One Piece Anime: Wano Arc, Episodes 996-1000

Yet another shorter batch of episodes. We reach the big 1000 in this one!

I had to rewatch 995 just to see the utterly badass SUNNACCHI moment as the samurai charge in to stab Kaido.

Episode 996:

• The scene of Hyo and the other samurai that have unique models taking off their Kin'emon-brand disguises is, admittedly, a pretty natural padding. 
• Ulti uses a golden mace! I don't think I ever knew that she used a melee weapon. 
• Big Mom is approximately 30% more badass due to her pretty sinister old woman voice acting. 
• Ulti vs. Yamato is actually extended by a fair bit, and there's even some thematic banter! Ulti gets angry at Yamato for not cherishing her family, while Yamato goes 'then you should've been nice to Page One!'
• Nami and Carrot taking out the Homies is actually pretty badass. I mean, it really doesn't mean much in the long run, but it is an appreciated scene for sure. We also get Nami talking about her plans to steal a 'treasure that [she]'s obtained', which leads to her stealing Zeus. 
• Big Mom clashing against Luffy's Elephant Gun is something that I don't think got too much of a spotlight in the manga either. 
• You know, I know that Izo doesn't have a katana, but it is kinda hilarious that any time we get a shot of all the Scabbards plunging their swords into Kaido we get a shot of Izo going *bang* *bang*.

Episode 997:

• They drag out the 'sunacchi' moment as expected, but you know what? After experiencing the Oden flashback in the anime, I feel like this is a moment well earned by the Red Scabbards. 
• I've always found Oden's "pirates will betray you", followed by Kin'emon's rebuttal, to be especially badass. 
• After all of the face-faults he's been making, I love that it's Queen who's finding out about the massive amount of rebels on Team Luffy's side. 
• I don't know why Killer is so embarrassed of his laughs, hearing someone going FAFAFAFAFA as they come to kill me with motorized blender scythes would be terrifying. 
• It's more or less things that we have seen them do before, but this is the kind of filler that makes the raid on Onigashima feel so much more expansive -- showing characters like Kid, Killer, Law, Perospero, Marco and the rest all do something. Seeing named attacks like Amputation and Candy Maiden also makes the five-year-old within me giggle in joy. 
• We actually get to see Jack react to Kaido rising up to the rooftop and going off, which is nice. The arrival of the Mink army is also a bit more elaborate.
• There's a gifter whose entire torso and abdomen is an entire gorilla head. I just love these random background gifters. 
• In something that IIRC was glossed over in the manga, Raizou gets to go "I'm the warrior they said wasn't there, Jack!" Raizou is safe is one of my favourite moments in One Piece in retrospect, and I'm happy it got recognized here. Jack swearing revenge for his defeat in Zou is also a neat scene. 
• I don't really care about BB or Concelot or any of the lesser Minks, but I definitely appreciate the fact that all of the named ones get at least a transformation sequence into Sulong. The five main lieutenants of Neko and Inu totally get to beat the shit out of Nangi and Jack. 
• I like the scenes in this episode, but between the flashback to Oden cutting Kaido and the Zou arc, we do get a fair amount of flashback scenes in this episode. 

Episode 998:

• Put some respect on Shinobu's name. She's nobody's favourite character, but dang, that was a pretty badass rescue attempt she pulled off. It failed, but the anime has given me a huge amount of respect for this character for sure. Poor woman got grabbed by King and tossed straight into a building! 
• The anime also makes it explicit that Shinobu uses ninja hand signs to activate her ripe-ripe jutsu -- and that she uses that to rot away the chains. It does add a bit of a bit of a continuity problem here, though, since Shinobu takes forever to rot a single chain link when she was able to create that hole enough for 20 people to hide in back in Oden castle almost instantaneously.
• Did Ulti always have that giant golden spear-mace-thing?
• Queen yells a lot of words in English in this episode. "FURAINGU??" "What's thatto?" To be fair, though, seeing a beat-up kid randomly float through the air after breaking chains, I would be doing the same thing. 
• GOD the Tokusatsu style music that accompanies Sanji's Germa 66 raid suit entrance adds so much more to this sequence. 
• King vs Sanji, as expected, looks so much cooler in animated format due to the copious amounts of shockwaves animated by the anime team, as well as actually showing the two of them flying around before King 'skewers' Sanji. Also, obviously, we get another over-the-top OOOO SOBAAA KICK from Sanji. 
• Big Mom's Ikoku totally just vaporized a bunch of guys in the way of the beam. Also, the anime makes it clear that that was the attack that freed Sasaki from being tied to a tree -- I didn't realize it! 
• Franky ramming a goddamn motorcycle into Big Mom's face while Brook slices a giant sentient cloud is still one of my favourite moments in all of One Piece. Franky and Brook actually sing a pre-asskicking song in this one as he rides his rhinoceros chopper bike to ram the giant woman in the face. God, I love the absurdity of this pirate manga.

Episode 999:

• "He ran over Big Mom with his bike!"
• We actually get to see Usopp and Chopper in the Brachio-tank being tossed around by the giants and the two of them having some antics praising Wapolmetal and stuff. It is a neat little bit of appropriate filler. I think that's my best comment on the Wano arc as a whole -- the filler scenes actually make sense.
• Ulti and Yamato get extended a lot. I've been complaining in the present-day era of the manga that Yamato doesn't get a proper fight other than holding off Kaido, but this definitely makes up for it. I really like Ulti and her very dramatic voice actor, which is a bonus. Some really great animation in the clashes between the two of them. This one does end in a more decisive 'Yamato  knocks Ulti down' shot, too. 
• "Breasts? Horns?" Yeah, I appreciate that they extended the 'Yamato claims to be Kozuki Oden' scene to be comedic. 
• One of the best Franky moments also takes place here. "Yonko? So we have to run? Oi, Nami, do you want to make our captain the King of the Pirates?" One of the best moments from the Straw Hats, topped recently by a great Nami follow-up, which is her standing up to Kaido. 
• The anime team gave Franky a wonderful shot as he puts on his goggles, too. 
• Big Mom is just casually holding up one of her Homies to take the brunt of the Franky Radical Beam. Sure, Franky shoots one of the Numbers instead, but that shot is hilarious! 
• The absolute disrespect on Big Mom. Ran over by a motorcycle, had her homie stolen, karate-tossed by Jinbe, and rolled around like a doll by Robin's Delphinium. 

