Kamen Rider Zero-One, Episode 13: I Work As The President's Secretary
Well this was kind of late. Oops! I'm like, two weeks behind or something? It's admittedly better time than I'm making for the CW superhero shows, though! Last we left off, Aruto's assumed his first-quarter-season upgrade, Shining Hopper... which leads to an interestingly abrupt fight? We get some Ultra Instinct "I can see all the moves you can possibly make" CGI sequence between Shining Hopper and Dodo Mk. III, but Dodo quickly learns what Shining Hopper can do and absolutely demolishes Aruto, grabbing him mid-punch and tossing him aside. We get the hilarious snark from Aruto about how "isn't it too early for you to figure this out?" Yeah, yeah, Aruto, at two minutes into the episode, it certainly is. After Aruto takes a hit that was originally meant for Izu, it's Wazu to the rescue as he charges (well, speed-walks) in and activates the Breaking Mammoth key to summon the giant mammoth spaceship and beam the good guy squad away.
So yeah, that's an interesting way to start off the episode, with the shiny new toy beaten up. The Hiden robots basically talk about how the Shining Hopper key is incomplete, while Fuwa just wants to murder the rogue Magia. Basically it's a bit of a mission statement between Aruto and Fuwa, both of whom want to stop the Dodo Assassin for their own reasons, and they head off to stop Dodo-chan from hunting down Number 5, his 'brother'. As the boys head off, Izu and Wazu discuss about the power of intuition, since last episode Wazu did warn them not to use the Shining Hopper key for some reason... and apparently that's Grandpa Korenosuke's influence making Wazu achieve singularity and having gut feelings and whatnot? Their discussion (and some 'call me your big bro' moment from Wazu) is interrupted by Yua, who they catch up with off-screen.
Aruto and Fuwa, meanwhile, head off against a small army of lesser Dodo Magia, and I do like the little description from Fuwa about how transforming into a Kamen Rider will 'compensate' for Aruto's current injuries. We get a cool double-henshin and they fight the Dodo Grunts... and then Horobi and Jin show up and Horobi blows up some of the Dodo Grunts with his suitcase bow-and-arrow. Jin has an adorable sad face when he says that assassin-chan won't listen to them anymore, aww, poor baby. Horobi offers a truce. Work together to fight the third party villain, that's like a superhero tradition, right? But Aruto and Fuwa absolutely refuse to do so, which is... actually surprising. I guess the past couple of seasons of Kamen Rider I've watched features so much "your enemy is my enemy" stuff that actually seeing them not even entertain the thought of fighting alongside the big bads actually caught me off-guard! But it definitely makes sense. Fuwa is a rabid anti-robot racist and Aruto absolutely loathes Metsubojinrai.net for stomping all over what his Humagear dream. Yua even shows up in Valkyrie form to take the first shot against Horobi! These Kamen Riders don't negotiate with terrorists.
The Kamen Rider trio regroup in the van again, and... well, Fuwa and Aruto have sort of became buddies, as Yua surmises, and that's kinda funny. Wazu figures out where they should go to hunt down Number 5, while Izu collects Aruto's power-up keys to properly synchronize with Shining Hopper or something. And as the Kamen Riders deploy to fight the villain, Izu and Wazu get an interesting conversation about the 'central memory', and apparently, since Izu and Wazu are part of the Zero One Project, they are special humagears who can't upload their central memory anywhere as a security precaution... which means that there's the threat of them getting permanently killed since unlike Dodo-chan, they can't make backups. Obviously, this is going to lead to some Izu angst down the line, which is interesting.
It's kind of a shame that Dodo-chan at this point has basically devolved into a generic toku monster talking about festivals of blood and shit. One of the more endearing qualities about the character that msdr me latch onto him so much was that he's slowly learning about everything around him, learning how to be a murderer, and now that he's just going "mwahaha, join my festival of blood, brother" really feels like they're simplifying him a lot.
The confrontation starts off with Fuwa shooting the bullet away from hitting #5. Fuwa, protecting a Humagear? It's a pretty well-done and surprisingly subtle bit of character development from our angry boy -- Kamen Rider shows aren't this subtle usually and I'm genuinely surprised we didn't get a comment from one of the other characters noting this. Anyway, we get a badass triple henshin (Power! Jump! Thunder!) as the trio heads off to beat up a bunch of dodos.
