#(I think it's incredibly funny the AI elected to give him hair that looks like it was dyed. The AI knows...) | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

sailor-cresselia · 5 years

Text

Zero One 01: A JUMP TO THE SKY TURNS TO A RIDER KICK

Okay, I’m gonna start liveblogging from the start of a show this time! Because oh wow, just watching this live was a trip… and now I get to properly understand it. >:3

––––

So, it appears that the shot of a HumaGear in the shadows in the trailer was not, in fact, in the satellite, like the trailer implied. Instead, he’s from the Hiden Intelligence sizzle reel.

Said sizzle reel also includes a shot of the “HumaGear Skin Fitting Gate System”. That’s the part of the manufacturing process that gives them their human-like appearance, as opposed to the base robot form.

Interestingly, each of the newly-humanized HumaGear has a rectangular tattoo, with some sort of hexagonal design in it. The male one has it on the left side of his chest, and the lady we see up close has it dead center a little below her collarbone.

The support HumaGear that they show next all have it on the side of their necks. And isn’t that a handy way to tell who’s a HumaGear, if they ever elect to make the ‘ears’ smaller?

Actually, I think the lower part of it has the Hiden Intelligence logo, and the top is the hexagon glyph. Still can’t get a good look at it, though.

Also, it’s probably a very bad idea to have all of your HumaGear managed via a single broadcast satellite. I’m just saying, with tech this advanced and ubiquitous, having some backups might be to your benefit.

–

So, Hiden Korenosuke, Aruto’s grandfather, was 75 when he died. Additionally, he wasn’t just the CEO of Hiden Intelligence – he was the founder.

The news spot about his funeral is being played on a giant hovercraft, via holographic screens.

I really do love how we’re clearly going all-in from the start on ‘this is not the mainline World of Riders.’

Meanwhile, Aruto shows us his dumb puppy nature right off the bat, being late for work despite having set five alarms.

We zoom out on the city, seeing the hovercraft in better detail than the grounds-eye view from before. We also see that the Hiden Intelligence headquarters absolutely dwarves the surroundings.

The logo appears on screen. When it zooms in for the transition, the black of the ‘01’ becomes a tightly layered pattern of binary.

–

There’s no opening credits today, since it’s the first episode and all. Opening Credits on the first day is not how Takashi Yuya-san rolls, as we saw during Ex-Aid.

The sponsor segment, however, does exist. It shows Zero One and his bike – which doesn’t have an individual name yet that I can find, just the term for the phone that has as a primary form. It’s a really cool shot, too. They’re under a blacklight. I’d thought they were glow-in-the-dark when I watched the raw, but seeing this in better quality shows that the blue and red accents are reacting, too.

That is so cool.

–

Aruto nyooms to the amusement park on his bike, because he’s super late. Turns out he’s a comedian in a stage show, with a truly hideous blue sequened suit and oversized red bowtie. His act is supposed to be a Manzai show… excpet for how he’s absolutely terrible.

Like, to the point where his straightman is his phone.

There are exactly two people in the audience… and it’s an older couple, who aren’t even watching. They’re having lunch.

This kills the Aruto.

–

And so does the fact that he’s fired. As his manager says, the era’s more suited to HumaGear entertainers.

Aruto disagrees – how could an AI understand a person’s sense of humor?

And then Ab-cruncher Taro, a HumaGear comedian, comes on stage for his act… and the audience loves it. Including the older couple from Arutos act.

I mean, this might be in part that nobody in World of Zero One likes manzai anymore, too, but also Aruto’s just terrible, and this guy did have a pretty decent pun on ad-libbing… as he exploded his abs off.

The manager points out that everyone is laughing, that having such a lively theme park is his dream. Aruto feels the same – he just wants to make people laugh, that’s all.

…Except that his now-former manager is already walking off. He already has someone who can make the crowd laugh, and Aruto really should find a new dream.

–

A car pulls up to Hiden Intelligence HQ, with Fukuzoe Jun and his HumaGear assistant, Shesta. I really like her red-and-grey outfit, not gonna lie.

Anyway, he’s the vice president of HI, and, admittedly rather justifiably, assumes that he’s the new CEO. He’s got quite an ego on him, apparently, because the funeral was today. He’s already got his portrait commissioned, made, and ready to be lowered over the portrait of the late CEO. And it’s larger, dwarfing the old one.