Episode 1000:

• I don't know how deliberately they were setting this up -- there weren't too many displaced moments or fillers that I could tell. 999 did have a couple extended scenes between Ulti/Yamato and the Brachio-tank team but they were definitely looking for a special moment for chapter 1000, huh? Having all the Straw Hats assembled together ready to kick butt in the festival hall is definitely something worthy of an 'episode 1000'.
• That is an amazing idea, too, having all the Straw Hats unleash a move before we cut away to a montage of their highlights during the anime. I haven't been reading/watching One Piece since its inception (I joined early in the Dressrosa arc), and I just did a re-read of the whole manga in 2019 so the montage isn't quite as epic as it should be, but god damn, that was a well done episode 1000. 
• I wasn't sure why the scenery around Luffy went all blood-red when he used Gear Second, but it's meant to show each of the Straw Hats' primary colours. Which is badass. 
• The little chibi baby Straw Hats that cut away to show the flashbacks are also adorable!
• Giving Usopp the 1000 gas bomb star is a neat meta way to celebrate it in-universe as well. 
• Robin gets to clutch-kill some bat Gifter lady. I found that to be cool! Jinbe also gets to beat the shit out of a centaur-crocodile guy. 
• We get a final montage of all the times the Straw Hats are together throughout the series, which is great. 
• We start off with a special opening, a remake of We Are!, the first anime opening. It's glorious. My favourite part is the shot of all the Straw Hats unleashing their attacks while the background shows random shots from all throughout the series. In a clever bit, the scene of Luffy punching out the moray eel Sea King in the original We Are is changed to Luffy punching Kaido's dragon form!
• I still love that we get an extended shot of the Sulong Mink horde fighting against Jack's goons -- something that is 100% offscreen in the manga, but actually feels like a huge deal here. Jack totally beats up the secondary warriors before being speed-blitz by Sulong Inuarashi and Nekomamushi.
• Speaking of which, Jack actually feels a bit less like a scrub. I mean, he still falls to the Minks for now, but we actually see him tank Sulong attack after Sulong attack. 
• I've always been 'well, the Sulong forms aren't as impressive as Carrot's over-the-top transformation', but god damn the change in colours, the Super Saiyan lightning auras, the voice acting and the fur flowing in the wind made Neko and Inu's Sulong forms so fucking badass. 
• We get such an elaborate docking transformation for the Franky Shogun. It feels like something from old-school 80's mecha shows or some shit! I approve!
• "If we tear off their wings, they're just caterpillars." God fucking damn, Nico Robin. 

Kamen Rider Revice E19-20 Review: Demons and Death

Kamen Rider Revice, Episodes 19-20:

Episode 19: Demons' Warning, Hiromi's Siege!?

This two parter is actually pretty fun, mostly because... it sort of raises stakes? The Julio two-parter before is a personal favourite, but now that we're starting to actually chip away at the large cast in terms of getting rid of them (and that's not counting characters like the Chameleon Deadman or the other Phase Two's before) it's actually feeling like it's heating up. One of the earliest scenes in this episode is also the unsettling scene shot in mostly darkness as Olteca stamps random nameless cultists and turns them into Gifterians. The Gifterians, IMO, have a much less interesting design than the animal-themed Deadmans, but the fact that this episode really does emphasize that every time Olteca sics a Gifterian at our heroes some brainwashed, unfortunate cultist got straight-up murdered adds a sense of dread to the monsters that I haven't felt in a while from a Kamen Rider series. Showing things like the gravestone of commander Wakabayashi (the real one, at least) also helps to build up the stakes for the show.

Hiromi, of course, is the star of this two-parter, and we get a brief flashback to his days of training under the real Wakabayashi with something typical in these sorts of shows -- the close rival-friends that he had during his training days, Chigusa and Tatsuhiko. Chigusa is embedded as a double agent within the Deadman cult, while Tatsuhiko is outright abrasive and angry at Hiromi for his failure in not realizing that Wakabayashi got replaced. 

Chigusa ends up contacting Ikki and Daiji about her mission, the dynamic between the trio, as well as the fact that Hiromi's been collapsing out of fatigue. As we know from an earlier episode, Hiromi's organs had aged to that of an 80-year-old man thanks to the Demons Driver's side-effect. It's interesting! I don't think we've had a driver with such a crippling effect in a while as well. There's a lot of nice, great moments from Hiromi, who's honestly reduced to a bit of a secondary character over the past dozen episodes. His flashback to Wakabayashi, his talk about wanting to be a proper hero, and struggling despite setbacks... I really do like it. A particularly powerful moment, I feel, was when Ikki ends up getting so struck by this "I will be a hero" speech that he actually loses his busybody streak for a while. 

We get interrupted by the episode's obligatory third act action scene, when Chigusa calls in Deadman movement to Fenix. Chigusa also tells Hiromi that Tatsuhiko is behaving strangely, causing Hiromi to confront him... and then we get the big revelation that Chigusa is actually evil all along, setting up Hiromi, Tatsuhiko and the Igarashi siblings into a trap. Olteca and Chigusa confront Hiromi. Unable to transform, we get a pretty cool sequence of Hiromi having to scramble and run around Olteca's monster form in the Fenix laboratory facility. Ikki and Vice show up in the nick of time because they figured out that Chigusa's trying to isolate Hiromi, and turns out that Tatsuhiko is trying to do some tough love in order to stop Hiromi from destroying his body with the Demons Driver. 

This episode ends with a pretty typical Barid Rex vs Gifterian fight which... it's choreographed well. I'm not going to shit-talk the action sequence. At least we don't have one of those terrible CGI remix creatures. But it's kind of just there. 

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Episode 20: Ruthless and Temporary, The Price of Transformation

The cliffhanger of Hiromi about to transform and the demon within the Demons Driver talking to him gets interrupted because Daiji shows up as Live, and the two Igarashis beat up the Gifterian. All throughout this, the deaths of the Gifterians continue to make Giff-sama pulse, something that excites George (because he's a nerd) and evil Blofeld Guy (because he's obviously evil). Hiromi realizes that the Demons Driver contains a demon, but refuses to confide this fact to Ikki and Daiji, essentially being a bit too wrapped up in his own 'I will lay down my life' catchphrase. Between the emotional turmoil of Wakabayashi's recent death and being betrayed by one of his closest friends, though, I actually really appreciate that the writers are focusing on how much Hiromi is trying his best to take control of his life and trying to be a hero. Again, it's one of my bigger problems with the writing of the recent Saber which I feel like Revice manages to sidestep beautifully -- they know when one of the secondary characters is being given the focus and they do that well.

We also get the first hints of Olteca's backstory. It's... it's very Light Yagami-ish, if you guys read Death Note -- a child prodigy not understood by the adults, and then eventually decided to join a misanthrope cult (by someone who's obviously Akaishi). He's clearly meant to be the super-evil irredeemable villain compared to Julio and Aguilera, though, so I didn't expect anything too sympathetic. 

