the face, eyes and antennae give me a Rabbit/Tank vibe.

I'm gonna wait until we get a plot synopsis to get really excited about a Female main, but for now this looks super promising.

I also love the inverted color schemes they have with the suits. Zi-O's is black with the Rolex being silver highlights vs the Hiragana rider wearing red with the G-Shock for black highlights. Reminds me of how the LupPat suits work.

Extremely minor complaint however: I think the chest armor is a bit too pronounced. It looks fine from most angles but in others like the poster on the left in that first picture, it's really pronounced.

Zio looks... alright. The suit itself looks fine, though I'm still not sure how I feel about the large chest armor as it looks kind of awkward from certain angles, I wasn't really feeling the helmet when I first saw it but its grown on me since then.

On the subject of the female Zio rumor, I have a question. Kamen Rider, above all else, is a toy commercial not a tv show. It does not exist to challenge social ideals or anything of the like, it exists to pump out highly marketable heroes every year to sell toys and other merchandise to a primarily male market of both children and, to a lesser extent, adults. The question is, are there any financial benifits for Toei and Bandai to make Zio female rather then male.

I am actually really doubt if Zi-O is girl because younger boys (kids) are more prefer to male protagonist hero. Super Sentai also are dominated by male members just like Kamen Rider. Also the younger boys (kids) are main target for Kamen Rider toys.....

Toei already has Precure for female audiences so yeah I really doubt for female Rider as main protagonist.....

Same answer to the question if there financial losses. Meaning probably not. Though it's assumed that's the reason a secondary got in the promotional material (Granted Cross-Z was in Build's poster too and made for a bitching phone wallpaper) to appease to the little boy audience

I will always judge a show purely as a full package, not just the suit design. That helped me enjoy Ex-Aid a lot.

...

But a whole year filled with Legend Rider suits? Why... they are so goddamn ugly. Base suit(s?) are pretty terrible too.

Man I hope at least the characters are good, the story is somewhat compelling and the action is cool. Because the suit design is among the worst I’ve seen in Kamen Rider so far :(

That's how I felt about Build at first. I really didn't like the costumes. I still think Vacuum Cleaner Arm is the stupidest thing I've seen.

And a Rabbit is hardly threatening or intimidating,..and I do prefer my Riders to be Insectoid looking.

But Build proved me wrong and turned out to be a great show. And it has my favorite secondary Rider,...Grease.

...I know people say Dragon, but I'll stick with Grease as the real Hero of the show. :rock:

Looks nice. Hope it's good~

I'd agree usually... but then you've got shows like Gaim and Build which do ask greater questions and look at complex topics. It's part of why I've loved Kamen Rider to begin with -- it isn't afraid to shy away from interesting subject material.

Either way, though... I'm not sure many of here could really answer that question? Personally speaking I just don't know enough about Japan's politics and social issues to possibly know how much this would challenge anything, and I'd hazard a guess that as a predominantly English-speaking site this forum mostly attracts western fans. I apologise in advance if I'm wrong about that

I’m still curious how we are supposed to pronounce this Rider.