[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER ZERO-ONE EPISODE 43 - “THAT IS A HEART”



Of all the things that I never expected to see again in Reiwa, the biggest one has to be the remix summer movie. You know, the frequently-Inoue ones, where it would do a truncated version of the main series, but with a different ending. The characters are all there, and the relationships are the same, but there’d always be just enough changed to make it feel ancillary: some new random character in a position of power, a different final boss, etc. The big thing would be a kind of slimmed down version of the show’s themes. It’d usually be more personal, a Versus thing rather than an exploration of larger concepts.

That’s what this final batch of episodes feels like. It feels like the remix movie version of the Zero-One TV show.

Those movies could be fun, for sure. This episode has some outstanding fight scenes (I love the shots of Ark-One in darkness, referencing Aruto’s misery), and some beautiful staging. It’s consistently entertaining to look at. But there’s a narrowness to what the episode’s talking about, and it’s reductive in ways this show largely avoided in the past. We’re not really talking about how society decides which people have value, or how working classes view their necessity to capitalism, or how marginalized people balance utility and independence within oppressive systems. We’re talking about the poisonous nature of revenge, and how violence begets more violence.

It’s fine, as a concept to explore with these characters. It’s just the Dig Two Graves lesson, but that’s got a ton of inherent drama. Doing a story where Horobi denies his own emotional needs to the detriment of his support system, while Aruto demolishes a year of goodwill to try and stave off despair, that’s a story you can tell in this world. But it’s simple, you know? It’s straightforward in the way 70-minute summer films frequently were. It’s about two forces in opposition, so everyone outside those two forces is relegated to the sidelines. Naki and Ikazuchi are back from their spa day, but they only get a single scene to tell Jin things are getting out of hand without actually, uh, helping him. Thouser and the Shotrisers (18+ show this Monday at the Metro, doors open at 9pm) spend most of the episode going to different rooms and expositing. (Good fight scene with Ark-One, though, for real.) The Humagears as a culture don’t get a say in what’s happening, other than it sounding like Horobi’s accidentally driving more of them crazy. It’s just a story about Horobi and Aruto.

In that shrunken spotlight, though, it’s actually pretty good.

Treating this group of episodes as more of a tangent than an epilogue frees it from the narrative weight of the proceeding themes, and lets it work as basically a two-hander. Both actors turn in series-best work (not exactly a high bar for Horobi to clear, but credit where credit’s due), and elevate what’d otherwise be a fairly standard revenge story. The escalation of hostilities feels sickeningly inevitable, with Horobi’s steadfast refusal to admit culpability running up against Aruto’s enraged loss. It’s not exactly fun to see Aruto this hollowed-out and grim, but it feels earned to a degree that had me anticipating the next scenes. There’s energy to Aruto’s terrifying mission, and it nicely compliments Horobi’s deteriorating confidence.

The two of them have spent the past couple episodes switching between who has the moral high ground, and the irony is that neither of them do by the end. They’re both killers, and they’re both villains. Hatred’s turned them both into vessels for destruction, with nothing to show for it but more hatred – directed inward and outward. They’ve both lost people close to them, and are becoming a living rejection of those victims’ dreams in the name of vengeance. I liked this show better when it was about how society did that, but there’s still some artistry to a story applied to the individual.

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KAMEN RIDER ZERO-ONE SO-DO AI 10: KAMEN RIDER ARK-ONE



The thing I like best about this suit is how the breastplate looks like a screaming Humagear face. The red eyes, and the open mouth… it’s a million miles away from a happy grasshopper, you know? There’s an anger to so much of this suit, and I love that. The harsh black/white coloring is a worldview without compromise or empathy: us vs them, victors vs victims. The red cuts through blocks of color to indicate that while the facade may be cold and unfeeling, underneath it’s all rage and fear. Gorgeous villain suit design.

The figure nails the design, too. Only maybe ten stickers across both boxes (they painted the inner arms, which is way above and beyond), and the inclusion of closed fists to make sure your posed toy is capable of inflicting horrifying violence. Real pretty to look at, and maybe be afraid of.