Ikki finds  out about Hiromi's body from the doctor, while Hiromi finally confronts George. It's really interesting how the writing in this part is really trying to hammer in how they're trying to set up George as an amoral character -- he straight-up admits that he was hiding the information from Hiromi for the explicit purpose of having him be a Kamen Rider, and even mocks his catchphrase. I really do like how George basically really skirts the line on whether he's just doing it because of For Science (tm) motivations or if he's actually in the mysterious evil faction within Fenix that is allied with Akaishi. 

Hiromi himself gets some really neat character moments, particularly his conversation with the imagined ghost of Wakabayashi, and later on a conversation with Ikki. I do find it an interesting solution from Ikki, who tells Hiromi to chase his dream -- and how Ikki will lay down his own life to protect Hiromi's. 

The episode has a couple of neat scenes showing how Chigusa's essentially a bit of a extremist who still believes in an ideal of her own, wanting to fight Fenix's hypocrisy. Of course, she, uh, hangs out with a demon, and Olteca basically stamps Chigusa and straight-up murders her to make a Giffterian. It's a pretty shocking moment, and while she is an antagonist in terms of this two-parter, I feel like her actress and the writing made her sympathetic enough that you really feel the trauma in Hiromi's case when he sees that he failed to protect another close friend of his. It really makes his fatal final transformation feel very, very impactful. Hiromi fights against Olteca, the Giffterian and an army of Giff Juniors, and the music here is also pretty great.

Meanwhile, Ikki and Sakura had brokered an alliance with Aguilera -- Sakura, Aguilera and Julio have a bit of a subplot in these two episodes -- and they show up together. As Vice himself lampshades, this is the 'mid-winter showcase', and we actually get to see a showcase of essentially all of Revice's forms. I have a bit of a weakness for these kinds of scenes, and I really do like it, especially with the opening song playing in the background. Olteca gets confronted by Aguilera and Julio. Aguilera's motivations is more about keeping Giff away from Olteca, and we get a neat showcase of Revice and Queen Bee Aguilera fighting against Olteca. Aguilera and Julio peace out after stealing the Giff stamp.

But, of course, the focus of the climax is still Hiromi's struggle against the Chigusa Giffterian, destroying her, before grabbing Olteca and asking Barid Rex Revice to kick both of them at once. Olteca gets 'purged' of his demon contract and reverted into a regular human, and apparently Barid Rex manages to knock the belt out of Hiromi instead of kicking him or something -- it's kind of honestly a bit of a weak finish to the climax that's building up to Hiromi's sacrifice. Of course, Hiromi's actual last stand is about to come in a couple of episodes, so we're technically just building up to that, but... I don't know. I really do feel like while the betrayal themes of these two episodes and the constant backstabbing and exploration of Hiromi's struggles are pretty cool, the actual conclusion just feels kind of passable. Still, it's a pretty enjoyable two-parter regardless! 

Random Notes:

• Chigusa's actress is of Lupinranger vs. Patranger fame! It's actually probably my favourite Sentai series of the couple that I've watched, and I've always thought that Patren Pink was very much underutilized there. 
• There's a brief sub-plot over both episodes of Julio getting Sakura to talk to Aguilera and maybe talk some sense into her, but of course Aguilera immediately goes into combat. It's not much, but I do like that it builds up for the next batch of episodes how Sakura and Aguilera's rivalry is going to grow. 
• Episode 19 has Ikki and Sakura briefly talking about using the Barid Rex Vistamp to separate Aguilera from her demon. Which hasn't happened yet in the current episode -- but it's interesting and very much a good point made by Sakura. 
• They also make it clear that Julio was separated from his demon, but I didn't realize until like, four or five episodes down the line that he's not able to transform into his wolf deadman form.
• Why doesn't Olteca just show up in, like, somewhere crowded like a train station or something and Giff-stamp everyone? Does that thing have a cooldown or something?
• There's a couple of interesting moments in 19 that are smaller moments which I really liked -- Vice mucking around with Mama Igarashi about curry; and the end of 20 having him eat curry with the rest of the family. 
• How fucking weird is it that the Fenix guys have a standoff with toy guns... and then in comes Chigusa with two real-ass glocks?
• "Eenie meenie miny moe" still gives me a bit of a giggle. 
• I really do appreciate that we actually get to see Hiromi and Tatsuhiko mourning on Chigusa's gravestone, to really emphasize that, yeah, she's dead. I really do like that the stakes are emphasized. 
  

Movie Review: Kamen Rider Revice the Movie / Hyper Battle DVD

Kamen Rider Revice: the Movie

I watched a bunch of the Revice specials, so I decided to review two of those today. 

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"The Movie"

I was originally combine this with one of the episodes since it's a pretty short movie, but I couldn't really do it because this movie's continuity places it between episodes 3 and 4, and slotting it into any of the episodes afterwards kind of just seems awkward. And then I was waiting for another special from Revice that I could latch this onto, but it never came. So hey, instead, you guys get a short mini-review. 

Anyway, this one is a short 20-minute movie that is more or less in the same vein as the Bacht movie for Kamen Rider Saber, except Revice: The Movie is a lot more low-stakes... which works a lot better for the format, I feel. Trying to pretend that a villain that's irrelevant to the series as a whole is going to destroy the world might work for a 60 minute movie, but for a 20-minute bonus episode? Not so much. 

The plot is honestly pretty simple -- the episode starts off with a prequel where the Deadmans attack a Fenix lab with a giant army of Giff Juniors and two attack helicopters... which is kind of hilarious considering they never really show that kind of resources in the show proper. A nightclub, a CGI UFO, individual monsters, sure, but seeing them with attack helicopters just feels bizarre. Anyway, it's just an excuse for George to pull out the driver.

We then cut to a Deadmans attack on that one theme park that has shown up a couple of times in Rider shows (I think it's the place where Goriders was filmed?) and Olteca gives this pretty cool rant about awakening and penance and stuff -- pretty standard supervillain stuff. And... there's a huge feel of this being intended as an 'episode zero' (except that'd be Saber's final episode) with Vice breaking the fourth wall to introduce himself and Ikki/Revi. The action scenes are pretty nice and makes use of the theme park surroundings, but the banter and what thin excuse of a story... well, isn't. 

There's a bit of a throughline about how Vice is super-duper destructive (hey, the movie has a bigger action budget) and Ikki waxing lyrical about the importance of hot baths, but, again, it's pretty much intended to just be a mini-pilot so we get into action and simplistic dialogue -- even for the standards of the show -- pretty quickly. The middle portion of the movie is just fluff that really is just our heroes messing around.

