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Kamen Rider Zero-One Episode 29- "Our Dreams Will Not Be Broken!" Discussion
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03-30-2020, 07:50 PM
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31
Fish Sandwich
The Immortal King Tasty
Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: Every diner you've ever been to.
Posts: 3,833
Yup, that's more like it! Glad I held off on whining for a week!
Well, I mean, there's still all the same stuff to complain about, and as the end of an arc, I think an autopsy of this thing is necessary, but we'll get there in a second. Right now, I wanna talk about what I liked about this episode, and that's a
whole
lot.
Mostly it's Fuwa, though. Man do I love this guy, and this is one of his best episodes yet. The character development he gets here is off the charts. In just two episodes, the show has made him into a straight up old-school
kaizou ningen
, cementing him as the most Kamen Rider possible Kamen Rider, a tragic figure manipulated to serve evil, whose irrepressible spirit ultimately compels him to fight instead for good, overcoming even his own desire for revenge. I ain't hearing any arguments this guy
isn't
an interesting character anymore. He is, without a doubt, one of the big reasons to be watching this show.
Where this gets even better is that Yuuya Takahashi, for the first time in a while, shows his master planner skills again, finally tying together the plot threads of Assault Wolf, Naki, ZAIA,
and
using all that combined with Fuwa's own changing motivations and development to have him bounce off of
Yua's
arc, forcefully shattering the comfortable lies she's been telling herself, and moving her along in a direction I think we've all been waiting for. That central moment, where it all comes together, where Fuwa has realized his obsession with his goals isn't going to do him any good in the long-term. Where he throws it in Yua's face that she has the same issue, and tells her, in the most Fuwa possible way, "you need to start moving on too, and I'll beat the crap out of you until you get that". Where he finds himself standing against Gai, the man who promises to rid the world of HumaGears, and with Aruto, whose belief in co-existence used to be so intolerable to him.
That is a payoff
. This kind of drama makes me feel a lot more like there was a point in everything that's happened up until now, and the timing of it all happening. It helps that Rampage Vulcan is freakin'
sweet
. I know most people are just happy the obligatory dogpile form (heh, dog) went to the secondary Rider, but even that is underselling how fresh it is. Fitting its in-universe origin, as well as Fuwa's wild character, it's a mangled mess of robot animal corpses strapped onto Vulcan. It's not things coming together in perfect harmony, it's an abomination, and I love it. Absolutely stellar debut fight scene too, thanks to Sugihara's usual insanely intense direction, which throughout the episode is as on-point as ever.
I'm very,
very
optimistic about where this show is heading from here. When all was said and done, the contest arc ended with everyone in the positions I most wanted. The main characters are all in perfect places for growth that fits their respective characters goals and motivations. Aruto is facing the consequences of his actions, and has to work harder than ever to make his dreams come true. Fuwa, who more than anything desires to have control of his own life, is facing the realization he's been dancing to someone else's tune the whole time. Yua, who's always been about procedure and following orders, has to own up to the fact that sometimes, those orders are obviously not for the better. Jin is growing up. Horobi has to follow the Ark's will in an increasingly complex world.
At the end of the day, you know, I'd say they pulled it together. The question then, remains: Should this arc ever have become something that
needed
pulling together in the first place?
I'm still not too sure, and I probably won't ever be until I one day sit down and watch Zero-One all over again once it's done. This arc consistently lacked in development for the main characters until largely just in these last few episodes (and, put less charitably, Aruto's "development" in this one is merely that he's no longer allowed to be static), and I think that's a big part of the problem me and so many others had. It was just hard for the show not to feel like it was stalling. Yua has been a big talking point precisely for how much of a talking point she
isn't
, and it's hard to say what keeping these details at bay for so long accomplished. Perhaps this is the downside to Takahashi's attention to structure as a writer? Perhaps he knew well ahead of time where these people needed to be for all these events to line up so perfectly, and ended up putting them in place too early, deciding it was best to simply leave them there until they were needed again. It's a theory, anyway.
Another big problem I've really locked onto over time, that's even present in this very episode, is how perfunctory the action can feel at times. It was
never
clear why Aruto, after the second episode made such a big deal out of him gaining the willingness to wipe out a rampaging HumaGear, and the following 14 episodes of him cracking jokes and doing wacky gags, why he's suddenly so insistent on trying to talk them down, even though the lack of backups isn't even an issue now. This is the kind of thing I think was a missed opportunity with this arc. You can easily turn that minus into a plus by taking some space in one of the arcs to have Fuwa or someone go "hey, why (
thing I just complained about
)", and give Aruto the opportunity to admit how maybe the competition with ZAIA and the continued public pressure on Hiden has made him desperate to hope there's still a chance for HumaGears to keep control of themselves, even though he knows it's naive of him. It could serve the functional purpose of justifying the writing (imagine how much more satisfying the Hopper Blade's debut would've been!), and create a nice human moment that adds depth to Aruto's character. As it is, he and Thouser keep smacking each other around, and now that it's all over I still have *no* *flipping* *clue* what they were ever trying to accomplish. They aren't trying to kill each other. They don't want to steal each other's belts or Keys or something. Half the time they're fighting (like here!), the HumaGear has already been blown up, and what's worse, this keeps happening in public. There's an obvious satirical element to Gai's ability to manipulate the public through populist tactics, but it stretches suspension of disbelief to have him smack Zero-One around with a lance completely unprovoked the way he does at the start of this episode. This isn't Gaim and these aren't Armored Riders! If Bill Gates got in a fistfight with Steve Jobs in the middle of the street, it would raise some eyebrows!
So that about sums it up. There are more minor, individual things all over the place, but the problems with this arc, which I've probably said a million times, and so has everyone else, because they're obvious, were:
- questionable pacing
- stagnant characters
- lack of proper plot context behind fights
I guess, anyway. I think in an ideal world, five two-episode competitions would've made for a really nice chunk of the show, that could've gotten anyway from the terrorist stuff and the focus on society as a whole to deliver a detailed look at these two corporations, giving us tons of tight world-building while effortlessly working in great character growth from the unique scenarios the premise allowed, and I just can't honestly say I think we got that. It also didn't help that we got several episodes that moved the plot forward... without moving the competition forward, contributing to the pacing issue by extending the overall length, and underlining what I'm talking about when I say the show would've benefited from trying to kill more birds with fewer stones.
I'll also be clear on this one last time:
None of these episodes were particularly poor episodes of Kamen Rider
. They're downright good in a vacuum, even. We still got lots of heroic action. The direction was consistently wonderful. The actors are doing good work. The jokes were funny. It was never that I hated these episodes, but rather that I wished they could've been so much more that what they are. And what they are, I suppose, is up to each individual viewer in the end.
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