[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER ZERO-ONE EPISODE 15 - “EACH ONE’S END”



Family! It’s both a theme for this week’s episode, and a word that gets said about seven hundred times.

I like Aruto’s view of Humagears as his family. In a way, it’s nothing more than the idea of a found family – a staple of Kamen Rider shows for decades – blown up to a societal degree. It’s Aruto taking his responsibilities as both a Kamen Rider and a CEO, combining them, and amplifying them with his own unique backstory. Sort of no surprise that this episode ends with him getting a hybrid upgrade form, is it?

He’s always viewed Humagears as partners more than servants, so it makes sense that he’d form emotional attachments with the very concept of Humagears. It’s a two-way street, and it doesn’t end when it becomes inconvenient. While even Subaru initially scoffs at the idea of treating an appliance like a member of the family, it tracks with Aruto’s sense of reciprocity. If someone treats you with care, you treat them with care. If they need you, you help them. The validity of these connections has never depended on genetics, so why should it depend on biology?

Aruto’s belief that Humagears are his family is mirrored in a way with an actual Humagear family, Jin and Horobi. The fun part of that one is, in the spirit of hybridization, it’s a form of family that’s mixed up with Fuwa’s interpretation of connection… which is to say it is inextricable from things like Revenge and Obligation. All Jin exists for is a way to pass on Horobi’s goals of the Ark’s goals. It’s nothing that builds up or improves; it’s just a way to maintain hate well past the point of any articulated grudge or crime. It’s family as a trap you can’t escape, rather than a pathway to something better.

So we get this nice intersection of storytelling where Fuwa gets his revenge, Horobi sacrifices himself for duty, and Izu gets injured for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It’s a layered scene of seeming catharsis, that becomes one more cause for alarm.

It’s an episode that, in sort of classic Zero-One fashion, is just rolling around an idea. If found families can be a way for lonely people to make connections, can they also be weaponized against lonely people? Treating friends like family has made Aruto into who he is, but the same thing has warped Jin. The best scene of the episode is Aruto’s baffled plea to Jin about the dozens of destroyed “friends” left in Jin’s wake. How can you claim to understand concepts like family when you think it’s okay to destroy friends? The anguish on Aruto’s face isn’t the raging cruelty of Fuwa’s arguments with MetsubouJinari, it’s Aruto trying to find the humanity somewhere within a machine that everyone else would destroy. It’s Aruto arguing with a machine, on behalf of other machines.

I really like this show sometimes.

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KAMEN RIDER ZERO-ONE SO-DO AI 04: KAMEN RIDER ZERO-ONE - SHINING ASSAULT HOPPER



It’s Assault Wolf, with a Shining Hopper coat.

I don’t love it? My favorite things about Zero-One suits have been cleanliness, tight color schemes, and aerodynamics, so here’s a multicolor suit with spiked shoulderpads. It’s the busiest suit on this show yet, and it’s the exact opposite of what I enjoy in Zero-One suit design. No thanks!

(I do like how the Assault Wolf jingle is changed up to “No hope of surviving this shot.” There’s more of an intentionality to Aruto’s use of the form than Fuwa, a targeted effort rather than the suicide pact of Assault Wolf.)

The figure is equally not my thing, with a bunch of stickers that curve over parts or need to nestle into crevices just so. It’s a recipe for a figure that basically executes the design, while looking too compromised to really feel proud of.

Shining Assault Hopper is another one of those suits where I get why it looks that way – it’s literally Aruto’s hope trying to contain Fuwa’s rage, and it goes about as well as you’d expect – but I don’t love looking at it.