It does show Daiji showing up to deliver the Megalodon Vistamp, and our heroes beat up the Spider Deadman to recover the Spider Vistamp, explaining the appearance of these two vistamps in the show.  Again, pretty neat stuff and I've always had a short spot for the Decade-inspired Megalodon form... though as always, the remix scenes leave much to be desired. When it's just hand-to-hand stuff, the action scenes are neat, but ultimately this 'movie' really ends up feeling like a fun but completely unessential part of your Revice watching experience. 

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Hyper Battle DVD

The Hyper Battle DVD's always tend to just be wacky one-offs with simplified plots, and this one is no exception. Like most Hyper Battle DVD's in the later Heisei era, this one also comes with a kangaroo-based form, which... I guess the kangaroo is the mascot of Televi-kun, the magazine that this DVD is packaged in? Eh.  

Anyway, this one starts of with some wacky hijinks as Ikki gets married, before George goes off to introduce the brand-new Kangaroo Vistamp... which is based very heavily on Kamen Rider Build. I like Build! And like most Televi-Kun related material, this particular form has a comedic twist to it. In this case, Vice gets reduced to a keychain. There's also a bit of a weird rapid-fire sequence of action scenes that didn't actually happen, with Ikki and Sakura describing how they took care of a demon stamp contractor and a Koala Deadman. I guess they just want to show a bunch of additional action scenes without having the setup? It's kind of weird. There's also a fair amount of intentional overacting on Ikki's part where he and the guest star gets a bit too worked up in protecting the guest star's sister's wedding. 

I did really like the comedy bit where Vice imagines various scenarios where Sakura would marry Hiromi, George or Vice, themed after different cultural weddings. It's funny. 

Obviously, since the villain of the week is targeting weddings, the only possible way for them to do anything is to stage a fake wedding, with George officiating with a fake mustache. Honestly, this Hyper Battle DVD is just an excuse for all the actors to ham it up with fancy costumes. We get Ikki as the groom and Daiji as the bride instead of Sakura, Ikki's acting as an overprotective brother who refuses to see Sakura in a wedding dress, and it's just... it's just wackiness, I guess? Either Daiji or Sakura would be creepy as the bride since the groom is their brother, so... eh.

The Deadman shows up and fights Kamen Rider Jeanne, while Daiji and Ikki trip and accidentally kiss. The... the whole kissing bit just makes me roll my eyes, honestly, although I really do like just how much George over-acts with how much he wants to see the two brothers kiss. Okay, George. I do like the fight between Jeanne and the Koala -- I actually do appreciate some of these just suit-actor fights that don't have too much CGI explosions all around. I do like my CGI explosions, but those tend to make the fights actually kind of short, so...

Jeanne blows up the Koala with her kujaku blades, Kagerou takes over Daiji and causes George and Papa Igarashi to toss around his belt to keep it away from him, and then we get Ikki finding out the true identity of the constantly-reviving Koala Deadmen -- it's a tiny... clay doll thing? That hides in the pockets of the larger Koala Deadman? So after a brief base-form fight, we get a marsupial fight as Ikki and Vice transform into the kangaroo form. They immediately remix into basically just Revi holding Vice in a pocket, and we get a comedic fight between him and the Koala Deadman. It's cute enough, actually. I liked the cleverness of them remembering that koalas are also marsupials, and going all-in with the 'turn Vice into a cute little doll' gimmick. 

The actual fight between baby-Vice and baby-Koala doesn't even try to hide how ridiculous it is, with both of them being puppets with very visible muppet-controlling rods from below. With the background being Australia's Ayers Rock. We get more comedic 'haha guys kissing are funny' jokes to close out the ending. It's... I don't know. Sometimes the showmakers just go all in with the zaniness? I did enjoy the sheer bizarreness of this one, if nothing else. 

Random Notes:

• This is a movie, so on-screen deaths are apparently okay as Olteca casually murders a Fenix scientist in the opening scene. 
• Also, Olteca being treated with such gravitas as he menacingly acts as the villain of this movie does foreshadow his greater role in the story. 
• The two people from episode 4 that bother the Igarashis and demand they sell the building to them show up here, and get screwed over by Ikki and Viec's pranking. 
• George shows off a bunch of Vistamps -- like the giraffe, chicken and dung beetle -- on his iPad. These are apparently based on Build's secondary riders. We don't really get a good look at these other than the Kirin (giraffe) one, and that one's based on Grease. 
• I didn't look at the credits when I first reviewed this, and apparently they show all the concept art for all of these -- the common theme is that Vice always gets something super-weird with all the designs. Revi looks cool, though, with the Grease themed giraffe form, the Cross-Z themed chicken form, and the Rogue-themed dung beetle form. 
• Vice's ghost form does Sento's Fleming's right-hand-rule pose, and says 'we're the best match' with his chibified voice. 
• I know it's just a joke, but Vice propositioning Lovekov for marriage is kind of creepy considering that they're both essentially also siblings. 

One Piece 1046 Review: Mizukage

One Piece, Chapter 1046: Raizo

Last chapter was super-focused on the Luffy-vs-Kaido fight, and it's neat to have a bit of a breather. It's surprising that our 'breather' this time around isn't a continuation of the Hiyori-Orochi thing, or explaining where Denjiro buggered off to, though. I do really like the opening scene as Kaido recovers from the hilarious head-punch from the previous chapter, demanding to know who Luffy is. Luffy, of course, has a very strong sense of self and his answer, as always, "I'm Monkey D. Luffy, the man who'll surpass you and become King of the Pirates". None of this 'I'm the next Joy Boy' stuff, which I think a lot of the fandom dreaded. 

Kaido does give a bit of an exposition, explaining what Awakening is -- I'm not quite sure if this implies Kaido has or has not awakened? They talk about what they've lost, and then we have both of them doing the One Piece variation of the JoJo ora-ora-ora barrage. Kaido unleashes a Gundari Meteor Shower on Luffy, though his body goes into that play-doh style of conforming to Kaido's spiked club. Then Luffy follows it up with like, six arms beating into Kaido? I'm not sure if Luffy just made extra arms like what he does with Kong Organ or if it's just a variant of gatling. Honestly, either way wouldn't be surprising to me. 

Kaido talks about how the flames are burning in Onigashima, something that's kinda been built up over the past couple of chapters, but I do absolutely love Luffy's line about how he's left 'everything down there' to his comrades. It's something that I feel is kind of similar to the Sanji/Robin interaction earlier this arc where the Straw Hats trust each other to take care of different parts of the operation. We see Kaido and Luffy exchange another series of blows, with Kaido unleashing the wind-scythe attack he used to dis-arm Kiku, while Luffy, uh... he, uh... grabs his crotch to scrunch up his abdomen and torso. Okay, Looney Tunes is still in effect, I see. 

