[Fish Sandwich]

Zi-O is a really special Kamen Rider series to me for a lot of reasons. Er, uh, well I guess they *all* are, but you know what I mean. I'll try and reminisce about as many of those reasons as I can as the thread moves along, and to start off with, I'm introducing my own regular feature for this thread -- a little something I like to call...

(Fish Sandwich also watched Kamen Rider Zi-O - EP01)

See, one of the biggest things about Zi-O that gives it such a big place in my heart is the experience of posting my thoughts every week in the episode threads at the time. I feel that was more or less where I truly started solidifying how I like to write these sorts of things. I posted in every Ex-Aid episode thread, but a lot of those were just bullet-pointed lists of whatever minor thoughts. In Build's case, I ended up skipping out on a solid handful of episodes. But for Zi-O, I made it a point to really try and dig into the show each week as best I could, and you'll see that as the show went along, I generally got more thorough about it.

...And you'll see it fairly easily too, if you're already reading this, because just like above, I'm planning on making a link to those posts with each episode Die gets to. There'll be some orphaned references to chatter from other users here and there, but I don't know, just take that as an excuse to dig through the entire thread or something. I mean, if you actually care what my raw impressions of Zi-O from 3+ years ago were, you'd probably find everyone else's interesting too.

The funny thing is though, I don't at all remember why I was so eager to attach myself to Zi-O from the outset? Off the top of my head, the only thing I vividly remember about the pre-airing hype window of the show was how profound it felt when I realized that Zi-O -- the guy with "Kamen Rider" literally written on his face -- seemed downright plain after the designs we had been getting in the back half of the Heisei Era. More specifically, it made me realize how far Ex-Aid had actually pushed things. Basically no lead Rider design reveal could ever faze me again.

Perhaps I was simply caught up in the whole end of an era hype or something. I do know a lot of things about the series seemed extremely interesting though, and I was definitely excited to see where all this madness was going. As such, I really enjoyed the premiere. Me and Zi-O got off on the right foot, for sure... but I wasn't too sure about that Sougo kid.

Die, I'm not going to push back too hard on your opinion of the premiere, because I was actually in a similar position too, but I will say, while the kind of things you're asking for would've made for a much better premiere, I firmly believe they also would've made for a far less unique and interesting series. All that weird stuff about Sougo, it's part of his mystique. Your critiques of him are things I would unironically praise (*especially* the contradictory nature of being a good evil king), and hopefully you'll learn to see that other side of him in time too. I've got a feeling this'll work out!

Oh, and while this won't necessarily be a regular thing again, there's one particular thing about Zi-O I know I was *super* hyped about, and that's who was doing the soundtrack. Toshihiko Sahashi helped create this era of Rider on Kuuga, he continued that work on Agito, applied his musical talent yet again to Hibiki, gifted Den-O with an incredibly distinctive tone, and finally, he saw the Heisei Era of Kamen Rider to a close by providing the background music for this show as well. It's great. It's Sahashi, so of course it is. And right now, I'd just like to share Zi-O's basic theme music, and note how perfect it is.

Sahashi nailed the whole maou vibe by giving Zi-O's motif that distinctly Egyptian sorta sound that instantly brings to mind a sense of royalty and grandeur, and more than that, the thing I utterly adore about the tracks directly associated with Zi-O is that they basically completely eschew any sort of traditionally heroic sound entirely. It was especially glaring coming off of Build, too, how rather than triumphant and energetic, Zi-O's fight music is often more foreboding than anything. Like, I really can't stress this enough -- it's pretty much an ideal musical summation of the sense of simultaneous wonder of Sougo's present, and the uneasy dread of his future.