configuration doesn't just explain how the other guest-star AI managed to survive (in a fashion), but also how Jin lost the character development and doubts he got in the sixth episode, because he was reverted back into the crazy psycho man--child by Horobi when he first transformed!
• I'm not 100% clear if it's the Humagear in the hospital that are just extra hack-proof, or if Hiden Intelligence did a software update for all their Humagear between episode 7 and 8. 
• This episode is a goldmine for Izu doing hilarious things in the background. Basically every time they show up is glorious, but highlights among their antics include:
• Izu's "scanning for laughter: none found" little speedy head-spin.
• Izu pulling Aruto outof sight as he makes faces at Fuwa from a distance, unwittingly smashing Aruto's head into the wall next to him.
• Izu's little jumping away when the Giga's tentacle whips swoop down; and then also moving away before all the chaos of transformation occurs. 
• Izu copying Aruto's thumb-pointing-at-himself in the background when he's all "I'm the only one that can stop you!"
• Izu's over-the-head clapping after Aruto blows up Dodo. 
• Dodo flapping his arms uselessly as he transforms into the Dodo Magia is also absolutely adorable. 
• So, uh... what's up with Horobi posing around with that katana? I mean, sure is cool, but why?
• The 'chan' in Mashirochan's name isn't just a suffix because she's cute -- the Hiden data readout actually parses her name as 'Mashirochan', so it's actually part of her name. The same readout also notes that Mashirochan is "all serene", and has a little paragraph going "She has the name of an angel in white, she is loved by everyone, she is helping everyone, she is". Okay! 
• The Gimmick Watch:
• "Force Riser. Poison! Force rise: Sting Scorpion!" Horobi's transformation summons a scorpion buddy, who stings him in the chest before wrapping its claws and legs all around him. Sting Scorpion's attack is "Sting Dystopia". Unlike the good guys' finishers, Horobi's finishers show up in Kanji. 
• "Strongk! Hercules Beetle's Ability!" Apparently, the ability of a Hercules beetle is to shoot out green energy beams. Absolutely love the actually decent English in this season's toys. 
• We've got a bunch of additional named attacks, including the Flaming Kaban Dynamic (Flaming Tiger + Attache Calibur) and I think we've seen Power Punching Blast before?