[Kurona]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Enchilada645

Yeah, honestly like the end goal, what happened in the aftermath, it was definitely important and that's why I enjoyed the series post that because it feels like that's what the arc was leading to. It's just, yeah, got way dragged out. Like it definitely is important, but it could have been structured and handled way better.

Oh I'm not even talking about just the endgoal and aftermath -- that's a huge part of it, and the build-up to it (or some of it) was very much worth it, but I also think the content is really important to consider too.

Like, Zero-One is very much a series about the advancement of technology and AI, and what role it plays in society as well as what role society plays in reaction to that. It's about a few other things but this is what's relevant to the positives I'm talking about here: if you're going to make your series about that, it's very important to showcase the sort of industries and careers that advanced AI and robotics would be relevant in -- especially when your target audience is pretty young and they need to be presented with a lot of different ideas. Zero-One's first arc was extremely effective at this and I think a lot of people would agree on that, but the introduction of ZAIA and Gai Amatsu presents a new spin on that: advanced robotics and AI may be useful in many different industries, but how necessary are they when humanity can do the same job, and can they even do jobs better than humanity in the first place?

And there's a fair few instances where the show is very effective at providing commentary on this idea. The courtroom episodes effectively showed Bingo providing something extremely important and relevant to the job that no human could possibly do (finding and examining evidence in real-time while still making the case for your defendant, in such a way that a human would effectively have to be in two places at once). The fire brigade episodes took yet another unique take on the idea -- sure, it showed something Humagears could do that would either be impossible or incredibly difficult for a human to do (extremely heavy-duty lifting and heightened endurance), but it also very much begged the question does it even matter if they can do something different, highlighting how Humagears are just like people and what matters the most isn't just what 119 Nosuke could bring to the job, it was his very human spirit and courage.

Both of these were excellent examples in progressing the themes of the series within the context of its new stakes and questions, and furthered the idea of how thin the line was between robot and human to begin with. But on the other hand, the flower-arranging episodes didn't have much of interest to offer -- which while you may argue is fine for an introduction to the tournament arc, it was not nearly interesting or engaging enough to warrant being a 2-parter and could also easily have had something else going on with other characters in the background. Similarly, I really don't know what positives the real estate 2-parter really did for the tournament arc, very much feeling like an even less interesting repeat of the flower-arranging episodes.

Kamen Rider has an issue in general with strictly following a 2-episode structure, and Zero-One's tournament arc showcases that at its worst. If these were actually 5 episodes I don't think many would have an issue with it; but it was effectively stretched out over the course of multiple months and it's very easy to get sick of it given both those circumstances and about half of the arc not being interesting in its own right. Which is a shame, because as I said; I really feel that what it did do right was incredibly important, dare I say necessary to the advances of the show's themes and messages and what questions it was presenting to the audience.