#about Horobi trying to reach out and getting literally shot down

[firebirdsdaughter]

Have you read what Omori wants for 01's conclusion? Apparently it will be completely different from any other Rider series..It will be very 01 and represent what Reiwa is in the current climate. For one, I'm really scared because I don't trust Omori, never have. But this just screams bs/bad ending. They probably have Aruto die and/or come back as a Humagear and then have Gai become 01 as the new hero because reasons. (If you want to be hip, write a show that makes sense from start to finish.)

I have seen that, and that’s exactly what it screams to me. Everything here comes across as ‘drama drama shock value!’ ‘We’re going to be radical and shocking!’

Like… Wtf does ‘the current climate’ mean? Hell? Bittersweet endings are one thing, but only when they make sense. This all just feels like a sharp swerve into a brick wall.

Like, I have to admit that Horobi’s behaviour is a fairly realistic depiction of someone who’d been through something like what he’d been through. I mean, of course, no human could actually understand what he’s been through, bc it’s impossible for humans to imagine being completely w/out a sense of self, we always have the capacity for it. HumaGear aren’t even allowed that except by human benefit. This isn’t the same as a human coming out of a cult, this is a person whose very nature was altered and defined by an active and malicious external being/intelligence. Horobi was made this way by the Ark, who was made that way by Gai.

Literally. The only reason Horobi ended up w/ all that negative data on the worst of humanity is bc Gai put it in the Ark. While I take issue w/ some parts of Izu’s speech and the tone, they did point out the biased data… It’s just… Instead of trying to address that… They chose to come out weapons out and enforce that interpretation, and then do it again when Fuwa rejects Horobi’s question (Horobi, who was tortured for asking a question before, who only tries to ask Fuwa, as if Fuwa is the only one who might convince him of it). I think that’s an important point in that fight. After what Izu says, Horobi does try to reach out and gather more information from the one human he’s spent the most time w/, the one he knows, the one who first actually treated him like a person rather than a tool of any kind… And gets literally shot down. Told ‘I don’t care, I’m going to kill you.’ It’s kind of like the interpretation I had of his reaction to Jin’s betrayal—‘if you’ve given up on me, it doesn’t matter.’ Why should he give humans a chance if the one human he knows is honest, and who before had been quite reasonable w/ him despite his anger, reacts like that. Fuwa didn’t immediately destroy Horobi when he restarted in AIMS custody. Instead he interrogated him like any other prisoner, and eventually became comfortable in his presence. They were discussing motivation and will. It makes sense that Horobi would choose to question Fuwa about this, who he knows is aware of human cruelty and deceit, who listened to him, albeit angrily, when he brought up human malice. Fuwa, for all he’s angry and reckless, isn’t an actively malicious person, and he proved that during their time together. It comes across as Horobi looking to the most human human he knows that he remembers as being reasonable in the end despite everything, trying to consider and gather more data, get a second opinion, like he’s looking to the one human whose word he might believe, the first one who defied that data… Only to get his beliefs enforced. He tries reaching out and gets a door slammed in his face. I think that honestly made him even more volatile at that point.

But I’m digressing, bc I’m just really mad about this episode. Pretty much everyone grabbed the Idiot Ball, except for Horobi, bc he was too busy holding the massive ‘mentally and emotionally fucked up and very unstable from being mind raped for twelve years’ ball.

But… I really have no earthly clue what that statement could mean? I feel like a main Rider dying has happened before? We’ve at least had half a main Rider die. But it is very worrying that they’re just going to pull some more abrupt weirdness for the sake of ‘shock value.’

[sailor-cresselia]

Zero One 03: When in doubt, apply more elemental forces

It’s Kamen Rider Valkyrie time! Here we go!

–

So, Aruto and Izu are at a small sushi restaurant, to finalize a contract for an artisan sushi-chef HumaGear. Said HumaGear prepares a serving, which he presents ot Aruto. When Aruto goes to try, Izu yoinks the tracy away from him, saying that they aren’t supposed to be here for food.

He grabs the sushi anyway, surprising her.

He thinks it’s great, but the owner of the restaurant tells the ‘young prez’ that he’s backing out of the deal, and they can take the HumaGear back.

Izu, being the wonderful ball of snark that she is, asks if it was because of the ‘joke’ Aruto made.

But no. It’s because it’s a robot.

This is the first time we’ve heard the word robot in this show. It’s always been HumaGear, up until now.

A woman steps in, saying that ‘he still doesn’t get it.’ Hi, Yua. What’re you doing here? I can’t shake the feeling that you know the chef. But she also says that there is great value in HumaGear. This surprises both the elderly chef, and Aruto. He’s not used to her siding with him.

–

A HumaGear sits in a chair, with morse code playing in the background, and a narration starts up…

IT’S OP TIME.

(Oh gaim, I can’t wait to see how GenmCorp properly stylizes the lyrics, and same for O-T. RiderTime doesn’t sub songs at all, and the other two haven’t uploaded yet.)

The narration gives a short rundown of what HumaGear are, and then brings up the young CEO who will “jump to the sky to protect the dreams of many.” The shot here? It’s footage of Aruto about to transform, from episode two. From when he was going up against Ekal. (Oh, no, my heart.)

Accompanying the chant of ‘zero one’, we have headshots of each Rider – helmet first, then themselves. Zero One to Aruto, Vulcan to Isamu, Valkyrie to Fua, Jin to… well, Jin, and Horobi to Horobi. The numerals 0 and 1 appear each time the respective one is said, the helmets lining up with the 0’s and faces with 1’s. There’s then brief suit shots framed in what look like written characters, but zoomed in too close for me to tell.

As the lyrics themselves start, there’s a fast pan from the fencing around Daybreak Town, across the city, and directly up the Hiden Intelligence building into Aruto’s office.

Aruto’s becoming quickly surrounded and overwhelmed by stacks upon stacks of binders, not helped by Izu adding more and more. Eventually, he just slumps down, sobbing in defeat, and she bows in ‘apology’ as a stack slides down onto his head.

There’s Isamu, walking through a lobby, and the shot pans to his ShotRiser, held in his hand, which turns and transitions to Yua’s ShotRiser on her desk.

Then Jun, Shesta, and that one other Hiden board member in front of Jun’s portrait quickly falling off the wall, with Aruto’s behind it – and oh, god, it’s Aruto trying to make a joke. (Shesta doesn’t even blink at the giant painting about to land on the three of them.)

A dark area, with the ruins of Daybreak Town as a frame, with Jin and oh goody, he’s shooting at the screen with his literal gun, which he loaded on screen with his creepy grin. He looks behind him, and we pan to Horobi, who has his usual stoic glare, and he holds up a ZetsumeRiser.

The center of the ZetsumeRiser transitions to looking down the barrel of an AIMS grunt’s gun, and zooms out to have battle-ready Isamu and Yua aiming their own guns at the screen. He has his ShotRiser, and she has a normal gun.

Then it jump-cuts to Aruto, running toward the camera down a very, very ruined street, reaching desperately out. Oh, no.

The next jump cut is to a long-haired Izu, in a similarly ruined street. With her ear pieces lit in red, as are her eyes. Oh, no. She raises up a hand, and there’s. Uh. I didn’t catch this in the live watch. As the screen very quickly glitches out, it looks like there’s blood in the palm of her hand. Fortunately, I’m able to get a decent pause after about 10 tries, and can see that everything in this shot is greyscale, with the exception of three colors. The teal of her outfit and index fingernail, the red of her eyes, and the bright blue of the HumaGear blood in her hand. (I know that technically, it’s hydraulic fluid or some such, but. Well, for a HumaGear, it’s the same thing.)

The shot drops directly from her hand to a giant puddle of the HumaGear blood. Oh, no.

It zooms right through said puddle, turning it to the lake that used to be Daybreak Town, going right for that crashed satellite.

Jump cut. A generic HumaGear looks up at the screen, eyes glowing bright red, and quickly zooms out to a crowd of HumaGear in the same state. Yay!

Profile shot of a HumaGear entering it’s Magia form – earpieces glowing red, and those awful pipes escaping its mouth.

A massive circle of HumaGear in that state, surrounding Aruto before he transforms. They’re fully made over into mooks at the same time as his armor forms.

Zero One delivers some of his lighting fast kicks to the swarming mooks. The camera spins to a different location, with Vulcan, similarly surrounded, punching and then shooting at mooks. Valkyrie uses his shoulder as a launch point to leap into the air, shooting some bullets of her own, before literally bouncing off of the giant phone that falls out of the sky. She goes off screen as the phone turns into Zero One’s bike, which he lands on.

We have our first shot of the three of them together, all landing in the street, surrounded by mooks.

Then we have separate, generic action shots of the three with their weapons of choice – Zero One’s attache-case sword, and the preferred sizes of Vulcan and Valkyrie’s guns. Then shadowed shots of Jin and Horobi (suit forms), although I genuinely don’t know which one is which.

Tranistion from the second, who I suspect is Horobi, going by the firsts more ‘actiony’ stance, to in front of Hiden Intelligence. Hiden Korenosuke stands there, is quickly replaced by Hiden Soreo, and then Aruto – the three generations of Hiden men. Aruto’s looking down, hesitantly, at the driver in his hand. Then, he finds his determination.

Jump to a very concerning shot of the Zero One Driver, two ShotRisers, and what I suspect are the drivers that Jin and Horobi are going to use, among a lot of rubble, in the rain. Then, a somewhat glitchy cut to the lower portion of Izu’s face, with a single tear running down her cheek. Oh, no.

Then, Aruto staggering, clearly injured, in the rain through a very destroyed street. he’s practically in the background, honestly, with rubble, fences, patches of fire, and destroyed HumaGear taking up most of the scene. The HumaGear are both mooks and normal, I think. There’s still a lot of that once-pristine white that the mooks lose.

He collapses, either giving up, or giving in to whatever injuries he has. Or both. But Izu reaches down to him, the sun coming out, and he takes her hand. She helsp him up, and they stand, back to the camera, facing the sunlight.

Red and blue lines of light form a platform of sorts in an otherwise black void. Jin and Horobi step toward the left of the screen, and then Isamu and Yua toward the right. Aruto and Izu stand in the center.

Everyone is in their normal forms momentarily, before their armor forms around the five Riders, and Izu dissolves into a light blue stream of zeros and ones. Smash cut to the five Riders helmets. I’m using smash cut very literally here, as each is framed in the largest sections of what is essentially a shattered mirror.