Izu and Wazu, meanwhile, are having a bit of a conversation and apparently Satellite Zea underestimated Aruto's growth over the past couple of episodes, and in a surprising reversal of the "power up item is too much for our hero" trope, it's the opposite this time around. I'm not quite sure how that works, though, although I guess it's Aruto's mind that is growing? Izu uploads combat data from the other keys into Shining Hopper, but because of drama reasons it's not quite enough and Izu resolves to upload her own records of Aruto's combat data into Shining Hopper. You watched the same fights that these keys have been in, Izu, what are you on about? Of course it's the guest star that ends up sacrificing himself, and Wazu ends up shoving Izu aside and uploading his own combat data instead. Apparently that one fight where Aruto got his ass kicked was enough to complete the data that Shining Hopper needs? Okay, sure. It's pretty dramatic. Wazu's actor does the little dramatic acting pretty well, even giving a neat motivational speech about how the best way that Izu can support their boss is by being by his side.
We even get what amounts to Wazu's life flashing before his eyes, quite literally qhen his hologram projector shows us a brief memory of Grandpa Korenosuke telling Wazu to be prepared to support his little sister Izu when she reaches singularity. And Izu finally calls Wazu "big brother" like he had been pestering her to do just as he passes. Pretty well done death scene for a guest star, actually!
In the battlefield, Dodo-chan uses his "sword bash a bunch of missiles" finisher to knock Aruto out of his transformation while the AIMS boys are distracted fighting the dodo goons, and we get a pretty neat exchange with Aruto yelling about how "if you can learn how to beat me, I can learn how to beat you!" Izu lobs the Shining Hopper key between Aruto and Dodo's next attack, and the shining new toy emits so much power it blows away Dodo's attack. Izu tells Aruto that Wazu dies making sure that key is completed, even acknowledging him as her brother again, and Aruto's expression of a combination of confusion, grief and gratefulness is amazing. Aruto isn't the best-written character in this show but his actor sure does have some pretty great moments.
We get a repeat of the fantastic Shining Hopper henshin sequence. 'When I shine, darkness fades' and all that. Shining Hopper moves way, way faster than before, appearing in multiple spots in that Sherlock-Holmes-predictive-move sequence, and apparently Shining Hopper moves and adapts so fast that it defies expectations at the last second. Aruto gets a badass one-liner: "the only person that can outdo me... is me!" With a speedy finisher, Aruto blows the fuck out of the Dodo Magia. Sleep well, sweet prince. It's not the best exit for Dodo, especially since he's certainly grown as an actual character over the couple of episodes that he's been in. I've watched the next episode and I know that this is goodbye for Ansatsu-chan for the time being, but with Number 5 still running around I'm holding out hope for my favourite supporting character making a return someday.
Horobi shows up and stops the AIMS duo from claiming the dodo key, Sting Dystopia-ing the two of them and then buggering off with the dodo key, delivering an ominous line about how Zero-One is now worth fearing. Amatsu Gai also watches and drops hints about how he would like to see Shining Hopper fight "Thouser". Foreshadowing! The episode ends with Dodo and Wazu dead, but they didn't quite get the key that will help fix Hiden Intelligence's reputation. I do really like that final scene where Aruto is battered and bruised but just picks himself back up to do press conferences and other stuff that bosses are supposed to do, with Izu being all smiles and supportive. It's pretty neat showing just how seriously Aruto's taking his day job even if we don't see him doing a boss a lot of the time.
This two-parter in general does kind of suffer from a bit of a choppy pacing and perhaps trying to do too much? I did like that eventually the focus in this episode ends up being on Wazu and Izu, otherwise that death scene wouldn't quite work as well as it did. On the flip side, though, both the Dodo Magia's exit and the whole police investigation plot sort of gets a slight shaft. It's still a neat two-parter, though, and sort of feels like we're entering a new phase of the show -- the Dodo arc is over, and it's definitely exciting to see what is up next!
The confrontation starts off with Fuwa shooting the bullet away from hitting #5. Fuwa, protecting a Humagear? It's a pretty well-done and surprisingly subtle bit of character development from our angry boy -- Kamen Rider shows aren't this subtle usually and I'm genuinely surprised we didn't get a comment from one of the other characters noting this. Anyway, we get a badass triple henshin (Power! Jump! Thunder!) as the trio heads off to beat up a bunch of dodos.
