Kamen Rider Zero-One, Episode 41: Thou, Take Thine Neighbour's Hand!
Yeah, there's definitely a sense of the writing staff sort of rushing through storyline. Whether it's thanks to the unfortunate pandemic affecting writing and production or if it's indeed just the typical abrupt pacing of a Kamen Rider show nearing its end. I dunno. The Gai redemption arc was... there was effort put into there and it doesn't really come out of nowhere, but it's not done particularly cleanly. And Metsubojinrai.net's role in all this, Jin aside, have really been very clunky. A lot of the Metsubojinrai's defections all depend on the writing and characterization... but they're just merely serviceable. I sort of buy that, yeah, Ikazuchi would totally decide to bro out with his little brother, especially after how the Ark treated him last episode... but at the same time the episode have been spending so little time with Naki, Ikazuchi and Horobi since the huge Metsubojinrai interview episode that them basically going through a revolving door and going 'banzai Ark' to 'oh shit fuck the Ark' is kind of distracting.
The episode sort of starts off with a recap -- the Ark can't be permanently destroyed, just delayed, as long as the satellite exists. Aruto decides to rebuild Hiden Ltd after gathering all the Humagear Progrise keys. And then the Ark starts hacking into the infrastructure of the city and set off a fuck-ton of random explosions and we get a montage of our heroes saving people from the exploding city while Gai monologues about incurring the Ark's wrath. This should be a big thing, but other than a couple of CGI explosions and a token scene of Aruto, Fuwa and Yua saving one or two people it's honestly pretty underwhelming, I feel.
Meanwhile, the focus of the episode lies more on the Mestubojinrai.net trio. Naki is a bit emotionless but it's clear that they're angry at being treated like a tool again. Ikazuchi, meanwhile is a lot more open in his fury, while Horobi is the only one left who's still on Team Ark, talking about how the Ark will guide the Humagears and whatnot. Jin shows up, though, and keeps bringing up good points about how Aruto's way will help Humagears find their dreams and heart, and we do get a neat little question-and-answer between Naki and Jin about what humagears would do after getting freedom. Horobi, though, is fully in Team Ark at this point and just wants to beat up Jin.
And... again, one thing that Zero-One as a show does well is setting up badass action scenes. As honestly flimsy as the character tension to this was (and it shouldn't be, it's Horobi and Jin) the actual henshin scene of Horobi and Jin facing away from each other, Western-cowboy-movie style as they both go through the Forceriser/Slashriser Poison/Infernowing counterparts is pretty damn cool. The fight between Horobi and Infernowing Jin is pretty neat, but ultimately Horobi overpowers Jin. Jin, of course, ends up asking Horobi the very question that Aruto asked him a couple of times before -- is it what Horobi himself wants? I do like that Horobi's rejection in this first scene is a very calm, collected un-transforming and walking away, not showing any sort of anger or confusion.
On the Hiden/human side of things, the huge terrorist attack have caused a shortage in trained emergency personnel, and Gai... ends up resigning in a board meeting, and ends up appointing Aruto as the new president (after the obligatory Fukuzoe gag). It... it ends up kind of cheapening Aruto's whole speech about how he built Hiden Ltd from zero-one and all that jazz, but eh, I've always personally thought that it's even more irresponsible for Aruto to leave Hiden Int to Gai anyway, so... I shrug, I guess? This just sort of happened, and honestly, I felt like this could've been done with a lot more passion and oomph. As it is, like the Horobi/Jin scene, I felt like this was just serviceable and honestly kind of bland.
Aruto, of course, ends up fixing things immediately because somehow he's able to put Humagears back into circulation. I'm not sure how, I don't think they have access to Satellite Zea and its magic 3D printer, but hey, after Aruto gives a speech about his dream of co-existence (we get a nice montage of the Mestuboys listening to it) and a bunch of Humagears end up cameoing. The carpenter bros! The doctor! The fireman dude! It's... it's neat if you don't think about it too much, I guess. Hooray, the Humagears are back and accepted by humanity, yeah? I dunno, this feels like a plot point that they're forcibly wrapping up in a single episode and I wished they had spread it up into the Gai-redemption episodes a bit. Eh. We get two very, very short scenes showing the other Metsubojinrai characters. Naki shows up in front of Fuwa, asking about the reason why Humagears exist... but we don't see much of this. Ikazuchi, meanwhile, shows up in front of his little brother Subaru.
