KR Zero-One 21 released

[takenoko]

Fuwa and Aruto are pretty much only human characters that actually interact with each other at this point.

Siiiiigh

[WannaFantaMan]

While I'm still loving this season, it's getting to the point that Thouser is WAY beyond broken. I mean logically, they should have a way to prevent him from Jacking the powers from the progrise keys by this point since he's done it so many times. Also getting annoyed that Yaiba is still following this prick as WE KNOW SHE HAS A CONSCIENCE ABOUT WHAT THE RIGHT THING TO DO IS!!! I'm so close to ramming my head into a wall because of how old this bullshit with Thouser is getting Q_Q

[FangTrigger]

Up until now, Zero-One has been a great Kamen Rider series in terms of writing, however, it seems that all great things must come to an end.

The fact that this 'competition' has moved from purely being about business to placing the innocence of a man on the line irks me. It really feels out of place for a series based on what the potential ramifications of having a society completely dominated (or supported) by AI, particularly because both sides are using AI, just in different ways. And the introduction of Narusawa is either a red herring or just a smack in the face to the viewers because him being the Lion Raizer is far too blatant for my liking. I'm hoping it's the girlfriend.

I want to hate Gai, but moreso because I expected him to be a more interesting villain. He had strong character motivations from the jump, but now he's just there to literally suck all the energy from this show. His actions in this episode alone have stepped beyond the boundaries of legality, not to mention was counter-productive in terms of his 'Humagears are a threat,' dogma. If anything, he reinforced Aruto's point that it's human malice that is the root cause of the Humagear's going bezerk.

Izu continues to be the life of the show, which is making me wonder how much longer until Ark or someone causes her to go apesh*t (which probably should've happened by now, given the amount of times she's seen Aruto get smacked around)

The strange thing is, that before this arc, Aruto never hesitated to destroy a berserk humagear.

Prior to this, he didn't have a choice. At the time, he had to protect the image of his company by destroying and reformatting the Humagears due to MJ.net's hacking. Now he has to try to keep them from being influenced from something that isn't cybernetic in origin. How does one stop all humans from having malice and taking it out on Humagears?

Alternatively, I have to wonder why Aruto hasn't made a move to destroy the Ark. He knows it exists and it's location is somewhere in the rubble of Daybreak tow, doesn't he? I could've sworn that Horobi mentioned it at one point or another.

While the new form brings many questions, the biggest one I have is what will be the consequences of Gai using the Zesumetsu Driver in front of Yui. While I get that AIMS is funded by Zaia, I hope that she is woman enough to revolt at this point.

[DeMatgic]

The fact that this 'competition' has moved from purely being about business to placing the innocence of a man on the line irks me. It really feels out of place for a series based on what the potential ramifications of having a society completely dominated (or supported) by AI, particularly because both sides are using AI, just in different ways. And the introduction of Komiya is either a red herring or just a smack in the face to the viewers because him being the Lion Raizer is far too blatant for my liking. I'm hoping it's the girlfriend

Uh, I might be misreading this, but Komiya is the girlfriend.

But now that you mention it, I kind of do feel like this two-parter flies in the face of the earlier parts of the competition. Or rather, all three of the competition rounds we've had so far seem... disjointed, in a way. I get that it's a business competition where Gai is looking to buy out Hiden, but there doesn't really seem to be any rhyme or reason among the three rounds. We go from flower decorating (I know there's a name it's just escaping me atm) in an enclosed singular area that would have been a single day had the Humagear not gone berserk, to a real estate selling contest that takes place over a week, to a court trial where a man's life is at stake.

There's also no rhyme or reason with Gai's actions but everyone else has already said that so I'm just gonna add to the growing list of "Things Gai really shouldn't be getting away with" by pointing out that he directly assaulted his competitor with witnesses in the room.

[Mandalori]

I think what he meant is that he hope the Raider is the girlfriend. Personally, I think it's either her or the cop.

[DeMatgic]

I'm more talking about this sentence "And the introduction of Komiya is[...] because him being the Lion Raizer is far too blatant for my liking." because it implies "him" is Komiya due to being in the same sentence.

Again, I could easily be misreading it.

[FangTrigger]

I'm more talking about this sentence "And the introduction of Komiya is[...] because him being the Lion Raizer is far too blatant for my liking." because it implies "him" is Komiya due to being in the same sentence.

