She was great! A big reason I bought into this story was her nuanced portrayal of an artist just starting to believe in their abilities. Really compelling work.

Yeah, it's nice that, as we're moving into an arc about the parity between humans and Humagears, we get this two-parter where a Humagear and human both succumb to rage and resentment, and have those emotions weaponized by Ark.

I... don't think the show tried to tie the Raidriser stuff and ZAIA together yet? This feels a little spoiler-y, so please try and keep the discussion to what's been revealed in the episodes. Thanks!

can we please not talk about where the story is going to go

thank you

Admittedly, I don't recall seeing many tournament arcs, but maybe an abundance of filler would be an inherent risk. It must be easy to fall in to that trap, instead of thinking about how to use that framing device in a clever way that develops the main characters. That's what I appreciate about Tekken, how it puts character motivations in the foreground.

In Zero One's case, it's not even directly between Aruto and Gai, but between their champions in each round. All their literal fighting, the more heated part, happens outside of that. And while most of the early subplots with Seine and Kobe were contained to a single episode that also found time to accommodate AIMS and Metsuboujinrai, the Job Competition expands each round to two episodes and distracts from the plot happening around it.

I do believe where those things come from is a total mystery at this point in the show, so yeah, spoilers!

KAMEN RIDER ZERO-ONE EPISODE 19 - “SHE’S THE REALTOR HUMAGEAR”

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/...zeroone19a.png

I’m currently house hunting, so this one hit a little close to home, if you don’t mind the pun. (I think Aruto would be okay with it.)

The housing market is completely screwy. Housing prices are skyrocketing as investors buy up properties, sit on them for years, and then flip them as the values reach their peak. Things are trending down right now, somewhat thankfully (I mean: interest rates, yikes), but there was a period there were homes were vanishing in days, as all-cash offers from investors priced out average folks who were working with a bank for their mortgage. It was creating an environment where people who wanted to actually live in a place were disadvantaged, and the concept of a home became just another type of investment.

So it’s nice to see this Zero-One story grappling with that, in ways that a younger audience can maybe understand.The evil Investment Realtor, selling properties to anyone who can pay, versus the good Residential Realtor, trying to find something that will help people live out their dreams. Because, man, owning a home is one of the most aspirational things there is? Beyond all of the Raising A Family stuff this episode traffics in (it’s for kids, so I’ll allow it), owning a home becomes a way to provide support and clarity for the next stage in your life. It defines the community you’ll be a part of, the direction in which you want your life to travel, and the thing that you’re working to protect. More than any other story this show has done, I feel like the buyer/realtor relationship is the one that gets at the idea of Empathetic Collaboration Versus Individual Success. Is it about working to help someone’s future, or succeeding at any cost?

Mixed in with all that is the very real fear that automation will eliminate human knowledge and experience, dooming us to an algorithmically-determined future. This story gets at that in fun ways, where the machine’s empathy and hopes are set against the rapacious, selfish, mechanically-heightened skills of a human. It muddies the waters in a neat way, where Arayashiki’s fears about his future relevance are in conflict with Sumida’s emotional dedication to helping humanity. Sumida does a really good job, and she cares about her clients in a way that Arayashiki has clearly forgotten, but her victory means he’s probably out of a job forever. That’s not a great outcome for humanity!

(That said, as much as Arayashiki paints things as impossibly bleak, there is a literal cost to automation. You can’t just switch out paid employees with high-tech robots and pocket all the payroll costs. Hiden isn’t giving these things away, I hope. Gai might have a point about Aruto’s leadership, if they are!)

It all makes for a sweet episode that lacks an easy resolution, even if it contains a very clear villain. Arayashiki has a quick little backstory that sketches in a lost dream, but he’s resolutely hateable for the entire episode. But there’s a lot of nuance to the exploration of home buying, and how it means different things to different people. Another very cool episode for this Job Battle arc!

(Oh, and there were also a couple monster fights, but I honestly don’t care about them. Feel free to post your thoughts on them if you felt differently!)

I never thought I'd see Kamen Rider tackle real estate, but darn it if they didn't try to sell it with gusto.

I know they're beginning to stretch what is acceptable behavior for this job competition arc but dang it if what Arayashiki did to Smile was not okay by any stretch of the imagination, no matter if she's a Humager or not. She didn't deserve that.

His Raider form is pretty cool though.

Horobi becoming that caged criminal that you always seen in these genre shows. Although even he seems somewhat confused by how the plot is currently progressing.

It's one thing for Aruto to fight mindless hacked machine Magia who can only think of killing, because by then he's convinced their a lost cause, but to see them pretty much willingly turn into that still gives him a glimmer of hope, however vain, that he can still save them.

It's really my favorite thing about the continued Magia plots. My biggest criticism was that the MetsubouJinrai stuff was all external to what the characters were going through in the rest of the plot. Now, the Magia battles are a choice that Humagear is making, so it's something that Aruto can plausibly reverse. I much prefer that approach.

Ah yes, The Whale Raider... not my favorite Raider.

I do have a favorite though. But we are not there yet.

Anyway yeah, the last fight this episode was a thing, it's very much a repeat of Episode 17's fight. Remember how I talked about bare bones structure repetition and having to watch this week to week? Yeah.

Ha ha, yeah, if I cared more about fights, I'd probably be a lot more down on this episode. But I don't! I would trade a whole lot of fights for Sumida staring sadly at a demolished home.

And you know what, I'd probably be with you there cause the fight at the end did nothing for me.

That being said I do always appreciate a good Jacking Break so there's the loss of that to be considered...

A strange episode this time, where the competition is centered around real estate, which is a strange theme for a show like Kamen Rider to cover, and while I do like this episode, I know that many others don't, which is true for most of this arc, I suppose. In this episode, you really do feel for Sumida, since she's just trying to sell houses and do her job and just gets abused by Arayashiki, and even after she goes berserk, she barely even tries to fight, with Thouser just brutally beating her down. Aside from that, I once again liked Gai wanting a clean win, even if he's a terrible person, he's still very charismatic and you can sense that this guy is the head of a major company.