Dude.

Maybe you should have waited a bit on getting the portrait. Like, at least until after the funeral.

Just saying.

–

We switch to somewhere called ‘Daybreak Town.’

…It’s surrounded by massive, high-tech security fences. And is a bit of a crater. A flooded one.

Entering a run-down, semi-abandoned room, we meet Horobi and Jin. Admittedly, we don’t hear their names, but that’s who they are. Horobi is stoic and calm, and Jin… well, he’s basically an even more hyper Parad.

Horobi says that now that CEO Hiden is dead, they can start the Magear Plan.

…Jin, what was that you were messing around with on that stand?

Jin’s probable attention issues aside, Horobi goes to explain a bit further, while unplugging a pseudo-driver from a cable, probably where it was being programmed. They’re going to use the HumaGear singularity – that is, the hypothetical point when Artificial Intelligences become more intelligent than humans, often including sentience. Bascially, they plan to use that to surpass humanity… somehow. As he’s saying this, he takes a Progrise Key out of a holder, and we get a few shots of the room.

The MetsuboJinrai.NET emblem is on the wall, and we see some of the assorted items. Including a katana, for some reason. And, on a platform with the same pattern as where Jin was messing around earlier? That is a gun right there. Yay!

Horobi hands the driver and key to Jin, while saying that it’s time to annihilate humanity… just like this city was, long ago.

Zoom out from his face, where he stands under a beam of light… that is coming in from a hold in a ceiling. That is to day, the hole in a roof, of a former apartment building.

Zoom out further to see that it’s one of the handful of buildings around the perimeter of the flooded crater.

At the very center of said crater? Underwater?

That sure looks an awful lot like the satellite that controls the HumaGear.

This is why you have redundant backup systems, folks.

–

So, at this point, Aruto’s got Shotaro’s meme faces, Emu’s pratfall humor (although thankfully toned down a bit), and Sento’s phone. Now we’ve also got Kabuto’s Shibuya disaster 2.0.

This is fine.

–

At Hiden Intelligence, we see a room labeled ‘Three Dimensional Printing System’. Like, it actually says that in English, same as the gate earlier. An Ai starts speaking, saying that it’s receiving orders from BS-ZA – the broadcast satellite. What does the ZA stand for? Who knows! The sizzle reel didn’t actually tell us that.

I can not understate how incredibly concerned about the ‘we have a single point of control for all of this technology’ thing that’s going on.

Anyway, a holographic pattern gets displayed inside the printing… room, I guess, and two manufacturing robot arms emerge and start. Uh.

Okay, so. That’s not how 3D printing usually works. You can’t really makes something solid out of beams of light. That’s not how it should have worked with the HumaGear skins earlier, and it’s not how it should work now.

Unless, like, it’s not light? It could somehow be a sort of plasma version of the materials needed? But it was able to make, like, the hair and eyes and such for the HumaGear earlier, so… ugh. I’m putting too much thought into it.

My hangups about how things work aside, they’re making the driver.

Outside of this room, in an office, a female HumaGear in white and teal is sitting, inactive, until she receives orders from the satellite. She gets up, and goes to fulfill her task.

Hi Izu! I didn’t notice that you had little teal highlights in your hair before! There’s just these little streaks hidden in there. It’s cute.

–

A dejected Aruto walks his bike away from the amusement park, lamenting his inability to get the crowd to laugh. Sorry bud, but you’re just not funny.

A car pulls up, Izu stepping out. She identifies her ‘target’ via the object recognition analysis that CEO described in the sizzle reel earlier. I didn’t notice before, but even though they still says peoples names in the ‘family name first’ order, the HUD shows them with given name first. Interesting.

She describes him as a ‘self described’ comedian, who is unknown. We see her face during this, before she blinks and looks downward.

Aruto’s on the ground. He’s collapsed.

Izu has known him for all of less than a minute, has no real personality of her own (yet), and is already roasting him.

When he asks who she is, she tells him that her name is Izu, and she’s the President’s secretary. Please note that she does not say which president, which probably only furthers Aruto’s confusion.

–

Back at the comedy stage, we’ve got… a human manzai duo, who are getting a laugh out of the crowd. So, it’s just that Aruto’s terrible, not that they don’t do manzai anymore.