I do really like the scene that comes up next, which is surprisingly a bit more dark considering how the past couple of episodes have fallen back to some familiar Saturday morning tokusatsu have been. Horobi with his janky-ass briefcase bow is trying to shoot a bunch of children playing together in his attempt to basically confirm to himself that, no, he's still all about humanity's extinction. It's a short scene and it gets interrupted by Jin before it gets too dark, but still. We get some flashbacks to Aruto's words to Jin about his free will and his desires to rescue Jin... but the very moment Jin shows any sort of strong emotion in raising his voice, the Ark interrupts him and gives him a new directive -- destroy the Humagears.
And... well, we do get a pretty cool bit of un-transformed fighting as Horobi and Jin clash with their Rider forms' respective weapons while not being transformed, which is always cool even if the editing is admittedly a bit choppy in moving them from the rooftop to the warehouse. This untransformed clash runs on for a bit longer than I expected before Horobi draws his real-ass katana and is about to skewer Jin... but, of course, Horobi is a secret softie and can't go through with it.
Again, it's sort of going through the motions and I really didn't quite feel like this had the same amount of oomph and passion as even the past couple of episodes. Horobi ultimately confronts the Ark in the mindscape and we do have the long-awaited defiance moment as Horobi is about to punch the Ark, fighting his way through the swarm of evil kanji... but then the Ark, as a cloud bursts out and enters Jin.
And then we get the episode-closing fight, which... is pretty cool, as always. Again, when it comes to setting up and hyping up the episode's fight, the episode at least delivers, with Horobi's speech about how "this is Metsubojinrai.net's will, as well as mine!" being pretty awesome. The fight is pretty CGI heavy, but it's still pretty neat and the dual henshin of Horobi and Zero-Two is pretty cool -- there was a point in the fight where Aruto makes use of Zero-Two's Flash-tier speed to catch Horobi as he's being thrown around, and zip around and deliver kicks to Ark-Zero while Horobi delivers slower, more deliberate blows. A finisher combination kicks Ark out of Jin and then Aruto does a big bang kick, pushing Ark-Zero through the tokusatsu warehouse and blowing him up.
In a neat little twist that actually is foreshadowed relatively well, as the Ark returns back to Satellite Zea and vows to destroy the Humagears... his connection is cut off. Turns out the Space Bros have made it into space, set off explosives, while Ikazuchi separates the Breaking Mammoth portion from the satellite and proceed to Star Trek fire all phasers into the satellite to blow it the fuck up, seemingly (but definitely not) ending the threat of the Ark. Of course, we still have a couple of episodes left... and apparently somehow Horobi's takeaway from all this is... 'humanity needs to be extinguished before they make another Ark'. Okay, then, bandana boy.
And it's not like that kind of character progression, on paper, wouldn't work. It's just that we see so little of Horobi after the end of the first Metsubojinrai.net arc that honestly, my reaction to most of what he does is "yeah, sure, why not, I guess". Horobi had that one focus episode when he interacts with the farmer lady Humagear, but ultimately is kind of pretty under-developed and a combination of his fanaticism and his one sole redeeming trait of being a dad to Jin ends up basically being the excuse for whichever good or evil thing he decides to do in a scene. The actor, Sunagawa Syuya, does a great job at showcasing an emotionless robot struggling with whether he actually has desires and free will (that scene where he leaves Jin the first time in this episode, or when he's considering killing human children)... but ultimately, the writing, I feel, isn't quite up to snatch. It doesn't help that the Ark itself is still just kind of a generic big bad. I dunno. Done and paced well, I feel like both the 'Aruto becomes a president again' and the Horobi/Jin storyline could've been a lot more touching, but as it is this ended up really feeling kind of flat for me.
Random Notes:
- I don't get the "rurururururu" joke that Aruto and Izu are making but the two of them are so bubbly and the actors are so dedicated to goofing off that it's hard not to get wrapped up in their energy.
- Have we actually found out who resurrected Jin? Or is it just assumed that it's Zea doing it off-screen? Eh. Either way.
- The later Kamen Rider shows have always been pretty terrible at basically 'power scaling', but it's really hard to buy that Horobi (who, one-on-one been trounced regularly by Assault Vulcan, Thouser and Metal Cluster) can so dominantly take out Inferno Wing Jin. I guess Jin's heart is simply not in the fight?
- Gai resigning from Hiden Intelligence is, I suppose, kind of a 'punishment'... but that's hardly counts for all the crap he's pulled.
- Fuwa and Yua basically find themselves reduced to background characters at this point. Which... I really can't argue with since their main storylines are basically done... but for the most part it leaves me pretty damn unsatisfied about Yua's storyline since it ultimately ends in a bit of a hanging thread after she beats Gai up and she sort of just ends up... existing, I guess. I dunno. I really shouldn't have expected something super-duper good, but I felt like she got absolutely shafted in these past couple of episodes.
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