Izu and Wazu, meanwhile, are having a bit of a conversation and apparently Satellite Zea underestimated Aruto's growth over the past couple of episodes, and in a surprising reversal of the "power up item is too much for our hero" trope, it's the opposite this time around. I'm not quite sure how that works, though, although I guess it's Aruto's mind that is growing? Izu uploads combat data from the other keys into Shining Hopper, but because of drama reasons it's not quite enough and Izu resolves to upload her own records of Aruto's combat data into Shining Hopper. You watched the same fights that these keys have been in, Izu, what are you on about? Of course it's the guest star that ends up sacrificing himself, and Wazu ends up shoving Izu aside and uploading his own combat data instead. Apparently that one fight where Aruto got his ass kicked was enough to complete the data that Shining Hopper needs? Okay, sure. It's pretty dramatic. Wazu's actor does the little dramatic acting pretty well, even giving a neat motivational speech about how the best way that Izu can support their boss is by being by his side.
We even get what amounts to Wazu's life flashing before his eyes, quite literally qhen his hologram projector shows us a brief memory of Grandpa Korenosuke telling Wazu to be prepared to support his little sister Izu when she reaches singularity. And Izu finally calls Wazu "big brother" like he had been pestering her to do just as he passes. Pretty well done death scene for a guest star, actually!
In the battlefield, Dodo-chan uses his "sword bash a bunch of missiles" finisher to knock Aruto out of his transformation while the AIMS boys are distracted fighting the dodo goons, and we get a pretty neat exchange with Aruto yelling about how "if you can learn how to beat me, I can learn how to beat you!" Izu lobs the Shining Hopper key between Aruto and Dodo's next attack, and the shining new toy emits so much power it blows away Dodo's attack. Izu tells Aruto that Wazu dies making sure that key is completed, even acknowledging him as her brother again, and Aruto's expression of a combination of confusion, grief and gratefulness is amazing. Aruto isn't the best-written character in this show but his actor sure does have some pretty great moments.
We get a repeat of the fantastic Shining Hopper henshin sequence. 'When I shine, darkness fades' and all that. Shining Hopper moves way, way faster than before, appearing in multiple spots in that Sherlock-Holmes-predictive-move sequence, and apparently Shining Hopper moves and adapts so fast that it defies expectations at the last second. Aruto gets a badass one-liner: "the only person that can outdo me... is me!" With a speedy finisher, Aruto blows the fuck out of the Dodo Magia. Sleep well, sweet prince. It's not the best exit for Dodo, especially since he's certainly grown as an actual character over the couple of episodes that he's been in. I've watched the next episode and I know that this is goodbye for Ansatsu-chan for the time being, but with Number 5 still running around I'm holding out hope for my favourite supporting character making a return someday.
Horobi shows up and stops the AIMS duo from claiming the dodo key, Sting Dystopia-ing the two of them and then buggering off with the dodo key, delivering an ominous line about how Zero-One is now worth fearing. Amatsu Gai also watches and drops hints about how he would like to see Shining Hopper fight "Thouser". Foreshadowing! The episode ends with Dodo and Wazu dead, but they didn't quite get the key that will help fix Hiden Intelligence's reputation. I do really like that final scene where Aruto is battered and bruised but just picks himself back up to do press conferences and other stuff that bosses are supposed to do, with Izu being all smiles and supportive. It's pretty neat showing just how seriously Aruto's taking his day job even if we don't see him doing a boss a lot of the time.
This two-parter in general does kind of suffer from a bit of a choppy pacing and perhaps trying to do too much? I did like that eventually the focus in this episode ends up being on Wazu and Izu, otherwise that death scene wouldn't quite work as well as it did. On the flip side, though, both the Dodo Magia's exit and the whole police investigation plot sort of gets a slight shaft. It's still a neat two-parter, though, and sort of feels like we're entering a new phase of the show -- the Dodo arc is over, and it's definitely exciting to see what is up next!
Random Notes:
- Gimmick Watch: "Bit-rise byte-rise kilo-rise mega-rise. Shining Mega Impact!" So how high does the prefixes go?
- For the power-level geeks out there (and this is Kamen Rider, power levels are quite literally bullshit and dependant on the requirement of the episode), Shining Hopper at the beginning of the episode is merely a 180% increase in power, whereas at the end of the episode it's 500%.
- I didn't get Izu and Wazu's punny names until like right now. "Was" is the past tense of "is", after all.
- The robotic way that Izu and Wazu raises their hands when Yua barges into the AIMS van is perfect.
- Thirteen episodes into the series, and Horobi finally uses that fucking katana for something more than just edgy-posing, using it to deflect Valkyrie's bullet.
- Izu gets Wazu's pocketwatch. I'm not sure if it'll be important down the line?
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