Backstage, Taro sits, presumably waiting for his next set. He’s playing back the crowd as they laugh at his joke, and oh nooo he’s smiling so widely. He’s so proud that he was able to make them laugh! Taro is a good guy and I feel really bad for what’s coming.

Not!Parad Jin ominously comes up from behind. He doesn’t say anything more than that he’s found him, before taking the imitation driver and slapping it onto Taro’s waist.

I like absolutely NONE of the hacking process! Not the red circle of light around the buckle as the driver activates. Not the fact that the ‘belt’ starts off as fuck-off huge cable strips with ‘connector pins’ on them. Of course, since said cables are basically as wide as an arm, this means the connecter pins are more like giant spikes.

Not the fact that they jam into poor Taro, and he immediately starts seizing up with red sparks everywhere.

Not him dropping to his knees, making pained sounds.

Not Jin saying ‘You’re my friend now, so go wreak havoc on this place!”

Not the fact that he says that with a smile.

–

Elsewhere, a belt has just finished being printed, and is now being assembled and given a spiffy new coat of paint.

–

Taro is trying to not do the thing, because his job is making people laugh.

Jin chuckles. Not anymore. Now his job is destroying humans.

We switch to Taro’s perspective, and see a download progress bar fill and complete. It has ‘metsubojinrai.net’ written underneath it. When it completes, the display is replaced with their logo.

Taro cries in pain, and his memory of the crowd turns greyscale. He reopens his eyes, and instead of the cool blue light they were lit with before, they’re glowing red.

Tonelessly, he says that he is connected to metsubojinrai.net, and the ‘connecting’ lights on his earpieces glitch from blue to red.

Jin hands him the Progrize key from earlier.

–

The driver’s done.

–

We switch to the Hiden Intelligence boardroom. Jun had called a board meeting earlier, and for some reason, Izu received instructions to bring Aruto there.

Nearly everyone in the room has a HumaGear secretary standing behind them. Shesta’s tattoo is on her left wrist, and Izu’s is on the back of her left hand.

The meeting was called to read the CEO’s will. Apparently, nobody even knew he had a grandson, much less one like Aruto. According to Izu, because he is, in fact, related to the CEO, and the CEO had requested he be there, there won’t be problems regarding the legality of all of this with Aruto here. She slides the will in front of him, and walks out of the room.

Jun tells him to hurry up and read it, he’s got to get to work taking over as CEO.

Aruto opens the envelope, and starts reading – forgetting to read out loud, because he’s just a confused puppy. (He’s 22, he’s legally an adult, but that does not stop him from being a dumb puppy.) He looks incredibly distressed over what’s in the will.

It’s ominously shown with a red static overlay, is hand-written, and segments of it are appearing on top to highlight themselves.

And I have no idea why some of the overlaid words are highlighted in red, because I don’t know Japanese.

Jun, frustrated with Aruto’s distress and lack of reading out loud, grabs the paper away from him.

“In the near future, our company will face a serious crisis.” Jun’s brow furrows, and the rest of the room starts muttering, wondering what crisis that could be. “The HumaGears that our company was making will be misused and will attack humanity.” This shot goes from Jun reading to a generic HumaGear, his eyes turning red, and zooming out to show that it’s a crowd of them, in a ruined city. They all crouch down and start. Freaking. Swarming, on all fours. It’s absolutely terrifying, especially when one leaps up at the viewpoint, shrieking. (It’s the same ‘vocal’ sound effect from the bugster unions, by the way.)

Back in reality, the boardroom is starting to panic a bit. Izu comes back through the door, carrying a briefcase. Jun resumes reading. “There is only one counter measure: the Zero One driver and Progrise Key.” Izu opens the briefcase, revealing the items in question. “Built into it is the new era’s security system, in order for human hands to take control of the HumaGear.” Aruto looks at the case and driver, his expression blank.

Jun continues, with us scrolling down the will. “Only the company’s President is authorized to use it.” He can’t restrain his grin. “And my successor whom-” his face falls “I entrust this to is my grandson, Hiden Aruto?!”

Nobody expected this, least of all Aruto.

“I want him to become a part of staff, and overcome the company’s crisis. That is all.”

Jun is not okay with this, and neither is the rest of the board. He’s treating this like a family business, that’s absurd! I mean, never mind that he was the founder.

