[FreshToku]

Nothing really brought this on, but sometime after watching this episode, I've started to feel like I'm not so pleased with Zero-One as an entire whole? I feel like the show introduces all sorts of cool concepts and plot beats, but only because it would be something interesting for the show to have, while having zero interest in doing anything meaningful with them. This goes all the way to the beginning with the basic concepts like 'robots gaining sentience' and 'multiple factions'.

I was thinking how at the beginning, you have a golden premise right out of the gate. You have one faction of humagears who wants to get rid of humans so that humagears can reign supreme. You've got a faction of humans who either hate humagears or believe they should fully be under the control of them, and in the middle is Aruto who believes the two can coexist. Except Aruto never came into conflict with AIMs during the first stretch in any meaningful way. He, Fuwa and Yaiba essentially all became 'the good guys' side as early as episode 4, and the it's just fighting off Metsubojinrai all the way till the end of the first arc.

When ZAIA came in, he sort of took the role of human antagonist that I had expected AIMs to have. Like Aruto, Gai doesn't differentiate humans and humagear, just that he'll use any of them as he wishes. Unfortunately his motivation being entirely based on profit and not due to any opinion he might have about humagears. When he first appeared, I figured he would serve as an antithesis to Aruto by either hating humagears or believing them to have zero value. I know that was Fuwa's character premise, but they didn't do anything with him there.

Speaking of Fuwa, my feelings about the show introducing plot beats solely to have them instead of doing anything meaningful extends to his entire character. He starts out hating humagears and believing they have no place in the world, but as mentioned, this never leads to any kind of confrontation with Aruto aside from chasing him for five seconds in episodes 2 an 3. Remember back in episode 13, when he very passionately yells out about how all he needs is his rage after all as he transforms into Assault Wolf? That felt like they were doubling down on his agenda against humagears which would inevitably lead to conflict, but uh... that doesn't happen. I was shocked when during the lawyer competition, he casually told Aruto that humagears could be used for both bad and good depending on what you teach them, because it felt like he had reached this massive moment of development completely off-screen and without any influence from the other main characters.

Oh yeah, and then they reveal he has like fake memories in his head, but that literally doesn't matter both in and out of universe. It's just another cool idea that's shoved in for the sake of it.

But at least Fuwa got off better than Yaiba, who got nothing in terms of character exploration in the first stretch of the show, got completely sidelined for months, and then came back to have a bit turnaround where you're meant to pretend it was all worth it somehow. Yaiba's character arc has since concluded at this point of the show, but it never felt like it really started.

Honestly, I'd say the lack of desire to explore any of these concepts and characters extends to Jin too. He was a fun antagonist during the first arc, and just when they were starting to delve into his character... they killed him off. And then he disappeared for two months and inexplicably came back. The 'inexplicable' part especially the problem here. See, the writers clearly wanted Jin to dramatically come back as a changed person, with a new mindset and goals, purely because that's a dramatic thing to happen in the show. They didn't care at all about actually going into how or why that happened, and I'm confident they never will. This is just the new status quo for Jin because the shows says so.

I don't know, I just suddenly felt really down about... everything in Zero-One. There's been big serialised shows like Ex-Aid and Build which would slack on a bunch of finer details, and I never minded that much. With Zero-One, something about it feels exceptionally transparent. I can just feel that there's no message or moral or life lesson that the show actually cares to tell, it's purely a product. I'm not gonna pretend every Kamen Rider season isn't just a product too, of course, but they at least managed to trick me into thinking otherwise! Zero-One kinda hasn't.

This show has really great fight scenes, and it's structure means I'll always be naturally curious about what happens next, but it feels shallow. It has felt exceptionally shallow to me for a while now, and I've only just now realised I've felt that way since the basically the beginning.