[Fish Sandwich]

Just watched the Zero-One Hyper Battle Video, and I really enjoyed it. As in like, actively. It's hard to totally pin down why. Something about it just seemed more straightforward and solid than a lot of more recent HBV's... is what I'd like to say, but then, I can already barely remember most recent HBV's, so, uh... at the very least, I think it was better than BiBill Geiz. Not to single that one out, or anything, it's just the only one fresh in my mind.

I guess that'll be the real test. If I actually can remember anything from this in a couple years, I'll know for sure it was good. For now, though, I thought it had a very focused script, surprisingly enough courtesy of Masaya Kakehi, who for the record, I'd still love to see writing more of the show proper! Obviously there's no ambitious narrative here, but you can tell by things like the pacing it wasn't phoned in.

What I think I was getting into more than anything though was just Fumiya Takahashi's performance as Aruto. I found myself paying more attention to it than usual in light of some of the discussion in the thread for episode 25, and I'll stand by what I've been saying since episode 1. The guy has loads of talent. He spends the vast majority of the HBV in total clown mode, and nails it the whole way through. He's great at knowing exactly how pathetic to make Aruto look at a particular moment, he's got an excellent range in his intonations, and his dubbing when Zero-One is on-screen is seamless (that last one owing as much credit to Nawata, too, of course). I've seen inexperienced actors playing screwball leads in tokusatsu who take a while to really "lock on", and I'm tellin' ya, he ain't one of 'em.

Oh, and this is just one last minor thing I found funny: Hopping Kangaroo's messed up text-to-speech transformation jingle is inadvertently justified by its in-universe origin as a Key that Zea made after basically having a mental breakdown. Talk about lucky!