[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER ZERO-ONE EPISODE 42 - “AS LONG AS MALICE EXISTS”



I don’t think I’m going to like the end of this series.

There’s broad strokes stuff in here that I enjoyed – the ways hatred becomes self-perpetuating and transmissible; how abused people can become abusers; how our ideals are sometimes the only things that can help us weather adversity; the impossibility of letting go of anger; how difficult it can be to have an open dialogue about our fears. All of that stuff was compelling, and it’s generally exactly what I watch Kamen Rider for. I like these shows best when there’s metaphor amongst all the plot.

But, god, I also like it when the plot makes sense! I like metaphor and plot, not metaphor or plot.

So much of what happened in this episode felt barely thought-through and flimsily explained. In order for the twist of Aruto being Ark-One to land, it takes almost an entire cast of characters (I guess Naki and Ikazuchi took a spa day?) to act like idiots. We need Izu to decide to skip out on telling Aruto about Horobi’s plan, which the entire Humagear population knows about, so she only manages to delay him by a scene. We need Izu to continuously place herself in mortal danger to prove that a genocidal terrorist in the midst of genocidal terrorism is willing to entertain an opposing viewpoint. We need three separate members of Team Zero-One to allow Horobi to walk out the door after killing Izu. (This is the big one. Why do people keep treating Horobi’s departures like the toku equivalent of saying Good Game? Why in the world would you let him wander off after executing Izu?!) We need Aruto to be so overcome with grief that he’ll take up the mantle of the same villain he worked to detonate over the last dozen episodes.

It’s all so dumb. It’s metaphor and theme completely untethered from character and plot. It’s making a point about hatred and intolerance at the expense of 40 episodes worth of investment in the world of Zero-One. It’s a good idea that the show wasn’t in a place to execute well, but everyone involved said Screw It and did it anyway.

(It's also flattening its main themes of combating racism and bigotry by doing a dull revenge plot, but that seems like a minor flaw in comparison. But since we're talking about it: I dislike that larger conversations about how different groups integrate into society gets abandoned for a fridging and dull solo villainy. We're so far off the beam from discussing Humagears as a group of disparate viewpoints, and that sucks.)

And even outside of all of that, to see that Horobi’s big plan to liberate Humagears is the exact same shit he was doing in Episode 1? Jesus, why bother? I don’t know if the point is to satirize Ark’s boring strategies or Horobi’s complete lack of creativity, but the only way I can see including a MetsubouJinrai revolution this half-assed is as a joke. Horobi finally has a reasonable argument and an actual dream, but it’s the same old horseshit on the battlefield. Incredibly disappointing.

I pretty much thought this whole episode was disappointing? It’s easy to see what the story is trying to accomplish, but there’s just not enough raw material in the right places to justify it. (Super glad to see that the resolution to the mystery of Jin’s benefactor is Some Brand-New Character That Was Never Even Hinted At.) It’s frustrating to think that no one on the production team was able to come up with a better story than this, after seeing how much the show has to be bent out of shape to start it. Literally anything would’ve been better than this. I sort of wish the show had ended at 41.