It's a soild first episode.
The world building is done appropriately
We have our first henshin neatly explained, even comes with tutorial. Hopefully it means something more in the future.
The fight itself is just okay, IMHO. The camera works start getting good when it was interrupted with jarring CGI works when he enters some vehicles being thrown around. The final kick is satisfactory, and the ankle sprain is nice touch.

Horobi and Jin's personalities are introduced sufficiently. The special unit guy and gal needs more screen time after this. Right now they feel like generic hot headed maverick and weak sauce team leader female.

Will be watching for three or five episodes before I decide to continue or not.

Some more thoughts:

I love everything about this. The first episode didn't feel as rushed as previous debuts in recent memory. Hopefully they pace things well. They didn't even feel the need to show off a form change right off of the bat.

Mainly we were focused on Aruto Hiden and how he ended up becoming CEO of Hiden Technologies. I think he will be a likeable protagonist. He initially didn't want to take the role since his dream was to be a comedian. Unfortunately, he's awful. But by the end of the episode, he realizes he can make people smile by inheriting his grandfather's will to become a hero and save others. It's a great character motivation and we get to see it materialize in a believable way in just the first episode. But this is just the beginning. The story is going to presumably follow a lot of company drama (especially with the jealous Vice-President) and I'm excited to see how its handled.

As for other characters, I really like Izu and I can already see how her dryly explaining Aruto's crappy jokes will be a fun running gag. Not much shown of the AIM's squad but we get a few details - Fuwa doesn't care much for orders and is hell-bent on destroying the Humagears, and Yua doesn't have much power despite her rank. Will be interesting to see how that dynamic plays into their character arcs when they become Vulkan and Valkyrie respectively.

The MetsubouJinrai.net faction seems interesting. Horobi seems to be more serious while Jin has child-like curiosity. The scene where he executed the Magear while laughing was chilling. Interesting that their base of operations in "Daybreak Town" seems to be a flooded megapolis walled off from the rest of the city. Based on what they say, it appears that A.I had reached a "singularity" in the past before too.

The first episode had great world-building and I can already see the potential for mystery. What happened in the past at Daybreak Town? Is Fuwa's hate for A.I related to it? What about Aruto? Why did he call that Humagear during the flashback his father? And what was that explosion that killed him? I am really intrigued.

Action-wise, this episode did not disappoint. You can tell Zero-One is portrayed by a new actor because he's so agile. I love Takaiwa, but he was definitely starting to show his age coming up to the end of Heisei. Nawata is proving to be a worthy successor. I love the emphasis on jumps and speed. And it was really neat that they explained how Aruto being connected to Zea gave him A.I-like processing speed in order to read an instruction manual to learn how to use the Zero-One Driver. Kind of subverts the trope where the Rider magically knows how to fight from the first henshin. Attache-Slasher is a little ridiculous but looked pretty cool in action.

Also loved the special effects. The Magear transformation looked pretty menacing and disturbing with a lot of skeleton imagery, and Zero-One's transformation looked hella extra too, with the satellite beams and giant robotic grasshopper. Plus, CGI was pretty sparingly used and when they used it, it was pretty creative (Zero-One jumping through the bus). Plus that Rider Kick is awesome. A little brutal to see the innards of the Magear though, blue blood and all. Definitely felt sorry for that guy. He just wanted to make people laugh. I really expect the show to make us feel for these Humagears throughout its run. I see the potential in it getting really tragic.

Music is great, as expected from the composer behind Ghost. Plus, we have a baller insert theme and opening song.

Based on this first episode alone, I think we are in for a stellar first entry into the Reiwa era. Sure, it's not exactly a huge stylistic or tonal change from Heisei phase 2, but they are only airing a week apart. I just expect more of what Kamen Rider is best at and that's watching suited bugmen turning jumps in the sky into Rider Kick's, so Zero-One has my attention.

I guess I probably won't go too much in-depth with my posts going forward, but I was definitely highly impressed with this debut and will continue watching the series with enthusiasm.

I have feeling Aruto finally will have two professions (comedian and CEO) in final episode....

With the subs. The final joke at the end of the episode is pretty funny. Nothing worse for a comedian then someone explaining the joke.

It was a pretty good episode in my opinion. We get a good feel of the characters. I was surprised though that the AIMS duo doesn't seem to have a good partnership going on as of the moment. I thought they would be a solid duo from the get go.

Jin shooting that magear in the head point blank with a real looking gun and not a toy gun was quite chilling.