All of them start protesting over one another, before Aruto yells at them all to calm down. He then says that there’s no way he can be a president. He just wants to make people laugh. Without another word, he picks up his duffle bag and walks out.

Izu tilts her head, blinking confusedly.

–

As Aruto, somber, rides the elevator down, he thinks back to when he was a little kid.

A tiny little Aruto is trying to practice a routine with someone who seems to be his father, who laughs a little. Babby Aruto insists on trying again, because he wasn’t laughing from the heart.

The man says that the result will always be the same. His headphones are white and blue – namely, with blue lights, the same color as a HumaGear’s earpeices.

Aruto swears that he’s going to make his dad laugh – oh no, this is his dad.

An explosion goes off, and blue fire fills the screen.

Little Aruto wakes up, on the ground, his father next to him.

His father, with sections of his skin blasted off, revealing a mechanical, HumaGear face underneath, bleeding blue and dying. “Aruto… head towards your dreams… jump to them…”

The shot zooms out, with elementary schooler Hiden Aruto crouched over his HumaGear father, surrounded by rubble and flames.

–

In the present, Aruto watches as Jun’s portrait is lowered off the wall. He apologizes to his grandfather.

–

At the comedy stage, the manzai act is still going on. Everyone applauds as they finish, the manager included. It looks like Aruto is about to go ask for his job back, but he hesitates, thinking back to what the manager had said. It looks like he’s trying not to cry as he turns back around to leave.

As he turns, someone shouts to be let go.

The hijacked Taro is holding another HumaGear, probably one of the staff, by the collar as he walks on stage, before tossing him to the side. “My job is to make people laugh…” Taro’s viewpoint is shown, red static overlaying the glitching sight of the crowd as they start to back away. “…and to annihilate them.”

He activates the key, and inserts it into his driver. Red ‘wires’ extend from the buckle, breaking into and through the key.

I am not okay with any of this transformation sequence!

Not with the fire burning away his human appearance.

Not with how his normal HumaGear face withdraws and reveals what is basically a robot skull.

Not with how his jaw opens wide, and green… I dunno. Green pipes come out of his mouth, and start surrounding him in what is basically the Mad Rogue transformation.

Not with the orange dna spiral that lights up around him, and turns purple before the whole thing – spiral and pipes alike – burst out of existence, leaving Taro as the Berotha Magear.

As per Rider Wiki: The name Berotha is from Kujiberotha teruyukii, an extinct insect that lived in the Cretaceous period. It’s a recently named type of thorny lacewing, which are closely related to mantises. Aka, the species that Berotha takes his appearance from.

Two HumaGear staffers go to try and stop him, but he tosses both of them to the side, and proceeds to use whip-like extenstions to attack them… and overwrite their programming, shredding their human appearances and causing their original faces to retract. they’re left with the skull appearance briefly, before full faceplates slide down, creating the anonymous mooks of the season. They run off stage to attack.

The manager watches all of this, stunned. Aruto watches, before running at Berotha and tackling him around the middle, trying to stop him. He gets thrown into a sign for his attempt.

–

In another section of… oh lord. In another section of ‘Giggle Dreamland’, we see that there are a lot more than two mooks now. A van pulls up, the body-armored grunts of AIMS grabbing machine guns as they rush out and get in formation.

Yaiba Yua, who will eventually be Kamen Rider Valkyrie, steps out as well, saying that they are to collect data on the rampaging HumaGear and that they need to- she’s cut off by machine gun fire. Fuwa Isamu, who will eventually be Kamen Rider Vulcan, gives the order to destroy all of them.

As Yua says, at least let her finish before you start going all gun-happy!

–

Aruto, now distinctly missing his jacket and bag, gets to his feet, seeing the destruction all around him. MaGear mooks are attacking people, and ohhh nooo I think they’re repeating some of their stock ‘amusement park employee’ phrases as they do it, and that’s just tragic.

The whole area is a shambles, and the manager is on his knees in despair. Aruto remembers how the manager had said that making people laugh with joy was his dream, before Berotha comes up to the manager, extending his arm blade. Aruto tries to tackle him away, but it’s no use – he gets tossed away again. Izu runs onto the scene, carrying the breifcase. Berotha grabs the frozen manager by the collar, saying that a future where humans have dreams will never come, and starts laughing maniaclly.

Theres the sound of a heartbeat as Aruto flashes back to his father’s death.

