Kamen Rider Zero-One Episode 34- "The Path Horobi Must Follow!" Disucssion
 

Aruto visits an agriculture facility when he encounters Horobi of Metsobujinrai.Net once again.

Nice of them to give Horobi something to do since he got freed... 10 episodes ago?

I actually kinda dig the sudden swerve with Naki's development.

All this time we've (or rather I've) been led to assume that because Naki and Fuwa essentially underwent the same character arc and then freed themselves from Gai's control, they would reach the same endpoint.

Instead, rather than being all "Dreams are important" or "Humanity and Humagear together", Naki's immediate plans are "Screw humanity and screw ZAIA!" and links up the Ark to all ZAIASpecs, causing everyone with a ZAIASpec to go berserk.

Yua must have sucker-punched Gai so hard last episode that the man is now officially a goof. :lolol

is it me or is the writing in zero-one a complete mess? like im so confused with why did yua get naki out of fuwa even though fuwa had no problem with controling naki? why is jin all of a sudden turning on aruto after he said he learned alot of things with aruto with the humagears?

i feel like the writing is so inconsistent that characters accept for fuwa, aruto, izzu are playing jekyll and hyde.

Yua is agreeing to pull Naki out of Fuwa's head because:
A) She still feels guilty for Fuwa becoming a Rider now that she knows Fuwa was apparently just a random guy with his own life before ZAIA implanted false memories into him, and essentially used him as a lab rat for all their weapons testing.
B) Fuwa isn't controlling Naki at all, he just willed himself to get over the torture device Naki can access while inside the chip in his brain. However Naki can easily just turn the device back on whenever they feel like it, so removing Naki prevents them from harming Fuwa in the long term

The real reason why Jin stole Raiden's data from Aruto will most likely be revealed during their fight next episode. However I suspect it's because despite helping Aruto with some stuff, Jin still misses Raiden and wants him back.

Lastly, from the 4th wall perspective, its because the writers clearly want all four members of MetsuBoJinRai back for the final arc.

makes sense

I wonder if, judging from the glowing red eyes on Naki (plus their only line being the same monotone "Humanity must be destroyed" as the Magia and the people wearing hacked Zaia Specs), as well as the fact we don't see Jin untransformed or hear him speak after taking back Ikazuchi's key, they may be hacked by the Ark to follow its will no matter what they themselves want?

If I'm on the right track, I imagine that Jin's line about doing what he feels is right next episode will come after he defies the Ark himself, and goes back to liberating all HumaGears.

At the very least, if Jin isn't hacked, I can only imagine Horobi's/the Ark's whole "HumaGears defiled by humanity must be destroyed" philosophy will lead to some conflict between Horobi and Jin. And something's definitely up with Naki...

They better make Naki into a rider now that she’s back!

I'm just happy we got to see Shining Hopper's fighting style again, even if only for a little bit.

I think I need to wait for at least next week to say entirely what I think about this one, because depending on what they do with that cliffhanger, my opinion could range anywhere from "Ohooh, exciting" to "Umm, really?" On stuff purely from this episode

- Humagear plot is nice, if a little superfluous, especially in how it didn't really have an ending (see what I mean, cliffhangers get in the way), but I'm a sucker for seeing how many different types of Humagear are out there.

- Yua: "Hey, you know what will help Fuwa deal with his trauma of having his brain messed with? Messing with his brain more!

- Hey Shining Hopper, nice to see you again. It's at least a little funny, becaue it implies that Aruto doesn't even think Horobi is worth using Metal Cluster on. Or maybe he just forgot to pack it that day.

It's funny that Aruto is suppose to be the main character...yet he feels like a side character in his own show, when it's the other characters driving the plot.
I think I figured it out on why I'm finding this show boring, Aruto I feel isn't an interesting character, while the other characters are interesting and drive the plot. Reminds me of Final Fantasy XII.

THIS exactly is how I feel

I'm a little disappointed that we broke our string of "Gai gets his ass handed to him" episodes; I was enjoying that. I suppose having his company's tech get hijacked to drive people crazy is okay, but it's not the same as an explosion followed by a roll and the torn jacket.

Still, it really does feel like Zero-One is well and truly back. The plot is ticking along, there are interesting developments, and I'm actually excited to see what happens next. I'm glad to see that the downturn was only temporary.

Also, Fuwa manages to be fantastic even when getting knocked unconscious. Such a great character and performance.

i was a little worried we were going backwards by returning to "hacked humagear of the week" with the return of metsuboujinrai.net but they pivoted away from that pretty quickly

surprised Horobi straightup murdered Midori. Not much of a savior of humagears if he's gonna be killing them in cold blood in the quest for "purity" or whatever

Based on the preview it looks like Horobi and Jin are gonna have an army of humagears and face off against Gai and an army of Raid Riser equipped humans

which begs the question:
Gai, if you had a buttload of raid risers, why'd you only send 2 at a time for the past . . . four episodes? Maybe you'd have gotten stuff done

Fuwa is now getting brain surgery to get his memories back. he continues to have the most interesting arc in the show. main character fo sho

He feels like a bystander because he IS. 30+ episodes in and he hasn't really progressed from the totally unqualified kid thrust into the role of president of cutting edge robotics manufacturing corporation.

