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Kamen Rider Zero-One Episode 33- "Are Dreams Really That Precious?!" Discussion
Hiden Manufacturing works to restore an older HumaGear model, while Gai pits Yua & Fuwa against each other with a long-kept secret...
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That fight scene was incredible. The wire-work in this series is off the walls. It's used really creatively, ditto for the camera work.
Valkyrie's (and Yua's) finisher on Thouser/Gai was highly cathartic. Fuwa continues his streak of being the best, most developed character in this show. Looks like Horobi is returning to main villain status next week. Seems Aruto is going to use Shining Hopper initially, probably cocky since Horobi hasn't had an upgrade and Aruto beat him last time using that form. I bet Horobi is gonna surprise him and show just how strong he really is, forcing Aruto to pull out Metal Cluster and even then they may be evenly matched. |
Yua doesn't need an upgrade, she has her own Finisher. (lol)
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That entire last scene, just, the 70's cop drama music, the sunset, fuwa casually catching the Shotriser, the finisher cut in and punch! Beautiful, honestly.
Her re-debut fight was also great, and I love how she's one of the few riders who decides "To hell with it" when they're stuck in a clash against an opponent. Normally they'd try and out power the opponent, but not Yua. She played smart and decided, "if I can't break through I'll just shoot them where they're vulnerable" and just shoots Thouser in the damn face! That was a pretty great finisher. |
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Chances are she developed the Thousand Driver too. |
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God, it's -so- cool to see Yaiba finally break free and embrace who she's always been! Those lines about her pride as an engineer; and about how technology should only ever be used to help people, that even if she doesn't have a dream herself she has those beliefs! That's just fantastic, and a wonderful embodiment of the core facets of her character that she...
... that she hasn't even been hinted towards having in the past 32 episodes. Now it's a very cool character concept, I'll give it that; even if it hasn't really been that long since Sento. It's a very good route to go down especially when she's under someone like Gai, and shows a quite clear path she'd go on after leaving him. I just, you know, really wish she had that character before? And it hardly explains why she was still with ZAIA all this time -- I was so waiting for this episode to give me something, anything to prove me wrong; that I was jumping the gun in saying she was far too ruthless and far too willing to go along with ZAIA. I wanted them to show me that her brainwashing was much more extreme than we thought; that she was protecting something else; that there was some other turmoil; that she was a humagear; something! But instead what we get? About her beliefs? It just makes her position up till now look even worse, and beyond that, makes her words in this episode almost ring completely hollow. I really really hate saying this, because I WANT to like her. I was interested in her towards the beginning and I spent the beginning of this post going on about how I like what's presented about her here. But she is so poorly constructed and so poorly written that it's hard to feel bad calling Yaiba a bad character, and possibly the worst of Zero-One's entire cast. I don't think I've been this disappointed in a Kamen Rider character before aside from like, the entirety of Kiva's cast. Hell, there's precious little else in this episode that works for me either. The one-off Humagear story we got this time is probably one of the weakest and badly fleshed out of the entire show; with their attempts to connect it to the story's other plot just coming off very weak. The revelation about Fuwa feels kind of unnecessary? I don't hate it, but I hardly feel it advances his character and just feels like excess bad-things-Gai-did. Oh, right, and after a whole episode that gave us Naki finally becoming their own character, they don't get a single line in this episode. Like, seriously? You're even having Fuwa development in this episode, you mention Naki by name and make it Gai's plot this episode, you showed Yaiba feeling very effected by Naki's words in the last episode and her revelation here follows the same kind of train; but you're just not gonna have Naki be in it at all? I... ugh, I don't like being this down on an episode, but the more I think about it the more of a trainwreck it feels like. Fights were nice though! As said above, some lovely choreography; even if I'm starting to get a little tired of Metal Cluster constantly fighting the AIMs duo. I'm also a big fan of Gai's ambitions being framed as a dream and that being a source of conflict for Yaiba; it's pretty simple but it's still a clever way of doing this and continues Zero-One's take on dreams being one of the best in Kamen Rider so far. I'm hopeful that'll get played out more in future episodes, but for now it's a nice little dash of grey. |
Not a fan of the twist. Feel like retcon and undo. Why zaia chose him to be aims captain and why i he even passionate about being a cop.two surgeries twists like ex aid. W kamen rider power / naki implant.
