[Fish Sandwich]

Quote:

Originally Posted by BrokenDreams

Just like every infamous suit that was complained about until they debuted, this is how it'll go. Once it debuts people will start complimenting that it looks much better than it did in magazine scans, and then people will forget they spent months complaining about how horrible and ugly the suit was. Grand Zi-O was one that was hated for so long, then it debuted and people stopped complaining.

And I guarantee it'll happen in the next season too. And the season after that. And the season after that. And so on. It never ends with complaining about suit designs that eventually stop after the debut.

Yeah, I caught on to this vicious cycle in the lead-up to Ex-Aid's premiere, because that was the only time I got myself a little caught up in the "not digging it" camp... right up until it turned out the irises in everyone's SD Gundam eyes still had the compound insect texture going on, which mollified me enough to realize, hey, these suits actually have a really unique and carefully considered identity to them!

Zero-Two, I think in the long run most of us are going to be appreciating that the series stayed so true to what made its designs such huge winners with everybody. They had plenty of detail, but they were slick too, and avoided being needlessly complex or deliberately gaudy the way so many of the later Heisei Riders were. Shining Assault Hopper is something of an outlier because of this, which I'd imagine is part of the reason there's a camp of people who prefer the base Shining Hopper suit so much.

Zero-Two's increase in bright colors without adding much in the way of new shapes, I think is a solid compromise to give the impression of an upgrade without ruining that simplicity. To me at least, it feels like a truer successor to Rising Hopper than any of Zero-One's other upgrades, even if, admittedly, something like Metal Cluster Hopper has a way more immediate cool factor.