Kamen Rider Zi-O Episode 45- "Eternal Party 2019!" Discussion
 

Sougo and his team have discovered the identity of Another Drive, while the TimeJackers recruit a new Rider to their cause...

Zi-O 45 Raw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYdWln_w_vE

Regardless of what my opinion on the characters and the show, a clusterf of things really happened this episode. Stakes? So many things are going on at once. A lot of flashy drive vs drive car action for tv and aqua v eternal.ear

A Clusterf*ck is exactly what this show is,but Decade reels me right back in

Knew it... Tsukasa trolling Schwartz was quite coming xD
Though Another Tridoron looks dope af... Time for Dark Ouma Zi-O?

Honestly, Another Drive being 108 is out of left field, but makes sense from a character standpoint and is easy for them to pull off (since he shares his VA with Oma Zi-O).

Also, an A.R Rider who is stronger than the original? What is this madness????

From what I've read from the wiki (so take it with a grain of salt), all the Dark/movie exclusive Riders that Another Decade summons are from A.R. Worlds where they weren't defeated and instead won against the primary Heisei Kamen Rider. So them being stronger than the original makes sense as they were never defeated.

I agree that Another Drive being Roidmude 108 is out of left field but makes sense with what I said above. He was a Kamen Rider (Dark Drive).

I'll wait for subs to confirm this or not

That's one of the only point I understood from the episode...

So hu...I remember something, when the roidmude get destroyed, his number is destroyed aswell right?

Which means he is still alive? Also...there was two 108 number....those that mean that the Ora that "killed" Heure is a Roidmude too?

It's a pity, out of all the time jacker, I liked Heure x)

As for Sougo being enraged...hu oh....I don't know why....but I fear that he might succumb to his "dark side"

I'll wait for the subs and rewatch the episode because I was like " what in the actual fuck happened?"

If memory serves, the Paradox Roidmude achieves his final form by merging with his past self, which is why he has two Cores. I don't remember if that was actually shown in Surprise Future though, that's just my guess.

Eternal, Paradox Roidmude, White Woz... There's just no end to the shocking returning characters! I guess this means we've technically had our returning character from both W and Drive in the series too.

The Paradox Roidmude being Another Drive is a clever way to bring in a Dark Rider without using Dark Drive.

Since well... Hattari kind of mangled that suit to make it.

Decade was boss in this ep even without his rider suit that's why I like him in Zi-O more than other riders.

A lot happened in this episode, but not all of it worked especially well. Let's start with the good stuff:

-Another Drive/Hora being Roidmude 108 AKA the Paradox Roidmude from SURPRISE FUTURE was an extremely clever twist that ties in nicely to the "Dark Rider" cameos. Since they don't have the Dark Drive suit anymore, this was a great way to technically feature him in the show. We even get to see a glimpse of the Paradox suit before it explodes. I guess this is our in-show Drive guest and while that's kind of disappointing, I'll overlook it because it was well-implemented and also helps makes this feel a little more like the Drive tribute it should have been.

-Speaking of Another Drive, the transformation is pretty neat and I love that it comes equipped with Another Tridoron.

-Finishing on our topic of Drive, Grand summoning Drive was sufficient I guess, but Tridoron smashing its Another counterpart and the finisher looked really good and quite visceral.

-I always love the suit acting when the main Rider gets angry.

-It's kind of cool that they're kind of making Aqua an honorary Zi-O Rider. He's getting a lot of screen-time and some fun fight scenes. If someone told me we'd see an Aqua vs Eternal fight scene years ago I would have called them crazy.

-It's great to see Daido Katsumi again. At least we get someone from W in the flesh for the show. Eternal's transformation is as cool as ever and I love how smoothly he moves.

-Tsukasa's moment was friggin' brilliant. The ability to use dimensional gates isn't a Rider power - it's something that comes from Tsukasa himself. Coming in clutch to save the day and even reveal some big news: that's what makes Tsukasa the GOAT. And finally, some Decade BGM.

Stuff I was iffy on:

-I want to feel bad for Uhr but he's such a flat character that I don't feel anything about his death. It was kinda brutal though.

-While it feels a little more natural this time, I think we've all had enough of Geiz butting heads with Sougo.

-Again, we don't know enough about Ora to make her betrayal truly meaningful. It wasn't shocking and I was actually hoping they'd make her change sides because that would add more to the story.

-Grand Zi-O fight scenes continue to disappoint.

Final thoughts: I think Schwarz's plan is kind of weird and not at all what a lot of people wanted to see going into the endgame, but if you relate it to Decade, it's actually pretty cool. It delves into the A.R stuff that Decade was all about and if it's going to lead to a full-blown Decade tribute, I am all for it.

The explanation for him kidnapping people is to place them in a world of "lost possibilities" - what Tsukasa calls "Another World". He is presumably doing this to resurrect the Dark Riders, and he goes on to explain that in this version of reality, Eternal defeated W. This is a really awesome way to introduce movie Riders into the show and we seem to be getting more fun cameos next episode with Yuuki.

And it's also a perfect explanation for why Shiro-Woz would return to. If there is one thing I have to commend the writers for, it's this plot point. It's just fun and it works rather well.

So... Whichever sub group did the one that's up on kissasian rigjt now seriously messed up- 90% of the episode is still raw with some subbed lines sprinkled throughout the episode....

Paradox is quite a clever cameo, I'll give them that.

Eternal didn't really do much for having his live actor present, but it looks like he's sticking around at least one more episode. Similarly, the idea of villains from AUs where they won is neat but I little hollow without any details.