Fast transition to the silhouettes of the five, the eyes of their helmets lit up, as their shadows stretch to toward the front of the screen.

–

I really like this OP sequence. We’re on some Ex-Aid levels of foreshadowing and special effects here. Not so say I haven’t liked other OPs, but honestly, of the ones I’ve seen (Decade through to now, and Kabuto) this is tied with Ex-Aid, and they both only just beat out Builds. Build would have made it a three way tie for first, if they had ever updated certain shots. You know, like. Cross-Z Charge should have been phased out for Cross-Z Magma, and they just kept that shot of governmental Gentoku at the beginning of it throughout the entire run, even though it was out of date by the end of about the first half, or even third of the show.

It makes sense, this truly is Mr. Takahashi’s style. There was a comment I made right after watching live… uh. Something about “Oh, they wouldn’t put Izu getting Magear’d into the OP sequence as foreshadowing, it’s just an unfortunate timing thing to have her right before the hacking sequence…” And then I remembered the shots in the Ex-Aid OP of Emu dissolving, and I felt true fear.

–

Okay, okay, back to the show.

Jin and Horobi are being ominous, as usual. Jin asks, while bouncing around the room, if Horobi’s really going to ignore Zero One and AIMS. Horobi’s not concerned, since they already have their plan underway.

I really don’t like the next comment of his, though. “The completion of our arc revival is near,” accompanied by the camera following a giant bundle of cables through a pipe, and to that crashed satellite. I don’t like this at all. I’m also not liking how RiderTime translated that line, it feels really awkward, but whatever.

They just need to collect more data, which is also very concerning, and Horobi hands Jin another Zetsumerise Key.

–

Okay, so. Up in Jun’s office, he’s kinda pissed that the literal CEO of the company is out doing sales rounds. Which, okay, valid. But still. Aruto is a good boy, and he just wants what’s best… and, as Shesta says, he’s also visiting HumaGears workplaces to try and catch the local terrorists. (Pity they’re actually based in the quarantine zone.)

Anyway, the restaurant is called Magokoro Sushi. The owner, the old man, has been looking for an heir since he injured his back.

Jun says that they may as well leave this be. If the contract works out, the company will look good. If not, then he can totally use this as an excuse to get Aruto out of the company. He and his lacky start laughing, and Shesta… ‘joins in,’ just saying ‘ha ha ha’ over and over. It’s wonderful.

Also something I noticed about Shesta is that she has a red streak in the back of her hair, similar to the teal undertones that Izu has. Both of them match the accents on their respective outfits. Neat.

–

Back at Magokoro Sushi, Yua uploads… something to Nigiro, the HumaGear of the day. She doesn’t really explain what she’s just sent him when Aruto asks, just saying that he ought to know if he’s the CEO. Which. Uh. That doesn’t help us in the slightest. I don’t think it’s the learning program she mentions next, though. I’m hoping it’s some sort of security patch. Key word being hope.

(I mean, I’ve already seen the episode raw, so. Uh. Yeah. The key there is that I really, really hope there are security patches.)

Izu, thankfully, is a fountain of information, and explains that Nigiro analyzed data from Yua’s Risephone, and is making the choice most suited to his patrons tastes.

And suited it very definitely is, given her almost ecstatic reaction to her serving. Looks like we’ve found the way to her heart: A healthy appreciation for technology, and good food.

Aruto’s really glad that she gets his appreciation of HumaGears, even though she immediately tried to return to her usual stoic tendencies when she remembered who she was with. As she says, it’s up to humans how to live with HumaGear.

(Her expression at this point, and it being in reaction to food, is what led me and Miyuko to make our first ‘Kabuto: TWO’ comment of the episode.)

The chef still doesn’t look impressed.

–

Elsewhere, a barber HumaGear hears a slight beeping sound as he bids another satisfied customer farewell. He’s confused, a little, and then freaking Jin bounces in out of nowhere to make a new friend.

Go away, Gremlin 2.0!

–

Nigiro prepares a serving of sushi – squid, this time – for the owner, who very reluctantly eats it… and calls it disgusting. He says, bitterly, that making sushi isn’t a job for a robot. Again, he’s specifically using the term ‘robot,’ and says that it’s because they don’t have souls.

Oh, no.

Aruto’s a little confused.

But the owner, hobbling to his feet, says that Magokoro Sushi will die with him.

(Sir, this is Kamen Rider, and we’ve already seen that this season is not above the dark stuff! Don’t tempt fate like this!)

The group watches him leave, and Yua’s phone rings. I like her ringtone, it’s some sort of mechanical tune.

There’s a Magear on the loose.

–

Outside, the barber is advancing on a fleeing group of people – including someone who was clearly in the middle of being his customer.

An AIMS van pulls up, troopers and Isamu in tow.

The bullets, as usual, do absolutely nothing to damage the poor hijacked HumaGear. They do, however, provide a convenient smoke screen to cover up his transformation. Thus, the show is saved just that little bit of CGI budget, and we don’t have to see that again.

The CGI budget for the horrifying transformation pipes is then immediately spent on attack tentacles.

I wish I were kidding.

Today’s Magear is Neohi. He’s a squid. Or, well, he’s based on Neohibolites, a genus of cephalopod. …He’s a squid.

Isamu, whose general attitude is ‘when in doubt, apply more bullets’, pulls out his transformation kit. He still has to force the key open. It doesn’t take nearly as much force this time, but I, personally, think he broke the locking mechanism last time.

Yua, after last episode, probably: I’m not fixing it until you stop being an ass!

Isamu: Then I’ll just have to keep doing this my way.

Gods, his transformation is still way too cool for him. The bullet actively zooms around to block the tentacles before rushing back to him for him to, and I feel this can not be over stated, literally punch in order to form his armor. I’m probably never going to get over this, so. Fair warning on that front.

Yua runs up, pissed that he’s done this again.

Yua, I love you. You deserve a better partner. Have you considered becoming Aruto’s advisor on technology? He could use it, and you deserve to get away from Vulcan.

(Also, please note that they haven’t used the name ‘Vulcan’ in show yet, only ‘Zero One’.)

Frustrated, especially at how Vulcan tells her that this one is his, so she can just stand back and watch, Yua heads to the van, determination written on her face.

Unseen by either AIMS agent, Aruto and Izu also join the party, and he quickly transforms after calling Vulcan a showoff.

There's some brief but efficient fighting, including Zero One bullet-timing a jump over the shots Vulcan aimed at him. I love the choreography in this show.

So, Zero One manages to slice off a few of Neohi’s tentacles, which promptly get stuck on him. because. Y’know, suckers. And also they’re still squirming. Neohi promptly decides that it’s time to get out, and spreads a thick smokescreen to cover his escape.

As they see that the Magear is gone, Aruto remembers that Vulcan thinks he’s a rogue HumaGear, too, and launches himself the heck out of there… still with the tentacles wrapped around him. Vulcan tries to shoot him down…

And the only thing he accomplishes is getting the tentacles to let go, which Aruto thanks him for as he disappears.

–

Now then, let’s head back to Aruto’s office to confront the fact that Aruto wasn’t able to make the sale!

Jun and his lackey are blaming Aruto for not only not completing the contract, but also for not finding the terrorists at the same time. Aruto says it’s because that tentacled freak got in his way, which is true, and makes some sort of terrible tentacle pun. Shesta just says that it doesn’t compute.

Aruto: Izu likes my puns, though…

Speaking of Izu, she seems to have uploaded herself to the cloud – er, satellite. Or, she’s interfacing with it, anyway, down in front of the 3D Printing Studio. The goal of this is to have the system analyze the results of the last fight, and design a new Progrise Key to best suit the challenge.

You know. Like with Nigiro and his own analysis program, to make the best selection to suit the customer.

I’ve noticed that on Aruto’s desk, and on the assorted bookshelves in the office and lab, there are a lot of old-school tin robot toys. Those were there when he first entered the office in episode two, so they aren’t things he brought in. They were his grandfathers. It’s a neat little touch.

Set decoration notes aside, Nigiro is here, too, with an inquiry.

Can a soul be turned into data? The boss wants a successor, but that successor has to have a human heart. So, if one could be installed-

Izu cuts him off. It’s impossible, a soul can not be turned into data.

(She’s not saying that he could never have one, mind you. She saying it a soul can’t be turned into data. Not that data can’t become a soul – that he can’t grow one of his own.

You know, like the whole singularity/awakening thing.

The one that’s being weaponized.)

Aruto thinks of what the owner said, about Magokoro Sushi dying with him. He asks Izu to look something up about the restaurant.

–

It’s nighttime, and Isamu confronts Yua outside of the AIMS van, since she hasn’t tracked down the tentacle freak yet. He also accuses her of having been playing on her phone earlier. When he tries to take a look at what’s on her screen, she hides it away, and he scoffs, saying he’ll just go find the magear on his own.

Once he’s walked away, she laughs a little. He doesn’t get it. He has no idea how tools work.

She pulls her phone back out, and walks in the other direction.

Interesting.

–

Back at Magokoro Sushi, the owner is cleaning the bar, preparing for the next day. He slips, because of his back injury, but Nigiro rushes in to catch him.

Aruto and Izu are with him, asking for him to give Nigiro one more shot. Aruto says that the owner has trained many apprentices, but they’ve all left without taking over.

The owner asks if that’s what his precious data told him, but says that it’s true. They couldn’t keep up with him, their souls bent in frustration.

Nigiro says that his soul won’t waver. It can’t, because he doesn’t have one.

Aruto continues the discussion. The owner has a special technique, right? He’d asked his former pupils.

Flashback to a larger, less personal restaurant, where one of said former pupils is talking to Aruto and the two HumaGear. He shows them a video of the secret technique, which is… it sure is something. I’m not sure what goes on, but it involves tossing at least some of the ingredients into the air. Aruto’s watching the video in surprise, Nigiro has one eyebrow raised in slight confusion, and Izu? Izu is bouncing up and down behind them, trying to see. She’s too short to see over their shoulders.

Izu, sweetie, I love you.

The former pupil says that it’s a weird technique, isn’t it? He can’t see the point in it, but it’s that type of thing that they were asking about.

(Cue our second Kabuto: TWO comment)

Back to the present, where Nigiro performs the same technique. He’d been following the textbook preparations before, but now he’s analyzed and learned the owners method.

He thinks he understands why the owner uses this technique, now, even though it’s inefficient.

