[Fish Sandwich]

Oh, and there is one other thing I'd like to take a second to dig into in these precious last moments before we all move onto Saber hype, if we haven't already.

There's that line Aruto says to Horobi during the break in their fight that was so clearly gift-wrapped for movie trailer style edits, it was literally the only line of dialogue in the preview. "We're Kamen Riders, aren't we?"

I've seen the episode twice now, and I've come to the conclusion I both adore that line, while also having some misgivings towards it.

Thinking about it, it's a lot less shallow in meaning than I had it pegged for at first. In the context of that scene, Aruto is basically saying to Horobi that, even despite the tragedy he's faced and the hardships he has to endure, him, and Aruto as well, will ultimately be able to overcome all that, refusing to break, and emerge as people who can turn that pain into strength, and use it to bring good into the world instead. And like, holy s*** that is exactly what Kamen Rider is about. Right back to the roots.

I'm honestly a little floored thinking about how much sense that makes, and similarly, Yua's little speech in the epilogue was something I came around to more after hearing it, well... not to be mean to Yua, but after hearing out of Vulcan's mouth instead, in one of his actor Ryuutarou Okada's usual YouTube videos, which in retrospect I wish I'd been keeping up with more actively. He points out, among other fun anecdotes like that the script only said Fuwa opens that car door by force, how the whole idea there is that the show is defining "Kamen Rider" not by the ability to transform, but by just that general desire to fight for freedom and be an all around cool person.

And that's great! ...but it also kicks up my usual issues with how flagrantly the name "Kamen Rider" has pretty strictly been defined entirely by having a belt and transforming for years and years now. Which for simplicity's sake, I understand, but it hurts scenes like those two in this episode when even just earlier in this very show, we've got Ark being referred to as a Kamen Rider, and no robot dog came along to redeem that guy. It's maybe pedantic on my part, which, again, I get, but it's one more theme in Zero-One that can be a bit muddled. It reminds me a lot of a line, also written by Takahashi, from Ex-Aid, where Emu at one point insists he's a doctor before he's a Kamen Rider. It's a great statement that inherently loses some impact when it's relying more on the meta context than any emphasis the show ever gave that title.

Zero-One is by comparison doing better, since around the halfway point, it's brought this stuff up fairly regularly, with Fuwa's arc even landing on him now having "a dream called Kamen Rider", reclaiming the idea from Gai, who only sees it as a tool to make more profit, as with everything else. So I guess between that, and everyone making their little mission statements in Burning Falcon's debut episode, maybe Zero-One actually did do a reasonable job here. I don't know. This is another one of those "thinking out loud" posts where I don't really have a concluding point, so hopefully I'm saying something even remotely interesting.