KR Zero-One 03 released

[takenoko]

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Last week's rating: 4.65 / 5 (37 votes)

Alt Title: That lady rider, what a real Amazon. Maybe her name should be Kamen Rider Amazon

See, I can make bad jokes too.

But yeah, I think this is a third 5 for me. Zero-One is knocking it out of the park with the action and characters.

The old man was last in a Goseiger episode, so what a fucking step up. Edit: I was looking up the actor, and he's apparently also been in like all the Godzilla movies and has two Ghibli voice roles? Get the fuck out of here.
http://wiki.tvnihon.com/wiki/Watanabe_Tetsu

The moment when Is picks up the chef and him being surprised is a great moment.

God damn that moment when Valkyrie kicks the crate to block the bullets and rushes after it is great.

Weird that the form change doesn't completely remove/replace the base form. Kinda neat to see something different.

[TypicalStandUser]

Welcome back to Toei Tokusatsu, Kento Uchino. Hope you could hop on by the Ultraman franchise at some point in the future.

Well of course, a chef who could still make dishes despite the impending “golden” age of automation would be perplexed and offended that a robot could do it. That said, I hope the chef and robot can work together.

Love Valkyrie’s debut. Good on her to remind Aruto that the Humagears are just tools.

Good episode.

[Dengar]

While she didn't defeat any major enemies today, she did show up the Vulcan guy. I mean not that I'm like "women should do better than dudes" but more like, you know, she was played up to be more competent than the other guy. And it turns out she actually is.

[stardrago]

nice in seeing the main rider having a shark based form. Although, how come you still hadn't changed Magear to Magia yet, given of how Horobi had spoken out 'Magias plan' and of Yua saying it on the phone, even the Key's the enemy has it wrttten as Magia for those animal motifs.
Also, it seems we still don't have the Henshin Course not up yet.

[sdsichero]

Pretty good episode, better than the previous two I think. Still don't like the secondary rider suits much unfortunately, but that's okay.

Weird thing, I download the SD versions and last week the size was 848x480 but this week its 1920x1080. Is that a change going forward?

Anyway, thanks for the hard work.

[satoman]

Ugh. Only now I noticed the hoodie-and-suit Aruto is wearing.

Good fighting sequences, but personally gun finishers are not my favorite ones... Let's see what they got next. Good ep, good series so far. Esp after zi-o...

[ViRGE]

I'm really loving all the transformation sequences in this show. While Valkyrie's is not quite as cool as Vulcan's (because how can you beat punching a bullet?), how she stands there fits her personality.

More importantly, I'm glad to see that she has a different philosophy on Humagear than the other two Riders. We have Vulcan, who is straight-up anti-machine. Valkyrie, who sees Humagear as mere tools. And then Aurto, who sees them as beings with a heart, equal to the respect and dignity given to a human. As a practical measure, by the end of the show I expect Aurto's point of view to win out since he is the main character. But importantly, none of these POVs is inherently wrong. Humagear can be a major threat, Humagear are being made/purchased primarily as tools, and yet the bond between them and their owners is real. And, I suspect, whatever a singularity moment is will also tie in to Aurto's POV.

On which note, hopefully we get to find out what a singularity moment is soon. The plot is moving at a good pace here; even though this was more of a character focus episode than a world building episode - and it had to introduce a new Zero-One form too - it still drove the series' plot forward. We now know the name of the downed satellite (Ark), and that multiple groups want to bring it back for shadowy purposes. Oh, and we got a callback to last episode on the green-yellow symbol; it is indeed the mark for a new (beginner) Humagear. This seemingly confirms that the guard we saw at the end of episode 2 was a new bot that was built in Mamoru's memory.

Meanwhile, Valkyrie's debut fight was probably the least impressive of the three, but that's largely because the other two have set some very high marks. I like how they doubled-down on the whole fast-cheetah aspect, and staged the fight so that it moved quickly and with some rather fancy gymnastics thrown in (rather than just being a brawl). I do wonder if they can keep that up, since it seems like it'll be harder to do week-after-week, but we'll see how things go one episode at a time. I'm also dying to know how they did the shot of Valkyrie running a tight circle like that; can a stuntie actually do that, or did they have to use wires? (Also, do we know who Valkyrie's suit actor is? It's just a hunch, but at times Valkyrie moved more like light, limber dude than a woman would)

Oh, and Zero-One gets a title sequence after all! In retrospect, the series' theme song on its own is okay, but just so. It's better than what we've had the last couple of years, but not on the same level as the best Heisei songs. If anything, it packs more punch as an insert song than it does here in the opening. Also, for better or worse, that OP is a bit spoilery. We saw that the two bad guys get KR forms as well, and at one point that looked like an evil Izu with longer hair?

Finally, Izu copying Aurto at the end legitimately caught me off guard and got a laugh. It's still a bad joke, but the timing on it was perfect. (The OP having "404 not found" in the lyrics was also a pleasant giggle )

Next episode:

Spoiler

Oh good, since the show is moving at a steady pace, they're not going to drag out explaining the Daybreak event to the viewers. It looks like we'll get to find out at least part of the story next week!

Weird thing, I download the SD versions and last week the size was 848x480 but this week its 1920x1080. Is that a change going forward?

Confirmed. Someone dun goofed there: it's encoded at 1080p with the SD encode's bitrate. That'll need v2'd.