We get a bit of a check-in with all the other characters in Onigashima. Chopper and Nami talk about how they're all separated, Bepo (!!!) and Killer are being evacuated by their respective crew members, we get a hilarious skull joke as some of the samurai mistake Brook as being disfigured by the flames, Sanji's protecting courtesans, Usopp trying to use a water flower and talking about how he's going to protect the two wounded Scabbards... notably, Zoro is still unconscious and on Franky's shoulder. Is Zoro just flat-out dead after the whole Enma thing? I wonder. 

there's an interesting bit of Apoo verbally abusing the Satan-looking Number, Ibi, and... you know what? I really don't care about this subplot. I can see Ibi just bashing Apoo, but... but I don't know. I really wished that Apoo had been taken out by CP0 guy or Drake at this point, because at least it'd be something vaguely important. I do like Apoo, but I really kind of feel like he's dragged on for quite some time now. 

And then, the solution to all of this? The solution to the conflagration eating up the entire castle?

RAIZO OF THE FUCKING MIST.

You know what? When we entered into the Onigashima Raid... Raizo's honestly one of the Scabbards that I really didn't care about the most. It's either him or Ashura Doji, and Ashura's got a couple of powerful scenes that contrasted him to the time-traveling Scabbards, and that pretty great scene in the anime where he shows the gravestones of all the samurai that had gone to fight Kaido instead of waiting for the time-travelers. But Raizo? Raizo's been pretty goddamn badass, isn't he? He had that amazing scroll moment against Kaido, and for someone whose fight is literally just dragged on, one panel at a time, in the background, Raizo's victory against Fukurokuju is something I genuinely really liked.

And while I did really like that Raizo's victory revolves around his endurance and his ability to withstand the heat -- something he couldn't in the boiling pot -- I felt like it was bizarre that he didn't make use of his Scroll Scroll (or Maki Maki) Devil Fruit power. 

Turns out Raizo's just saving it for this moment. This is the 'operations' that he alluded to Jinbe a couple chapters earlier. We get a great moment of Raizo having a flashback to his past failures and his inability to protect Oden's family. He unleashes his scrolls, and apparently at some point he saved up the water from Zunesha's baths, and he unleashes it in a "Ninja Art: Elephant Bath", a gigantic surge of water that shoots straight at Jinbe. Jinbe then uses Ocean Heart to redirect the literal surge of enough water to create a monsoon and redirects it all over the castle. 

Absolutely badass. Again, another montage -- this time checking in with characters like the Minks, Killer and Chopper, but god damn. God damn, Raizo. I really like that this is his big contribution moment. We could've just had merely Zunesha to douse the water, but this is so much cooler.

The chapter ends with Yamato telling Momonosuke to create flame clouds to hold up Onigashima before Kaido falls... and the final page is a badass confrontation between Gear Fifth Luffy and Kaido... and Luffy just very fucking casually grabs a goddamn thunderbolt out of the skies, which... um I'm sorry nani the fuck???

Yeah. Wano's closing up and the jury's still a bit out for me on whether I think Gear Fifth is all right or if I really like it. But from how this chapter is structured, I guess we'll have a couple more scenes to show other niggling side-plots before we get the final Luffy-vs-Kaido and Momonosuke lifting up the island? I'm going to assume we resolve the Orochi death near the end. Who's left? Apoo, I guess. Plus whatever Denjiro's doing. But other than that, Wano-kuni's wrapping up and honestly? Sitting about it and thinking about it, especially since I'm in the midst of watching the Wano part of the anime, I really might rate this as one of my favourite One Piece arcs of all time. 

Random Notes:

• The cover story shows two shadows entering Pudding's turf of Chocolat Town. From the way the cover story's set up, it's just probably Ichiji and Reiju. But I think a lot of people speculated that Blackbeard's forces might attack Whole Cake Island with so many of Big Mom's forces out in Wano, and it'd definitely be a great surprise. 
• After her misleading red herring comments from previous chapters, this one kind of confirms that Zunesha is 'merely' just being nostalgic of Joy Boy instead of actually implying that we've got some reincarnation stuff and that Luffy's literally the incarnation of Joy Boy. 
• We do briefly get an answer to a question I didn't even think to ask -- why not just use Zeus? Zeus just isn't strong enough, and he would've been burnt up by the fire.
• It's a bit understated, but I do like Hamlet demanding to be included in Usopp's lineup of people he's going to save. Mostly because I really like Hamlet and how fucking weird he is. 

Moon Knight S01E01 Review: Split Personality

Moon Knight, Season 1, Episode 1: The Goldfish Problem

So I really actually like Moon Knight from the comics. I don't actually know all that much about Moon Knight himself, but the bits and bytes of him that I've seen over the years of reading superhero comics have made me really appreciate this utterly crazy, multiple-personality brutal character. He's like Batman and the Punisher rolled into one, with some mystic Egyptian themes tossed in, with the craziness ramped up to eleven. But I don't really know why I never sat down and read huge chunks of a Moon Knight comic run. I do know enough to really appreciate what they did with this episode, for sure!

As the first Disney+ Marvel show to technically introduce a brand-new adaptation of a character into the mainstream audience (What If technically starred Uatu; and I'd argue that both leads for Loki are kinda-sorta new characters), Moon Knight does what the Netflix Marvel shows did in the past and ended up giving us a brand-new saga in the MCU continuity by introducing the audience so someone new. 

And "the Goldfish Problem" does an amazing job at taking it slow and giving us an idea of what the Moon Knight character concept is in a show-not-tell concept. We hang around the persona of Steven Grant, mild-mannered, dorky museum gift shop guy who's just trying to make ends meet. Some things are not quite right, though, and I feel like the show does a great job at showing how it's all easily explained by 'alternate personalities/movie-ized Dissociative Identity Disorder' and how it's foreshadowed even early on with Steve Grant having dates he didn't remember making, or tying himself to sleep to avoid what he attributes to sleepwalking. 

In a lesser show, spending a chunk of the first episode just going 'is the magic real or not?' is something that could very easily backfire and make the pilot episode boring -- refer to Iron Fist for how not to do it. I think Moon Knight gets away with it not just because of Oscar Isaac's amazing charm in playing the persona of Steve Grant, but also because both the supernatural factors (i.e. Khonshu's moon magic) and the mental illness (multiple personalities) are real. 