It’s because it carries his sincerity.

The owner looks… taken by surprise, before falling back into his judgmental expression from before, and trying the sushi.

Nigiro described it differently, this time. For Yua, he’d called hers “a serving based on skill.” For the owner, the first time around, he’d called it “a serving to his tastes.”

This time? A serving from the soul.

I really hope that one of the other sub groups elects to translate that sign in the back, when the camera focuses on it, because it’s clearly significant, but I can’t get Google translate to recognize it as a word.

The owner doesn’t say it’s bad – but he tells Nigiro to do it over. 10,000 times, over and over. He’s telling him to practice.

“Got it. 10,000 times, is that correct?”

“Geesh, you’re more stubborn than a human.”

Aruto smiles. Izu is confused as to why this is making Aruto happy – the owner is angry, he doesn’t look happy about this at all.

Aruto smiles at her, telling her that humans aren’t that simple.

That’s just how this man is – he’s stern, and strict, and doesn’t emote… but he’s impressed enough to take a HumaGear under his wing and train him, even if he hasn’t said as much in those exact words. It’s all about the subtext.

–

Oh, look, Gremlin 2.0 is on a rooftop with Neohi… and tells him that it’s time for them to make some new friends.

Oh dear lord, that’s a lot of tentacle cables.

…Like the ones Berotha used to create the mooks in episode one.

Oh, no.

Ohhh, no. Neohi transforms some construction workers, and then a waitress, into mooks.

And a cable reaches into Magokoro Sushi… and takes over Nigiro.

It’s painful – for all of them, it hurts just to watch, and it’s so well performed by the actors. These characters aren't human, they aren't supposed to react like humans do… and yet, without fail, it’s made clear that the HumaGear definitely feel pain as they’re being overwritten.

Aruto, Izu, and the owner run – Izu helping support the old man, and Aruto trying to push Nigiro back.

He’s still trying to reason with him, even though he’s not even a Magear proper – he’s a mook, stuck repeating his lines with a stutter, like a skipping record.

Like. Geez, Zero One. It’s episode three. This is so hard to see these characters we got attached to wind up going out like this. And he didn’t even get turned into a Magear of his own – no, he just got hijacked, doesn’t have any will anymore.

If his death is inevitable, at least let him go down fighting on his own. Please.

Shots are fired, knocking the former Nigiro backward into the recently arrived crowd of mooks.

Aruto can’t even tell which one he was anymore.

Yua strides forward, with a word of ‘advice.’ You can just bring him back if you back-up his data. That’s all HumaGear are, after all, AIs. Even if they’re destroyed, their data can just be restored.

Now we get into the ‘what measure is a person’ issue. Humans aren’t so simple that you can tell what they’re feeling by analyzing their reactions based on expressions alone… and HumaGear aren’t so simple, either. They’re partners that work in harmony with humanity. They aren’t just tools.

This speech seems to get through to the owner, who seems to finally get where Aruto is coming from.

Yua doesn’t look down at Aruto, as he’s trying to push himself to his feet. She just says that they are tools, as she pulls out a belt, her ShotRiser already attached to it, and places it around her waist.

She pulls out an orange Progrise Key, spinning it as she brings her hand up.

Dash!

She inserts it directly into the ShotRiser, without opening it first – and look at that. The top of the gun is open, and she can just unlock the key while it’s in there.

Sucks to be you, Isamu, she’s got style.

Her transformation… She fires, the gun on her waist, and the bullet – orange, as opposed to Vulcan’s blue – swoops close around her, before breaking apart on its own. She’s already running as it forms the armor around her.

Rushing Cheetah!

There’s a motion blur as she knocks the first few mooks away, one of them landing on the ground with her standing on its chest.

I love how the wild arcs of Vulcans armor bullet imply that it wouldn’t actually turn into his armor if he didn’t punch it, since Valkyrie doesn’t even need to look at it. Hers circles once around her outstretched arm, and then moves in front of her to turn into the armor.

“AI in violation of the law verified. Eliminating targets.”

Her voice is cold and analytical – and it matches her sharp, efficient fighting style. She delivers quick blows to her opponents, knocking them away. And she must be ripped under that business suit, because a number of them go flying when she hits them – that’s not just the armor at work there.

Aruto, watching, is finally able to get to his feet, and the owner starts to reassure him that he’s not wrong. They’re not tools. (We see Nigiro making his comment about the owners form showing his sincerity.) Yua had said it herself – it’s up to humans to decide how to live with HumaGear.

Neohi arrives, swinging one of his attached tentacles like a rope of some sort.

Aruto tells Izu to get the owner somewhere safe – so she just picks up this old man, and carrys him in a piggy back out of there. The old man is very confused about this, but at least he doesn’t see the giant neon grasshopper drop out of the sky behind him.

Zero One starts fighting Neohi, pulling out his Attache Calibur.

(I still have trouble believing that this is our protagonists main weapon. A briefcase sword. You’re putting Drives weapons to shame here for sheer oddness with just this single one, you know that, right? And there was an axe that you had to wait for its crosswalk signal to use back then.)

This monster takes Combat Tentacles to a whole new level. Not only can they be used as a whip-like attack, but when severed, they still cling to whatever they land on. In addition, the ends are bladed, and can be used as handheld weapons – which is exactly what he’s doing right now.

–

Over with Valkyrie, whose name I will hopefully be able to spell without Autocorrect within the month, she’s kicking all sorts of Trilobite ass. Er, turns out that’s what the mooks are called this time around. They’re ‘Trilobite Magear.’

But she’s good at this. She is definitely the technology specialist and the tactician. Like, she’s just shoved a giant crate at the mooks, and is running behind it, using it as a shield to block the gunfire from the mooks.

Also, why are the mooks able to generate machine guns and knifes? I mean, at least they only have one or the other, but… how.

Eventually, as the giant wooden crate slides to a stop, she leaps out and starts firing.

–

Meanwhile, with Aruto, he’s… been knocked into a drainage channel, and is tied up with the tentacles. Again. He is not enthused, and probably considering swearing off of squid forever.

He pulls out his newest Progrise Key: Biting Shark.

The beam from the satellite is, appropriately, blue this time, as opposed to the yellow for Rising Hopper. Also, the shark bot? It can dive up and down through the ground, treating it like water. Man, that’s a cool tactic, I always get a kick out of that. One of the Yummies in OOO used it, and then Another Build did, too. I think Haruto did something similar a few times as Wizard, but I might be misremembering some of the ways he used the Liquid ring.

There is almost definitely a pun that RiderTime missed here. They translated Aruto’s line as “here we go.” You know, Iku ze. Except it sounded an awful lot more like Ika ze. Ika – aka squid. RT, I’m disappointed. If he was actually just saying it normally, then I’m disappointed in Toei, instead.

Oh, man, the arm section of the Rising Hopper armor turn into arm fins, that’s so cool. And I much prefer how the faceplate readjusts for Biting Shark than for Flying Falcon. Here, they rotate downward, so it doesn’t look nearly as much like he’s got eyes on the side of his head.

The Biting Impact finisher is neat! It starts with Zero One putting his arms out, cupping the air, as a pen-and-ink image of a shark appears next to him, much like the grasshopper at his leg for Rising Impact. He slashes at the attack tentacles with the blades on both his arms and on his legs. Notably, the energy slash effects are different for both. For his arms, where the blades are from Rising Hopper, theres yellow effects, but with his legs they’re blue, where the armor is from Biting Shark. Nice touch!

Eventually, he’s gotten in close enough to punch Neohi into the air, and proceeds to charge energy into his arm blades. And holy shit, said energy takes the forms of two giant rows of sharks teeth emanating from each arm, which he uses to crosschop – sorry, bite through the Magear.

The Magear falls to the ground, where he explodes, creating a glorious spray of water for Aruto’s “cool guys don’t look at explosions” shot.

–

Over at the mook battle, Valkyrie prepares her finisher, as Vulcan fights his way into the background. He sees her, and her ShotRiser, and realizes who it must be under the armor.

She starts her finisher, firing shot after shot of orange energy into the center of a group of mooks – not aiming at them, but at the center, where the shots collect and grow into a giant orb of energy as she runs literal rings around them. When she finally comes to a stop, it’s with a tire screeching sound effect. The energy bursts into a giant ball of fire as she poses, and the mooks are straight up incinerated.

VALKYRIE I LOVE YOU.

THE BEST WEAPONS GIRL HAS FIRE POWERS.

YES.

Vulcan watches as she calmly removes her Progrise key from her gun, and we don’t get to see the de-transformation, because he’s blocking it. But there’s smoke coming off of her when the shot pans to the other side, and we see Yua, telling Isamu that that is how it’s done.

Actually, now that I think about it, have we seen any of the three riders actively detransform yet? I don’t think we have… feel free to prove me wrong!

Because we see Vulcan pull his own key out, and glow blueish white, but we don’t see the transformation actually end. He walks off screen, and when he re-enters the frame, it’s Isamu, with similar wisps of smoke coming off of him. Interesting.

Isamu’s pissed, but Yua ignores him as he complains that she should have told him there were two ShotRisers.

–

Jin picks the ZetsumeRise key up out of the water.

–

Turns out that even with a ‘new’ Nigiro, they’ve still made the contract with Magokoro Sushi.

Aruto, watching the owner training new!Nigiro, wonders if he’s the only one who can see that HumaGear do have hearts. Izu tilts her heat, looking at him, asking for him to clarify. “Well, after all, he was able to move the owners heart.”

Aruto then apologizes to the owner, because now he has to start all over again. (The ‘Beginner’ icon flashes breifly over new!Nigiro’s earpeice.)

The owner is okay with that, though, because it means he just gets to teach him thoroughly from the beginning.

New!Nigiro serves Aruto a piece of Squid sushi, to which Aruto makes a comment that I’m pretty sure Ridertime didn’t translate well, because Japanese wordplay is a pain. Regardless, Izu goes on to explain  the pun, calling it quite the joke.

Aruto: Eh?!

She then goes and does his little punchline thing, the ‘and that’s aruto’ thing.

Thing is?

Aruto wasn’t even trying to make a pun. It was just a coincidence! Also, stop copying him! (He does the motion while telling her not to copy him.)

–

Elsewhere, a mysterious figure plays chess… as Yua gives her debrief.

Oh, no.

(Cue our third Kabuto: TWO comment.)

She says that she’s discovered Hiden Intelligence’s secret. The HumaGear have an auto-transfer program for their perception data. She wasn’t uploading her preferences to Nigiro, back in the beginning of the episode.

