[GoldenXtreme]

Alrighty, I wrapped up rewatching Zero-One with the Shout subs! I'll leave the movie for tomorrow, since that will be a new experience for me. First thing I should get out of the way: Shout's Rider subs are as excellent as usual. When the competition also includes Over-time it can feel hard to justify official subs, but the quality actually edged them out this time! I've seen all the Rider Shout has subbed so far, and every time what really impresses me is how good they are at giving each character a very distinctive manner of speech. Fuwa's brash, overly casual, and rude way of talking in particular was excellent, but it was all great!

On to my thoughts about the show itself though! I liked Zero-One a lot the first time, and that still held true even if my opinion of some individual aspects shifted. One thing I definitely enjoyed more the second time was Yua's character arc. When I first watched, I enjoyed it, but found it too drawn out. On rewatch, I found myself appreciating the deliberate pacing and build up of it a good deal more. I also found I really enjoyed a lot of the more down to earth episodes about just random Humagears on rewatch, since they tended to showcase the world of the show and characters so well! On the other hand, rewatching the show definitely made me realize just how sloppy the show was in some areas. I can't really hold a grudge against it on a lot of fronts, what with the whole global pandemic and all, but I can't just ignore all of it! The pacing is all over the place, half of Metsuboujinrai barely count as characters, Gai has his comically rushed redemption arc, and the show seems to make a game of introducing information in the most confusing order possible at times. I feel like a lot of these issues were shared with Ex-Aid, so it may just be a weakness of the writer. That being said, I really do like the show a ton. Most of the cast is dripping with charm and has great nuance, I love the story and how it uses AI learning to convey its themes about how people (and Humagears) are shaped by their experiences, and the fights are usually spectacular! For as many problems as the show may have inherited from Ex-Aid, it also inherited strengths from the show too!

So yeah, definitely an A Tier show in my book. It even makes me want to shed a tier of joy. Aaaaaand that was a work of Aruto!