“Don’t you laugh!” He pushes himself to his feet. “Don’t you dare laugh at someone’s dream, when you know nothing about it!”

“I do know.” Berotha starts rattling off a dictionary description of ‘dream,’ his earpieces lighting up as they connect to the web, before Aruto cuts him off.

Aruto is all but shouting. “A person’s dream isn’t so simple that you can just look it up!”

Izu looks slightly aside, averting her gaze.

“Hey! With that driver, I can do something about this, right?!” We only see Aruto’s lower face as he asks this, same as when he told Berotha not to laugh.

Izu says that yes, though it is available only to the companies president-

Aruto cuts her off, desperation written on his face as he tells her to just give it to him.

“Very well, Aruto-sama.”

She walks up, and hands him the driver and key. (In the distance, we can see that Berotha is charging energy to his mantis sickles.)

“Equip the driver to your waist.”

Glaring furiously at Berotha, Aruto places it at his waist…

There’s the sound of a heartbeat, as blue ones and zeroes glow around Aruto, and…

His soul, glowing that same bright blue, straight up leaves his body, and transports into the satellite.

(Me, a Double fan: YOOOOOOO!)

The similarities to how Philip enters the Gaia Library only increase in his visualization of the BS-ZA’s ‘cerebro’, which is a white void with occasional columns of binary scrolling upward. And written in the same font as the logo, at that.

Izu appears in there, in much the same manner – they’re both in their usual appearances again, though. Whereever they step, the binary ripples out beneath their feet. It’s a nice touch to give a sense of where the ground is, since otherwise it’s all just pure white.

She tells him that his brain is remotely accessing the satellite. He… doesn’t quite take this well.

Also, now that I have a proper back view of Izu, I can see that the earpieces have a headband behind them, so they’re basically behind the head headphones. Except, you know, most likely mounted.

Anyway, she continues. Right now, he has the same thought processing speed as an AI.

Their surroundings change, to have the void show where they are in the real world, while they appear as data projections. Just to drive the point home, she walks through the real-world Aruto.

Who is very much unconscious, standing upright with his head dropped down. Berotha’s still charging his attack, rearing back to fire.

“Left like this, in five seconds, you will die.”

Only an AI could deliver this line so casually. Aruto is not okay with this. He’s not okay with any of this.

The surroundings change again, this time to a grey and purple tinted void with hexagons in the background.

“Until then, you can learn from the manual.”

So. They’re just actually having him read the manual, in virtual form, while his real body is very, very vulnerable, so that he can learn how to use his driver.

Now This Is Kamen Rider.

‘Opening Tutorial Mode’

–

Meanwhile, over with the Zectroopers – I MEAN – AIMS troops, the machine guns do absolutely jack all against the Magear mooks. They can knock them down, sure, sending them sparking to the ground, but they just get right back up again.

Isamu, frustrated with the fact that his bullets do nothing, climbs back into the van and punches his way to grabbing what will eventually be his driver.

It seems that Yua is supposed to be his boss, because she tells him to wait, that he doesn’t have her permission – he ignores her and shoots the gun in her direction.

For a brief moment, the audience assumes he’s shooting her, but he’s aiming right over her shoulder, the ‘bullet’ sending her hair waving, and hitting a Magear mook right in the eye.

It doesn’t get back up.

Also, the top of its foot has a skeletal… well. Foot. Zero One’s going all in on the robot skeleton theme they’ve got going here, then.

Looks like Isamu’s whole attitude is ‘when in doubt, apply a bigger gun.’

–

Aruto snaps awake. “Learning complete.”

As he activates his Progrise key, Berotha launches the energy scythes.

A yellow light beams down from the satellite. It was either rapid-fire 3d printing, or it was actually teleporting, but either way. A silver grasshopper with neon-yellow lines lands in front of Aruto, blocking the attack.

Interestingly, along with the impact dustcloud, there’s yellow and blue circuitry patterns radiating away along the ground.

Hot damn I like this background music. I’d ask when we’re getting the OST, but I know the answer is ‘after the season ends,’ so instead I will just mourn my lack of soundtrack.

The grasshopper starts bouncing around Aruto as he prepares to properly transform, a holographic screen projecting from the driver in front of him. Said giant robot grasshopper is making even more of a mess of the area, and said projection is slightly 3D – the images have depth to them… and are made, of course, of closely-placed zeroes and ones.

