[FreshToku]

Hey, you're watching Zi-O! This is a show that's 'special' to me in various ways. As it happens, I actually do mostly recall all my initial impressions from watching every episode as it aired back in 2018 up to 2019. Probably helps that most episodes fall into such neat groupings. Not to say that I'll certainly have anything or will say something about every single episode, but I hope you don't mind me just taking your thread as an excuse to talk about my own experiences beyond acknowledging your own comments.

This first episode, well it's a lot of nonsense, huh? A lot of it is stuff I think I just sat through bewildered, but it's the beginning and the end that really stuck with me. That beginning with Oma Zi-O displaying his terrible power before hardcutting to the dopey teenager watching him makes for a strong first impression.

And at the end, when Geiz asks Sougo why he is doing this, and we see the image of Oma Zi-O giving the same answer before it fades to the present Zi-O in his place? That's a really cool moment, and I was excited to see where things would go.

Everything in-between is kinda whatever though. Sougo's general personality and reactions to everything is like, bizarre and not necessarily in a good way, and I just held out hope some of his 'quirks' would make sense in hindsight. There is a way to make his declaration to be a benevolent overlord a good one, but if there is, this episode isn't there yet.

Oh, and the brief bit about time-travelling with time-travelling to the Build show makes no sense for so many reasons but it's hard to care if it's all to facilitate an equally brief cameo anyway. I think like you, for me personally, cameo from characters of older series really don't do anything for me especially in this show, but I especially didn't get much out of seeing Sento and Banjou considering their show ended just the previous week.

But all in all, despite all that, I think just the premise and the teasing of what's to come about this story of a future overlord, and his supporting cast who all think that future is inevitable, made me interested in seeing the next episode.