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I was so ready for Fuwa to be a Humagear in that scene, and then it turned out his backstory (that I'd entirely forgotten about, whomps) was fake. It be like that sometimes.
But yeah, this one was a bit of a mess. An *enjoyable* mess, don't get me wrong, but messy. I get what pushed her over the edge to finally telling Gai to suck it - being asked to kill Fuwa is another level up from "Scrap a few Humagears for me", but her rationaisation of it doesn't really follow. Maybe if they'd focused more on her feelings of betrayal and how she's been kidding herself to follow ZAIA because she feels like its her only option, rather than her mentioning her supposed ideals. Also, Gai killed her Hard Buddies. RIP in piece, you were exactly as memorable as the knockoff Hell Bros you were. Humagear plot was created entirely so Aruto had a reason to be here, and because they gotta use up that guest cast money somehow. Naki was off this week clearing out room in Fuwa's head for all their stuff. |
This episode was mostly a mess, but I'd say the ending made up for it. "It" being the rest of the episode, since I don't think there's actually anything they coulda done to make Yua's lack of screentime the last almost-twenty episodes worth it.
And that awesome ending would be even better if they'd given some focus to her reasons for staying with ZAIA even after Fuwa showed that it was possible to rebel against Gai, given her some character development leading up to this episode. But as it is, it's a cathartic moment that ends up making me think about what they could've done to make it amazing. |
they really could have done better showing why Yua stayed, I assumed it was due to mostly psychological reasons like mental abuse, but they never did much with it, some snippets only.
It was still a positive change though, and watching Gai get beaten is always a win, I am a bit saddened by the lack of insert songs this season, hey we get a new solid background track ? Great ! Why no songs though ? The action is solid pretty much every episode. |
You know, it's funny, this is the first of episode of Zero-One in... man, I don't even know how long, where, even though I'm still seeing the flaws, I'm totally satisfied. Like I don't want to whine about this one at all? The things that feel interesting to talk about are actually the things it did right, so credit to Masaya Kakehi for continuing to be at least as good at writing Zero-One as Takahashi (take that however you want I guess). Anyways:
- I now have a theory Ryuuta Tasaki was as deeply invested in this show's story as much as we were and decided to start directing for it with these episodes specifically so he could have Yua hitting Gai be done in the style of one of the finishing moves. I mean, I get a feeling that was actually just in the script, but that theory is boring. That whole scene, with the music out of nowhere and everything, it was impossibly jarring, and I don't actually think it fit the tone very well, but I just can't hate it. - Fuwa continues to give off major Showa vibes by enthusiastically telling a child to believe in their dreams, and finally gets his moment of formally rejecting revenge as a motive to top it off. The huge revelation about his backstory here, the plot is maybe too packed to give it the space it deserved, but it hits that beat I'd want to see of him saying it's irrelevant because he's over it already anyway. As for how forced the "retcon" feels, I've found it suspicious since day one that Fuwa just happened to survive being chased after by murderous HumaGears during the Daybreak incident (if a horde of angry robots wanted some little kid dead, he'd be dead), so this feels like something planned out to me, even if I figured at the time it had more to do with MetsubouJinrai. Although with the way the Ark has its eye on Fuwa, maybe it still does. - Yua follows Naki's lead with the Takumi flavored "[thing someone told me I want to believe in for myself], apparently" line when she Rider Kicks Thouser, which, by the way, Yua finally beat up Thouser! The stuff about believing in technology existing to benefit people was actually right in episode 3, where she first transformed into Valkyrie. Like, she had a little dialogue with Aruto to establish that, so I guess props to Kakehi for remembering this show maybe a little better than Takahashi has been? Because it definitely didn't come up a lot in the interim, as far as I recall. This episode confirmed one of my theories about Fuwa, but as for Yua? Was she really just some random ZAIA employee? Gai wasn't promising her some kind of reward in like a Faustian pact she'd have to have some big internal conflict over? She could've just... stopped? This whole time? Because that makes Yua sound an awful lot like the jerk I had her pegged as early on! She should count herself lucky Fuwa turned out to be so bad at holding grudges! As satisfying as this all was, it could've happened a dozen episodes ago. I thought the idea of Yua as having this almost feudalistic loyalty to Gai was an interesting concept, but if it meant her not being Valkyrie for this much of the show without any particularly clever twists, then I just don't think it was worth it, plain and simple. - As for the way all the plots here blended together, it's okay? I'm getting really tired of Aruto having nothing to do in episodes but repetitive Metal Cluster Hopper fights against any combination of the same three dudes, but we're due a final form in a bit here, and now that Fuwa and Yua have their arcs pretty much concluded, I think the odds of Aruto finally getting some meaningful time in the spotlight is right around the corner. For what it's worth, I did rather enjoy the HumaGear plot this time. Wimpy Student and Excited Coach were fun enough guest character for what they were. They admittedly didn't add too much to the story though. - The action was well directed like always, but I think I'm becoming numb to it or something, because I can't think of anything nice to say about it beyond that. |
Took a while but i'm glad we finally got to the Yua redemption moment (although her fist was all messed up, didn't they teach her how to ball her hand?!)
