Kamen Rider Zero-One, Episode 21: Objection! This Trial!
Another two-parter that's essentially another part of the Zaia-vs-Hiden competition and... it's still kind of annoying just how slow-paced and repetitive these episodes have been, y'know? There's good material and some neat build-up, but the fact that we really blazed through like so many heavy plotlines in the November/December episodes only to then end up going to a pretty slow slog isn't the best look for Zero One, particularly with how rushed the Metsubojinrai.net arc ended up becoming. I did say in my reviews for those episodes that how much I like the twist is going to depend on whether the sudden plot development is going to lead to a faster-paced arc, but honestly, these past episodes have been... they haven't been bad, but the pacing's really slow and it's going to be jarring especially for anyone who's going to binge-watch this a couple of years in the future.
Anyway, the set up for episode 21 is relatively identical to the previous couple of two-parters. It's the lawyer job that they're setting up a fight for, with Bingo the Humagear Lawyer going up against Ichimori, the stern-looking Zaia spec prosecutor. There is a case where the dude in question is someone who's being sued for allegedly perpetrating an engagement fraud. Izu and Aruto lampshade how ridiculously dumb it is to have the results of a trial that's about deciding guilt is something that's also being used as an inter-company competition, but I can buy Gai's defense on 'wouldn't you use your Humagear tools to save another person's life' working on Aruto.
That said, though, there's not a whole ton to the trial? We get the prosecution's version of events, as well as Bingo's defense and presentation of the accused dude's alibi (he was watching the gut-buster Taro's comedy show). Oh, plus, Bingo has a truth-telling ability... I dunno, I can't think of one on top of my head, but that probably could've been really useful a couple of times in previous episodes. There's also a couple of huge speeches about how terrible internet-based crimes are. Okay, so it's an attempt at a down-with-the-times plot.
Team Aruto gets attacked by a pink monster with dreadlocks (no, not Ex-Aid) that the characters somehow recognize as a lion monster. The mere appearance of this Raider monster spooks Bingo so much that he starts spazzing out ('my fight is in the court!') and Aruto recognizes it, and fights the monster. He goes straight into Shining Assault Hopper and fights the monster, and we get a couple of cool shots as Fuwa zips in with his Assault Wolf form. The action is pretty neat, even if this fight does rely a bit too much on the special effects of Aruto's super-speed and the gigantic hologram of a gatling gun that the Raider summons as part of his "Dynamiting Bolide" attack. Oh, and the Raider manages to get the drop on Zero-One and Vulcan by... tossing a dynamite and we get a full beat sequence of the two Kamen Riders just looking in bafflement at the dynamite before it explodes. That's fun. Speaking of fun, the next sequence when they find the Zaia Spec on the ground is also pretty hilarious -- Fuwa insists that he can break it open, while Izu is incredulous at the thought. "Do you think you're a gorilla?" and Fuwa gets all crazy-up in her face while the jingle for Punching Kong plays. This show's fun.
Aruto and Fuwa get a couple of scenes working together, with them talking to Horobi together -- Horobi does not give us anything new at this point, but his lines get Aruto to finally realize that the Humagears went berserk in response to being abused. Fuwa, meanwhile, gives Aruto a nice post-character-development speech about tolerance, noting that Humagears both nearly killed him but also saved his life, neatly working in a very thematic "guilty and innocent" line.
There's an obvious Red Herring that, of course, the Zaia-aligned human is the bad guy since we see him requesting a replacement Zaia spec from Gai, but that's the whole big twist of the episode -- it's almost like a Scooby Doo episode in its simplicity. It's entertaining enough, I suppose, but even for Kamen Rider it's kind of obvious? We get a very obvious line of Fuwa questioning why the police officer isn't the one he handed off the Zaia spec to, which means that the police dude is pretty much the Scooby Doo "introduced in the second act as foreshadowing then never mentioned again" villain. Or maybe there's another twist down the line in episode 22.
Regardless, Team Aruto end up confronting Gai and the prosecutor, but Bingo's truth-telling vision tells him that prosecutor Ichimori is indeed not lying, and that he truly did lose his Zaia spec. Gai then starts provoking Bingo, ranting about how baseless accusations is just as bad as Bingo's own rant about using internet and technology to commit crimes, but basically Gai just wants A.I. that can think for themselves to be destroyed. We then get basically the same way the first episodes of all of these two-parters play out, except this time around Gai accelerates the process by slapping a Zetsumerise belt onto Bingo, turning him into the Vicarya Magia. They jump outside of Gai's mansion, and we get the requisite Zero-One/Thouser/berserk-Magia fight, and Thouser steals Aruto's Flaming Tiger powers to murder Bingo, before going on a rant about how they are tools and how humanity is going to be the one to dictate how Humagears exist. Aruto goes for the biggest gun he has, Shining Assault Hopper, but gets knocked down by Gai as well, who mocks him for being also a defective product that goes berserk once he loses control of emotions.
