As we realized last week, showing off Grand Zi-O early really took the steam out of the big fight. Even though they didn't spoil everything in advance, they showed off enough to take the edge off. That said, the insert song for the fight has a really good beat to it, so that helped to salvage things there.
Past that, this episode was kind of weird. It's a part 2, but it suffers from the "missing character" problem: where'd everyone in part 1 go? The uncle and the rest of the Imagin are gone (or all-but-gone), and even Yuuto gets very little screen time. To be fair to the director here, I'm not sure what you'd really be able to get away with cutting to make time for other characters, as this episode would have been overstuffed otherwise.
I already commented on the basic design of Grand Zi-O last week. But I'd just like to say that having the statue of Zi-O talking on its own has brought things to a new level of weirdness. I guess that's meant to be Sougo (as opposed to an independent entity)? The idea seems half-baked, at best. Also, whoever designed the Grand Zi-O watch was totally baked. That thing is impractically huge! I am left to seriously wonder how they're able to get it to stay on without breaking the driver or keeping it from properly doing a 360.
There's throwing curveballs at the audience, and then just totally screwing with them. That was well done by Toei.
They've created a golden monstrosity and they know it.I feel like it says something when the official page for the Toei Zi-O episode 40 page doesn't have any pics of Grand Zi-O on it...
Laying the tracks? That was throwing the twist directly at our faces, complete with fins to help it hit us more accurately.
The weird thing is that I'm not sure I'd call that over the top? It was long for sure, and they spent a good bit on CGI. But it wasn't actually all that crazy of a transformation sequence? I'm actually a bit surprised by how tame it was. It needed to be about 20% cooler to be over the top.Kamen Rider Raven wrote: ↑Thu Jun 27, 2019 3:56 pm Grand Zi-O is the culmination of 20 years of Heisei riders. His henshin sure as hell better be over the top. That being said, it's the first appearance of the ultimate form. Subsequent Henshins should be shorter.
Toei is the master of hindquarters pulls. But even then, if they want to maintain at least some artistic integrity, the only way for it to be Sougo is to be an AU version. The Sougo we've seen in this series could never become an evil ruler.
It was completely out of nowhere. After he left for 2017, he didn't interact with Sougo again until after he decided to let Sougo have the watch.I felt like Yuuto coming around to Sougo came a bit out of nowhere. At least Momotaros had time to warm up to Sougo after watching the kid be kind and stuff, so I wished he had just chosen to give the watch to Sougo without any input from Zeronos.
More ridiculous than Decade Complete for sure. Decade at least kept his insanity on his chest. And the design matched the card motif. Zi-O's golden statues, on the other hand, aren't drawn from any of the character's design elements or abilities.Now the question is whether it's a more or less ridiculous design than Decade Complete. Gosh, imagine seeing them side-by-side.