Gai is a confounding villain. He's douchebag enough to hate him and largely has outmaneuvered our heroes. He was slick enough to brain wash Fuwa, on top of all the business, political, and PR moves to make humagears an outlaw and Hiden a subsidiary of Zaia. his tactics are really stupid enough. We have NEVER seen his two raid riser goods been effective against anything except hapless Humagears; it's extraordinarily dumb to rely on them. He should have cranked out a dozen of them if he was gonna send them into battle The fights had been getting super repetitive too - we KNOW Rampage Vulcan AND metal Hopper can beat Thouser, they're just too soft to ever finish him for real (not even killing him . . . at least capturing him or stealing his driver), but they kept stalemating. Glad we finally, hopefully ended that loop and get newer forms or fight dynamics At this point, can we even consider Aruto the main character? Fuwa has gotten WAY MORE DEVELOPMENT, his powerup is the "combine all powers" form, he's had an arc explaining his hatred of Humagears, then his begrudging accept of them; now a backstory that shows the hate is manipulated; he has a whole thing with Yua. What the fuck has Aruto done except make terrible jokes and get owned repeatedly by Gai? rename this show Kamen Rider Vulcan |
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This episode is basically saving the series by having a new fight sequence with Yua actually using her experience to dodge some of Gai's attacks |
The Battle Raiders were weird because, and I'm sorry if this is offensive...
But I literally thought that we'd been using the same 2 guys for like 4 episodes straight and they just got sunglasses and a hat during the latter half of that set but no. We have 3 sets of Battle Raiders. The ones from Episodes 30 and 31, the ones from 32 and the start of this episode, and now ones showing up at 33. |
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Honestly my feelings on this episode can be summed as: I get what its trying to do, but the end result feels just okay.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The surpise twist with Fuwa basically boils down to:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yua's final straw feels underwhelming considering she was already hesitatent but still complied with Gai torturing Fuwa through the Naki chip in his brain. They could've easily gone with her being suspicious that Gai might've implanted false memories into her head, or possibly imply that some of her own memories were fabricated to explain why she was so subservient to Gai this whole time. Regardless, that "70s/80s buddy cop movie"-style sequence at the end was fun. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Aruto's part of the plot was... ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Personally I think the fight scenes are nice and all, but I feel like they could've been better if they had just reused the other Raider suits rather than make the two Horseshoe-Crab Raiders to get jobbed all the time. Yeah Metal Cluster Hopper and Rampage Gatling would still curbstomp them and Thouser, but it would at least make Gai look semi-competent if instead of sending the exact same two lackeys each time, he would actually try to mix and match different Raiders together to create new and interesting strategies to compensate for the new power-gap he inadvertently created for himself. Like in this episode imagine that instead of Gai showing up with the two Horseshoe-Crab Raiders again, suddenly Aruto had to deal with the Buffalo Raider in front while the Panda Raider was sniping him from afar. |
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Gai's already been trying to play up the Raiders as a tool of "justice" or whatever too, so it would work so well to have him "redeem" those other suits by making them into his lackeys. Like, seriously, ZAIA has like a million Progrise Keys, why are we having multiple people (apparently? I thought it was the same two guys too!) share a boring set of goon suits when we could be having a classic monster army scenario going on. I mean, I've complained about this before, and maybe this is the Ultraman fan in me talking, but I think Kamen Rider is seriously underestimating the importance of having good monsters lately? It seems like the more and more forms the Riders get, the less room in the budget there is to make new monster suits each year, and that's a shame, because two random dudes with assault rifles is nowhere near as satisfying an opponent for a Rider to go up against as like, a lizard that spits corrosive acid, or some kind of armadillo monster with like, super tough skin that requires outside the box thinking to defeat. It can be pretty much anything, but I'm telling you, that kind of stuff breathes so much extra life into a show like this. Imagine that kind of variety with Zero-One's kind of direction! It'd be amazing! |
Let's just hope the apparent budget cutting on this show latter half means we would get amazing second reiwa rider.
