Kamen Rider Zero-One E25 Review: Exposition Lore Dump

Kamen Rider Zero-One, Episode 25: I Will Save the Humagears

I've been late on this series for a while mostly because of real-life stuff, but also because... Zero-One as a show has been sort of really struggling with finding their footing, hasn't it? Each individual episode tends to be a solid 30 minutes of tokusatsu material, all the actors are competent and the action scenes are exciting and all, but honestly, ever since the December episodes I really do feel like the show's been vacillating back and forth on what they want to do, and man would this episode been so much better if the exposition was handled with actual tact and foreshadowing. Ever since Metsubojinrai.net was put on the back-burner in episode 15 and Thouser took the spotlight, all we've gotten is just vague, repetitive scenes of Horobi smirking and taunting Fuwa, and that's hardly any sort of foreshadowing for what happened in this episode. It's basically how I really feel about the abrupt and rushed 'deaths' for Horobi and Jin, as well as the introduction of the Assault Wolf/Shining Assault Hopper forms. It's a pattern that I'm not the biggest fan of, where we get this intricate, episodic series of arc episodes focusing on Assassin-chan before bull-rushing the conclusion to debut a super form and then we get a couple of rushed episodes to wrap up the arc. This is more or less the same, where the Thouser competition arc gets stretched out as an excuse to do standalone two-parters, before debuting Metal Cluster Hopper and then bull-rushing through the return of Metsubojinrai.net. Because they really could've done better -- "Death" or whoever the fourth member of Metsubojinrai.net is called has shown up since episode 20 or 21 or something and yet we've barely gotten any screentime or foreshadowing with her.

Anyway, the episode starts with the revelation that someone has placed a jammer on top of the Hiden Intelligence building, and Aruto and Izu has to bring an expert, a Humagear professor called Professor Bot, to fix it. Of course any sort of tension as to who did this -- Zaia? Metsubo? Someone else? -- ends up being done away quickly as the literal next scene is immediately showing off the new Kamen Rider Jin suit. Yes, I get it, it's a new form, but it's not like it's particularly different other than the colour. Fuwa also shows up, telling them about how Horobi has escaped, because someone sabotaged AIMS.

Professor Bot is just there to give us exposition, basically doing a whole connect-the-dots and exposition dump to our heroes, and... and I don't mind an exposition dump episode. What I do mind, though, is that this feels like it comes out of nowhere. Our heroes never actually work for this information, there's not even any real thematic significance between them fixing the jamming thing to Bot suddenly going through his monologue. But hey, suddenly we get this exposition how 12 years ago Hiden and Zaia worked together to make Humagears (we know this), there's a network to allow them to be deployed throughout the country (we sort of know this) and that father-type Humagears are one of the models created to help raise children. The only real new information we got is the fact that Horobi, like Aruto's robo-dad, is one of these father-type Humagears. It's a neat information that puts Horobi's abusive dad behaviour into new light, but at the same time I'd actually rather have this be revealed to us not as a random piece of information shoved into a flashback, y'know? Then we get a sequence of stuff of things we already know about -- Gai sabotaging the Ark; Daybreak Town; the founding of Metsubojinrai.net; Hiden Soreo making the Kamen Rider system as a countermeasure; blowing up Satellite Ark and Daybreak Town; four years ago Zea was released while Mestubo hides and scheme in the shadows, waiting for Humagears to evolve... it's stuff we already know about, but laid out as a full flashback, and... and it's just such an odd place in the series to put this, y'know?

Of course, Izu quickly points out how weird it is that Professor Bot knows about things like Thouser and the Ark that aren't actually in the database, but an Aruto Joke ends up deflecting the question, and Professor Bot ends up making up an excuse, telling them to ask the one who created the Ark. This apparently leads to the hero trio showing up to confront Yua and Gai. Yua, as usual, is shocked that his evil employer Gai is actually pretty damn evil. Gai pretends to not know anything, of course, but then goes into a rant about how this is what AIMS is created for, to weaponize the weapons called Kamen Riders. I do like this little argument between Gai and Aruto, even if it is admittedly very Kamen Rider Build-y. Aruto insists that Kamen Riders aren't a weapon, but Gai just talks about how the financial concept and the fact that everyone is rising to the conflict are factors that are going to profit Zaia a lot, especially with the current threat of Metsubojinrai.net. Can't sell weapons without a threat, right? (Except Gai's selling freaking smart glasses instead of these weapons, so apparently he's also a shit businessman). Gai also refuses to help fight Metsubojinrai.net, wanting them to flourish in order for him to justify Thouser or something.

