[Fish Sandwich]

Hey everyone, guess what time it is!



10:10, according to this dude's face. More importantly, it's also time for a brand new Kamen Rider show, and I love it so far. This isn't anywhere near as strong a premiere as Build's, but that was already an outlier anyway, so I won't judge Zi-O too hard. This is about average (maybe a little better than usual?) for a Kamen Rider first episode, but it was hugely entertaining and set the stage well. Not exceptional, but there's not much to complain about, either.

That being said, it's also wall-to-wall setup to the point where I feel like I just watched a 22-minute trailer. I think the pacing would've been massively helped just by cutting out the opening. Don't get me wrong, it was nice to see it, and it looks great, but that extra minute of breathing room is worth missing out on some catchy music and visuals designed to explain the show, something a first episode already does.

The writing here is pretty wild and hits like, a million beats in a very short time frame, but to the script's credit, everything checks out. The characters definitely get the short end of the stick, but we do get just enough to get a feel for everyone, and in exchange, the backstory is presented nice and thoroughly right out of the gate. And Sougo even got thrown in a river! I don't actually think that was an intentional reference, given how different the context is from usual, but it's nice to see a classic Heisei trope back.

The more "production" aspects of the show are all great, too. The CG isn't awful (which for Kamen Rider is a huge compliment), and I loved Zi-O's transformation. Toshihiko Sahashi's style of background music is perfectly suited to a "big" show like this (although it doesn't help my brain comparing this show to Den-O), and the designs are all nice. I can totally accept labels on everything if it means we get monsters that look notably gross for the first time in years.

All in all it was solid stuff, but I don't think it possible to form a proper opinion until next week. Which is another very typical Heisei Rider thing. The premiere gets all the setup out of the way so the second episode is free to actually show you what the series will be like. Right now I see tons of potential in everything, and I especially think Sougo and Geiz could quickly become extremely interesting characters, but that all depends on where things go.

I feel like there's this kind of meta dimension to Zi-O, because the character is trying to defy fate by becoming a nice evil king, and the show is trying to defy fate by pulling off almost the exact same plot as Decade. As long as it has an actual ending, I guess it can't be too bad, right?