#pairing: isamu fuwa/yua yaiba | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

sailor-cresselia · 5 years ago

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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.)

#kamen rider zero one #sailorcressy says #OPENING WHEN?!

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