KR Zero-One 13 released

[takenoko]

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Last week's rating: 4.53 / 5 (19 votes)

Alt Title: Shining Sacrifice

While nothing really surprised me about this episode, I appreciated the execution was perfect. It hit all the beats and twists it needed to and it did it well.

It's pretty interesting to see how stuff done in Ryusoulger where a character sacrifices himself so the main character can power up can be done so differently.

A) They made Was really likeable, so it's actually genuinely sad to see him die.

B) Zero-One does get all the toys, but I don't resent him the way I do Koh. Aruto's not just pulling the spotlight at every corner. Heck, even in this episode the trio of Riders transforming and helping to take out the Dodo group together is a better sentai moment than Ryusouler has had recently.

The only downside about this episode is that it feels like we were cheated out of Aruto's reaction to Was' death. His sacrifice should have been touched upon a bit more than nothing at all.

Notes:
-It's cool that Fuwa explains the suit allows people to fight despite their injuries. It's a nice bit of worldbuilding
-Cool to see the main three Riders finally fighting together.

[Xirix]

Yup, knew Shining Hopper wouldn't work well considering Was wanted him to use Press last time, poor Was and Izu, damn episode got me teary-eyed.

Was Dodo throwing a fucking egg at Number Five? XD I don't know what that was going to do, but that's... okay, just caught me off guard.

Also there you go CEO of Zaia, that's how percentages above 100 work, well done.

[VerusMaya II]

Glad to see that Humagears are USB compatible.

Was' "death" was a tad bit cringey for me, because computers are either on or off. There's no slow death-rattle to be had here. Also confused why it was necessary in the first place - can the Satellite not copy the data from them? If the data were say, read-only, then the Satellite shouldn't be able to move it either. Why is the Zero-One data tied into their life functions and not just say, the baseline of their personality? Shouldn't they just become a blank slate, but not shut down / "die"?

I understand it all from a dramatic, story-telling perspective, but it still rubs me the wrong way. I'm always worried on the consistency of technology's abilities in media; if they don't follow firm rules, it treads quickly into hand-wavey magic territory.

[takenoko]

Maybe it's kind of a self-destruct feature? During the learning phase for Was and Izu, it's probably good to include an incentive to make sure they aren't just giving away all the Humagear and Zero-One classified data willy-nilly, given the catastrophic effects it would have. Tying it to their core function does that, I guess?

[Slowking]

We got some good development for Izu, just as she was a bit more side-lined during the past two eps.

Was only showed up last week yet his death is emotional. "I wish you had said this sooner" was probably the peak of it. Is Izu now closer to Singularity than ever before?

So grandpa Hiden predicted the trouble in the future and ensured Was and Izu would be around to help. It may be just a short, holographic message yet it adds to the story.

I love Shining Hopper. It obviously screams "upgrade" yet it maintains the sleekness of Zero-One's forms. The "Shining" in the name is a tribute to Agito Shining form, which continues the trend from "Rising" (Rising Kuuga) and "Hooper" (Kamen Rider Ichigo). Cool!

The way he holds up the progrise key is also reminiscent of the Magiranger holding up their MagiPhone. Maagi Magi Majiro?!

Other things I liked are the growing friendship between Aruto and Fuwa and the foreshadowing of what is to follow with Gai shown at the end; I do wonder how they will link MetsubouJinrai.net to a Hiden vs. ZAIA story though.

Oh and, Yaiba, stop sneaking up to people like that, chill girl.

Was' "death" was a tad bit cringey for me, because computers are either on or off. There's no slow death-rattle to be had here.

I guess it makes sense since Was is a Humagear that has reached Singularity - and it ties nicely with the previous scene and the mention of instinct. For any other Humagear it'd be less dramatic I'd like to think.

[Catastrophe]

I like the idea that Shining Hopper originally sucked because Aruto had outpaced the calculations of the satellite.

Real great episode. Nice character moments and a better death scene for a character that was only introduced the previous episode.

[kevinlafriday]

I mean, everything is a level up if you watch this after Ryusoulger. In that sense we can be thankful to this season's sentai.

[BreadToku]

I'm on the same page as everyone else, really. I was hoping that our new detective pal would stick around a little longer, but I honestly think he contributed just enough in the last two episodes to feel important while managing to make his farewell emotional. It almost makes me forget that we say goodbye to Dodo in this episode too!

Dodo sort of had an arc in the sense that he went from a goofy bird-man, to someone learning from a human, to being a dangerous killer. But I don't really feel like there was ever a 'transition' between each of those phases of him. I was never unconvinced of the role he played at any given time, but there definitely felt like there could have been a better or more natural build-up before his demise in this episode. As of right now, I think he's just okay as a villain.

Shining Hopper is pretty cool, though that's not surprising since it's really just a tweaking of Rising Hopper's design. I really enjoy the visual effects they used to display it's pre-planned super fast movements, and that Shining Mega Impact finisher wouldn't look out of place in a series finale!

Hiden Intelligence doesn't quite manage to clear it's name yet, but I don't believe it's trouble with the police will last more than another episode or two. I'm much more curious what Metsubojinrai and ZAIA are going to do next.

[Xirix]

Christ, if Gai (that was his name right? the ZAIA head) keeps saying dumb things like apparently naming a humagear after his 1000% obsession, I might start to dislike him more. Thouser? It's just going to be a Zero-One clone but with 1000% stapled onto the helmet isn't it?

