Kamen Rider Zero-One E15 Review: Mid-Season Forms Galore

Kamen Rider Zero-One, Episode 15: The End of Each

We're sort of shaking up the two-parter formula again, aren't we? Because this is kinda-sorta a follow-up to the space-bros episode 14, but also kind of its own thing that's a huge cliffhanger to whatever's going to happen in the next episode. I'm a huge fan of this. Not quite such a big fan at how fast everything's paced, but that's not a huge complaint. I'm not that broken up by the fact that, say, Spacebro #2 doesn't get enough screentime or whatever.

We start off the episode with what seems to be an interesting buildup to a climax, with AIMS is mobilizing with Fuwa being angry and single-minded and all angry and shit. Meanwhile, as Jin continues to approach singularity, he ends up making a grave around the Dodo Zetumerize (Progrise?) Key with rocks and stuff, noting that this is to commemorate the deaths of his good buddy Assassin-chan and his big brother Ikazuchi, but Horobi tells him to stop being a fucking filthy human, noting that all he's doing is looking up human behaviours and being a fool. What horrid parenting, and I feel like there's a genuinely well-done unsettling bit of acting as Jin goes straight into cheery jumping and going 'all right!', like this is something inconsequential.

Speaking of gravesites, Aruto and Izu bring Subaru to visit the Hiden family grave, and we get a couple of neat speeches. The Spacebros are genuinely rushed and pushed to the background as far as how memorable they are compared to previous guest stars, but there's a great moment when Subaru rejects his brother for being a filthy traitor, but Aruto tells Subaru to have faith in his family, how all Humagears are his family, and Izu even has a precious little flashback to Wazu, and she confirms that, yeah, big brothers are a special existence and Izu understands what Aruto's getting at, even giving her respects in front of the Hiden family grave. Why the hell is Izu not 'awakened' yet? I feel like every other Humagear that's awakened had done so with far less development than Izu. Case in point, Subaru, who ends up achieving singularity and gaining blue eyes shortly after Aruto and Izu gave their respective speeches.

But that's essentially the extent of Subaru's development in this episode. He does recur as a background character for Aruto to bounce dialogue off of, but he's just sort of in the background as crazy action stuff is going on. AIMS is mobilized and it's a cool shot seeing Fuwa and Yua leading an army of soldiers with assault rifles on the bridge leading to Daybreak Town, facing off against Horobi and Jin. We get a four-way transformation as Jin, Horobi, Valkyrie and Vulcan's shiny new toy form transform and do battle. We get a pretty cool bit as the soldiers try their best to help up, machine-gunning Jin, but since they're boring ol' soldiers and this isn't a Michael Bay movie, Jin just lobs his feather daggers and knocks the entire army down. Only Kamen Riders are allowed to fight here!

The fight moves on a cliffside overlooking a pond. Horobi is overpowering Valkyrie and about to take her out (poor Valkyrie can't catch a break in these episodes, huh?) but Shining Hopper shows up and zips around Horobi, shooting and kicking and punching and stuff before unleashing a finisher with his fancy toy shotgun (it's a grasshopper shaped beam) that knocks Horobi flat on his ass. Speaking of finishers, Fuwa also unleashes his own finisher, although it's clear throughout this fight that he's suffering some of that power-up side effects and he's certainly feeling pain.

It's at this point that time freezes for Horobi, who's contacted by the Ark... and he just shrugs his shoulders and obeys the Ark's orders, pushing Jin out of the way and taking Fuwa's magnetic storm fever spinning chompy-chomp wolf attack head-on. And Horobi explodes! Fuwa collapses and coughs up blood, causing Aruto and Yua to scramble and evacuate him out of the battlefield.

More interestingly, though, is Horobi's sudden 'death'. I put death in quotation marks because throughout this episode it seems like it's not permanent at all? We could be rushing through what was intended to be a more drawn-out act-one finale or whatever, or it could just be a bit of a fake-out. Regardless, though, Horobi's dying and wounded and Jin's panicking. In perhaps one of the more awkward sequence in this episode is Izu showing up and just standing there to give a commentary about how the leader of Mestubojinrai.net has fallen and nothing bad's going to happen... and Jin gets so angry that he launches a tentacle that stabs Izu through the gut, ranting about why Izu would smile at the sight of another Humagear being hurt.

And we get this simultaneous cradle scene of Aruto panicking over Izu, while Jin, still in full Kamen Rider form, carries Horobi's wounded body as he walks into the lake. That's pretty neat. A while later we get to see Jin desperately trying to fix Horobi, but Horobi tells Jin that this is the whole point of what the Ark wants -- for Jin to properly reach singularity, by witnessing the death of his 'father' and having all the hatred fester in him. I'm not quite sure if Jin is explicitly special or what, but apparently all of this is just a gambit to have Jin awaken 'properly', and not in the way that he presumably nearly reached singularity back in the voice actor episode.


Also, more interestingly, is Amatsu Gai. He's just sort of being built up as this master manipulator, talking about how Mestubojinrai.net is done for, how it's destined to fail no matter what, and it's just a matter of how many Kamen Riders they throw at Metsubojinrai. With his 'mythology' talk last episode, it seems to imply that Gai and Zaia Enterprise is just using Metsubojinrai as the threat, as the case-profile, to take the fall so that the Kamen Rider can be proven to be effective as weapons of the new era. It's heavily implied that Gai's likely behind the Ark's creation or something along those lines. It's interesting, though, because we really don't know just how involved Gai and Metsubojinrai are, and if Metsubojinrai are willing accomplices or just pawns.