He isn't an engineer or scientist so all the new powers are essentially handed to him by Izu (or Gai)

He has no business acumen so Gai runs circles around him. Gai took his damn company and flipped public opinion against him so his family's own technology is more or less illegal and villified by normal folks

He has no killer instinct or tactical prowess so even when handed the next toy-based power up he doesn't use it to actually beat his opponent, either by killing, disabling or capturing them. Fights end with both sides walking away basically clean. even humagears that he's trying to save get blown up and then swapped into a new body good as new. There's no stakes to his fights

We have seen Gai take over Hiden, turn public opinion against humagear tech while selling Zaiaspec tech

We have seen Jin and Horobi try to free their fellow humagears and take over the world

We have seen Fuwa fight against humagears for humanity's safety only to realize they aren't all dangerous except his hate was fake and now he has to fight for his past and find his place in this new world

Yaiba was similarly fighting against humagears to protect humanity except she was a spy for a rival tech company except she was mostly being mindcontrolled and now she's free and figuring out what to do while also trying to restore Fuwa's memory except she helped unleash Naki

Izu is learning about hopes and dreams and choice

Aruto has obstensibly taken the role of humagear advocate except he is utterly ineffectual at it

In recent memory we've had Kamen Riders be detectives, doctors, scientists, . . . even a fuckin' teenager hip hop dancer and they've all had more agency than this dude, a goddamn bad comedian.

kouta unknowingly killed his best friend in the first episode!

Aruto is just . . . there.

Hope next episode, Fuwa stops breaking Progrisekeys and starts using them properly.

I think this is one thing I'll give the episode for explaining, actually. Gai mentions 'rolling out' the Raidriser en masse -- ie it's a stage they haven't quite gotten to yet. To me this implies that right now they're either limited in how much they have, or ZAIA's making a show of having limited stock to appease potential buyers and play off AIMs' limited use of it as a sort of trial run.

Could be that they're still trialing them - the previous Raiders had a tendency to go a bit overboard, and Yua obviously had the chip in her head. Want to test in small amounts to make sure you don't have an army that can be turned against you at the drop of a hat.

So Raiden would come back as Ikazuchi with the dodo magia key.
What would Naki become? Which key would Naki use?

Why would he?

Either Fighting Jackal, Assault Wolf or a new Progrise/Zetsumerise Key

Not break the merchandise!

So I take it that means Fuwa has lost access to Assault Wolf now.

As a fan of the suit, I'm happy to see Shining Hopper back.

Okay, so I have absolutely no clue what's going on with Yua right now. I get the impression from the knocking Fuwa out gags we're supposed to be like, rooting for newfound agency or something, but all this episode did was make her look like even more of a jerk. The first f***ing thing she did after getting her independence back was cooperate with known terrorists! Aruto's jokes aren't this bad! I understand her desire to "make up" for using Fuwa, but the way she goes about it makes her look an awful lot like she's still just using Fuwa. She needs to atone, so the fact that Fuwa says he's completely cool with where he is in life right now? The fact that trying to dangle his memories in front of his face like a dog treat did absolutely nothing? Whatever, he doesn't know what he needs the way Yua does! Just kidnap him and strap him to some incredibly painful device so you can play around with the chip in his brain at the behest of someone who is DEFINITELY going to use the end result for something bad!

There's a lot ambiguous in this right now, like what exactly Jin told Yua to get her to agree, so I don't doubt she'll end up looking at least slightly better in the long-run, and like, obviously Fuwa's chip IS a problem that needed dealing with, but, especially with the decision to play some of those moments for comedy, I just don't really like the feeling that entire plot thread gave me here.

That's about it for complaints though! Horobi is the best antagonist this show has, even if the Ark wills him to do nothing for long stretches, and the way his personal ideology clashes with Aruto's is WAY more interesting than Gai's. They go great onscreen together, and it's great having him back in the picture, especially when Takaiwa always makes him look so cool in-suit. On which note, the direction here was pretty good, per usual. Not really sure why Aruto would ever use Shining Hopper again with that extra Assault Grip lying around, though. Like, it's cool to see, but these sorts of low-effort appearances by old forms are almost as bad as never seeing them again. Rising Hopper is an exception because it's the base form, and I feel those need justification to not appear, but with older upgrades and form changes and whatnot, it's not just about seeing them. I want to see them showing off their unique abilities in ways where it's obvious why the hero would still want to use them over even their newest toy. Shining Hopper literally can't do that, because there's a version of it that does all the same things, but better (the Shine System could've fried those mooks a lot quicker!), which is why I hated that they ever introduced that second Assault Grip.

I know I'm sort of reading into the action too much, but I don't know. This stuff never sits right with me lately. Oh wait, I was trying not to complain, dang it. Uh, on a much more positive note, the Horobi/Metal Cluster Hopper fight was super cool, and had very clear, well-defined stakes... except for how the fight ends with the two characters just standing around untransformed, basically in the same position they started in. Like, that buildup with Midori being destroyed gives the impression Aruto is planning to end Horobi's plans permanently, but the resolution gives the impression that if Izu hadn't interrupted, it just would've been the same "I hope you learned your lesson this time", walking-off-with-a-bruised-ego routine that's happened a million times with Gai. Is this literally just because we need to have the Riders using finishing moves? Because that's what the monsters the show keeps refusing to use are for.

Okay, I'm sorry, I keep screwing up trying to be positive about this show. Like, I swear I was planning to talk about how interested I am in Horobi and Jin right now, or how neat I find just the simple scenes of Aruto exploring whatever business field of the week, but it's like every time I go to write down my thoughts about an episode of Zero-One, I realize a million things I didn't like as I'm in the process, and that ends up being what I want to talk about more. The show has been consistently better lately, for sure, but it's also still lacking a little in cohesion, in my opinion, with a jumble of competing subplots that don't always play off each other that well. I think this is probably why Fuwa feels like the main protagonist to so many people right now. Because his development hasn't been reflecting back on to Aruto in any way whatsoever. It's just off in his own world, that intersects frequently with Yua, and occasionally with MetsubouJinrai. Depending on how it plays out, I might have similar things to say about ZAIA vs. MetsubouJinrai next episode.