She was uploading spyware, to hijack his feed.

So, when Izu gave Aruto the Biting Shark Progrise Key in the office, Nigiro saw it. And, as a result, so did Yua. That’s why she was on her phone outside of the van. She was watching along with us.

Also, whoever she’s reporting to has a bracelet that can function as a holo-projector, because it’s showing him the same footage now.

But that isn’t the secret – that’s probably just technical specs.

No, the secret?

Hiden Intelligence isn’t supposed to have the Progrise Key data.

It was thought to have been destroyed in Daybreak.

You know, where metsuboujinrai.net is based out of.

Her boss (?), who sounds and looks young, from what we can see, says that… oh dear.

He says that this means ‘the arc will rise again,’ and that the CEO of Hiden is the key to it all… Zero One.

You know, the arc, the thing that Horobi was talking about earlier.

Oh, no.

End of episode.

–

So. Yua definitely knows that Aruto is Zero One. She also reports to someone that I’m pretty sure Isamu doesn’t. I’m hoping this is a case of ‘the right hand doesn’t know what the left is doing’, but that seems pretty unlikely.

Okay, so this season is somehow Ex-Aid, Drive, and Kabuto TWO.

WOW.

(Yua, please don’t be working for a fourth party, I don’t want to lose you…)

[firebirdsdaughter]

Okay…

… I feel very bitter right now.

But I am going to be eternally frustrated by the fact that as far as I could tell, Aruto’s (and therefore Izu’s) definition of ‘heart’ was ‘happy making humans happy.’

Or… ‘Seeing that humans are ultimately good’?

Really, just… I define a heart as ‘feeling emotions.’ Feeling emotions is useless unless you know how to handle them, which Horobi didn’t, and no one seemed at all invested in teaching him how. Just made him feel worse and worse, pressured him about something that terrified him and pushed him over the edge, and then a human who really should have known better went and grabbed the fucking Ark Key??? Like. Horobi’s somehow completely at fault for Izu pestering him until he lashed out like any emotionally immature child or even animal would and then she doesn’t move out of the way even though she easily could have, but Aruto grabbing the psycho Key and going nutty is ‘totally understandable bc grief.’

For one thing, wtf would Horobi believe Izu’s nonsense, she’s programmed to love and obey Aruto, and she never develops anywhere past that. He knows she’d say anything to save her beloved master. She has no identity out of ‘exists to serve Aruto and occasionally be cutesy.’ Listen, Takahashi, you need to work on your female characters when you resurrect one w/ no memory and she’s exactly the same.

My lack of sympathy for Izu’s ‘death’ is bc it could easily have been prevented by multiple other people even if Horobi did literally nothing different, and bc literally nothing was lost. If any of the humans had actually used that compassion they sing to the skies about, you know, like, the fact that they have years of practice knowing how to feel and control emotions. I’m sorry but, ‘did you feel Izu’s pain?’ Well, first off, no, bc she didn’t seem pained at all, she just kinda stood there parroting Aruto’s bs, but… What about feeling Horobi’s pain? Or… Was Izu being ‘sad’ Horobi didn’t magically forgive humanity for everything they put him through and took from him more important than him having being mind raped, controlled, conditioned, and abused for twelve years? ‘I believe in your heart’ you mean you ‘believe’ he’s going to magically switch around and conform to your views that humans are ultimately good and anything bad they do can be excused bc they teach you about ‘hearts’? Meanwhile, none of her memories changed her at all. She gazes lovingly at Aruto, she participates in his jokes… There was pretty much nothing to her other than ‘loves Aruto.’ Her character fell into the trap of KR’s general attitude toward female characters that they exist to be pure angels who unfailingly believe in the hero and the series’ attitude toward AI, that the definition of ‘goodness’ for them is completely devotion to humans and unrealistic purity and benevolence.

The question should never have been ‘will AI have benevolence towards humans’ but ‘do humans deserve it?’ ‘what can we do to justify that?’ Why do HumaGear have to ‘prove their worth’ and ‘teach humans to be nice to them’ but humans don’t have to… Like… Know how to be decent? Aruto’s sympathies and dreams for HumaGear were exclusively rooted in how they benefitted humans. He expects the ‘hearts’ they develop to be completely ‘pure’ and ‘benevolent’ even if humanity has given them no reason to be so.

Horobi was the most aware of how horrible the Ark was. Everything he did, he did bc he was conditioned to believe it was right for HumaGear. Bc he saw the cruelty of humanity, and wanted to protect his people from it. He was conditioned/programmed to react w/ absolutes and extremes. He didn’t turn on the Ark bc he realised humans were actually ‘good’ he did it bc she turned on HumaGear, and he fought bc he loved HumaGear. His love for HumaGear, for Jin, was stronger than her control. That was it.

But he also knew that she was created by humans. Deliberately. It doesn’t matter that Gai had a personality one eighty bc the satellite printed him a dog and Aruto’s only for humans AI therapist talked to him for a hot minute. This shit doesn’t work like that, Gai should be at least facing jail time for his part in things. Yotacrappy’s response was to manipulated Jin into trying to kill him as a sacrifice, even after the Ark was out of the picture. Not a single person reacted w/ ‘maybe we should give this poor AI who has literally had his entire mind and life fucked over by humans and has no reason to like us a bit of kindness and support to help deal w/ the emotions he’s suddenly feeling.’ Izu’s speech was kinda close, but the tone was ultimately ‘she’s right and he’s wrong.’ The attitude shouldn’t be that ‘humans can sometimes be beneficial, so that makes the wrong they do okay.’ The fact that they tried to pretend that even the most twisted humans were ‘actually just misguided’ was ridiculous.

Horobi’s suffering was real and valid, and deserved recognition beyond ‘lol, but humans are actually nice, tho.’ He was scared and confused, but no one was trying to help him through that, they were just belittling the very valid reasons he had to be angry at humans. Rather than being like ‘I understand you’re angry and in pain and those are valid feelings, but there’s a better way to do this’ the response was either aggression or ‘no, you’re wrong, they teach us to want them to be happy and to dream or serving them well!’ (pretty much what Aruto’s definition of ‘good HumaGear’ seemed to be). And then even the people who should understand the most how her feels act like he’s spreading a ‘shocking’ and ‘bad’ thought by offering HumaGear a chance to stand up for themselves. I really hate how the protests were treated as Horobi spreading ‘malice’ to the HuamGear and all conveniently disappeared when Aruto ‘won.’

Again. The Frozen quote is eternally accurate for Aruto’s ‘dream.’ ‘It’ll be just like it was except for we’ll be best friends.’

Aruto’s dream was never equality or freedom for HumaGear. What he wanted was for them to go back to work for humans w/ smiles painted on their faces to make humans happy. HumaGear’s meaning in life shouldn’t be to ‘be useful to humans.’ I wasn’t expecting the ending to be ‘everything is okay now,’ but I was under the impression that there would be some kind of motion toward HumaGear getting some rights and protections or respect by virtue of being, like, living beings rather than needing to work and be ‘useful’ to justify their existence. Aruto is very face value, he thinks that the programmed personalities humans give HumaGear are their ‘true natures’ when they’re not, they’re just a starting point. They need to branch out. The fact that Izu’s entire life just revolved around benefiting Aruto made it hard to sympathise w/ her in place of the more interesting and dynamic characters. The fact that Aruto tries to claim HumaGear are his ‘employees’ when the definition of that word literally is ‘someone who works for a wage’ and people pay his company to get HumaGear to work for them and he delivers them to people in boxes… It’s just ridiculous. They shouldn’t have to just be ‘perfect pure forgiving little angels’ just bc humans made them and occasionally are nice to them? Izu’s data was just as biased as Horobi’s, they should have met in the middle rather than her being painted as ‘right’ and ‘good’ for only thinking of humans as good.

Yes, Horobi should have responded w/ violence, but literally no one even tried to put real effort into showing him other ways to react, or to help him through what happened to him. They either shouted at him, put him down, invalidated his suffering (admittedly bc she was just as out of balance maturity-wise as he was), or outright tried to kill him. Any child or animal will lash out when stressed or panicked. It is the responsibility of the people w/ more awareness to know what they’re dealing w/ and act accordingly. Izu knew he was armed, she saw the weapon pointed at her, she had plenty of time to move, and choose not to. That was not Horobi’s fault. It also wasn’t Horobi’s fault that humans decided to not give her a back up to benefit themselves. How was he even supposed to know that? Where was Aruto? Why was he running around outside trying to make the other HumaGear go back to his definition of ‘normal,’ while telling them there’s ‘no reason to fight anymore,’ which really should be their decision??? If he really cared and wanted to help Horobi and saw HumaGear as people, wouldn’t he have run in and tried to properly talk Horobi down? Then we have Yua’s hypocrisy of reacting aggressively to Horobi and them giving a speech to Yotacrappy for reacting the exact same way to the protests. And then Fuwa literally shooting down the one time Horobi genuinely tried to reach out… While kinda in character… Definitely did not help. Horobi was never in a place to parse out implications.

Basically, they pushed Horobi over the edge, then blamed him for being broken. Meanwhile, they have all sorts of ‘compassion’ and ‘understanding’ for Aruto and it’s ‘not his fault’ bc ‘grief.’ The attitude that Horobi’s suffering at the hands of the Ark was less important than Aruto’s trained AI letting herself get shot? The fact that Horobi, however horribly they influenced him to think he was completely at fault, was willing to ‘forgive’ humans for everything he suffered through bc of them… Is much more compassion than Aruto ever showed him.

Horobi had every right to be angry w/ humans and blame them for their part in what he went through. And humans never admitted responsibility for that, and never apologised to him.

But he’s supposed to need forgiveness from them?

[sailor-cresselia]

Zero One 02: Shot through the heart, and Vulcan’s to blame

He gives wolves a bad name.

…I’m not sorry.

I’m bouncing between the three non-TV-Nihon sub groups right now – OverTime, Rider Time, and Genm Corp. Since all three had their subs available quickly, this’ll make it easier to compare differences. Also, Genm Corp was the only one of the three who bothered subbing the OP when it appeared as an insert in episode 01, so I’ve only seen the one style for it yet.

Zero One 02: START

––––

We open with Izu and Aruto stepping out in front of Hiden Intelligence, where she formally introduces herself as his personal assistant.

