[Fish Sandwich]

(Fish Sandwich also watched Kamen Rider Zi-O - EP25)
(Fish Sandwich also watched Kamen Rider Zi-O - EP26)

Okay, so first of all, bad past me! Complaining about Sougo using the Build Armor... see what I mean about how big I was on Zi-O II? I couldn't even appreciate how nice it was to see Zi-O still busting out a power-up from all the way back in the second episode.

One other remark I made about 25 that's fun to dig into with the greater context I have now is when I mention how seeing two guys fighting in water in Kamen Rider always reminds me of OOO. You might recall the offhand mention I made of Satoshi Morota's obsession with throwing people in water from when I was talking about the gradual process of learning to identify toku directors. And back in 2019, I still didn't know enough to go and look it up, and find out that -- you guessed it -- both episode 25 of Zi-O and 46 of OOO were directed by Morota. So the visual similarity is a lot more than just a coincidence! I really do love that whole dream sequence, by the way. Not really for any deep reason, I guess. It just looks cool (like, the color palette is literally cool), and I like it as a way to visually rub in the inevitability of a big conflict between Sougo and Geiz.

Oh, and speaking of a big conflict between Sougo and Geiz, how about episode 26?!

I've held back on a big rant about it until this point, but to lay my cards on the table once again, as I did back then, Geiz is my dude, man! He's like, neck and neck with Zeronos for my favorite secondary ever, if he hasn't pulled ahead yet. He was a character I immediately found fascinating conceptually, because, on the surface, he sounds like he's the protagonist of a show? Yeah, sure, he's a Grim Executioner or whatever, but when you look at the basics? A young man who travels back in time to bring hope to a future ruined by despair? Fighting against fate itself, clad in a shiny red costume? He's got "hero" written all over him, and the unhealthy amount of pressure he's always putting on himself to make everything right singlehandedly only adds to that.

That was always the thing about Zi-O I was most excited about, because I think that's my favorite setup for a hero and their designated rival character. When it feels like you can flip the perspective, and both of them would slot into the other role just as comfortably. Sougo is an inexperienced but optimistic person destined for greatness, but he could also be an arrogant fool rashly taking on power with little regard for the consequences. Geiz has a lot of the trappings of your usual foil Rider in his personality, but I find that from his conception, there are more layers to him and his dynamic with Sougo than just a typical selfless and empathetic hero and a surly jerk looking to accomplish a goal regardless of any mushy personal feelings. Even though that's also exactly what their dynamic is like.

Ryuki was one of my first Rider shows, and in that series, a key component of the drama was always the interplay between Shinji and Ren. Two very different protagonists who nevertheless had the common ground of fighting for other people, in a show where most Riders fought only for themselves. A single person in Ren's case, and as many people as possible in Shinji's. Those two set a gold standard for pretty much every Rider frenemy duo who came after, and with how formative Ryuki is for me, I guess going into Zi-O, it was only natural I'd be excited about the idea of this secondary Rider, who struggles to reconcile his need to defeat the main Rider for the sake of his objective with the undeniable fact that he's not cut out to be a ruthless killer, no matter how hard he pretends they aren't friends. (And uh, yeah Geiz and Knight, are maybe even more similar than usual. Tasaki must've caught on too, given that both show's openings end with the main pair fighting before the title card pops up.)

All this is to say, I was WAY invested in these two leading up to this point, and especially since it took me so long to realize how much I like Sougo, I was particularly invested in Geiz himself. I mean, there's the whole thing I've mentioned before where I sort of saw myself as Geiz, in a way, watching Zi-O to determine for myself if the future it was heading towards was for better or for worse (and taking a while to realize how much I like Sougo!), but on top of that, and all that rambling I just did about his concept, it was also the little things. They gave the Ghost Armor and the Wizard Armor to him, for one. Bottom line, I couldn't wait to see what this whole Geiz Revive thing was building to, and it was pretty much everything I could ask for.

The show did an impressive job making this feel considerably more serious than your average Sougo/Geiz conflict, from the writing to the direction. There's a bit in there I love, when he uses the Revive Ride Watch for the first time, where the scene is pretty much totally silent, aside from the standby sound of Geiz's Ziku Driver. And then he slaps the new Watch on the belt, and the standby jingle for that layers over the existing one, which is just something the toy does, of course, but it adds so much intensity to that initial transformation, used the way it is here.

And then... man, I'm gonna be here all day if I try and actually cover everything I love about this episode, but Geiz Revive! Very cool powerup! It was nice of Geiz to add "fast and blue" to the list of things that make me love him, and yet, Gouretsu has always kinda been the one I like more. It's just so intimidating with the sheer bulk of it, and I love how barbaric the chainsaw is? It's two cool forms in one, though, so I guess there's no point in picking favorites when Shippu is, again, right up my alley.

And then the music! Last thing I'm gonna talk about right now! (I just have to remind myself I can always gush more about Geiz later too.) Geiz Revive was accompanied by an extremely memorable new piece of background music. It's extremely triumphant and heroic sounding, with the kind of grandiose brassy sound Sahashi excels at, fitting Geiz perfectly... as well as it should, because it's based on Future Guardian, an image song I straight up didn't remember when I first watched this episode, which is why I don't bring up how familiar it sounds in that old post. Because it didn't sound familiar yet.

It just goes to show how much the where and how of using background music is as important as the music itself, I suppose. That being said, I also feel like Geiz Revive's BGM really elevates the sound of Future Guardian in a way, since the lack of vocals means the instrumentation is free to be a lot more intense. (I really hope I'm using the word "instrumentation" correctly here...)

This also means the music for Geiz's powerup pairs rather well with the BGM associated with Zi-O II, which mixes bits of Toki no Ouja with the usual Zi-O motif.

I'm not sure if the show has actually used this track by the point Die is at yet, based on the quick skimming I did of a bunch of episodes around this point, so maybe it's not actually that closely tied to Zi-O II in the way it's used, but it definitely makes a nice set with Geiz Revive's track.