Kamen Rider Zero-One E43 Review: Escalation

Kamen Rider Zero-One, Episode 43: That is a Heart

Honestly, with only a handful of episodes left before the series is over, it's really kind of a shame that we seemingly lost four or five potential episodes of Kamen Rider Zero-One because, well, ever since the rather abrupt Gai-redemption arc, everything has been going on a breakneck speed and I honestly don't think that it's done well at all. The individual episodes are great as standalone tokusatsu episodes. The acting is all right, for the rapid pacing that they were forced to go through. But ultimately... yeah, it's kind of a shame considering how strongly Zero-One started out.

Still, at the very least, this little twist near the end is pretty interesting. We've had secondary Kamen Riders becoming evil and becoming one of the final antagonists before. We've had main characters either dying or be put in a bittersweet, sad ending before -- particularly prominent in the Heisei shows before... oh, I wanna say Hibiki. And we certainly have had main characters getting mind-controlled as a tragic villain near the end of the show.

But for the main character to personally and willingly (albeit not without 100% willingly) become a villain? Aruto is clearly conflicted. He spends most of his screentime particularly when talking with Azu angry, crying or confused. His emotions is clearly clouded and he's not thinking straight after Izu's death, and we, the audience, understands why. But on the other hand, it's not like he's being mind-controlled or turned into a mindless zombie the way that, say, Hino Eiji was when he turned into a Greed during his show; or the whole Hazard Build thing; or even Metal Cluster Hopper earlier in the show. Aruto is noted several times in this episode to be fully conscious of what he's doing. Influenced by his anger and malice, perhaps, and said anger is probably heavily enhanced by the Ark Progrise Key... but it's still Aruto doing all those things.

There's also Horobi, who, of course, ends up kind of being the focus. Again, I keep saying how I wished Horobi had more screentime to really get into his mind before he got even more fanatical last episode. He and Jin have a long discussion at some random rooftop with tattered clothes hanging from some wires which I thought is so over-the-top emo. I like it! Jin basically confronts Horobi with the idea that malice doesn't just come from humans, since Horobi clearly has some of his own if he would go as far as to kill Izu. Horobi makes a big show of showing off his katana and slicing off one of the hanging cloth pieces, but his hands are clearly shaking at the end of it.

The rest of the humans are... sort of basically playing a game of catch-up, and this feels pretty rushed. Like, okay, we need to get Gai, Fuwa, Yua, Shesta, the Vice President team and Williamson all on the same page regarding Izu's death and that Aruto is Kamen Rider Ark-One. Williamson orders Gai and the Shotriser duo to eliminate Aruto, and also makes a call to Jin. The human trio end up making a very cool last stand in a tunnel, and we get a pretty well-choreographed scene of Aruto dodging and deflecting every single blow from Vulcan, Valkyrie and Thouser, explicitly being in control and trying not to hurt his fellow humans. And then Aruto starts actually taking everyone out. He blows up Thouser's Jack Rise spear thing, then rips off the Thousand Driver and crushes it. And then he does some hacking goodness to disable the brain chips in Yua and Fuwa's heads, preventing them from transforming with the Shotriser.

The humans are forced to regroup and face that Aruto's actually acting on his own, and there's some talk about the 'contagion of malice' escalating the human/robot war, and they arrive at the conclusion that the Ark basically plans to replicate by, uh... inciting malice and anger in everyone? Okay, sure. Also, Naki and Ikazuchi shows up to tell Jin about the conflict, and Jin's hands are shaky, just like Horobi earlier in the episode.

Horobi, meanwhile, gathers even more Humagears and turns them into Magia with messages about how humanity's evil gave rise to the Ark and there's no salvation left for them. Aruto and Azu are arguing, but ultimately Aruto accepts Azu's help to go off after Horobi. Aruto confronts Horobi and his army of Magia at a warehouse.... and, as always, the action scene is actually pretty cool. Ark-One flash-speeding through the goons, at one point grabbing two Magia by the face and slamming them down. Another neat scene is Horobi punching the ground to have his scorpion-whip-stinger thing burst out a short distance away. Their argument basically revolves around the whole "I have no heart!" insistence from Horobi. Ark-One, being the overpowered final boss form, absolutely overpowers the army of Magia, and there's a neat sense that Horobi's only managing to survive because he has all of the help.

Ultimately, not even a point-blank shot to Ark-One's face can faze him. Aruto destroys Horobi's weapon, and clearly having Izu's death in mind, unleashes a finishing rider kick. Of course, Jin jumps in the way, gets kicked all the way through the warehouse and blows the fuck up and both Horobi and Aruto are absolutely shocked. It's actually pretty neat how thematic this is, that Aruto gets so blinded by his single-minded anger at Horobi just as Horobi himself has been letting himself be single-minded about the extinction of humans; while characters like Jin and Izu have been trying to get both sides to stop.

Jin, as he lies dying, notes to Horobi how he does have a heart and he's scared of having emotions, and Jin doesn't want Horobi to lose that heart because he's his father. And then Jin's CGI feathers shatter, he blows up and Horobi gets tossed aside. This turns out to be the trigger for Horobi to transform into another Kamen Rider Ark-One, since he's now in malice-land and the Ark will be revived as long as there's enough malice. And the episode ends in an ominious showcase of multiple Ark-One keys.

So... yeah. It sure is an interesting setup to a finale. I still have a lot of complaints about the pacing of this final arc, but at the very least it promises to be something different. This episode, if nothing else, has a bunch of neat action scenes.

Random Notes:

• I do actually really like the fact that not for one second does Aruto get fooled by the Izu/Azu thing. He recognizes Azu as someone who just parades around looking like Izu, and is nothing but hostile to her. 
• As Jin dies, there's a pretty tacky but also neat little visual effect of the floating, disconnected Burning Falcon feathers slowly crumbling away. We also get a shot of his little earpiece falling next to his handgun. 
• It's really kind of sad that this seems to be it for the side-characters, huh? Fuwa, Yua, Ikazuchi and Naki are basically just hangers-on at this point. Particularly Yua, who basically didn't get anything significant in the show after punching Gai in the face. Naki and Ikazuchi are particularly under-utilized for sure, hopefully they'll get to transform at least once or twice more before the series is over. 
• I guess it's Ark-One's gimmick to have random flashes to the suit being lighted up with different-coloured lighting in a dark room? It was cool last episode, but at this point it just feels distracting.
• The Gimmick Watch: "Perfect conclusion: Learning END!"
• When the Ark-One Key is going through the annoucement of "Despair! Conflict! Destruction!" there's a neat little slower zoom-in when the key gets to "ruin" (metsubo), because of the fact that it's tied not only to Metsubojinrai.net, but the specific kanji that Horobi takes his name from. 
• I'm not sure if it's the same thing as the "that's what Kamen Rider Zero-One is!" that Aruto, Fuwa, Jin and Yua have spoken a couple of times throughout the series, but when Horobi and Aruto face off against each other there's a neat line from Horobi where he declares that "that's the way of Kamen Rider Horobi!" And his motivation is to make all humans extinct. Okay.