He’s still in very justifiable disbelief that he’s been named President. He’s a comedian, for crying out loud! Izu points out that not only was he personally selected by the founder, the point of the HumaGear is to make people smile. That lines up with his own goal of making people smile, so he is well suited for the job.

Aruto: I mean?! TECHNICALLY?!

As they walk further into the building from the lobby, Jun and one of the other members of the board peek out from behind a vase of flowers and a table. He swears that he’ll pull the chair out from under their new chairman.

Shesta stands there, unimpressed.

The security system is pretty cool! At first glance, it appears to be the standard ‘bioscanner and glass pane’ set up that you see in all sorts of media – and then you realize that once a person has been let in? The ‘glass’ door is just a hologram. It’s a holographic door that says STOP on it, and it disappears when  it’s ‘open’. Which raises the question of ‘do we have solid-light holograms’ here. I wouldn’t put it past this season.

Unfortunately for Aruto, he. Uh. Hasn’t been added to the security system just yet. Instead of the circle saying that it’s okay to pass, he just gets a big old X and a buzzer noise.

After several attempts of smacking the scanner, a security HumaGear briskly steps up. He scans Aruto, and greets him as ‘President Hiden Aruto,’ bowing formally. Aruto returns the bow and greeting…

And still can’t get through the gate.

–

Daybreak Town.

Horobi watches a delivery HumaGear on a screen.

…oh. Oh dear.

After my last liveblog, I had a thought that I worked out with some others, that the selection of which HumaGear get hijacked probably isn’t random. That Taro’s smile was geniune when he thought back to the audience, and that he’d reached sentience – he’d hit the evolutionary singularity.

I thought that Horobi and Jin might be specifically using HumaGear who had hit singularity to turn into monsters. They’re not trying to bring on the singularity, they’re weaponizing it.

And Horobi just said that the one he’s watching is approaching it. That satisfied little nod to himself as he hoists up a package… yeah. That sure seems more like Taro than the other HumaGear we’ve seen.

Handing a Progrize Key to Jin, Horobi tells him to go collect the data.

…After Berotha was defeated, they plugged the broken key back into the holder that he’d pulled it from during his expository monologue.

So, maybe… trying to weaponize the mechanical rise, and bring it about en masse? Or something?

–

Back at Hiden, Aruto is ‘exploring’ his new office.

Looks like I was right on the money with my ‘dumb puppy’ comparison, he’s all over the place.

The 3D printing studio is just part of a big mechanical work bench section of the office, down a level from the office section of the office.

It’s also clearly up really high, because one of those tv-drones can be seen at the same level outside.

The workstation can be neatly hidden away, as well, when a wall builds itself back into existence, blocking the whole thing from view and leaving the room more like a normal office.

That’s the point when Izu decides it’s time to go over his schedule. He’s got a morning meeting with some government representatives… right now.

(Aruto has a brief, quiet panic about not being dressed for this – he’s wearing his day-glo sneakers, a formal pair of pants, and a formal suit jacket… and the jacket is on over his hoodie. It barely fits over his hoodie.)

We’re finally formally introduced to our two main members of AIMS; Techinical Advisor Yaiba Yua and Agent Fuwa Isamu.

Apparently, they’re going to be questioning all of Hiden’s personnel. Yua is much more reserved about this, and Isamu-

Okay, wow, if I didn’t hate him just from last episode, I’d hate him already. He slams a hand down on the desk, leaning way into Aruto’s space, ‘warning’ him to be thorough, because his answers could land him in jail.

Come on! He just got here! Aruto has had this job for less than a day, he doesn’t know jack!

–

…Oh, come ON!

STILL NO OPENING?!

–

Delivery HumaGear is doing his job, when a playful voice calls out from on top of the truck. How’d Jin get up there? Who knows! But he’s already calling the deliveryman his friend, as he forcefully places the false driver onto him, saying that he can start by destroying this company.

The deliveryman, wracked with pain and red sparks, mind you, says that HumaGear are supposed to make people smile!

We see from his perspective as Jin crouches in front of him, a progress bar filling as Jin tells him he’s wrong. It’s to make people extinct.

Connection established.

–

Back at Hiden, we see that Aruto has exactly zero idea what’s going on, and that Isamu gives zero shits about acting professional during an interrogation.

Basically, AIMS suspects Hiden Intelligence of covering incidents up. Currently, the specific incident in question is the one at the amusement park yesterday. They’ve clearly gotten the remains of most of the rogue HumaGear, but there wasn’t a trace of the one in charge.

Because he was very thoroughly destroyed, not that anyone but Aruto and Izu know that.

Izu, connecting to the server, states that there are no records of anything matching that description… as phrased by Genmcorp. Going by Ridertime, she says that they can not validate those records. Overtime has her saying that there’s no data to corroborate Yua’s claims.

In any case… something is going on. Hiden is very definitely covering this up, and using Aruto to do it. He’s just following Izu’s ‘lead,’ because he has zero idea what’s going on.

Isamu implies that this isn’t new, that Hiden has covered things up before.

Yua tells Aruto that AIMS has the authority to prosecute HumaGear-based violations.

Not that Aruto actually knows what that sort of thing would be, so he asks Izu, who recites off the good ol’ First Law of Robotics: A HumaGear may not allow a human to come to harm, for any reason.

Isamu – area speciesist – basically threatens Aruto, telling him not to think he can keep this quiet, these HumaGears are killing machines.

Yua, who is a few bullet-shaped microaggressions away from punching her ‘partner’, tells him to cut it out, they’re not here to commit slander.

Being the dumb puppy that he is, Aruto thinks he can break the tension with one of his old stand up routines.

This doesn’t work.

In fact, it looks like it does the opposite of work, and I’m pretty sure that Isamu’s about ready to kill a man with his bare hands.

It’s a little ironic that the giant ‘emergency’ warnings flashing around the room are what probably just saved Aruto’s life. Mind you, they also confuse the heck out of all three humans in the room. Izu, who often looks about two steps away from saying ‘screw the first law’, lets Aruto know that he has a trespasser.

–

Said trespasser is a very-much hijacked deliveryman, tossing people around – human and humagear alike. His transformation into the Kuehne Magear is no less terrifying than the one into Berotha last episode, although it is thankfully over much faster.

Kuehne is based on the Kuehneosuchus, a late Triassic gliding reptile. This is most easily seen in how he has a pair of wing-shaped boomerangs.

A security humagear manages to block said murder-rangs from killing Jun and the other board member, but that wound up redirecting them to the balcony where Aruto and the others were, dividing the party as everyone dodges.

And these blades are dangerous, too. They can cleave right through the display stands, which appear to be made of poured concrete.

As Isamu and Yua fire, I can’t help but notice her saying he’s disobeying orders again – he is not supposed to have the transformation gun right now.

Oh, goody! As an arboreal gliding lizard, Kuehne is able to crawl along walls! Right up until he takes a hit from Isamu’s Shot Riser, which makes enough of an impact that it knocks him back to the ground.

Isamu, pulling out a Progrise Key, says that he’ll transform and scrap it.

Or, he would, if the key would open. He’s a bit distracted by his non-functional transformation trinket as Kuehne launches his boomerangs again, so Yua literally kicks him to the ground to dodge the return path.

I love her.

I love her even more now that I know that she’s the weapons administrator, and that key isn’t going to open without her authorization.

Yua, I love you, please don’t die.

The security humagear are evacuating the remaining civilians, as Izu all but hurls Aruto out of view. “President Aruto, it would be wise of you to do something before anyone dies.” Emphasis mine, but I strongly suspect she would be placing the same if she were allowed to have emotions yet.

“However… please conceal your identity from AIMS.”

Aruto seems really reluctant at first… and then he hears the screaming again, and turns around, his expression level. “Henshin.”

There’s a brief scuffle between Zero One and Kuehne, which moves the fight outside, and Aruto does okay… until his sweep kick is dodged very handily via Kuehne landing on the wall. That sort of jumping ability does tend to put a damper on knocking someone off their feet.

As Aruto’s hit by a few shots from Kuehne, he gets knocked down, and as he gets to his feet, here come Isamu and Yua, guns drawn and aimed at him. Oh, uh, not just aimed at. Isamu’s shooting at him. Aruto’s protests of ‘you’ve got the wrong guy’ are useless, as Kuehne’s disappeared. Zero One proceeds to take off, as well, dodging gunfire and leaping off of walls to get distance.

Aruto has just barely dropped his transformation when the AIMS agents make it to where he wound up. Isamu grabs him by the lapel, shoving him into a wall and ‘asking’ where he’s hiding ‘the yellow one.’

“I’m not hiding him! He went that way!” Aruto points at the fucking sky, and this somehow works, so as the agents move away from him – only a few yards, mind you – Aruto nopes the heck out of there.

Isamu, the Key dangling from his fingers, demands that Yua unlock it.

“Why would I do that for someone as stupidly reckless as you?!” (The only part of that sentence that’s subtext is ‘stupidly,’ everything else is just straight up text.)

Isamu, getting in her face, all but yells that he’s the captain here.

She gives as good as she gets, retorting right back that she’s in charge of the entire arsenal. If she doesn’t think you should be using the super gun, you’re not getting to use the super gun. They split up, to go look for the rogue HumaGear.

–

In the Hiden lobby, Shesta and that same security guard we’ve been seeing assure the small crowd that it was just a security drill, nothing more.

As the relieved crowd disperses, Aruto jogs up, thanking the guard for protecting everyone.

“President Aruto, it is my task to protect the people of this company.”

Izu smiles a little bit, looking slightly away from her dumb puppy of a boss. Most people don’t treat HumaGear on the same level as humans – not quite. But Aruto talks to her like a regular person, and he greeted one of his coworkers at the park by name – Yui, one of the greeters.

Aruto notices the damage to the guards arm, and flashes back to his father – humagear legs revealed, synthetic skin torn away. He pauses, just for a moment, his smile dropping a little, before he turns back to the guard.

“Then, tell me your name! I won’t forget it.”

Implying that people don’t usually bother to remember HumaGear’s names.

“Mamoru. President Korenosuke named me.” The guard – Mamoru – looks a little less stiff at that, a little less pre-programmed.

“I see. We’re basically family then, right?” Aruto pulls out a handkerchief, tying it around Mamoru’s damaged arm. (Oh, for the love of – it’s got those comedy paper fans on it. Aruto, please.) He pats Mamoru on the shoulder. “Get yourself patched up.” He grins as he heads back into the office.