Also Aruto is the classic POV character used as main character, and the side characters can develop better. This happens all the time in KR and anime. Heck, Ryuki DIED in his own show, letting Knight to be the winner. Also many things can move forward as consequences of Aruto's actions: his willingness to treat Humagears as equal as humans, catering to their dreams and hopes, make the development in other characters happen. Heck even Jin. The only character that don't have development so far are Jin and Gai, and their views of Humagears never change because they don't look into Aruto's visions of them. |
Well, that was enjoyable. It continues the trend of "the payoff is awesome, but it rings hollow because the setup was mediocre" that's seemed to plague Zero-One so much lately. Kinda the opposite of Aruto's jokes!
Still, that punch was extremely cathartic. Most of what I'd say has already been said, but I'll add to the griping about the Horseshoe Crab mooks. IIRC, the whole point was that their progrise key was mass-produced, and we know for a fact that more than two exist. So why is Gai not dispatching whole squads of them!? Like that AIMS fireteam that was there in the first couple episodes. And since they're fully in control, unlike the hacked HumaGear footsoldiers, they could use organized tactics and switch up their strategies to actually be an interesting challenge to Aruto. But just the two of them, just standing there and shooting, is so, so dull. I mean, seeing the various other Raider suits again and in interesting combinations as others here have suggested would also be awesome. But dang, I wish the footsoldiers acted like actual soldiers instead of like extra-generic monsters. |
Uhhh what was the point of Horshoe Crab attacking Yua at the van? That one was weirdly paced.
In a perfect world this could've been a perfect episode to have Valkyrie obtaining a new form, it has all the beats for it. I still hope that she will use the Fighting Jackal key for her Rider form. Also this should be reserved for the next episode, but I am loving Yua's new look! |
I really liked this episode. Yua got redemption, Fuwa gets cooler with each episode.
I truly have started seeing Fuwa as the 'real' Rider of the show. His whole story reminds me a lot of the Showa era Riders and I like that a lot. Yua, "then I guess I'll just shoot you in the face" finishing move was great. As was her 'Letter of Resignation.' The story arc with the tennis coach I could take or leave, I don't really think it added anything to the episode. I guess it gave Izu a funny 'wide-eyed' moment, but that's about it. She's a pretty adorable character. Can't remember a Rider show that had anyone before I would consider adorable. Maybe Akiko from 'W', but she was more like a main character really and not so much (to me) a sidekick. |
I still don't know why the fuck Gai gave Aruto a powerup that would make him more powerful than Thouser
dude was clowning Aruto on a weekly basis in battle AND stealing his business. just take the W, man. |
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*TN - Keikaku means plan. (I mean, Metal Cluster Hopper would have done a great job either stopping Aruto transforming, or tanking his public reputation, if Izu and Enji hadn't grown souls. Why he made it so powerful, umm... will of the Ark? Considering how much it hates Gai, maybe it both hates Gai, and made the Metal Cluster Hopper key, maybe it did it so *it* could kick his ass? I'm guessing here.) |
Technically, Thouser isn't entirely powerless against Metal Cluster Hopper.
Back during episode 24, Thouser revealed that his "Thousand Break" finisher actually can overwhelm Metal Cluster's defenses:https://youtu.be/JqP-2IUxCKk?t=84 Why doesn't he spam it against Metal Cluster more often...? Well I assume it's the same reason why Aruto and Fuwa don't just kill him whenever he rolls up these days. |
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Kamen Rider standing there holding a gun/sword/whatever. Bad guy rolls up, strikes a pose, "Hen-" *BLAM!!!!* Game Over |
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmUmtJwmzFs |
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