We do get a pretty cool scene at this point as Aruto and Fuwa basically talk about each other's main goals. Fuwa claims that he's going to turn all his enemies into scrap, because "that's what Vulcan is", and Aruto talks about his dream of harmony and stuff, becuase "that's what Zero One is." This is a genuinely cool moment, and even if I'm not the biggest fan about the pacing of the rest of the episode, this bit of them declaring what their mission statements are, and the tie-in to Jin saying a similar thing later on, is pretty damn smooth.

Oh, by the way, our heroes are investigating Humagear activity in Daybreak Town. Vulcan and Zero-One transform and fight an army of Trilobite Magia, and we get a pretty cool dual henshin into their respective assault forms, and the fight scene here is very smoothly choreographed, particularly the bit where Aruto tosses around the shotgun-axe to Fuwa before turning into Metal Cluster Hopper and Final Strash-ing the Trilobites to death. While Aruto deals with the mooks, Fuwa arrives on top of the dam to confront Horobi, who's just calmly walking along (still with the straitjacket, which I found hilarious) and of course we get the brand-new debut of Jin's new form as he explodes in as a gigantic burning bird. And Burning Falcon Jin is awesome. 

Burning Falcon Jin fights Assault Wolf Vulcan, and, again, the choreography here is pretty great, with fire punches and spinning kicks and whatnot, and the special effects for Jin's new finisher Burning Reign is pretty awesome. Again, for all the faults this episode has, I think I rewatched that fight between Vulcan and Burning Jin like five times. The spinning slash attack thing blows Fuwa aside, knocking him out of his transformation, while Jin de-transforms and shows off that he's ditched his hoodie terrorist fashion and is dressed in a smart-looking fancy suit, which looks almost as awesome as his Burning Falcon suit. There's a bit of a confusion where Fuwa thinks Jin is human because of the ears (I didn't even realize), but apparently it's just part of Jin's new Humagear upgrade. 

And then we get the huge revelation that Jin had help, that he's the one putting the jammer, and Professor Bot was being hijacked and controlled by him all along. The actual cinematography and the setup of the scene is pretty cool execution-wise, but the actual revelation sort of fell flat because, well, it's pretty blatantly obvious from the first scene. Izu actually asks Jin why he's even bothering with the long info-dumps, but apparently it's because Jin is buying time. Mostly, I just think it's because of lazy writing. While Horobi does some vague 'connect to the Ark' stuff, Jin talks about how he's going to unchain Humagears from humanity and bring them true freedom, becuase "that's what Kamen Rider Jin is", which is cool. And then the Metsuboys leave... and we get another twist that apparently Jin isn't subservient to Horobi anymore, and he's got a brand-new agenda for the Humegears.

Overall... I think I made my feelings for this episode pretty clear. As a standalone episode it's a mess between half-baked plot ideas and a pretty poorly justified exposition dump. But the actual fight scenes for Burning Falcon Jin and the whole "that's what [insert Kamen Rider name] is!" theme is at least well-delivered. Ultimately, though, kind of a dud episode if we're being honest.

Random Notes:

• This week on the "Izu is adorable" watch is the first scene, where Izu has a little cold pack over her head and just opening her head in front of a fan adorably. Also adorable is how Izu calmly jogs in the background to try and catch up with the running Aruto and Fuwa when they catch up with the Metsuboys.
• Also this week has probably one of my favourite "Fuwa secretly thinks Aruto's jokes are funny" moment when he had to pretend to like, hug Aruto or something to hold in his laughter.
• Jin still has his real-ass gun with the handphone strap. That's nice. 
• The Gimmick Watch: "Inferno Wing! Burning reign!"
• I think I have to mention that Professor Bot has a little lightbulb on top of his head that lights up for a visual gag, but the humour factor is pretty strained for this one. I'll stick with Aruto-ja-nai puns, thank you very much. 
• That shot of the four members of Metsubojinrai.net being assembled together is admittedly pretty damn cool. 
• I guess we are having the whole 'goodwill data' and 'evil feelings data', huh, with Professor Bot explicitly calling those two as the source of power for the Progrise and Zetsumerize Keys respectively. It kinda sounds corny, but okay, sure, whatever. 
• I really do wish Yua gets a "this is what Valkyrie is" somewhere down the line. She really got downgraded into barely-a-supporting character at this point, isn't she? Hell, even Gai got to talk about how his motivations to sell Thouser as the ultimate weapon. Poor, poor Yua.