Mamoru looks down at the inexplicable impromptu bandage… and smiles. A real, authentic, smile, not the programmed one.

A distance away, Jin spins a key in his hand, and smiles as well.

–

Isamu interrupts a ‘talk’ between Jun and Aruto, the second of whom has zero idea what’s going on.

He brings Aruto to the roof to talk, because that’s totally a good idea… but it’s nice and private, at least.

He starts going on about how the company hasn’t changed, that it’s still building itself on a foundation of victims. Aruto protests that HumaGears are supposed to make peoples lives better, that they’re what people dreamed of!

“So you’ll just let the nightmare repeat itself?!” Isamu pauses after yelling, and then resumes talking, more calmly this time. “An entire city was destroyed in an accident.”

Ah. There’s why we came up here. It’s to give us a visual. The roof has a wonderful angle of Daybreak Town.

Aruto grows somber at the mention of Daybreak, thinking back to an explosion of blue fire engulfing a school building, and his younger self crying over his fathers broken body.

“But that catastrophe was no accident. The truth was that HumaGears went on a murderous rampage. I was there, that day…”

Holy shit. Isamu was… late middle school, maybe a first year in high school at most, waking up in a blasted, ruined classroom… and it sure looks like the other students in there are dead. Red-eyed humagear – an earlier model, going by the less detailed faces – are crawling at the windows, hurling themselves after him as he runs.

“And Hiden Intelligence covered it all up. They claimed it was an accident!”

Aruto stands, shocked, his eyes wide, before growing serious as Isamu storms up to him, glaring. “I will expose your company, and their sins.”

While Isamu walks off… I’m pretty sure that Aruto’s vowing to do the same.

–

Kuehne reappears, where the press is hounding for answers in front of Hiden, tossing people aside.

Mamoru charges him, trying to tackle him away, before being similarly tossed aside. As he gets up…

No.

No, no, no.

As Mamoru gets up, Jin places a buckle at his waist.

–

AND THEN I HAD TO SPEND 15 MINUTES WAITING FOR MY COMPUTER TO UPDATE.

–

As Mamoru gets up, Jin places a buckle at his waist, saying that he can be one of his friends, too.

Mamoru, on one knee, in pain, tries so, so hard to reject this. “To protect this company…” he clutches at the arm that Aruto had wrapped for him. “That is my task!” He’s not saying this in the scared manner that Taro or the deliveryman, named Okureru, according to KRWiki, did. He’s defiant, and angry, and glaring right up at Jin, even as he gets grabbed by the chin and forced to look directly at him, as the download completes.

–

Yua and a team of AIMS troops ‘corner’ Kuehne, firing on him.

–

As people evacuate, Aruto runs up to Izu.

Slowly, Jin comes up the stairs toward them. When Aruto asks who he is, he says “Me? Hmm… the pioneer of a new world… I guess.”

A security door opens behind him, Mamoru stepping through, his face vacant… and a little bit haunted. None of the fear or loss of control from the other two. He looks like he’s been erased far more than they had.

“Mamoru!? Why did you let him in?”

“It is what I was commanded…” He pulls out a key, and inserts it into his murder belt.

Aruto already recognizes those belts, too.

Mamoru’s transformation into Ekal is terrifying, yes, but he doesn’t scream through it, like the previous two magear did. He’s silent, and since we don’t see as much of it, that is where the terror comes from.

The tragedy comes from how it happens. His uniform burned away… but near the end of the transformation, we see that the handkerchief didn’t disintegrate. It fluttered to the ground. On fire, yes, and definitely not the same size it used to be. But it wasn’t completely destroyed.

Ekal takes his theming from Ekaltadeta, a type of carnivorous marsupial. They can tell it was a carnivore, or an omnivore with a preference for meat, by the “large buzz-saw-shaped cheek-tooth” found in the species fossils. That description of the tooth is a direct quote from Wikipedia.

Aruto grabs Ekal around the waist, calling for Mamoru, to try and wake him up. This isn’t him, so please, snap out of it!

He gets thrown against a pillar for his trouble.

Izu chooses now to speak up. “Once HumaGear code has been modified, it cannot be reverted.” There’s no other option. Aruto has to eliminate him.

“no…”

Ekal, in a robotic monotone, advances. “Humans must be…”

–

“-Eliminated!” Kuehne, growling, finishes the sentence in the loading area where he’s cornered Yua. She backs away to reload her gun, but Kuehne is on top of the shipping container already. She aims her weapon-

And a shot passes right past her ear.

Isamu, stop doing that. I swear, if we lose her to friendly fire of all things…

He stalks up, the belt for his Shot Riser in his off hand, swearing that he will crush all HumaGears.

Yua yells at him to stop, even as he latches the Shot Riser in place, he doesn’t have clearance yet!

“I said I’m going to do it! And I make my own rules!”

Someone needs to knock this asshole down a few pegs.

He pulls out the Progrise key, and as he strains to get it to open, there are momentary flashes of the red-eyed HumaGear attacking, and him running. “The HumaGears are going to pay…”

–

Aruto is flung against a column, again. “HumaGears are the reason I’m here today…”

We flash to when he was a child, with the blue explosion… and see that his father shielded him from it, pushing him to the ground and covering him with his own body.

“A HumaGear protected me.” In the present, he drags himself to his feet. “HumaGears aren’t killing machines!” Izu watches in the background as he puts on the driver and furiously glares. “They’re humanity’s dream!

–

Isamu pulls at his Progrise Key. “HumaGears are a threat, they’re humanities enemy!” He keeps forcing at it. “And I’m going to obliterate every last one of them!”

The Shooting Wolf Progrise Key opens.

Bullet! Authorize!

The belt plays a sound clip of “Kamen Rider” over and over, looping, the background music effect audibly looping with it. And then Shooty McAsshole gets a STUPIDLY COOL TRANSFORMATION SEQUENCE.

“Henshin!”

SHOTRISE

He fires the gun, and the bullet looks like it’s a seeker round, by the way it zooms around Kuehne, and then back toward Isamu…

It starts to ‘split apart’ as it returns, and then he pUNCHES THE BULLET IN MIDAIR. It breaks apart and the suit forms. The armored portions are the first to appear, latching onto him, as red circuit lines trace down his body, which presumably turn into his undersuit.

But the best part, especially for me, a Double fan, is seeing his helmet form. The individual pieces start as little disks, before spinning out into the shapes on the helmet. Those same red circuit lights that made the base for his suit also trail up his face, before the helmet segments close in and form the helmet proper.

For those who haven’t seen Double – and you should – that helmet formation is almost the exact same way it happens for Double, Accel, Skull, and Eternal. Literally the only difference is that the helmets in Fuuto form out of… like, fragments? They aren’t distinguishable until they’re actively part of the helmet, basically. And the lines are darker in a Gaia Memory based transformation, instead of glowing, but still.

Kamen Rider Valkyrie had better get an even better transformation than Vulcan is. I refuse to let her be shown up by this asshole.

The elevation increases as the bullet is fired

–

Jump! Authorize!

Aruto, I am begging you to get your mechanical grasshopper under control, because once again, he’s causing even more damage to the surroundings. Also, he is very definitely being teleported down from the satellite – the 3D printing doesn’t seem to go through things, and that grasshopper just crashed in through a skylight.

…Aw, man. We’re not going to get a cool robot wolf or cheetah, are we?

Just one more way that Aruto’s transformation is different from the others. He has the undersuit form first, they have the armor. Zero One has a giant robot, Vulcan has a literal bullet. He has a belt, they have a gun.

Hm.

Zero One charges to battle-

–

-and the shot transitions smoothly to Vulcan doing the same. He and Kuehne are swapping blows in the enclosed spaces between shipping containers, while Yua films it with her RisePhone.

“Fuwa Isamu has become Kamen Rider Vulcan. It’s finally begun…”

…Honey, what do you mean by that?

–

Zero One and Ekal have made it to a parking garage – and. Uh. Okay, so. He knocked Ekal down, and said magear landed near a row of motorcycles.

Remember how Berotha used those cables to reprogram the other HumaGear in the last episode?

Ekal just used that to jumpstart a motorcycle to get away.

And then it gets WEIRDER!

Izu shows up, telling Aruto that his phone can summon his company motorcycle.

And by ‘summon,’ we’re being quite literal here. I think we all assumed that the phone was going to be like the Machin Builder. It’s not. The phone has a bike app, that he has to scan on his belt, same as the Progrise Key.

This is where the ‘Changing to Super Bike, Motorcycle Mode’ voice clip comes from.

Then. We see the satellite – which Genm Corp and Over Time agree is called ‘Zea’, as opposed to ‘Z-A’ like Rider Time had chosen. A section on it rotates, and it is definitely straight up sending the grasshopper down for the transformations. How can I tell that?

Because a panel on the satellite opens up, dropping a giant Risephone to earth.

Regular phone, in a polite female voice: “Please watch your head.”

Aruto, confused: “Eh?”

Ceiling: destroyed

The giant risephone is floating over the rubble – yes, it’s definitely floating in mid-air, I can see it bobbing up and down. Aruto presses the giant bike app icon, and there’s the ‘phone becomes a bike’ aspect.

Aruto just sort of goes with this. His life has already become weird enough in the past day and a half, why not just get on the floating phone-bike-comet?!

Zero One and the Rise Hopper nyoom down the street in hot pursuit.

–

Ekal, meanwhile… seems to be following traffic laws much more closely on his stolen Honda than Aruto is on his company vehicle. Case in point, Zero One just used a car as a ramp to get some air. He got too much air, and drove on the side of a building, shattering the windows, several stories up, before finally going back down to the actual ground.

This show is wild, and I think that insert theme is kicking back in.

Oh, no, maybe it’s just normal fight music. Everything looks like it’s going at a weird speed, because they’re allegedly fighting each other by punching and kicking while driving motorcycles next to each other. And it looks really slow! I. You know what, it gets us some NICE stuff, so whatever. Such as Ekal having extendable fangs that nearly knock Zero One off of his bike, but him hanging on by literally one hand and foot, and pulling himself back upright in time to avoid getting hit directly by an oncoming truck.

Then he does some truly absurd kicks to Ekal’s face… while standing on the bike seat.

Our protagonist, ladies and gentlemen!

The second kick is the one that knocks Ekal completely off of his respective bike, so Zero One skids to a stop, and goes back to fight, pulling out his Attache Calibur, going after Ekal.