I think the potential of this show to be darker in tone seems big. There's just so many things that could take a very serious turn.

And another thing, the humagears must be regulated to some degree right? Otherwise what jobs would humans have if the humagears are doing everything. Job unemployment must be high if you could be replaced by a humagear.

Haven't seen the subs yet (waiting on Over-Time so... probably won't see them until next week!) but from the raw this does look pretty solid and a return to form for Rider. None of this complicated Time Travel or tributes, just a straight forward storyline that focuses only on it's universe and has time to flesh out the characters.

And yeah, after previous rider seasons where someone shows up to throw the rider a belt/item/weapon that they need and the fact that they always catch it perfectly, the fact that the briefcase sword hit him right in the face was my favourite part of the entire episode. Just seeing that raw twice got me laughing both times it happened!

Interested to see where the series goes. I think comparisons to Ex-Aid are going to be inevitable so I await to see what this show's version of Dan Kuruto will be...

It's very standard for the first episode to be completely suck me up in the hype and excitement of everything being new, and it's happened here. I'm just as thrilled as I was after Build's first episode and I am ready to fall in love all over again.

Just like with Ex-Aid with Build, I expect my head to churn out dozens of impossible speculations, hopes, and dreams for how this show will turn out, only to be inevitably disappointed or happily surprised every single week.

Biggest hopes which are depressingly slim considering this franchise's history: Let Izu grow to be an actual main character (Not even Poppy got that...), and please let Vulcan and especially Valkyrie stay relevant through the whole show.

I haven’t watched yet but does anyone have any opinions on Gemn Corp vs Rider Time for the subs?

Try both and form your own opinion, but really they both are very good, I honestly just go with who was first, and that was Rider Time, and when I woke up they both had subs out, so next week if that's the case I'll go with Genmcorp, but yeah, both are very good groups and beats the long wait for Over Time.

I haven't seen the Genm corp subs but RT had some typos which made me pause to figure out what the sentence was supposed to be

You say OT has a super long wait, but I've literally downloaded their subs right now.

They have had a long wait over the last months due to work and other more important things for the translator in question, and even then it was usually just a little into the new week, a bit longer for the last ep of Zi-O due to problems.

I think I'll keep this a little briefer than usual, but this was really good. Actually, you know what, let's go with the bullet points, I haven't done that in forever:

- The first Reiwa Rider show is... still pretty blatantly just another Neo-Heisei show. Of course, if your formula has been working for a decade, why change it, right?

- Aruto won me over way quicker than I expected. For the first half or so of the episode, I was expecting to come in here and say I loved his actor's performance (he seems way more natural than most Rider leads are this early on), but wasn't digging the actual character... only for the back half to actually present some solid backstory and motivation for him, and give him a cool dramatic scene where he gets to be serious (and again, I think the actor nailed that lead up to the transformation), all right there in the first episode.

- That being said, I didn't miss the wacky closeups and whatnot for humor after Zi-O largely stayed away from this kind of thing. It doesn't exactly annoy me, but it does come off as sort of a "cheap" way to get a laugh. Aruto's actual, deliberately cheap gags, in of themselves, I think were totally fine, on the other hand.

- Yuuya Takahashi does his thing here and so the episode effectively conveys a broad idea of pretty much the entire show's cast and world through fairly brief little moments, keeping the story from feeling bloated or unfocused while also still giving viewers things to dig into if they want. I know the "what time is it" thing probably got old during Zi-O, so please forgive me if writing さすが高橋さん accidentally becomes my running gag this year.

- Teruaki Sugihara does his thing here and delivers on some extremely dynamic action that's pushing right up against the boundaries of what an episode of Rider can actually do on its moderate, TV budget. That whole sequence with the bus had some shots that didn't totally look right to me, but the majority of them did, and the whole thing was this awesome high-concept kind of thing that I can't help but love.

- The actual theme song is good, and so is the not-theme song that kinda still seems like the show's actual theme between being at the press conference and in all the trailers. Apparently it's just his normal background music, but sometimes it has lyrics? We'll figure it out eventually.

- One final little thing: The armor on Zero-One's torso and head consistently looked more yellow, and the armor on his legs more green to me. It's obviously just a difference in materials, and how pronounced it is varies drastically from shot to shot, but, I don't know, I thought it was worth mentioning. I guess this is my big criticism of the episode? Yeah, I think we're in for a pretty good year.

- This didn't actually end up being that much briefer than usual.

