[Daikaijuman54]

"I'm gonna be the nicest Demon King ever!" That's a line that made me believe I was going to like Sougo and Zi-O as a whole. It's such an absurd line, that I can't help but love. One of the best quotes of the season and the year.

This was the first Rider season I watched as it aired. I remember when Zi-O's design was first revealed, I instantly loved it. I adored the clock theme, the Katagana for Kamen (on the forehead) and Rider (for the eyes), the color scheme, the strong feeling of royalty it had, it was just so good.

The opening, Over X Quartzer, is fantastic! It's one of my favorite openings, both visually and musically, feeling very Anime for Rider (I'm aware the others had their own flair of "Anime-like," but Zi-O just hit something that went beyond that to me), and the detail at the end with every Kamen Rider logo cycling over to Zi-O's was great. Also really enjoy the almost Egyptian style music, fitting for Zi-O's theme about time and kingship.

Now onto the premiere, the start is straight-up Decade. Oma Zi-O (great suit by the way), just trampling over everyone felt like the beginning of Decade, which if funny since both are anniversary seasons. But I strangely love how there's a shrine to his debut transformation and the Heisei Riders (the worst future, nobody remembers the Showa Riders...) as a testament to his reign.

Then we meet Sougo, who starts out singin' "Oh, I just can't wait to be King!" and that's about it for his character, which somewhat baffles me how he ends up as Oma Zi-O in the first place, but hey, I had speculations, though I'll probably talk more about them later. Tsukuyomi, the one trying to resolve things peacefully, honestly didn't think too much of her, though she does have some moments. And then there's the best boy in the show, who I was convinced from the start, Woz. Just Woz. He may be a suped up Phillip, but he's the best, loved every moment he was on screen, just him being the Demon King's butler, without being an actual butler, was just a joy to watch every week. Also, boy, do people in the future have an interesting fashion sense.

The Another Riders are interesting, being monster versions of previous Riders, though part of me wishes they had elements of their own monsters in their designs for reasons I'll get into in a later post. But the idea of these being like "what if the Riders were never the good guys and stayed bad?" kind of deal, even though they're absolutely not, was something I liked about the villains, other than that used Za Warudo!

I really like the Time Majin, just the idea of a time travelling robot sounds cool, despite being only CGI. But the time travelling elements have some fun little details, like whenever the time period shows up on screen, and it's especially neat how in the Build timeline, it's the day after Cross-Z debuts. Speaking of Build, I loved seeing Sento and Banjo again, and how Sougo, despite knowing nothing about them, nerds out over the fridge lab (even if we don't see the inside), but just how well they were getting along before getting blasted.

And then there's Zi-O's majestic debut. Woz really made this transformation even better with his speech, as if the visual of Sougo's transformation wasn't cool enough on its own. And then finally, we have Ren- I mean Geiz! Whom, I'll talk about more in the next episode, but first impressions, "Die, boy!" also, collectable merch!