I do really like how we transition to the madness, and how our introduction to the multiple personalities, to Marc Spector and Khonshu, is as scattered and confusing as how Steve himself experiences it. The first-episode-action scene is him waking up randomly in some countryside (implied to be in Egypt) where Steve Grant, the 'gift-shop-ist' from London, finds himself smack dab in the midst of mercenaries shooting at him, a cultist with a strange tattoo based on the Egyptian crocodile judge-god Ammut, and a deep voice in his head that can command his fingers to clench around a mysterious beetle totem. 

I love how scattered everything is and yet how ultimately easy it is for anyone with the barest hint of literature savviness to piece things together. And if it's not obvious enough, Steve 'glitches out' and stutters, leading to very well-done snap-cuts to him regaining control of his body after Moon Knight takes over, beating the shit out of mercenaries and leaving his hands bloody. It's equal parts horrifying as it is comedic due to Oscar Isaac's amazing acting, as well as some pretty amazing comical scenes like Khonshu going "did you seriously just throw the gun?"; Steve waking up to find himself driving backwards; or giant cupcakes and the black comedy with the falling logs.

Again, I love that the MCU propensity of comedy translates to some hilarious black comedy in this case, something that I felt was kind of missing in the Netflix shows. 

Again, the whole episode really sets up a lot of great mysteries that I'm sure will be covered in the future, swapping around between Steve's "dreams" that turn out to be real, him losing two entire days (that date is soul-crushing) and increasingly terrifying horror moments. It goes from pretty subtle things like reflections not working as they should -- seriously, pay attention to Steve's reflections after his little action sequence. Even before the massive hall-of-mirrors sequence near the end, we get some signs that things aren't doing quite as right. And there's also KHONSHU! Impressively CGI'd into a horrifying being, everyone's favourite bird-skull-headed god ends up terrifying poor Steve in that elevator hallway, and later on just keeps showing up. Really, really love that the focus of this first episode isn't just a by-the-books origin story, but rather on how this poor museum worker is quite literally and unwillingly thrust into a world of mysterious phone numbers, missing days, dead goldfishes and the Cult of Ammut.

The bad guy plot, so as it is, involves a pretty cool villain. Arthur Harrow (played by Ethan Hawke) is introduced to us in the first scene of the show with that very uncomfortable glass-shards-in-shoes thing, and his stated goal revolves around the Egyptian deity Ammut -- in real-world mythology, Ammut is the crocodile judge in the underworld, who would judge a person's heart against a feather, and would grant them access to specific parts of the afterlife depending on the deeds they did in life. The MCU version of Ammut is a bit more vengeful, noting that he attempted to judge people in life before they died, and was held back by the 'indolence of the other gods'. Very neat worldbuilding for sure.

I really do love how Harrow ends up being shown as a charismatic cult leader -- what with the moving judging tattoo that causes him to deem his followers worthy or instantly kill them. Absolutely love his conversation with Steve Grant in the museum, too, with the very unsettling revelation that so many of the tourists and guards are already part of the Cult of Ammut. (And then we get the Avatar-the-movie and Avatar-the-cartoon joke, which cracked me up so bad). A very interesting villain from the get-go, and hopefully Harrow would remain interesting throughout the entire season. Please no more surprise final-episode villains, Marvel, please and thank you.

And then, of course, we get the epic final scene. Poor Steve is stalked by some hideous skeletal dog-skull-headed demon in the museum, and he finally comes face-to-face with his alter-ego in that very appropriate double-mirror bathroom, and in a transformation scene that has very strong Tokusatsu vibes, we get Marc Spector finally taking over of the body on-screen for the first time, and mummy bandages slither up his body as he transforms to Moon Knight while Egyptian hieroglyphics glow in the walls of the room. Very fucking badass. Did no one ever give Moon Knight a mummy-themed outfit in the comics? Well, I'm happy the MCU costume designers did it. 

Very, very powerful first episode, and I really do feel like Oscar Isaac is actually the perfect choice for this with how easily he communicates when he's channeling Marc Spector or Steve Grant (though Steve's hilarious faux-British accent helps too). Very entertained by this for sure. More, please. 

Marvel Easter Egg Corner:

• I won't do a (potentially spoilery) full intro on who Moon Knight or Arthur Harrow is, but I'll do note some Easter Eggs.
• "Steven Grant" is already one of the personas of Moon Knight from the comics, but I do like to note that it's also the first two names of Captain America (Steven Grant Rogers) so it's possible that Marc Spector took that as an inspiration when crafting this mild-mannered civilian persona. 
• Among the Ennead textbooks Steve is poring through are textbooks on Asgard and Wakanda. 
• Other than the massive lines of Layla missed calls, the one sole non-Layla name is DuChamp, referencing Jean-Paul "Frenchie" DuChamp, Moon Knight's sidekick. It's the 32nd missed call, and Moon Knight debuted on Werewolf By Night #32.
• More of an internal Easter Egg, but in addition to Marc replacing Gus the goldfish, all the postcards from Steve's "mom" are the same postcards you could see in the museum, meaning that Marc probably mailed them to Steve to keep him essentially 'docile' in this civilian life. 
• Less of an Easter Egg but more of a foreshadowing, but Steve Grant's phone wallpaper being a crocodile and him signing off his calls to his mom (which may or may not exist) with 'later, gator' might be a reference to presumably Ammut herself. 

One Piece 1045 Review: Luffy Tunes

One Piece, Chapter 1045: Next Level

Yeah, this whole chapter is just Luffy versus Kaido, and I wager that we'll have that for the next couple of chapters until Wano ends. And... I've seen people severely defending and disparaging how Gear Fifth turned out, especially since it's really turning out to be something that's way wackier than what everyone expected. I feel like this really fits the soul of One Piece and Monkey D. Luffy, though. I mean, would I be pissed off if Gear Fifth or Awakening turned out to be some sort of badass Dragon-Man or Tiger-Man or the Wisdom King or whatever? No, not really. I think I'd be happy with it, just like how I was pretty happy with Boundman and Snakeman. And I did agree that 1045 in particular was rather... bizarre and over-the-top in the comedy. But I don't think Oda could get away with making Luffy's power be essentially Toon World from Yu-Gi-Oh without going over-the-top with it, you know what I'm saying? He needs to make it a bit more ridiculous than what we've seen Luffy do in the past, and if that means extending his limbs through Kaido's eyeballs or using Kaido as a skipping rope...

I'm not 100% sold about how much I like Gear Fifth, personally. In general, though, my feelings are positive, especially since we do get a lot of cool shots in this chapter like Gomu Gomu Gigant or the epic punching Kaido through his face scene. I think my biggest problem is that... the narrative foreshadows both Awakening and the comedic aspects of Luffy's power for sure, but I still really want the specifics of why Luffy awakened after Kaido beats him to near-death to be explained. I think that'll make or break how I feel about this fight as a whole. As for now, though, I'm just in it for the ride. 