Some bad news, the Tv Asahi youtube upload of Zero One episode 1 has been region locked everywhere except for Japan
https://polsy.org.uk/stuff/ytrestric...%3DrWZ2zZ3Iujc

I've checked out a couple of subs now and I think I'll be sticking with Over-Time. If Aruto's going to be doing a lot of lame jokes, I'm willing to sacrifice perfect accuracy for an attempt to replicate the word play. Basically it's Kyoryuger's blue ranger all over again.

Yeah, that tracks. Toei is really bad about recognizing the idea that there are international fans of the show.

the video gained tons of upvotes while viewable to the world, an utter shame that they did that, they legit had something people clearly liked, but nope, gotta get rid of them disgusting gaijin, must not let them see our precious show.

Huh, Over-Time actually delivers On-Time this time, and not super-Late a la mid-to-end ZiO.

But I have no trouble with RiderTime Subs, except maybe the lame jokes. Need to check O-T for their takes.

Also the mention of singularity, Aruto's "dad" being blown up, and him being chosen to be CEO of HIDEN and user of Zero-One Driver, gives me flashback to several tropes in Kamen Rider.

Those tropes are:

*Being a potential twist that Aruto is the one actually triggering the singularity rise by his lame jokes forcing the AI to be sentient just to try understanding his jokes

*The late CEO's "dead" signal the creating of Zero-One Drive and the rise of MaGear, orchestrating a clash to actually make the AI rise again, only to be defeated by Aruto's undecipherable jokes :)

*AIMS are the third party secretly made by HIDEN to contain the event so it won't deviate far from plan, but blown up since Yua to somehow become container for the AI.

*IZU is secretly modeled after Aruto's mom.

I thought I was gonna hate Aruto's voice (it was inching close to Black Clover levels of annoying) but given the fact that he's a failing stage comedian and his act relies on really emphasising that punch line with that voice, i'm actually okay with it. Unlike Onari who was just loud for the sake of "loud equals funny", Aruto acting like that makes sense for his personality and his job. I can live with it.

I pretty much agree with the consensus here. Absolutely loved this first episode. Great world building, character introductions, fight scenes and camera work. Can't wait to see more

I like this one a lot too. Doesn't mean it will be good, but I have high hopes.

I'm going to predict right now that Aruto is himself a super advanced android, but one designed to simulate all aspects of being human, such as growing up. This is why his dad was a robot. He was literally designed to be a Kamen Rider, a fusion of a human soul with the combat capabilities of a machine. If I"m right, than I expect his final form to be him removing the limitations that make his seem humans and tapping full into his machine powers.

So it wasn't just another fun idea; Kamen Rider Kikai was actually a sneak preview at the far future sequel to Zero-One!

I really suspect that they were using the future riders to test out some ideas they had and Kikai's concept won. I mean, he even connects with a satellite to transform and fights berserk robots that want to kill humans.

He's yellow and black with red eyes; he's largely a physical brawler; something about him is back to basics...

So? Those aren't mutually exclusive things.

What if Zero-One's timeine actually have connections with Kikai's active year in 2121?

Probably if Zero-One are failed to destroy all corrupted HumaGears, the Earth will be ruled by HumaGears and many years later, HumaGear will be evolved into Humanoises.....

Well both Zero-One and Kikai have some similarities:

- Both Zero-One and Kikai are have mechanical motif despite Zero-One's mechanical motif are covered by animal motifs.

- Both Zero-One and Kikai have corrupted androids as their main enemy

- Both Zero-One and Kikai have satellite as their power source

I'm ashamed to say this...but...they sure chose a cute girl for Izu...I wonder if she will just serve as an eyecandy or if she will have a more prominent role than most of the "Kamen Rider Girls" we got these last years.

I mean, Tsuku became relevant really late on Zi-O *cough cough*.
Misora...hu....well...hu...she had little purpose in reality and she "suffered" a lot.

Akari was actually interesting.

Kiriko was Kiriko and I still love her interactions with Shinnosuke.

And I'm drawing a blank here I don't remember the others of the Neo Heisei period...

Plus both made their official debut in Sougo’s dreams.

I did it! I actually started a Rider show again right as it begins! Now to keep this up... Been a few years...

Anywho. The comedy bits from Aruto were a bit rough, but everything else I rather enjoyed. The action was great and the villains were surprisingly terrifying and brutal. Really looking forward to more!

that was a fun first episode.

I'm liking the new Driver and that Rider kick was superb!