The owner of the park is watching all of this, by the way.

“Henshin!”

We actually get to sort of see the driver reading the data on the key – kind of like when we used to see the action inside the Build Driver.

The base Zero One suit is black, with glowing red lines and a disconcerting face plate. We don’t have to see that for long though, because the grasshopper quickly dissassembles itself and turns into his armor.

In a very interesting detail, you can see it breaking down into wires and metal, and the lights that pull it towards Zero One are DNA spirals.

A JUMP TO THE SKY TURNS TO A RIDER KICK

…Hey, didn’t Aruto’s father say he should jump towards his dreams? Just saying. ;)

The grasshopper didn’t just become his armor – it also seems to have turned one of its limbs into the Attache Calibre, which makes its way to Aruto’s hand as the transformation ends.

“Who are you?!”

“Zero One! That’s my name!”

He immediately launches into an attack against Berotha, punching and kicking to great effect. Berotha tries to slash right at his feet – if he can just stop him from moving, he can annihilate him. Except Zero One leaps over the blades.

And by leap, I mean that our good grasshopper boy is now on top of the rollercoaster. Aruto is, justifiably, super impressed by his new leg power.

(I’m just saying… Aruto got the Pink Cure’s ‘WOW I can jump really high now!’ moment for this year, because Cure Star didn’t get it. She had her first fight in space, so it was already a given for her.)

Berotha is decidedly less impressed, and fires an eye beam at him. The eye laser does nothing, as despite it being almost as wide as he is tall, Zero One just tanks it as he jumps back down. As the light breaks apart around him, there seems to be a faint helix pattern there, too.

Aruto’s about to go after Berotha some more, but then he sees the owner getting attacked by a pair of mooks. Mooks who used to be his staff, and can just barely be heard stuttering around their rote phrases, repeating them without context or intellect. He goes to block them, and yells at his former boss to get out of there.

As Aruto redirects the mooks elsewhere, Izu comes running up, carrying the attache weapon that had been abandoned. She calls out to him, and throws him the case…

And it whacks him upside the head.

The mooks just watch as she apologizes, and he, rubbing his head, says he’s okay.

An honest-to-gaim insert song kicks in as they start fighting again. Like, this isn’t the OP. I’ve heard the OP. This isn’t it. This is an insert song. In episode one. It’s only a short part of it, yes, but it’s still an insert.

This is going to be a good season for music, especially since you can actually hear said insert. Not quite clearly, and it’s too brief to really get anything from aside from the tone. But that tone is awesome and I can’t wait oh god it’s going to be a long wait for this soundtrack.

Also, at some point the mooks acquired guns.

–

The insert ends when we see Not!Parad Jin bouncing in joy as he watches all of this happen from a nearby roof. “Yeah! Come on! Get ‘em! This is so fun!”

A damaged mook gets up, stuttering. “A-a-a-attention! A-a-a-a lost child has been reported!” This confirms that the mooks are, in fact, still saying their lines. It tries to attack him, because that’s what they do. He’s human, after all. (Right?)

Still giggling, Jin grabs the mooks arm as it goes to stab him, and in one smooth motion and without looking, twists it behind said mooks back, holds it around the neck, pulls out an honest-to-god gun, and shoots it in the head.

Everything goes silent for a second as the gun fires.

He doesn’t stop giggling wildly the whole time, nor does he even spare the mook a glance.

The mook falls to the ground, broken and unmoving, as he continues laughing.

It’s a normal gun. That is straight up a normal gun. Not a fancy sci-fi one, just a normal gun with normal bullets and a normal bullet casing that ejects in front of him as he laughs.

…Can we go back to our hero, please?!

–

Oh, good, we’re going back to Zero One versus Berotha. Thanks!

And thank you even more for the OP kicking in as Berotha fires a volley of energy blades. These are powerful enough to slice through cars and set off explosions wherever they hit. But they don’t even graze Aruto, not the way he jumps and rolls in mid air to dodge them.

His fighting is super graceful and deliberate, so much unlike how he moves as himself. The intro beats to the song transition into the song proper as he leaps, angled yellow lines of light trailing behind him as he uses the flying cars as jumping points, bouncing from one to the other, dodging blades all the way, before the actual bus that’s in the air comes up toward him.

