[AkibaSilver]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kurona

There is that to it, but I don't feel it works half the time. Genius and Sparkling feel completely superfluous while you absolutely could have cut out half the fullbottles and lost nothing of value.

I've been thinking this through on and off today, and I disagree. Not with the Fullbottles, there are a tonne of those, but with Sparkling and Genius.

You need Sparkling to make Grease hit hard. RabbitTank jobs on and off to NightRogue and BloodStalk throughout the first arc, but at the end comes Sparkling, a representation of Sento freeing himself fron Isurugi, of gaining new power from his own creation, rather than that of the Smash... and then Grease comes along and his new power up gets trashed on almost instantly. That slap-in-the-face just wouldn't hit so hard (in hindsight) with only the base form or variations upon it, you need something in the middle to make Grease seem insurmountable so when Blood Stalk shows up offering him just a little trigger to make himself stronger, to help stop Banjou doping himself on Sclash-Steroids, he takes it. Because he already tried his own work, and it didn't cut it.

Note - I think my appreciation for Sparkling just jumped 1000% writing that.

I don't have as much to say about Genius, other than it works nicely as both a metaphorical and obvious culmination of eveything Sento's got, plus it looks good. There's probably something in my head about how it also ties in with him finally starting to work with his past, rather than against it, given the arc it directly comes off (plus otherwise people would just be complaining that Evol is too weak because his double upgrades don't work against a bouncy stick boy).

If you really wanna talk about superfluous forms, how about Great Cross-Z? Because as much as I love that design, it shows up for five minutes and is then never seen again.

Anyway, I'm done derailing the Zero-One thread. Zero-Two looked a little weird to me at first, but I think it was just the "#2 pose" looking kinda goofy. The other scans make it look fine, certainly an unusual final form but new era, new design philosophy. Still not as good as Shining Assault Hopper.