I also like that Kaido realizes that Luffy's awakening has the environment-altering properties of a Paramecia awakening, but also gains the transformation aspect of a Zoan. I absolutely love how Oda clearly takes reference from old rubber-hose (ha!) cartoons like Looney Tunes and especially Popeye in showing what's going on. I really don't want to describe every single scene since it's something that's best you read on your own, but man, Luffy contorting Kaido like an accordion before expanding and causing him to float like a balloon? And the thing with the eyeballs? My god, that's stupid and hilarious.

I also really loved the joke that Yamato is baffled and briefly thinks that it's a form of Kaido she hadn't seen before. 

We get the very epic scene of Luffy descending from the heavens later as Gomu Gomu Gigant, and Luffy turning into a full-on giant is something that everyone has kind of been speculating would be a power Luffy gets eventually. A very epic two-page spread that we get... only instead of an epic punch or stomp or something that would be worthy of a dramatic finish in a Dragon Ball Z or Naruto Ninja Storm game, Luffy instead...

...plays jump rope with Kaido's serpentine body.

Yep. Yep, yep yep yep. Did anyone call that? Did anyone think Luffy's going to do that? Oh, the utter creativity and sheer balls on Oda to make this part of the fight. It's so audaciously bizarre that I can't even be mad and I'm just laughing along with the story, and I actually do love it that the whole 'Joy Boy' thing is intended to infect the audience as well. 

Also, the absolute disrespect that Luffy is showing Kaido right now. It's one thing to one-shot the enemy after a power-up. It's one thing to Red Hawk or King Kong Gun or Jet Gatling your enemy to oblivion after a power-up. It's another to actually physically use your opponent's body as a goddamn toy.

I also like that Kaido isn't getting the... the post-Super-Saiyan-Freeza treatment, I guess, where he's actually still putting up a fight and Luffy's Gear Fifth form isn't completely overpowering him. A more One Piece-relevant example would be how Luffy utterly trounces Blueno after learning Gear Second, I guess. Kaido is still able to fight, and unleashes a massive Boro Breath at Luffy... and is this the first Boro Breath that actually damages someone? I made a joke in one of my anime reviews that any time Kaido uses Boro Breath, it only ever destroys the environment, gets cut, deflected, or otherwise dodged.

Luffy gets burnt to a crisp by Boro Breath... and just like a goddamn Bugs Bunny cartoon, explosions and fire just turns you black and covered in soot for a while, and Luffy just coughs it away, fucking RUNS IN THE AIR like Road Runner, and runs back to fight Kaido. We get Kaido breaking out Ragnaraku and bashing Luffy's still-gigant head down to the performance hall, and we get everyone having Looney Tunes pop-out eyes. I guess that's the manga's way of showing that Luffy's powers are probably an aura that affects people around him? That explains some of the goofier expressions Kaido made in 1044 for sure. 

Clearly, rubberhose animations don't exist in Wano, but Kaido does compare Luffy's powers to that of a 'picture book'. We get an interesting brief bit where Luffy's transformation is undone and he actually melts into the face of a tired old man. Kind of obvious from previous chapters that Gear Fifth is going to actually have some severe drawbacks. Luffy basically 'restarts his heartbeat' to the sound of the drums to re-enter Gear Fifth, but I do like that this chapter really emphasizes the toll that Gear Fifth is having on Luffy.

Some really great (if brief) character moment for Kaido and Luffy in this scene, too. Kaido, all obsessed about finding the 'perfect death' and obsessed with the deaths of Oden and Roger and the samurai and all that... talks to Luffy about how 'after you die, someone will record the tale of your great battle'. But Luffy doesn't give a shit about his legacy, and I love that. I love him quoting Bink's Sake's line about how the only thing left after death is just bones (yohohoho), and all of this really ties to the constant arguments about giving your life as a sacrifice for the greater good, or to struggle in pain for the next day. It works well with Ace's story as a whole, with Usopp's line to Kin'emon, with the Scabbards' Sunacchi mentality, and with Kaido's many badass lines on the rooftop battle against the samurai. 

In a very cool moment, Luffy reactivates Gear Fifth, remembering Momo, Tama and Kin'emon -- the three people he's had the most ties to in Wano... and also Pedro for some reason? It's cool, and I do feel like Pedro's honestly pretty badass death has been marred in the fandom by everyone joking and dreading the idea of Pedro turning out to be alive again. But if he's actually dead? If this moment and Carrot's earlier moment reminiscing about Pedro before attacking Perospero really confirms Pedro's death? Yeah, this is a neat little sequence, then. It's just such a shame that the 'death is cheap' trope also kind of cheapens this moment. 

We get more slapstick sequences of Luffy molding his body to fit the spikes on Kaido's kanabo, then him bouncing off the ground after Kaido bashes him, before rocketing back to do essentially that wacky Gomu Gomu no UFO attack on Kaido. This really does bring me back to that moment in Punk Hazard which, I feel, really describes Oda's philosophy regarding Luffy. Zoro tells Luffy to get serious in the New World, and Luffy's response is to dork out and do that UFO attack. I feel like that plays into us, as a fandom, and our perception of how the power ups are going to get. Something more badass, perhaps, something more 'edgy' and traditionally serious. And edgy power-ups are great! I loved Boundman and Asura and all that jazz, but I also love that Oda's essentially really going back to the core competencies of Luffy as a character, and how he's, at his core, a goober. And I feel like this power-up does really work for him very well in a way that something like a Hollowified Ichigo style edgy power-up wouldn't. 

(Oh, and if you really care about the specifics of Gear Fifth, Kaido has a random line that says that Gear Fifth essentially mixes Armament and Conqueror Haki, which sort-of justifies the focus on Ryu'o and Advanced Conqueror's training that Luffy had earlier this arc.)

...and, well, the chapter ends with Luffy punching Kaido through the head (except not really), and we're still on for 1046 to bring us more goofiness. I really am pleasantly surprised, I think, is the best way that I can describe how I feel with Gear Fifth. It's not what I was expecting, but it's something that I have to admit really fits the character. Very much enjoying this chapter a lot. 

