[Fish Sandwich]

(Fish Sandwich also watched Kamen Rider Zi-O - EP44)
(Fish Sandwich also watched Kamen Rider Zi-O - EP45)
(Fish Sandwich also watched Kamen Rider Zi-O - EP46)

Big series-length plot threads are definitely not Zi-O's strong suit. I've always heard the show sort of had to write around what guest stars they ended up getting, probably meaning it was a more fluid production than usual, and on top of that, I also know for a fact that when Shimoyama was the main writer on Ninninger, he consciously avoided tying himself down to any particular twists and turns ahead of time, giving himself room to make the story up as he went along. I think that worked out a lot smoother for Ninninger than it did for Zi-O, if I'm being honest.

The struggle of making Swartz into a proper main villain, especially, was maybe something complicated by him only becoming the main villain for sure once they eventually settled on that. More things I know for a fact: Woz Ginga Finally was originally conceived to coincide with Woz revealing himself as a full-on villain, and the gimmick of Zi-O Trinity was supposed to be that Sougo was borrowing the powers of two Riders who weren't normally on his side. And yet those potentials are perhaps lost to their own Another Worlds now, because in the show we ended up getting, we strayed so far from that path that we got an episode where Woz and Woz both work towards helping our heroes, and the bonds of friendship that power Trinity are crucial to saving the day.

To borrow the words out of Shirakura's mouth -- "a television show is a living thing."

Not to drag the discussion back to Over Quartzer, but I found it sort of funny to read Die criticizing how the plot twists contradict what we've seen on TV, because, fair as that point is, I also know that the show has been contradicting the show plenty of times, and certain elements of Over Quartzer are potentially truer to the "original" vision they might've began with, such as Woz's shocking true allegiance, or the idea of Sougo's supposed destiny being a lie. No doubt all this haphazard plotting is part of why Barlckxs thinks our Heisei is such an unsightly mess. Because, you know, it kinda is.

And all of that definitely caused its share of problems for Zi-O when it came to drawing the show to a close, for sure. But I really love the duality of Die's post about episode 46, because the sheer joy he found in the thrilling Woz-centric plan of attack Team Zi-O puts into action highlights just about all the good that could've only come about because of the same decisions that left the other side of the episode feeling so limp to him. If Zi-O didn't veer off-course to the uncharted future it did, we could've avoided half-baked attempts at propping Swartz up... and we also could've lost out on so many of this series' best moments.

This is another one of those super navel-gazey sort of post from me where I don't really have a point, so much as I'm just throwing some food for thought out there, but naturally, I can't bring myself to be too worked up about any of the flaws these three episodes might have. All the fun I had with them sort of overrides that part of my brain.

I was, as you'd expect, easily suckered in by that scene with Geiz's Another World in 46 especially. (I also specifically remember reading FreshToku gush about it and appreciating it even more because of that, for the record!) It's just this really wonderful story beat to have the thought that's eating Geiz more than anything else in his life, in that moment, to be "Why did I make that the last thing I said to him?" Everything about the way Geiz loses his temper and ends up saying something he regrets, it's so grounded and human, and exactly the kind of character drama that made Zi-O a lot more than just shallow fanservice to me.

(Although man, it's still so great that Aqua, of all Riders, got such a massive spotlight in this show.)