Is this the episode where Ark impatiently taps his fingers waiting for the MCH jingle/aibo dance to end? That was a super funny couple of seconds

I'm just sitting here feeling bad for Ikazuchi, man.
And Show Hayami is playing him so well. Like such efficient cold, logical, menace and directness while still coming off as condescending and cruel.

(And yes, I know this is the same man who voiced Sosuke Aizen).
Yeah, and it wouldn't make any sense for everyone to immediately or naturally forgive and forget or be all buddy buddy with him. Even Aruto's restraining himself a little even if he seems a smidge more willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, if only under the circumstances.

The whole point of Humagears, and why Aruto fights for them, is so that they and humanity can both be better than they were before. Aruto fights for the idea of progress, of improvement. He's not going to sit there and pretend Gai never caused harm, but he's going to give Gai the chance to be a better person and correct his mistakes.

Gai says that he's the embodiment of Grampa Hiden's dreams, but he's also the embodiment of Aruto's hopes. I... sort of think that is not going help Aruto sleep at night.

It's really all I ever want in a villain plot, you know? I want the villain to have to react to the hero, rather than just Be All-Powerful or whatever. I liked that Ark gamed out Team Zero-One until he got precisely what he needed to take out There.

So great! It's another scene of Gai being like Bask In My Magnanimity And Humility and these two grunts are like Okay, and then Gai's so offended that they don't care about his emotional growth! SO GREAT!

I weirdly thought this was sort of a combat-light episode? I'm curious what you'd say was the proper amount of fight footage.

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/zeroone/arkzero.png

I'm with you on that! Excellent comedy from the usually humorless Ark.

The team-up battle was great, Thouser and Metal Cluster Zero-One look great as a combi, he even gets a double kick with Zero-One, something we've yet to see Fuwa, the secondary rider, do as well. They really do make a good combo.

I love that no one[/I] absolutely forgave Gai. I saw a lot of people back then (and still now) that everyone forgave Gai and that was that. No one here forgave him, they just went along and tolerated him, because as much of a bastard he was, he is still very much useful on their side against the Ark. And they handled it well, too, he doesn't just become part of the cast neatly like some redemptions are, no, there is a certain are of awkwardness around him now acting like this because it's so unlike him! And Gai doesn't lament this either, he says sorry and will actually act on it to do better next time.

And now for Raiden, sigh Raiden. I just wish he was utilized as a character better and wasn't killed off during his first appearance. I actually had his SHF, but I sold it recently since I figured he was just taking up space and liking the suit just wasn't enough to keep it around.

https://i.imgur.com/H2H6dNv.jpg

Yeah, I found the cast's ambivalence to Gai's Very Important Epiphany That Is Bright And Beautiful And Will Make You Weep With Sympathy to be a solid distillation of both the show's themes of self-improvement through partnership, and the universal character trait of no one in the cast giving a shit about Gai's rich interior life. (The only person in the cast who cares even a little about his tragic childhood is his robot dog! No one cares that he turned himself around!) The irony of Gai's bullshit being tolerated because he's a useful tool is delicious.

I do enjoy most of the fighting in these shows, but when a lot of these fights are just 'character shows up to fight Ark, gets beaten up, and has to give up' it's almost getting boring. I get that the Ark is supposed to be a major threat, but with how much they have to rush due to Covid, I'd wish they would cut down on these scenes, since I don't feel it's necessary to have 3 episodes in a row where the Ark just shows off his strength, or at least that they would have these fights offscreen so that we could just know that the heroes lost without a 3 minute scene of them hopelessly fighting, though I'm probably in the minority here who thinks that.

Not much to say this time, so I’ll share two production facts.

Aruto’s actor did the stunt where he got thrown through the air himself, despite being scared of heights.

This was the last episode to be completed before COVID hit. From here on in, the writers had to truncate their plans significantly (Takahashi has gone on record saying it would’ve just been a retread of Ex-Aid, with Aruto slowly getting all the secondary villains redeemed to join him in fighting the Ark if they’d had the full 51 episodes they’d planned for).

I'm not sure wheather I like this better than what we actually got tbh. It really all up to the execution. I do hope one day we might get like a movie or miniseries using these original plans in a what if scenario.

And I might as well get this out of the way now(even if it's early) but that really how I feel about Zero-One as whole I'm not sure where it falls for me. It not the worst thing in the world but I don't love it either. I wish I loved it because I see so many people both on here and other places love it so much. And I'm honestly jealous that I can't feel the same. And maybe that's my biggest dissapointment? Myself for not feeling the same as the others. That maybe I'm just not seeing what others are seeing?

The only other time I commented was when we where reccomending Ultraman and really hating on Episode 27.
So I want end things on a positive note and balance that previous post negativity I'll echo what everyone is saying and I'd loved entire Zero-One/Thouser vs. Ark-Zero fight(in general this show has great choreography) and loved the cast reaction to Gai "redemption"

Okay so ep 39... If I'm being frank, it wasn't as good as ep 38 was but it was much better than ep 37 for its plot progression and some of its characters' moments. The best part of this episode hands down for how they handled Gai post-redemption. Obviously it's understandable and an imperative for ANYONE not to immediately forgive Gai for all of his sins. But the cute part of this was how the show used Thouser dog as Gai's chain in morality and behavior. The scene where Gai apologized to Fuwa and Yua were alright but it was Thouser, who made puppy eyes to Gai, skyrocketed the scene into nebulous. Like obviously Gai bowed in apologize for them but Thouser insisted Gai to make a 'dogeza'. That's just... I really can't speak too much about it. That's almost he same amount of hilarity and craziness, like when Shouichi challenged Hikawa in a tennis with a frypan. Even everyone on Aims were having trouble focusing because Gai was playing with Thouser in the background. Like Die said, if this was solely an episode of Gai's tour for apology, I would not complain at all.

My biggest gripe in this episode was, unlike Die, I think the show or Takahashi made a slight weird step that lower my expectation for the Ark's calculation. I do like that Ark had some predictions about Gai joining force with Aruto. That's like one instance in the Xth amount of calculation that Ark had but such probability was so small that he didn't expect such thing to happen. I actually like this aspect where the Ark was only taken aback and let a guard down because some small percentage of surprising events like that.

What I don't like was how the show portrayed the Ark as an omnipotent future-calculating machine by manipulating... Aruto and Ikazuchi. The two characters who, unfortunately, might be not the best one in the brain. Aruto, of course, put his heart more to action than his thought and don't forget how Ikazuchi was easily puppeteered by Mestubojinrai without even realizing it. Obviously manipulating both of them were too easy, so to have the Ark HAD to explicitly said they were gullible was disappointing. Even someone who is scared and traumatized by the Ark like Jin obviously felt something amiss when Ikazuchi arrived. Like I don't think it was special for Ark to say he outwits some random citizen than a chessmaster. Even Gai and Co. managed to figure out Ark's intention with little clue they had. Unfortunately the episode painted my expectation for the Ark in the worse light. It felt like a simple villain who took leverage on someone like Banjo and said it was the most amazing thing he could muster. The Ark gained control Zea was good but I wish there was more wits to it than simply portraying Aruto for the Nth time where he was dancing right in the villain's palm.