Random Notes:

• Again, sorry for being so infrequent recently. Real life's really taking up a lot of my spare time! I'm trying to catch up with Kamen Rider Revice reviews in the near future, as well as probably do semi-regular updates for Moon Knight. Probably not going to catch up to CW/DC shows for the near future? I do have drafts for MCU's Phase Four movies, but I'm kind of burned out on making movie reviews. Oh well, we'll see how things get as we go.
• I really do hope we get a Kaido flashback, but where I see a lot of people expecting it to be as long as the Oden flashback, I wager it'd be around a chapter or half a chapter like how Big Mom's flashback with Mother Caramel was. 
• It'll probably be a bit more clear in the anime, but with Kaido's eyeballs and later on his face, Luffy's not punching through them, he's punching and extending Kaido's body like rubber, and Kaido's flesh is enveloping Luffy's extended fist. 
• So since Kaido says body transformations are a trademark of a Zoan awakening, does he have an additional form we're not privy to? Or is that just his hybrid form?
• Some people pointed out that the bizarre cartoon physics of King, Queen and Sasaki's dinosaur Zoan forms does help to kind of prepare the audience for some bizarreness with the Luffy Toon Force. I agree!
• It's one thing to see Chopper and Nami have bug-out eyes. It's another to see Kid and Law doing the same. 

Kamen Rider Zero-One: Others Vulcan & Valkyrie

 Kamen Rider Zero-One: Others: Vulcan & Valkyrie

Now the set-up of Kamen Rider Zero-One Others Metsubojinrai is an interesting one. All four members of the Metsubojinrai.net organization gets fused together into a berserking warrior that doesn't seem to be in control of themselves; while Yua is ordered to exterminate them by any means necessary. Which leads to this final confrontation between all the secondary characters in Zero-One, and, as far as I can tell, the final chapter for Kamen Rider Zero-One as a whole. 

Except... this movie is paced rather oddly. For all the faults about the oddities of reusing plot points and not building up the necessity of the 'ultimate uncontrollable berserk form' that is Kamen Rider Metsubojinrai, Others: Metsubojinrai at least utilizes most of its characters well. Horobi, Jin and the antagonist Arkland get a lot of decent screentime for them to monologue their viewpoints, while Yua, Fuwa and the two less-prominent Metsubojinrai characters at least show up enough to remind the audience of what they're doing. 

And this movie, for a movie titled "Vulcan and Valkyrie"... really doesn't feature Vulcan and Valkyrie a whole ton, does it? Or Valkyrie at all, because she just gets bedridden in a hospital for almost the entirety of the second act? It's kind of a huge, huge shame. A huge problem that I also have is that the movie dances around the fact that Metsubojinrai.net's members are kind of... not in their right mind and are forced into a gestalt entity by the Mass Brain system. And it's not like Zero-One as a show hasn't dealt with an out-of-control character not in their right mind with Aruto and Horobi in their respective tenures as Kamen Rider Ark-Zero. But everyone just handwaves Metsubojinrai as trying to commit suicide by becoming the 'evil to be eliminated' by the heroes that are Kamen Rider Vulcan and Valkyrie, and... and the fact that we don't really give Horobi, Jin, Naki and Ikazuchi screentime to explain themselves feel weird -- especially considering the values and the themes that Kamen Rider Zero-One as a show has been emphasizing. It's definitely a tragic and very interesting ending to the characters, but it's also one that feels unsatisfying, I feel. 

The movie itself... I have a bit less to talk about because it's kind of straightforward. Kamen Rider Metsubojinrai rampages around, and Yua ends up being caught in a conflict of having standing orders to kill Kamen Rider Metsubojinrai, or to try and talk them down. 

There's also the Sold subplot, which... yeah, it was interesting to see where it's going to go in the Mestubojinrai movie, and the actors they picked for the main Sold guy, the main Sold girl, and the burly Sold with a jacket are competent enough, but everyone in the Solds are pretty much one-dimensional about how they're either pro-murder-the-humans or pro-coexistence-with-the-humans. Again, there's an underlying message about how Mestubojinrai.net's cause can easily be interpreted into two different 'justices'. Or how 'just because the decision is the majority doesn't mean it's right'. but the movie doesn't really do enough to build up the Sold characters for me to care; and the conclusion ends up being kind of taken away from their hands since it's Fuwa and the Metsubojinrai entity doing most of the fighting. 

There's a lot of these talks -- Fuwa admonishing how justice can be used as an excuse to commit violence. Or Yua telling the girl Sold that doubts shouldn't be quashed, but rather discussed. We do get a bit of a motivation rant. Yua wants to protect all life. Fuwa plays by his own rules, protecting everything he likes and destroying everything he doesn't like. Both eventually lead to 'justice comes from the heart'. It's... again, this is all acted very well, but a lot of it feels like it's just repeating what we've already seen in the show. Maybe it's just because I'm not too invested in the Sold storyline?

Yua's Sold friend dies protecting her from Metsubojinrai, since she finds out that 'justice is protecting life', and her little gadget ends up giving Valkyrie her movie-exclusive Serval Tiger form. Yua spends the rest of the movie in a hospital, but not after a conversation with Fuwa where he interprets/realizes the fact that Metsubojinrai is specifically targeting Kamen Riders to make them 'extinct' is because of the prior conversation that Horobi had with him -- that it's a way for the humans to get rid of Metsubojinrai if they become out of control. 

Which leads to the second half of the movie. The Solds rampage and beat up the AIMS goons, because they think Metsubojinrai.net wants them to kill all humans. Fuwa runs up and gives a speech about how Metsubojinrai.net's real values is more along the lines of protection or coexistence, about what Metsubojinrai's true ideals of justice is. Again, all very well acted, but... I don't know. I kind of feel like the Sold characters are so shallow and Kamen Rider Metsubojinrai's basically a personality-less force of nature, and the movie's just relying on Fuwa to carry it on its back. He does so, leading up to his climactic fight with Kamen Rider Metsubojinrai next to Jin's garden, where Fuwa essentially mercy-kills the out-of-control Metsubojinrai entity. 

(Fuwa's death is also kind of ambiguous, we don't see him after he collapses with eyes bleeding after the epic final battle; the way he talks to Yua is about sacrificing a stray dog's life, and we see him later at the hospital framed in the same ghostly way that Horobi, Jin, Naki and Ikazuchi are walking)

Again, the conclusion of Fuwa-vs-Metsubojinrai is pretty well done, and I applaud the storywriters for doing something pretty daring. It's just that the pacing in the middle portion of the movie. There's also the argument made about how bleak this whole two-parter movie is in contrast to the rest of the more upbeat Zero-One series. Not to mention the fact that, well, it's kind of a terrible way to write off the four Metsubojinrai members without giving them a good sending-off before they're all transformed into a mindless being. The two movies are well-shot and well-written and most definitely well-acted. But ultimately I still feel that it doesn't quite gel with the vibe of the rest of the series particularly well. It's so different that it's worth checking out, but there's a lot of discussion to be had about how they handled the characters and the themes for sure.