–

The shot of Zero One rushing off screen with his sword transitions directly into Kuehne’s perspective of attacking Vulcan with his own swords. Vulcan blocking a strike and pushing it away transitions directly into Vulcan’s perspective as he shoots.

The cinematography of this show so far is just. Mwa. Beautiful.

There’s some time with Vulcan dodging the boomerang blades, before Kuehne must catch them and leaps down to attack-

–

-transitioning right into Zero One parkouring up and off of a shipping container to kick Ekal.

Wait. A shipping container? There’s. Uh. Your new location has a lot of those. And Vulcan’s already surrounded by them.

And AIMS thinks Zero One is another rogue HumaGear.

Uh-oh.

…Oh.

Oh, my heart. We’re not even getting that conflict yet.

We’re getting the end of the Zero One versus Ekal fight.

Breathing heavily, Aruto pulls his Progrise Key out of his driver. “There’s only one thing that can stop you…” His voice is shaking, he does not want to have to do this. We see a shot of him tying the kercheif around Mamoru’s arm. He looks at the key, and then back at Ekal. “And that’s me!” His voice is breaking, and so is my heart, and I’m pretty sure he’s trying not to cry under that helmet.

The music is dark, dismal.

There’s nothing heroic about this sunset victory.

–

Yikes.

So. Uh. Vulcan’s initial finisher.

He, naturally, activates the progrise key and shoots. That’s as expected. Four over-sized energy bullets come out. That’s as expected, it’s a superhero finisher.

What’s significantly less expected is for said energy shots to then turn into energy wolves, which track down the fleeing Kuehne. And bit onto his limbs. Okay, yes, fine. When the first two have him by the arms.

They pin him against one of the shipping containers as the other two go for his legs, and when I say ‘pin him against’ I am being incredibly literal.

The wolves turn into spikes and literally pin him in place.

This shipping container isn’t even anywhere Vulcan can see. He fires again.

The energy sphere literally burns straight through three consecutive containers before it reaches where Kuehne is pinned and then presumably melted.

I say presumably, because we don’t see any remains. We do see that the fourth container has had a hole melted through, same as the others. Zero One sees this, as well, since he’s right on the other side, and just barely didn’t get hit by the massive ball of energy that was still going.

Vulcan looks at him, gun still raised and shaking slightly with his rage.

A cloud of smoke billows past Zero One, obscuring his escape.

Vulcan stands alone, a full moon hanging low in the sky.

–

The next day, Jun is heading a press conference – or, trying to. Nobody seems to believe that he doesn’t have any comment with regards to any potential HumaGear having gone berserk. Yua and Isamu watch the chaos unfold as they stand along a back wall. Also, Isamu must have screwed up his shooting arm in that fight, because it’s in a sling.

“It’s the truth!”

And just like in the board room, all it takes is a short, sharp phrase from Aruto to silence the room, even as the theme song intensifies in the background.

Hiden Aruto strides forward, in a well-fitted suit, Izu following a step and a half behind him as he takes the stage. She starts a video as he speaks.

It’s Mamoru, and Jin, right before Mamoru was turned into Ekal. From the direction of the camera… this is taken from a feed from Izu herself.

Aruto, at the podium, in front of reporters and government officials, tells them that the true people behind this are the terrorist group Metsuboujinrai.net, that they hack HumaGears and corrupt their programming.

Going by Yua and Isamu’s reactions, they had no idea that anything of the sort was happening. They also know full well that the third person in the video is Aruto – they recognize that hoodie from the same afternoon.

If he was trying to cover this up, why would he film himself being attacked? Why would he film it with one of his own security guards doing the attacking?

He swears that he will prove that the HumaGear are not at fault.

(He doesn’t say this, but… he’s not doing this as a CEO, but as a person. It’s not a corporate desire driving him to prove his companies innocence, it’s because it’s what’s right, and humans and HumaGear alike deserve better than this.)

One of the human reporters asks who he even is.

“Chief Executive Officer and President of Hiden Intelligence, Hiden Aruto.”

Jun looks like he wants to do a murder.

Aruto has come off cool and collected, serious throughout this entire section… and then a HumaGear reporter brings up that it seems unlikely a comedian like him could be a company president.

This was a mistake.

He steps out from behind the podium, looking like he’s going to make a grandiose statement, and… no. No, it’s one of his terrible, nigh-untranslatable jokes. Something about bright futures and shining and whatever. Izu is now his accomplice, helping him out by shining a light from her tablet.

The room is left silent for a completely different reason.

…Oh no. It’s not going to be heroic resolve that wins Isamu over to Aruto’s side. It’s going to be Aruto’s terrible, awful, no-good sense of humor.

Because Isamu wasn’t fighting the urge to punch him in the office.

He was trying not to break out laughing.

This aspect will not end well.

Isamu and Yua leave, him trying to regain his stoicism, as Aruto desperately begs Izu to stop explaining his jokes.

––––

Zero one zero one zero one zero one zero one I DON’T HAVE A GOOD END COMMENT

UH.

Okay, so. The special effects in this show. The cinematography. They’re SO GOOD.

I acknowledge that Yua’s going to have a very hard time getting a better transformation into Valkyrie than Isamu has into Vulcan, but by gaim, I need her to beat him out.

The cuts between shots tying into each other during the fights was just. Ugh. Yes. It’s beautiful.

The only problem I have right now, that I’m willing to get into, anyway… where are our opening credits?! Are we going to have to wait until episode four for them?! Because episode three is where we’re finally getting Valkyrie, so they might just be waiting until we have our three main riders. Might.

As for the problem that I’m not willing to get into just yet… I know that I didn’t mention, during the press conference, that there’s a shot of… a new Mamoru. I don’t want to get into the topic of “can you ‘recreate’ an AI” at the moment. I’m not good at dealing with things like the Ship of Theseus Paradox in the first place, and since it looks like we’re going to be getting more into the ‘do HumaGear have hearts’ next episode, I’d like to at minimum wait until then.

Until next week!

Zero one zero one zero one zero one- PLEASE JUST GIVE US OUR PROPER OPENING SEQUENCE ALREADY I BEG YOU.

(Takahashi-san, please. Please don’t start off doing the thing from Ex-Aid, where Excite wound up being an ending theme for a good third of the season. Please.)

[firebirdsdaughter]

Random Writing Tidbit Still Can’t Focus…

… One day, I’m gonna be able to sleep. DX

Maybe.

Whooo! More of my desperate hoping for the Thouser to be the bigger bad! Yay!

Or not yay, depending on how much I’m annoying everyone w/ this.

Quick rundown of the setting: Jin and Horobi have kinda had redemption arcs; at the very least, it’s been established Thouser is the real villain. Thouser is doing something--not entirely sure what but I have a hazy idea that it’s, like something about merging people and machines or something, like he’s literally trying to become the satellites, I dunno how to explain--via having taken over both the Ark and ZEA. He’s kidnapped Jin bc for some reason Jin is a compatible interface for the combined satellites--only catch is, that’s  not pleasant for Jin (might write a thing about that later--it’s my theoretical timeline, I can write Thouser months before his debut if I like! XD). Anyway, during this time, the Daybreak site exploded (again), bc Thouser left a bomb there after kidnapping Jin to kill Horobi when he came back (looking for Jin). The heroes were informed of this, and they (and also Thouser and Jin, actually) believe Horobi died in the explosion.

Meanwhile, said heroes are trying to formulate a plan to stop Thouser. They figure out that they can mess up whatever he’s doing in they connect to the satellites, which would cut his strength down and provide a distraction while they storm the castle--however, they need someone who has proper authorisation to go mucking about in the satellite, and they all need to be, again, storming the castle. Additionally, it is very dangerous, bc they don’t know what could happen in the satellite, and also, bc of how unreliable the connection is since the satellite’s are hijacked, there’s the risk of getting stuck in said satellite if the connect breaks. Probably other stuff I can’t think of rn.

So, they’re in Hiden HQ debating what to do about all this, when a little voice speaks up from the door…

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“I will do it.”

Aruto spun around at the same time both AIMs Riders turned in surprise, and found his HumaGear secretary, standing straight as a pin by the door, casual and calm as always, hands folded neatly. “Izu?” He managed, then, “… You’re sure about this? You heard what Yaiba-san said about the risks, right? If something happens…” He faltered, swallowing, then stepped forward, making sure she heard him. “… I don’t want to lose you.”

“So what are we, chopped liver?” Isamu grumbled faintly behind him—but then Vulcan’s hand, warm and solid, came down on his shoulder, and he knew immediately that the other Rider had understood, especially when he, too, looked over at Izu. “He’s right, though. Something goes wrong, we won’t be able to pull you out.”

“I am certain.” The secretary insisted, her voice rising a little. She looked at Aruto. “Aruto-saichou. As the Presidential Aide, it is my duty to do everything I can to support you. I am capable of connecting to the ZEA satellite, and will be able to disrupt Thouser’s plans there.” She squared her shoulders, eyes determined. “This is my family and my fight as well, Aruto-saichou.” Har gaze moved between the three of them. “If you are risking yourselves for this, then so will I. I will not sit idle.”

Aruto felt tears in his eyes, though he wasn’t sure if they were of pride, hope, or fear. “Izu…”

“Hold up a minute.” Yua’s voice cut through the moment, practical as always. “Before you all get too far ahead of yourselves; just uploading someone to ZEA isn’t going to be enough.” Picking up her phone, she came over, pulling up a hologram on the screen, showing both the active satellite—and the downed one. “He’s bouncing the signal back and forth between both it and the Ark, and has complete control of both. If we take down one, he’ll just use the other. The only way this will work, is if we interfere with both at the same time.” She closed the display. “Izu can connect to ZEA, but we don’t have a HumaGear who can safely interface with the Ark, and there’s not enough time to make one.” Silence fell over the room.

“Yes, we do.” Everyone froze, heads turning to stare at Izu.

Aruto gaped at her. “I… What?” He managed. “Are you saying you can-” He cut off sharply when, instead of answering, Izu looked slightly over her shoulder, then jerked her head at the room. There was a rustling, then footsteps.

Horobi stepped out from behind her with his usual, viciously inhuman grace, glaring around the room like he was daring them to question his presence.

After a moment of shock that the rogue HumaGear was even alive after the Daybreak site’s explosion, two of the present Riders snapped to action. Yua reached instinctively for her ProgriseKey, and Aruto moved to pull Izu away from the MetsubouJinrai.net Rider. Only Isamu stayed surprisingly calm, his hand tightening on Aruto’s shoulder to hold him in place, the other motioning for Yua to stand down.