[Lunagel]

*facepalm*

Sorry about that, someone forgot to uncomment a line when encoding, I've got a new encode going and should have it out soon

[njb]

I have a question regarding the OP lyrics:

http://wiki.tvnihon.com/wiki/File:REALxEYEZLyrics.jpg

from this pic, shouldn't the end of the second REALxEYEZ line be "miraizu"? (未来図)
In the same way that 合図 was aizu..?

nice in seeing the main rider having a shark based form. Although, how come you still hadn't changed Magear to Magia yet, given of how Horobi had spoken out 'Magias plan' and of Yua saying it on the phone, even the Key's the enemy has it wrttten as Magia for those animal motifs.
Also, it seems we still don't have the Henshin Course not up yet.

Personally, Magear is preferable since it's a play on 魔 (Ma, evil), gear, and is a corruption of Humagear

[Lunagel]

My aunt Magia takes personal offence at her name being used for a corrupted evil A.I. She's only slightly evil and barely corrupted.

[TorchWood]

Is this the earliest in any Kamen Rider series that we had a lady Kamen Rider introduced? I still recall one of the Kamen Rider Decade video shorts where Natsumi notes that there were only three previous women who were also secondary Riders, and then, during one of the movies, she becomes Kamen Rider Kivala.

[takenoko]

>On which note, hopefully we get to find out what a singularity moment is soon.

Yeah, they better make it momentous the moment a robot hits singularity without jinnai messing with them. Like, there's no guarantee that it'll be a good thing when they do, right?

>Oh, and we got a callback to last episode on the green-yellow symbol; it is indeed the mark for a new (beginner) Humagear. This seemingly confirms that the guard we saw at the end of episode 2 was a new bot that was built in Mamoru's memory.

Oooh yeah. That's a bit problematic. I know we need smart lady to explain things to Aruto to show her competence and philosophy, but why is Aruto freaking out about the chef bot if he knows he can be rebuilt from a backup. He clearly did it before with Mamoru since he's the only one who could have put the bandage on Mamoru. It's not a big plot hole, but it's annoying since two major story aspects rely on these things, and it makes the resolution to the Mamoru thing seem really rushed.

>(Also, do we know who Valkyrie's suit actor is? It's just a hunch, but at times Valkyrie moved more like light, limber dude than a woman would)

Looking up. Searching. Looks like Valkyrie's suit actor is Fujita Satoshi
http://wiki.tvnihon.com/wiki/Fujita_Satoshi

>We saw that the two bad guys get KR forms as well, and at one point that looked like an evil Izu with longer hair?

Ooh, I was wondering why there were so many riders in the opening.

>My aunt Magia takes personal offence at her name being used for a corrupted evil A.I. She's only slightly evil and barely corrupted.

Is your aunt a straight up witch?

Speaking of Izu, here's something I suggested in episode one that got rejected. I'm wondering if the names of some of the robots and the satellite are actually supposed to be English words.
Izu イズ = Is
Shesta シェスタ = Siesta
That ザット
Satellite Zea ゼア = There

Given that we have a guard named Mamoru, it seems like the Humagears are all named based on some aspect of the function that they perform. But these regulars, Is is just always there as the assistant. Siesta appears to be a humorless lady. I don't know who That is supposed to be, but it's listed in the credits. And the Satellite is just there. It'd be pretty fun if this says something about grandpa's naming sense.

Possibly spoilery theory, but Aruto 或人 = A person who exists. Dunno if we ever explain the Gotta have Aruto, but the pun is it sounds like the word pattern "aru to" so the actual meaning of his catchphrase is "Gotta have it that way" or something to that effect.

I dunno, maybe I should create a split off thread for that

Edit:
The poll average for episode 2 was 4.65 out of 5 (37 votes)
And episode 1 4.58 / 5 (40 votes)

I figured I'd post them here since the poll results aren't available when I usually make them, given that we release the same day as the next episode airing... Will try to do some optimization for next week.

[Kuchiri]

No one going to comment how amazing that intro was? Easily the best Intro for rider. This show is knocking every ball out of the park.

[Actar]

Third episode of KR01 finished and I'm actually quite liking what I'm seeing. So far, we have quite mature discussions of the themes of AI and the show isn't afraid to show the bots getting destroyed or messed up. However, this kinda worries me as the rest of the show might be a simple variation of this formula, just applied to different contexts. While the bots are allowed to get beat up or destroyed, the fact that the consequences are minimal with regard to them having backups does downplay the stakes quite a bit.

My other worry is that the form changes and upgrades look to be one-time-use deals that are literally created for the express purpose to deal with one specific enemy. That... really cheapens each individual powerup and I long for forms like W's where they were constantly relevant and widely applicable in a ton of situations. Why do I need to buy Biting Shark if it's never going to be used again?

Lastly, I'm actually really surprised by how much they toned down the jokes and gags. While the puns are great, the editing is way too anime-esque. In fact, that's the issue I have with all these flashy CGI text cut-ins and pratfalls. Kamen Rider is becoming too anime-like. Some things just work more in 2D and I don't want to see Rider lose its very unique identity and feel.

[BreadToku]

Don't have much to say that hasn't already been, other than this show continues to hit all the right notes for me. I've been under the impression that singularity just means when an AI develops real emotion, but I'll wait for the show itself to confirm one way or another.

That opening sequence is really nice, and I admit to having watched it five times.

Oooh yeah. That's a bit problematic. I know we need smart lady to explain things to Aruto to show her competence and philosophy, but why is Aruto freaking out about the chef bot if he knows he can be rebuilt from a backup. He clearly did it before with Mamoru since he's the only one who could have put the bandage on Mamoru. It's not a big plot hole, but it's annoying since two major story aspects rely on these things, and it makes the resolution to the Mamoru thing seem really rushed.

? He had a big moment in this very episode where he declared that Humagears aren't just replaceable tools. The rebuilt ones might look the same, but to Aruto, that doesn't mean that nothing has happened to the previous ones.