Juxtaposed with the Jin-tries-to-fix-Horobi scene is Aruto and Subaru trying to fix Izu, and it's some great scripting and acting just to see the normally cheery Aruto be so broken and barely holding his emotions together. When Fukuzoe and his lackeys show up to do their thing of mocking Aruto and demanding how the CEO will answer, Aruto's reply is a barely-restrained angry growl about how this "isn't a good time", and he straight-up loses it when someone mentions that they could just easily replace Izu with another model. Aruto just rants about how Izu just "figured out what family means" and stuff. Fukuzoe leaves the episode for now, but threatens that they'll hold a meeting to kick Aruto out of Hiden Intelligence within a day. Izu, of course, is very likely not dead and Zea is just fixing the hole in her chest.

Jin's awakening activates some weird purple cables to activate, and apparently this ends up causing a bunch of fabrication to begin, creating a small army of Trilobite Magia for Jin? I'm not sure if this is the same thing as the fabricator making the Assault Wolf Key last episode or something completely different. Regardless, though, Jin ends up leading his army to wreak havoc, hacking AIMS' Giger squad off-screen. We get a neat scene of AIMS filled with wounded soldiers, including Fuwa, and despite Yua's warnings Fuwa just does the silly-macho thing of ripping out his IV line and going off to fight.

Likewise, Aruto also goes off to battle, leaving Izu to Subaru, and I really do love Aruto's expressions in this scene, where he's clearly torn about leaving Izu behind be he knows this is his duty and he must see it through.

The gigers attack at night, which is a neat, atmospheric move and also probably a way for the studio to cheat in animating the gigers destroying buildings. Yua and Fuwa show up and do a double-transformation, and Jin is noticeably a bit less... eclectic. He's just sitting like an anime villain, smart enough to sic his trilobites at the AIMS riders and has seemingly stopped seeing everything as a game. The random trilobite mooks end up managing to wound Fuwa so much that Yua is forced to take the Assault Wolf key out of his belt, since it's dangerous to his well-being... but then Jin explicitly sics the gigers on Valkyrie. They don't manage to kill our heroes, but they do manage to smash the AIMS van and knock Valkyrie out of her transformation.

Of course, it's Aruto time. He charges in with Breaking Mammoth, who makes quick work of the gigers, before Aruto calmly walks out of the dust, demanding answers from Jin. Sure, he hates humans, but why did he hurt Izu? After getting the answer that Jin considers Humagears as 'friends', Aruto's absolutely angry as he points out just how much Jin has hurt, twisted and broken others of his kind, not just Izu, and how 'someone who does that cannot be considered a friend!' we get a pretty badass transformation scene as Jin finally transforms into his Kamen Rider form in the night.

Aruto, meanwhile, picks up the Assault Wolf Key that got dropped during the fight, mutters about Satellite Zea anticipating this... and the rips out the little gray dongle at the end of the Assault Wolf Key, attaches his own Shining Hopper Key, and transforms -- the beams that come towards Aruto comes from both Ark and Zea, and it turns him into Shining Assault Hopper, which... looks like the fused form of Assault Wolf and Shining Hopper? The episode ends with the cliffhanger of Shining Assault Hopper charging in to fight Jin.

Ultimately, it's an episode that moves fast. The AIMS/Metsubo confrontation, Horobi's seeming death, Jin's awakening, the revelation of Gai's machinations, and eventually the debut of Zero-One's new power-up form no less than three episodes after his previous power-up form... it's certainly a hectic, fast-paced episode. I'm entertained. Time will tell if this is an abrupt shift in the plot or actually a well-done misdirection. In any case, there's definitely a massive sense of the confrontation and the climax ramping up, and I'm all about that!

Random Notes:

• The opening features the crossover movie with Kamen Rider Zi-O, and we don't quite get that many scenes. We did get to see Woz whack a Magia with his future-bible, which is hilarious, and some giant Kamen Rider whose waist is fused to a giant bike? A bike-taur? I don't follow the news for the lead-up to this movie, and apparently this is Another Ichigo. Okay.
• The Gimmick Watch:
• With Zero-One using the Authorize buster, the finisher is called "Zero One Dust", and as mentioned in the review, the beam turns into a glowing grasshopper. 
• Assault Wolf Vulcan's finisher is "Assault Charge: Magnetic Storm Blast Fever", which turns his legs into like CGI wolf fangs in the same way of Kamen Rider Rogue's finisher two seasons ago. 
• Shining Assault Hopper's transformation jingle is "Hyper jump! Over-rise! Progrise! Warning. Warning. This is not a test. Hybrid rise! Shining Assault Hopper! No chance of surviving this shot."
• Shining Assault Hopper really looks like it was originally conceived to be a fusion form between Assault Wolf and Shining Hopper, like they really fused a la Zi-O Trinity or something. I'm curious if there's going to be some real explanation to why S.A.H. has Assault Wolf parts or if we're just sort of shrugging it off. 
• I swear that pond-cliff that the second act fight takes place in is like, a fight site that's somewhat familiar from Ex-Aid, I want to say? Where they fought Cronus one time? 
• Last episode went all the way noting that Metsubojinrai is comprised of four kanji characters, so it's very, very likely that despite what Gai claims, we haven't seen the last of them just yet. 
• If we don't know Gai's association with Kamen Rider Thouser, his bizarre fixation and hard-on with the number one-thousand is pretty stupid, huh? He quite literally just goes "MY PROGRESS IS 9-9-9-PERCEEEENT COMPLETE!" apropos of nothing. 
• I'm not sure if the subtitles translated it correctly or not, but apparently Jin claims that his ability to hack the Gigers en-masse is because of his 'awakened' ability.