Again, I could easily be misreading it.

Oh, I thought Komiya was the AIMS cyber crimes dude. Edited my previous post, but thanks for catching that.

Reflecting on the different aspects of the competition so far, the only one that made sense would be the real estate battle. From a business perspective, it hit all the right points: customer satisfaction vs profit gain and how location can affect value over time. The Ikebana one seemed to be more of a 'Can an AI determine what beauty means to the human heart?' type deal, and even then, I felt that Aruto should've won that one.

[hiro9796]

But now that you mention it, I kind of do feel like this two-parter flies in the face of the earlier parts of the competition. Or rather, all three of the competition rounds we've had so far seem... disjointed, in a way. I get that it's a business competition where Gai is looking to buy out Hiden, but there doesn't really seem to be any rhyme or reason among the three rounds. We go from flower decorating (I know there's a name it's just escaping me atm) in an enclosed singular area that would have been a single day had the Humagear not gone berserk, to a real estate selling contest that takes place over a week, to a court trial where a man's life is at stake.

There's also no rhyme or reason with Gai's actions but everyone else has already said that so I'm just gonna add to the growing list of "Things Gai really shouldn't be getting away with" by pointing out that he directly assaulted his competitor with witnesses in the room.

Actually, there is some logic that I can comprehend for the competition. At the very least, regardless of what competition, the main aim, putting the AI background aside, was to reflect responsibility as a president/CEO or top leader of a company.
The first competition was to make sure employee can provide good presentation about the company, what they can do for people to invest and all.
Second one, profit. I get that we work to get profit and paid. Almost all company had to achieve within a certain margin that increases annually and that is some of the reasom why income tax company in my country just had to find excuses to charge higher and not deniable to reject paying. But in the second competition, it seems too rigid to achieve so much profit in fortnight rather than annually, for selling houses, because realistically, in my country anyway, Malaysia, there are like 10000s new houses got built nowadays and no one is buying them. Why? Damn too expensive. Just a standard looking house in a terrace cost like about RM700 thousand (170 thousand USD), when their actual prices are supposed to be less than half of that plus recently employed workers had their monthly paycheck at about RM1000-, depending on what job it is. Just say you keep your job and pay RM1200 annually, how long would it take? Just for a house? And what about cars, repair, tuition fees for children and all? Definitely bad. That is why there is hardly any vacancies for jobs, because the older people, who had yet to finish paying those debts cannot get retired and they can't even get much wages from retiring and it is less. I mean, I'm still applying for jobs daily and hardly get any interviews due to them wanting experience workers and better candidates than me.
Third one, I could not comprehend why they would use crimes and lawyers because it does not really fit in for this job competition. I mean, I understand the context but prosecuters=the income tax company that charged people with COMPLETELY UNNECESSARY EXPENSES THAT MAKES NO SENSE AT ALL TO BANKRUPT PEOPLE. This is never fair realistically. In any case, this is very much irrelevant with the responsibility of a president, most of the time anyway because it just eats away the morality that you just had to make a suspect get convicted and takes 100% of the following punishments without getting less burdened or like that. I don't know. But I believe the third competition would make sense had it been something like charity for the poor or something? I mean we are fellow humans and we should help each other so that we all can enjoy prosperity. It is not just giving fishes to the poors for a day, it is about teaching those poor people how to make baits so they can get their own fishes for themselves. The meaning was like you don't always donate things for the poor but help those poor people to get their own earning, something along those lines.

In any case, sorry for the rambling and nonsense. By the way, what is so funny about a red bean juice that makes Aruto laugh when he look at the juice can? Is there a hidden pun somewhere or he was just happy that Fuwa was considerate? I know jokes aren't meant to be explained since it will lose funny effect but just asking.

[Lunagel]

Red bean soup is kinda considered to be an "old man" drink. Whether that says more about Fuwa or what Fuwa thinks about Aruto is questionable, although Fuwa was drinking black coffee iirc.

[Catastrophe]

It's probably just Fuwa being a smartass. I really like that aspect of his and Arutos relationship.

[DeMatgic]

I more meant that the three rounds don't really have much relation to each other, but I was also confused about what they have to do with the business buy-out so I'll thank you for clearing that part up in regards to the first two rounds.

This third one though is just a big "why are we doing this?".