[Kogashi]

Well I'm glad to see everyone else was emotionally gripped by Waz's convenient Izu saving sacrifice to not notice that despite defeating Dodo we have achieved nothing, because we didn't get the Dodo key, meaning Hiden does not have it on hand to clear their name, and what's worse the enemies have it again anyways meaning they have even more learned data to slap on to some other humagear they might buy off the black market. Like I am all for 'they won the battle but lost the war' moments in stories, but that isn't how this feels it feels like the show is saying 'well we beat Dodo, and that clears Aruto's company's name, so we do not need the thing we kept saying the character needed'... or I dunno maybe they went and found Dancer 5 after and had them explain how they were kidnapped and modified by the black market along with eye witness accounts from Fuwa and confessions from the group they arrested but none of that is shown to us.

Seriously though the Izu Waz sacrifice thing stops working once you try and think about it. Like, I get why it happened, cause Izu needs a growth moment but we cannot lose her this early in the story so we need someone else to take the bullet for her. And I get why removing core battle data about Zero 1's growth would be basically ripping out the OS for her in theory. What I do not get in theory, is why Waz can provide the same data when he has not been at any of the fights to observe Aruto's growth like Izu has been at EVERY FIGHT. And we established that the data can't be transferred without causing harm to the humagear that's the whole conflict of the moment, so she can't have shared it with brother Waz. So while it makes sense that we need someone else to die so Izu can grow it doesn't make sense that the older model who had been asleep and not with our party up until this moment, would have the same data as Izu outside of like, the last two fights I guess but if that is all the data the satellite needed than we are back to 'then how is it so unreadable without hurting Izu' problem since wouldn't it be as simply as linking up with the satellite and, I dunno, projecting the battles she's seen as a video for the satellite to observe and calculate from!?

I've made no secret bout how frustrated I've been with these episodes for a while now and I'm not here either... Shinning Hopper looks kind of cool but unless the projections of where he will attack is how dodo sees it it's a dumb effect that makes no tactical sense as it tells the enemies all the possible attacks Aruto is thinking of doing instead of giving the sense of 'oh man is he thinking/moving so fast now' and I hope it gets dropped.

[takenoko]

Yeah, not sure. I hope the effect is just a part of Dodo's predictive algorithm and not how Shining's effect looks each time.

I was gonna say maybe Was had the Zero-One battle data from when grandpa was programming it, but the whole point of this exercise is that they need Aruto's data so it can be calibrated to his specifics. An unfortunate oversight

[resop2]

They could do cross-over movie with Kamen Rider W now. A humagear could be transformed into a Gaiagear by having them insert a Gaia memory into their USB port. The plot of the movie would be that many more humagear's have become sentient than have been turned into magears. Some of these sentient humagears are painfully trying to understand their place in society and life. Evil salesmen appear offering them a chance to evolve quickly by using a Gaia memory.

If they do have Robo-Waifu Izu become Kamen Rider Tsukkomi then I think I have the correct random English that could be announced when the henshin happens: "Was it you? Was it you that didn't laugh at President Aruto's jokes?"

I am a little fuzzy on Humagear terminology: Does "sentient" mean "They have gained self awareness and can think independent of their programming" and "singularity" mean "Can outpace humanity in terms of learning"?

[RoxasXIII]

Assault Vulcan helm = Build Rabbit Tank helm? lol

[DeMatgic]

They finally used the Authoriser's finisher augment in the show proper. Not the full terarise, though, but this is fine for this point of the show. I do like the callback to the first episode's finisher with Aruto launching his enemy into the air as part of the finisher before kicking down through them.

Admittedly, the Was sacrifice is on the lower end of the episode for me. It's really well done, don't get me wrong, but I have a similar issue about it as Kogashi had pointed out, being how Was would have sufficient data on Zero-One if Aruto surpassed There's calculations and thus likely Korenosuke's predictions. Lowest would be there not being a legitimate reason as to why Dodo (An is deaaad to me) betrayed Horobi and Jin since he ended up wanting to kill all humans just like them. Though I did like that Jin was genuinely(?) torn up by the betrayal.

Otherwise, this was a good episode. The action was great, story beats were good. The bit with the headphone having a rod slide out confused me as an earlier episode just showed that the white tab could be removed for plugging in anyways but eh. I think the holo patterns being seen by Dodo made sense as he was trying to predict Aruto's attacks at the same time as Shining Hopper was determining the best attack for Aruto. And with the upgrade in the second half, he could react to choose a different path of attack should Dodo try to intercept him.

Preview

Seems there's a new MJ.net rider next episode debuting with Assault Wolf

I know it makes sense in context but out of context, it's a goofy line.

[takenoko]

When Izu dies we can say. This was Izu.

>I am a little fuzzy on Humagear terminology: Does "sentient" mean "They have gained self awareness and can think independent of their programming" and "singularity" mean "Can outpace humanity in terms of learning"?

We actually had this discussion among the staff. The way they're using Singularity here is kinda very loose. The fact that it's an English term and it's also a sci-fi term doesn't do it any favors.

In general an AI gaining sentience and reaching the point of singularity are usually associated with it meaning the same thing in most stories.

But if you look up the strict definition, it's more like when an AI surpasses humans:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity