Kamen Rider Zero-One Episode 18- "This Is How I Arrange My Flowers! "Discussion
 

The next stage of competition between Hiden and ZAIA is a flower show. However, things take a turn for the worse when a new type of enemy emerges...

there's nothing!

Overall the episode was nice.
I like the mystery about the woman identity and the fact horobi knows about the Raidriser.
The little confontation between Vulcan and Valkyrie was cool too.

But I didn't like the fight between Zero-One, Thouser and Buffalo Magia. The choreography might be nice (I liked the end part), but the camera work was horrible to me. It cuts every second and the shots are all shaky. it was a pain to follow.

It's a good new wrinkle to the story. Humans can now be Magia too.

I also liked the resolution with Tachibana. He learned to appreciate humagears in the end.

Vulcan vs. Valkyrie was pretty good too.

there was an error in this one.
When Assault Hopper jumps out to protect the raid from thouser, the jingle for Shining Hopper is played.

Robot Ghost!!!!!!!!!

Very disappointing confrontation between Shining Assault Hopper and Thouser. I know he's going to get Metal Cluster in 2 months, but come on, at least make it seem like it puts up a decent fight but still doesn't quite get the job done. Even Assault Wolf had good hits on Thouser, and that's supposed to be weaker.
So it looks like it's just going to be "Thouser smacks Zero-One around until he gets Metal Cluster" for several weeks. Joy.

^ I second that. It's kinda underwhelming.

Also, perhaps the "woman" is the 4th MJnet general/rider?

I never really saw the final fight of this episode as underwhelming because it was never a fight between Aruto and Gai.

It was literally Aruto using his strongest form to try to force back and mediate the other two fighters because this new monster is made from a human and not a humagear, and he's worried that Gai going all out on him could kill him.

Not every fight is a clear someone vs someone fight. In this case it was a case of a devolving bar brawl that kept getting worse because the florist had lost all sense of reasoning and gone mad. While Gai's too much of a confident ass to think of the consequences of possibly endangering a human like that.

I agree. Assault Hopper was used to tank Thouser.

Assault Wolf tried to go all out. The movements are different.

I was expecting a death, it seems we're never going back to the human death spree again. Not like I want to see, but it was implied. The whole "stop it, don't hurt him, he's human. " it all ended with the guy waking up fine. The same with the veteran villain actor that got shot by DoDo. There was a passing line where he survived. It's the writer of ex aid, so I don't see any permanent death even for Ai.

It would be An intersting development if Zaia Thouser is willing to kill to accomplish his Goals making Aruto much More of an obstacle/threats To stop him. judging by how riders tends to go through arcs nowadays, i don't think he will last after the next 01 upgrade at least he won't be the next big Threat.

The only thing bother me by the fight scenes is the pausing cards. I don't need them to freeze the screen for the finisher announcement .

Judging from the sounds of zaia thousand driver, I was expecting sieg or I forgot who was it, but there was a couple of overconfident rider or sentai characters who open arm introduce and do a lot of expositions as well as wanting praises afterward.

I was more trigger so by the lack of yaiba dedicated episodes and win. The same with fuwa. No repercussions. It's lack of continuity with the arc creating wolf. Don't tell me it's a coincident like faiz phone. Anyway, assault wolf performances were all underwhelming compares to 01 both upgrades. I was expecting assault wolf=assault hopper. He didnt even have a shining abilities unless he doesn't know about it.

I wonder who actually made the rider systems?
Is it Gai and Hiden Grandpa, or just Gai?

So far we only know one rider system from Hiden, which is Zero-One system, while we have other rider systems like Shot-Riser, Force-Riser, Raid-Riser, and Thouser System which looks like are made by ZAIA (Gai)

The fact that he is 45 and has been dabbling in AI since his 30s make me think that Gai is the one who makes them.

And who wants to guess "Bou" (the hooded female) is actually Yua?

I Gonna say this raid/Thouser Arc is bit dissapointing
I mean at the end Aruto Just look stupid because the raid user is just fine after beaten up to death... so If there a monster of the week shows we just beat it up without care in the world and everything will be fine ...
IMO this just make everything underwhelming because there are no risk
I don't know who to blame the writer, the parents who always protest if the show is too dark or because nowandays everything is super sensitive

also if i want to nitpick last fight scene, why aruto not use ultra fast speed to stop thouser? the shinning system laser is available too, but i understand they did that, because its a classic "Don't do that!! " moment with less risk

Am I the only one who heard the woman’s voice and instantly recognised the voice as being Shesta’s?

the voice is said to be from 中山咲月 (Nakayama Satsuki).

So that's not Schesta's actress at least that voiced her.
Now it could be anyone under the hood. In a series where robots/AI are the central theme, faking a voice is easy.

EDIT : "funny enough" Nakayama Satsuki seems to be a model that adopted an androgynous style. And media labelled her as "genderless" (but she said she doesn't mind, and even like it)
Adding to the mystery that anyone could be under the hood.

'Genderless' in this context in Japan generally just refers to people adopting androgynous styles, or otherwise not much caring for gender roles in how they dress and style themselves. At least, as far as I know.

I actually didn't know about this person until you brought her up; done a quick google and she seems super cool! Has Rider ever had actors who adopt genderless styles before? Zero-One's already breaking boundaries with Yaiba, so it'd be neat if they kept going on that track!

I quite like were this is going. We all knew Metsubojinrai.net wasn't quite done yet. And the twist to make humans transform into Magia is really interesting.

The belt they used, that Raid Riser, didn’t expect it to be a new mold honestly; I assumed they'd use a repaint of the ZetsumeRiser. I wonder if there will be a Premium Bandai release of this belt with DX versions of the Progrise Keys which were only released as Sound versions before. The Buffalo one for example.

On the topic of Thouser trashing everybody – well that’s what he’s there for. And both Zero-One and Vulcan managed to get hits in during their first fights, I didn’t think the fight choreography was boring because of Thouser’s supremacy; the fights are still cool to look at.

Thought it was a good episode.

By the way, my dumb ass didn't realize the contradiction of the photo Gai has until they pointed it out this week. It did make for a good laugh though. Aruto and Gai have some unintentionally hilarious conversations.

Gai being 45 is the hardest lie Toku ever tried to sell to me

I thought this episode was fine too.

I specifically liked the parallel scenes we got of Gai protecting ZAIA's image; First with agreeing to Aruto's rematch proposal, then with silencing Fuwa's accusation.

Based on Horobi's knowledge of the RaidRiser's existence, it probably means the last member of MetsuBoJinRai is the one causing the "Raiders" (Official term according to TV-Asahi: https://www.tv-asahi.co.jp/zero-one/...uffalo_raider/) to appear.

In which case, poor Raiden. Horobo, Jin, and this new person got either a bunch of screen time or important roles, meanwhile Raiden got to be Assult Wolf's punching bag for a single episode, that's gotta blow.

I don't what to think, but maybe I'm just getting a bit burnt out with Kamen Rider now. To me, it just doesn't reach the heights that Build had and just feels very samey.

It could still be anyone, but the fact that she's a relatively unknown and young model/actor, as opposed to an established voice actor, makes me think we probably will be seeing her in the show proper. Usually for voice only/mystery voice roles they'd just get dedicated vas or simply not say who it is (like with Stalk, where they just had it out as it being Tetsuo Kanao, versus just not IDing Night Rogue's voice or something like that). If it's not someone established there's not a lot of reason to get them to do voice work. To compare with another show, it also half reminds me of Shouma Machii in Ex-Aid as what appeared to be a va only role at the start of the show.

Serious stuff probably restarts back up in around the 20 episode mark.

The alternatives are worse. If Aruto hadn't worried and just attacked the Raider, then that would've raised the question of "how did he know a human would survive?" especially since all the Humagears died when their monster forms were destroyed, and the same people who're calling him stupid now would be calling him reckless.

And if he'd been right to worry, and the flower guy had died from Thouser's finisher, then they'd have had to find a non-lethal way to take down all the future Raiders (or just let Thouser kill them), which would get old really fast and the writers would probably hand-wave it away after a bit by having Zero-One's finishers modified to be non-lethal... somehow. Which would then raise the question of why he hadn't been using non-lethal finishers from the start.

Having Aruto worry about the flower guy's safety but ultimately be proven wrong was the best way to let him be true to his character and the events up until now without bogging down the future story.

Thouser
 

Gais character is really mysterious to me, he is obviously a bad guy but his actions show him to be lawfully good. very interesting for a rider show

Do they though? His actions are purely to look good as word getting out that he cheated, as in, commited fraud, would be terrible PR and have a negative effect on his business, it's purely to keep the company's reputation positive

He is more Lawful Evil.

Theory: he's a humagear protoype Hiden's gramp built after the real Gai passed away.