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Kamen Rider Die watches Kamen Rider Zero-One (and builds SO-DO)
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08-21-2022, 10:39 PM
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892
Kamen Rider Die
Kamen Ride Or Die
Join Date: Aug 2019
Location: Chicago, IL
Posts: 6,159
KAMEN RIDER ZERO-ONE EPISODE 44 - “THERE’S ONLY ONE PERSON WHO CAN STOP YOU…”
See,
this
is all I wanted.
This episode was so good that I mostly don’t give a shit about how much I disliked this story’s beginning. It’s literally everything I want in a Zero-One story: personal stakes with societal metaphors, and societal stakes with personal metaphors. There’s weight to every interaction, and a sense of how minor ripples become crushing waves. Aruto and Horobi become a story about how difficult it can be to let go of hatred, as well as a story of how valuable it can be to think of the similarities of our circumstances.
Mostly, though, it’s a story about how Hatred and Hope are each others’ antithesis, and how one can only exist in the other’s absence. Aruto spent a year fixing his friends (and some foes), helping them see the pointlessness of anger and hatred and intolerance and bigotry. His work let them dream of better futures, and hope for a better world.
They
can be the force for good that Aruto used to be. It’s a role Aruto can’t take on, because he’s chosen hatred instead of hope. He’s given himself over to anger and self-deception, defined himself as someone who wants to destroy someone else, and left himself no room to hold onto a dream. He can’t leap towards a dream when he’s rooted by hatred.
Giving over an entire episode to the ways hope can be just as transmissible as hatred… that’s really lovely? This is a story that doesn’t shy away from real-life parallels (that AIMS guy was going to execute a protestor, right on this superhero show designed to sell toys to Japanese children), and so it gains additional power from its hopefulness. The point of the heroes here is to argue for the right of Humagears to feel let down, to feel underappreciated, and then to ask for a chance to make it up to them. It’s trying to meet rage with acknowledgement and apology. It’s defusing anger by admitting culpability. It’s the most humane way to resolve this sort of situation, and I almost can’t believe this show did it.
Because it’s kind of the entire point this show’s trying to make about people, you know? It’s that we’re constantly divided by things, despite being so
fundamentally the same
that it’s ridiculous to hate one another. The humans and Humagears have different origins, but they both want to be free and safe, while fearing that someone might prevent that. We all just, deep down, want to know that we’re safe to be ourselves. That’s it. The loss of that, or the
denial
of that, is what makes us turn on each other. The ways we hate each other is one of the most common things
about
people, just like how Aruto and Horobi’s rage and shame are identical. Being able to see the same dream in one another might be the answer to so much pain.
Also,
this was a completely awesome superhero show.
I sometimes forget to talk about these shows on that level, but, HOLY SHIT. The fight between Aruto and Fuwa was beautiful and heartbreaking, as Aruto grew more and more enraged at Fuwa’s attempts to stop him. We got a little of last episode’s silent dismissal, until Fuwa’s emotional attacks started making contact. Then, Aruto just started pummeling him. It’s hard to watch, because the fight isn’t tokusatsu action, really; it’s a
beating
. Fuwa’s two-headed wolf form (so great to have Naki back in the plot) is janky and almost inoperable from the start. He can’t hope to stop Aruto, but Fuwa can at least weather enough punishment to maybe talk some sense into him. It doesn’t work, because Aruto can’t let go of his mix of denial (none of this is his fault, he just needs to defeat Horobi) and depression (it doesn’t matter if he’s hated, it doesn’t matter if he hurts his friends). It’s the saddest fight Aruto ever won.
AHHHH
I’m doing it again!
The fights! The superhero drama! Incredibly cool to see Horobi and Aruto have their final battle on the same car park that Geiz and Sougo almost had their duel! And with Ark-Horobi as the hot new suit and the Progrise Key that is the Ark half of the Ark-Zero face instead of the Zero side like Aruto has! And with weapons everywhere! In a fight no one can really win because doing violence to others is really doing violence to yourself! Because AHHHH I’M JUST TALKING ABOUT THE EMOTIONS AGAIN SHIT SHIT SHIT
THE END
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