[Fish Sandwich]

上堀内監督による、カミ回ですね！

はい！或人じゃ～ないけど！

Sorry, I got a little carried away there. But, uh, wow did I end up liking this one. It was a real roller-coaster getting there, too. You know what? Let me just take you on that ride, and I'll work my thoughts in as I go.

First I'm strangely impressed by the concise cold open, and that cool shot of Jin. Then I end up rewinding the opening like a dozen times in the middle (maybe more?) to see Metal Cluster Hopper's amazing shot, which packs an impressive amount of visual storytelling into a short span. The fact that I inadvertently extended the opening to at least double the length then made it that much more of a reveal when I finally got the very end, and, as I always do with Zero-One, took note of the director credit, and suddenly it made sense why that shot of Jin from earlier was so cool. This was a Kazuya Kamihoriuchi episode. That aired back to back with Ryusoulger's finale?! Best Super Hero Time ever, right?

Moving into the meat of the episode, I braced for disappointment as it became apparent a huge chunk of this episode would be a combination infodump/recap, "characters stand in a room stating facts" being just about my least favorite form of storytelling. My spirits became lifted again as I hypothezied that Kamihoriuchi was chosen for this episode just so he could come up with the most visually interesting possible way to handle a flowchart.



Before I had time to further come up with a hypothesis for why Aruto was doing so many puns in one episode, things moved into the back half, where I also didn't find time to wonder why everyone was suddenly throwing around the word Kamen Rider like it's going out of style, largely because I was preoccupied with how great the second half of this episode is. Sure, everyone announcing their Rider names and central motivations is both extremely cheesy, and further emphasizes how much I can't wait for Yua to move out of her phase of having nothing to do besides be sad about being Gai's lackey the same way every episode, but it really starts coming together.

There's stuff about this episode to this point, that, like a lot Zero-One lately, I'm not too keen on. Yua, obviously, which I've gotta talk about in detail at some point. The infodump which, combined with the trailer for Project Thouser, really casually spills the beans on Naki when it seems like a mysterious hooded figure like that should probably be more of an enigma and/or have a bigger reveal. And if I want to get really nitpicky, ever since I saw the ThousanDriver, I've been wondering what the actual difference between Progrise Keys and Zetsumeirise Keys is supposed to be, and the way the infodump covers it does not help on that front. Where the heck are Assault Wolf and Metal Cluster Hopper supposed to fit into that explanation?

All that just started to fade away right around the time Zero-One and Vulcan go into action together, though. It helps that I'm a long-established sucker for Vulcan's BGM, but the dialogue between Aruto and Fuwa there, it's all great stuff. A subtle advancement in their relationship that, like a lot of this episode, seems to also be catered towards catching up new viewers on things. Maybe this script was expected to air alongside Kiramager's premiere to catch people tuning in for that, I don't know. But it's a sweet fight scene that lives up to the standards of the hottest director in tokusatsu right now.

And after holding it back for so much of the episode, we get the big exciting event here. Jin is back! I forget how much I actually talked about him, but Jin was definitely a favorite character of mine throughout his first run. I really enjoyed his gradual evolution, and thought making him the final boss of the show's initial arc was a great exit. What I was really looking forward to with him coming back was the potential to see that go even further. I wanted to see a Jin that wasn't just the same as always. He should feel more mature. He should have more defined goals, and perhaps a bit of a harder look to his appearance, transformed or otherwise. The show should play with the viewer's expectations of who Jin is. So not only did Zero-One hit literally all of those points, it did just in the episode he came back, when it easily could've resorted to ending the episode on the cliffhanger of him revealing himself, and made us wait for further elaboration. I'd like to think I wouldn't have found that an issue either, but I'm super glad I don't have to worry about it, and this episode packed all that story meat right in, here and now. It's an immediacy I'd love to see more regularly from Zero-One. A nice balance to all the elements that have spent so much time simmering without a lot of progress (*cough*Assault Wolf*cough*).

And the cliffhanger we did get? Hoo boy, that's a good one.

So, in short, I loved this episode, and I'll leave off by mentioning one thing I loved about it before even seeing it. The title. I've given Zero-One crap for its bizarre titling conventions, but this one continues a trend I really like. "I Will Save The HumaGears" sounds straightforward enough, but I'm betting I lot of you assumed that was in reference to Aruto, right? The trick is, the pronoun used for "I" there is boku, making it clear that this is Jin speaking. Titles like this, or the subtle contrast between the premiere and Thouser's debut, they make it clearer to me why Zero-One uses katakana for those pronouns. It's a matter of emphasis. The subject is the key information being presented, instead of whatever comes after. Not all of them work out this nicely, but when they do, Zero-One's episode titles have a sort of understated simplicity to them that makes them rather poetic in their own way, and I dig that. How much they can accomplish with so little.