Hu....Are subs already out? Because I can't seem to find proper subs for this episode...

Kissasian has a subbed version but like I mentioned before its pretty bad- 90% of the episode isnt actually subbed and what little is is sparsely sprinkled throughout the the episode

Ridertimesub made a mistake. They re upload on their blog. It's weird people only know and credit streaming site.

Maybe shotaro as the neighborhood detective esste egg, but Philip and shotaro is way too busy and famous nowadays. It depends if their agency allows it and can accommodate them l

Must have save arc cgi budget. I wonder if there's other surprise guest and 01 tie in.

Man it feels the show doesn't have enough budget to do Grand Zi-O justice after that amazing debut.

Movie budget . Like genius build genius no combo .

It was a pretty good episode. Seeing Another Drive have its own Another Tridoron was cool. And the fact that it was a Roidmude too.

Who would have thought we'd get an Eternal vs Aqua fight before Zi-O? Maybe in fan-fiction? But it was great to watch. When they got in the water I thought Aqua should definitely have the advantage but Eternal held his own.

And now we have an angry Sougo. It wasn't as brutal as when Godai went to town with that one Grongi when he got really pissed off but I'll take it.

Tsukasa actually still having his powers surprised me to be honest. I should have seen that one coming. I forgot that his dimension-hoping powers aren't exactly tied to his rider powers. Or was it? I don't remember.

Next week Shiro Woz returns. Bring it.

In hindsight, instead of Eternal being able to beat Aqua out of the water just because he's Eternal, it would have been much cooler and better if he used one of his twenty-six T2 memories to pull it off. Cyclone would have done the same trick as he did in the actual episode.

Kinda surprised that Swartz didn't try to trap Aqua in an Another World to make Poseidon. Seemed like a perfect idea to me.

Also, this is another 3-parter. I can only assume the last stretch will be another one; so we've gotten three 3-parters in a row. Huh.

If that's Swartz's plan - and it's kind of awesome - then I wonder how Fuma and Dark Ghost feel about all this. G4, Rey and Eternal were all kind of assholes but Fuma and Dark Ghost had, uh, goals? Things they were doing what they did for?

So, I finally watched it with subs.

A lot happens in this episode.

Basically, Schwartz summons Dark Riders/Movie Riders from Another Realities/Another Worlds ( A.R uh uh uh) by pulling people into their own personal worlds.

Aqua is really an interesting fellow, I really dig his Henshin and he really seems to be a cool dude.
So Aqua and Tsuku are from the same world.

In the end, Ora is just Ora...I thought she was Roidmude 108 aswell but probably not because I thought that the Roidmude number didn't get destroyed but it did.
I fear there will be no redemption for her.

I know Heure is kinda bland but I liked that guy, in the end he was just a poor lost soul.

I wonder what kind of "world" is Geiz's.

The BGM from Decade was a nice throwback and made me want to watch Decade all over again ( and I'm doing it but...bleh...I think I'll have to explain my feelings towards this series in Another Thread)

I really really don't like Sougo being mad, but if we could have something as agressive as Kuuga it might be interesting.

I'm thinking that all of that is a manipulation from Schwartz, I think he is attempting to trigger something.

Also...White Woz....ho boy I hated him, I can't wait to see him being roasted by our Woz.

Well anyway, it was a good episode.

Hey everyone, guess what time it is!

https://i.imgur.com/xNsvz19.jpg

Geez, Zi-O, it's not Christmas. You didn't have to get me a present.

Although I'm definitely not going to say no to Another Drive coming with an evil Tridoron. We got an evil Den-Liner in Heisei Generations Forever too, and considering Drive and Den-O are pretty undeniably the Heisei Riders most strongly associated with their rides, I'm glad they both got this treatment. Even if I really would've loved to see Another Kuuga going around chopping buildings up with the front wheel of a giant CG Try-Chaser.

It's hard to get too greedy when this episode is packed with so much awesome crap happening. Just to cover the other obvious thing that everyone else has already mentioned, the fact that we got an episode of Kamen Rider where Eternal and Aqua face off is just wonderful. I especially appreciate that Aqua doesn't just get curbstomped on account of being nowhere near as popular. Zi-O has inexplicably decided to give the guy his due, and I'm really enjoying that.

The fanservice doesn't even stop there. Tsukasa giving a short dramatic speech, complete with the return of what I firmly consider to be one of the absolute most memorable, iconic pieces of background music in Rider history was cool, and while the twist with the Paradox Roidmude was neat, I actually liked Tsukasa still having his weird dimensional powers or whatever you wanna call them more. This is another one of those Go-Rider level bits of cleverness from Shimoyama, where in this case, he took the fact that Decade as a series had no rules, and turns it into a plot point that Tsukasa learned how to do that at some point (He's been entering and leaving crossovers this way since Chou Den-O and Decade with no explanation), and that there's no reason to assume that was an ability he had because he was Decade. It's a great moment, and it's very, very Tsukasa to not even be slightly inconvenienced by or upset about losing his Rider powers.

Most of the larger plot stuff happening, I'll hold off on for the next episode, but I definitely felt properly sorry for Uhr. He's had my sympathy ever since the Kikai episodes. It's a similar deal to Uva in OOO, where even though he's just as much of a jerk as his pals, I can't help but pity him for how he constantly draws the short straw. So the drama with him here landed perfectly for me, and it even let them pull one of my favorite tricks this show does with Geiz and Sougo talking about him at the start smoothly flowing into them talking about each other. I love it.

Props for Grand Zi-O actually doing Drive's Rider Kick, too. It's still not totally what I'm after, but it's a lot better than what we've been getting.