Valkyrie shot her partner a glare, but complied, though she kept her hand ready to move. “Have you lost your mind?” She demanded sharply, glaring at the rogue HumaGear, but addressing Izu. “You honestly believe he’s willing to take a risk like this for humanity?”

Horobi’s icy gaze moved briefly to her. “… Not for humanity.” He replied shortly—then his look shifted to Vulcan, like he expected him to understand. “…For Jin.”

Isamu kept calmly meeting the HumaGear’s permanently weary stare while both Aruto and Yua faltered slightly at the declaration. After a moment, Valkyrie found her voice again. “… Thouser is using him as the primary interface for both satellites.” She explained softly, a small edge of sympathy slipping into her voice despite herself. “That’s way more than any HumaGear was ever-”

The cold eyes flicked back to her. “Do not underestimate Jin.” Horobi snapped, genuine emotion entering his voice—irritation, but also a bit of pride. “He’s far stronger than others.” He faltered, eyes flitting to the floor for a moment. “… But he won’t last forever.” Stepping forward, the other Rider’s intense stare bore into each of them. “You save Jin, I will help you destroy a thousand satellites, a hundred times more dangerous.”

Silence followed—Isamu glanced sideways at Yua, who was scowling slightly. Finally, she sighed deeply. “… Fine. Just don’t expect me to trust him.”

Horobi tilted his head enough to look at her again. “… Trust my rage.”

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Yes, yes I am stuffing my weird Isamu and Horobi friendship into everything. I’m writing this for me, sue me (actually, please don’t, I’m unemployed).

Anyway, Horobi is royally pissed at Thouser. XD

Will probably check in w/ this idea again later. Right now, I am very tired.

[firebirdsdaughter]

Random Writing… Tid… Bit?…

… Okay, I don’t even know what this is. It just… Popped out! DX

… No wait. That’s… A really weird image.

So! Why don’t I subject everyone to this, instead?

Well, this is whacky.

Random scene from a random timeline that will never happen in show.

Literally features a dialogue summary of the last Tidbit I just wrote.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

There was a long silence.

“Okay…” Aruto said, finally, leaning forward on his knees, clasping his hands together. The woman sitting across from him gave him a suspicious look, but didn’t interrupt, so he continued. “… Can you give them back?”

She blinked at him. “You’re asking if I can give Horobi back his emotions?”

There was an incredulous tone to her voice, but he nodded anyway, even though he saw Isamu rolling his eyes out of the corner of his vision, and Yua shaking her head. “Yes.”

The woman gaped at him for a moment, until she realised he was completely serious, throwing up her hands. “No! They were never a part of his original programming! They’re not some code I can stick back in.”

At that, Isamu snapped out of his usual exasperation with Aruto to shift forward in interest. “What do you mean?”

The woman shifted uncomfortably, grinding her teeth together. Eventually, Yua came closer well, leaning on the back of the sofa. “You’ve got immunity now, remember? And that man doesn’t ever need to know you were here.”

The woman shot her a small glare, but sighed. “Horobi was intentionally designed to hate humans.” She explained, haltingly. “Where other HumaGears are programmed to support and assist…” She trailed into another deep sigh. “He didn’t choose the name Horobi himself. The boss gave it to him, so that he could ‘never forget what he was.’ People who interacted with him were instructed to keep their distance, make sure he kept a negative view of humanity, and to make sure that he never thought of himself as anything more than that.” She rubbed her hands together anxiously. “He wasn’t just a HumaGear. The boss wanted him to be a…”

There was a sharp thud as Isamu’s fist connected with the wall. “… A weapon.” He growled. “They wanted him to be a weapon. So they mistreated him to build resentment.” He punched the wall with his other hand, too, head dropping into his forearms. “Damn ZAIA…!” There was a sour edge in his voice that made Aruto strongly suspect he was thinking about the way Thouser had manipulated him, too.

Looking even more unsure of herself, the woman nodded. “Exactly. Horobi is, essentially, a carefully crafted WMD.” She looked down at her fidgeting hands. “I don’t know what exactly they did to him. I was just programming. But it… It sounded bad.”

Isamu was glaring daggers at her now, and Aruto wasn’t sure if he should be worried Vulcan would take a swing at the the woman, or glad that he was this angry on behalf of a HumaGear’s mistreatment.

Yua on the other hand, like always, was much harder to read. “… I see.” She murmured softly. “Thouser creates Horobi, and therefore MetsubouJinrai.net, in order to create an massive incident that he’s secretly in control of…”

Aruto blinked at her. “Eh?”

She gave an irritated sigh, but propped her hands on her hips and clarified, “Thouser deliberately created the threat so that he could be the one to step in and stop it—effectively disgrace Hiden for not being able to deal with it, and make himself and his company the hero.” Her mouth twisted. “All that damage. And I nearly…”

“We nearly helped him do it.” Isamu grunted from her left, not breaking his glare at the former ZAIA programmer. “Don’t bump me off the guilty list.” She gave him a look that was slightly annoyed—but also partially grateful.

“But something went wrong. His creation reached singularity despite his programming.” Izu brought them all back to the point, her level gaze never having left the woman. The HumaGear secretary tilted her head questioningly. “You stated that ZAIA created Horobi. How was Jin created?”

The woman hesitated for a long time, taking several deep breaths before answering. “… That’s just it. We… We don’t know how it happened. Something… Somehow, despite everything, Horobi… Something changed. One of the theories that came up was that he saw the humans interacting around him, and realised he was…” She choked on the word. “… Realised he was lonely.” Another nervous swallow. “Be we don’t know for sure. It was amazing how he managed to keep it from us—he worked nights, figured out how to hack the cameras and give them a feedback loop. We found a whole damn library of clips he’d been giving them to hide it.” She raised her hands to rub her face briefly. “Then, after he finished, he had Jin hide somewhere in his rooms during the day, when the staff came by.”

“… How did you find him?” Yua asked, very quietly.

The woman pursed her lips in a frown. “… He attacked a researcher. It was on the routine ‘conditioning’ visits, and…”

“He attacked the person hurting his family.” Aruto finished for her sombrely.

The woman didn’t nod, but she didn’t disagree, either. “I was…” She shook her head as she searched for words. “… Amazed. It was the first time a HumaGear creating another HumaGear had ever been heard of. And Jin was so advanced, in a way. He looked like an adult, but acted like a child, more personality than any other…” She trailed off again, her expression darkening. “But the boss was furious. Wanted him destroyed. Horobi went nuts, started shouting not to hurt him, called him his son.” Her hands rubbed together even faster, and she started picking at her nails. “Boss… Said he had an idea. Sent me out with Jin and ordered me to wipe his memory.”

“And you did?” Izu asked, with an edge to her tone that was unidentifiable.

“It’s not like I wanted to!” The woman’s voice broke. She looked frantically at Yua. “You know what he’s like!”

Yua, however, shook her head. “No. I left Thouser when he tried to make me cross the line.”

Tears pricked at the woman’s eyes—and Aruto did feel a little sorry for her, Thouser didn’t give the impression of someone who would be lenient on disobedience, but this had had had massive consequences. “What happened?” He asked firmly, trying to sound like his grandfather and bring the conversation back.

The woman’s jaw clenched, and she huddled into herself, but she continued. “… Daybreak happened.” She murmured. “The ForceRisers hijack a HumaGear’s main programming. Results can vary—they can reset it, alter it, magnify a particular program, or completely override to with something like a single command.” Her fists were clenching so tightly her nails were leaving marks. “He used it to drive Horobi berserk. Almost the whole facility was destroyed.” She sighed again, a slightly thoughtful one. “He came for Jin. I didn’t expect that. Even though his mind was overridden, and he was operating on his original core directive, he still came. I only survived because I had the sense to get out of his way.” She looked around at them. “Emotions were never part of his original design. He somehow… Taught them to himself. Through Jin. When the boss put the ForceRiser on him, it purged everything it deemed ‘unnecessary.’ He literally cannot feel.” She shook her head. “I can’t just put them back in him. He’d have to learn them all over again.”

Yua folded her arms. “And his relationship with Jin has already suffered for it, so that’s probably not…”

“That’s what you think.” Isamu muttered, straightening up. Turning on his heel like a soldier, he started toward the door.

Yua turned after him. “Where are you going?”

He came to a half a few steps from the exit. “It’s just the emotions he lost, right?” He asked the woman with clearly faux cheer, deliberately ignoring Yua’s question. “He still remembers that he made Jin, just not why, or how it felt?” Looking utterly bewildered, the woman nodded. “So.” Isamu clicked his fingers. “We just force him to remember.”

“Remember?” Aruto asked, rising himself, completely not following Vulcan’s logic. “How?”

Isamu sighed thoughtfully, then glanced at Yua. “Yaiba, why did you ditch Thouser?”

She hesitated. “… Because he wanted me to frame you for murder and then kill you.”

He pointed at her like she’d just answered the winning lottery question. “Exactly. Life or death decisions.” He turned and started toward the door again.

“So… What?” Yua demanded, starting after him. “What makes you think you’re going to be able to do this, that you’re the person for the job?”

Isamu stopped with his hand on the doorknob. “… Because,” He told her levelly, without turning around. “… Feels like I owe it to him. One of Thouser’s weapons to another.” Looking over his shoulder, he gave them all a tired, sad smile. “Like we’re the only ones who can almost understand each other, you know?” Then, with a nod, he vanished out the door.

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As you can see, I do like me the idea of Isamu being deliberately manipulated by Thouser/Yua’s mystery boss in the name of… Well, here, essentially using him as a weapon. Taking his hatred and fear of HumaGears and stoking it to help raise the stakes of the incident or something, or as a method to clear up evidence, or as canon fodder, whatever. And Isamu is pissed to learn of him doing something similar to Horobi.

Of course, none of this is gonna be exactly canon. There is a chance for the ‘Isamu (and maybe Horobi? Please?) being manipulated’ somehow, but it would not be exactly this, not at all.

Also this is way later in the series when both Wolf Dad and Cheetah Mom are on Grasshopper Son’s side. Also the thing that I wrote Yua leaving Thouser’s employ for… Feels possible. Like, for all she and Isamu fight and he drives her crazy, I don’t get the impression she’d be willing to kill him, and might even be disgusted by a plan to frame him for something as bad as murder. So, it seemed plausible.