He just barrels through it, still dodging the blades, using the support bars to flip and spin around and over. He manages to tap the ‘stop request’ button with his foot as he rebounds at one point, which is a hilarious little detail that they didn’t need to put in. But that lets the bus announcement of ‘stop requested’ play as he comes through the rear window right before it hits the ground.

MAN, the attention to DETAIL in this episode. I know that it’s mostly Episode One Budget in action, but damn is this promising.

Those yellow lines start following him again as he resumes his beatdown on Berotha, giving a pre-asskicking one liner. “There’s only one person who can stop you: me!” He activates his finisher.

RISING IMPACT!

A brief projection of the robo-grasshoppers foot appears over his own as he braces himself to start moving. Neat. And move he does, going faster than the camera can follow, slowing down only long enough to deliver a few punches and kicks, tossing Berotha into the air. Zero One follows suit, leaping far higher, and diving down with his Rider Kick.

He goes through the MaGear, shattering it to pieces. Gears, wires, and dark blue hydraulic fluid go everywhere, as the eyes on his helmet have a line go from front to back along the facets. Huh.

A special projection of ‘rising impact’ appears on screen as Zero Ones kick approaches the viewer, and since holo-tech is a thing here, may or may not actually be there. The key that had been used to hack Taro into Berotha, definitely cracked, also flies at the screen.

Zero One lands, digging a gouge into the path, and when he comes to a stop… Aruto twists his ankle, winds up rolling bodily into one of the buildings, and gets covered in rubble. He pulls himself up a bit using some of the debris, saying “Aaaand here’s my stop.” He collapses backward.

–

The AIMS troops seem to be wrapping up their defeat of the mooks, but as Yua says, they’ve still got a lot to do.

Isamu’s stomps on the chest of one of the downed mooks, who isn’t quite as done as he’d looked. It grabs his ankle, before he apparently shoots and shatters it, going by the sound effect.

He glares, hands trembling in apparent rage, saying that history is repeating itself.

–

Jin hands Horobi the damaged key. When Horobi ‘questions’ the damage, he just ‘asks’ “Zero One?”

Implying that there was a previous Zero One.

This implication is only furthered with Jin’s comment, as he pulls down his hood. “Seems like the previous president didn’t simply die, huh?”

We still can’t see his ears under all that hair.

The suspicion that these two aren’t human only grows. Why would Horobi want to turn humans into an endangered species if they, themselves, are human?

The ‘eye’ on the sunken satellite glows red.

–

As they exit the amusement park, Aruto’s going on to Izu about how cool he was. She says she’ll be escorting him home, calling him ‘Mister President.’

“Wait, what?!”

Turns out he completely blanked on the fact that only the president of Hiden Intelligence is allowed to be Zero One, and he accepted the position by putting on the driver.

Our protagonist, ladies and gentlemen. He’s just a big ol’ puppy.

He’s protesting this fact – the president thing, not the puppy thing – to Izu when he hears a child asking the parks owner if he’s going to be closing the park.

“Not at all. A mysterious yellow hero protected it. So we’re going to keep on giving smiles to our guests!”

Aruto looks absolutely touched by his former bosses words, just by the refusal to close, and the ‘mysterious yellow hero’ part. …He has no idea that his boss knows exactly who that hero was.

Not until said boss turns to him, and winks.

Izu lifts one hand. “I have detected many smiling expressions that Master Aruto is responsible for.”

He laughs, just a little, a light chuckle at himself. “There’s more than one way to make people smile, huh…?”

He bounces the driver a little in his hands, and gets into the car.

As he buckles in, and Izu doesn’t – sweetie, I know you’re an android, and thus can’t technically die in the way most people would see death as, you should still use your seat belt and model good behavior for the kiddos watching at home – she hands him ‘the presidents’ Rise Phone. It looks like it’s just an upgraded version of his phone from earlier, or they upgraded that phone itself.

He tries to make a terrible pun about the hassle the board of directors gave earlier… which Izu, now putting on her seat belt, thank you so very much, starts explaining. Aruto cries that she shouldn’t be trying to explain the joke as the car drives away.

The episode title finally appears.

––––

Aaand that’s Kamen Rider Zero One, episode one! This is sure gonna be something, and I’m super hyped!

#kamen rider zero one #sailorcressy says

23 notes · View notes