Zero-One became boring for me during the whole work saga thing, although it did pick up again once Ark-Zero entered the fray.

Personally, they should've had a few more episodes with Aruto as Ark-One to shake up the traditional formula more. Oh, and Thouser's 180 personality flip was not convincing for me. No, I don't care that a cute robot dog was involved, it just felt so forced. At least hint it in the previous episodes as to why he hates machines so much instead of just the "humans are superior to robots" thing.

Vulcan, however, is a treat to watch anytime he's on screen.

I'm kind of the opposite (aside from thoughts on Fuwa and Gai which, yeah, 1000% agree with) -- I warmed up to the workplace arc a lot over time and personally find it to be incredibly strong, even if there are some flaws such as Yaiba just becoming a non-character; and Ark-Zero was... just devoid of any substance. It went from a show asking complex interesting questions and portraying them in ways that are groundbreaking for a show like this, to just "Ark bad we need to defeat him but he's so powerful oh noes D:"

And like, I love power-of-friendship-overcoming-extreme-malice shit that's simple on the surface -- OOO is my favourite season, my favourite Sentai seasons tend to follow these themes, one of the whole reasons I'm giving Ghost another try right now is because I vibe with a lot of what it's saying, etc. But it's just completely not what Zero-One was about and it didn't do anything interesting at all with it. It's a running trend I'm starting to notice with this writer -- he starts out with an interesting theme and well-penned storylines, but doesn't know how to end it so he just throws out a powerful evil rider for the good guys to beat up.

You peeps realise it's possible to enjoy Saber and Zero-One, right? It's not a zero-Sum game. I really enjoyed the action and themes in Zero-One dealing with overcoming malice and prejudice to do better in future (something that, especially looking at Fuwa, was definitely there from episode 1), and I'm also really enjoying Saber's off the wall energy and bond between its protagonists. I'm just here for a good time from a Japanese children's show.

Yeah...? I don't see what that has to do with anything; no-one's choosing to dislike Zero-One just for the sake of it

It's funny because this is exactly how I feel about Evol and I've still never totally forgiven Build for turning into a generic shounen anime after 30 episodes of being a gripping political thriller turned war drama. The "powerful evil Rider everyone needs to beat up" thing is almost certainly less to do with Takahashi as a writer, and more to do with Oomori as a producer, since he worked on Drive, Ex-Aid, Build, and Zero-One, which all pulled that same stunt to some extent. This probably sounds like I'm trying to start an argument, but I think I mostly just wanted an excuse to vent about Build a little.

I see where you're coming from with your opinions on Zero-One and I don't really wanna disrespect that, but what I will say is that if you've managed to mellow out on the contest arc over time, I only hope the same will prove true for some of the later parts of the series, because I do still think there's a lot of great material in there that ties into things established at the start very strongly.

I'm not overly fond of Build's final stretch either - good god buildad - but at least there Evolt was a character that had been manipulating the characters the full course of the show -- as such you had a lot of interpersonal arcs being fulfilled, and Evolt's tower at least feels like the final phase in his plan. Build being about a war in particular means a big whole final battle doesn't exactly feel out of place compared to how much quieter and entangled the earlier parts of the show were -- that was just a precursor to the inevitable disaster the Pandora's Box would wreak. While perhaps not executed in the best way it could have, there's a clear path being followed here and so many personal connections between our final boss and our heroes that it's hard not to find great positives in here. To turn this around, I see where you're coming from with your opinions on Build's last third and I don't want to disrespect that; but I hope you'll be able to find something to like in there some day.

Ark and Chronus on the other hand are complete voids of personality that are completely out of place in their own shows and beyond having nothing to do with any character (I mean, Ark sure did turn MBJR to terrorism and Masamune sure is Kuroto's dad, but that sure doesn't seem to matter to anything), they don't exactly feel bothered with engaging with anything the show has done up until that point. My problem isn't evil kamen riders as the final boss - I mean, I have issues with that as I've gone over before; but it's hardly ruinous - it's that they substitute literally anything interesting happening. Zero-One's writers have gone on record saying that the humagears were not meant to be a big part of Zero-One beyond the halfway point, and to me that really gets to the core of the issue for me: the entire point of the show, the entire premise and key component to the questions the show was asking and what really set this show apart from any other Kamen Rider... is little more than window dressing in the eyes of the main writer, something to be set aside for "Evil Kamen Rider Beats Everyone Up, And We'll Figure Out The End Later".

I came around to liking the tournament arc because I had issues with the structure at the time that made it hard to watch, but I came around to it because of good points that were always there in how successfully the arc portrays how different industries have advanced robotics and AI integrated into them and what different questions those raised, while still also acting well as a kid's show in portraying all these different industries; I liked pretty much everything going on with Fuwa and Naki; Gai was an unbelievably threatening and unbelievably real villain who capitalised on the best aspects of Zero-One's corporate themings, and how he turns it around into "the corporate world favours those who don't let feelings and morals get in the way". That is far beyond the scope of what I ever expected the show to handle, and to then turn it around even further by having Aruto create his own company from scratch; starting his journey into defining his own path and ideals and becoming dedicated to the humagears rather than just following and using the tools of his predecessors by starting Hiden Manufacturing? Brilliant! Everything I just described is so close to perfect in my mind that I can almost forgive them not integrating the actual Kamen Riding in any sensible way, and their just completely forgetting to give half their cast personalities! Ark-Zero, on the other hand? ... no wonder most people thought that the only episodes we missed from the Covid restrictions were 5 episodes of Zero-Two fighting Ark-One, because that's all this ever is.


I went on for far longer than I wanted to because I seriously didn't want to go into this again, Zero-One is a show so incredibly frustrating I would much rather just forget it and move on; but it is one that made such a great effort earlier on that it's hard not to get passionate about how much it fell. I don't like ragging on it so much, but everything it does after Raiden came back and helped laser-eye the Ark driver into existence is either so boring or unlikeable that it kinda hurts. I'm just glad to get back to a writer who actually seems to care about the characters he sets up.

... man, I wanted to get to a Ghost episode today...

Ufff... That was a putdown Kurona, but one I generally agree with, minus a few things.

Especially this one I agree with:

Especially since it was apparently always endgame that Aruto vs Horobi would be the final, which kinda confuses me. Aruto and Horobi don't have much interaction and the last time they interact before the ending is when he defends him from Thouser and they depart on better terms. It doesn't help that Horobi's hatred of humanity has no ground to stand on. It's hollow.

It clearly shows that they had no idea how they would get the fight to happen and just crowbarred the story long enough till they forced it, which just didn't feel satisfying in the slightest to me, not even going into stuff like ghost dad and so on.

From what I heard, they wanted to do that because of the Reiwa suit actor being set up against the Heisei (minus kuuga and hibiki) suit actor. And if that's true... ah, boy. What do I even say?

Oh... Oh boy... I mean, I appreciate a good metaplot, but... Yeah, that ain't one of them... Yikes.

Am I being too dramatic if I say I'm sorry for kicking up all these lingering frustrations with Zero-One? Because I spent like two entire years very gradually getting over a similar kind of disappointment with Gaim, and I feel like I should know better than to attempt to push you on this at all right now because of that.