I feel like I'm being a bit too hard on this episode. It's something that's pretty solid all things considered, the acting is pretty neat and the action is decent, but at this point it really does have a feel of 'been there, seen that', y'know? And there's nothing wrong with being a bit formulaic, but Zero-One has kind of been building itself up to be something different, and that's a mite bit disappointing.
Aruto and Fuwa get a couple of scenes working together, with them talking to Horobi together -- Horobi does not give us anything new at this point, but his lines get Aruto to finally realize that the Humagears went berserk in response to being abused. Fuwa, meanwhile, gives Aruto a nice post-character-development speech about tolerance, noting that Humagears both nearly killed him but also saved his life, neatly working in a very thematic "guilty and innocent" line.
There's an obvious Red Herring that, of course, the Zaia-aligned human is the bad guy since we see him requesting a replacement Zaia spec from Gai, but that's the whole big twist of the episode -- it's almost like a Scooby Doo episode in its simplicity. It's entertaining enough, I suppose, but even for Kamen Rider it's kind of obvious? We get a very obvious line of Fuwa questioning why the police officer isn't the one he handed off the Zaia spec to, which means that the police dude is pretty much the Scooby Doo "introduced in the second act as foreshadowing then never mentioned again" villain. Or maybe there's another twist down the line in episode 22.
Regardless, Team Aruto end up confronting Gai and the prosecutor, but Bingo's truth-telling vision tells him that prosecutor Ichimori is indeed not lying, and that he truly did lose his Zaia spec. Gai then starts provoking Bingo, ranting about how baseless accusations is just as bad as Bingo's own rant about using internet and technology to commit crimes, but basically Gai just wants A.I. that can think for themselves to be destroyed. We then get basically the same way the first episodes of all of these two-parters play out, except this time around Gai accelerates the process by slapping a Zetsumerise belt onto Bingo, turning him into the Vicarya Magia. They jump outside of Gai's mansion, and we get the requisite Zero-One/Thouser/berserk-Magia fight, and Thouser steals Aruto's Flaming Tiger powers to murder Bingo, before going on a rant about how they are tools and how humanity is going to be the one to dictate how Humagears exist. Aruto goes for the biggest gun he has, Shining Assault Hopper, but gets knocked down by Gai as well, who mocks him for being also a defective product that goes berserk once he loses control of emotions.I feel like I'm being a bit too hard on this episode. It's something that's pretty solid all things considered, the acting is pretty neat and the action is decent, but at this point it really does have a feel of 'been there, seen that', y'know? And there's nothing wrong with being a bit formulaic, but Zero-One has kind of been building itself up to be something different, and that's a mite bit disappointing.
Random Notes:
- The lawyer Bingo and the wife, Ebii Chiharu, are played by Sentai alumnus! Bingo is layed by Minami Keisuke, known to fans of Kyuranger as Houou Soldier; while Chiharu is played by Komiya Arisa, better known to fans of Go-Busters as Yellow Buster. Arisa previously showed up in Kamen Rider Ghost as a character-of-the-week in the Houdini two-parter.
- The Gimmick Watch: "Dynamiting Bolide" is a big-ass pink hologram gatling gun summoned by the dreadlocked pink lion man. I think the key is called Dynamiting Lion?
- It is nice to have that Gut-Crusher Taro from the first episode make a very brief cameo. Hopefully someone restored him and allowed him to go around and bring smiles with his abs-flexing routine!
- This episode's obligatory "hey, let Gai say his catchphrase" is comparing Ichimori's insistence of a 99.9% victory to 999%. Perhaps the first alarm sign that Ichimori isn't evil is the fact that he's not a self-absorbed twit like the previous two Zaia employees, and that he's fully willing to step down from the prosecutor position if Gai thinks he's not good enough.
- Yua's role has sort of been reduced from a main character to Thouser's secretary, huh? I don't like that.
- Gai's kind of a one-note villain at this point, but I do enjoy the dude just calmly asking Izu if they have a backup for Bingo (why did you answer, Izu?) before just smoothly punching Aruto in the gut and going on with the robot-murdery business.
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