Kamen Rider Zero-One (2019)

A Rider Kick to the sky turns to take off toward a dream.

Overall
I believe that this series was good overall. It wasn't the best but it did do a lot that was interesting and the characters are likable enough to keep watching even through the lows.

Story
I have mixed feelings for the story overall due to the story arcs having different qualities. The first arc, called MetsubouJinrai.net Saga by some fans, is, in my opinion, the best part of the show. Episode 1-16 has the heroes battling the terrorist and it keeps me wanting to watch the show as fast as I could to know about MetsubouJinrai. As soon as that was over, the ZAIA Workplace Competition Saga started and that was the lowest point of the show. It became very repetitive and was just boring to watch the same plot 5 times. The only thing good in that arc was the introduction of the power-ups for both Zero One and Vulcan. HIDEN Manufacturing Saga was a step up to that the last arc and it slowly improved the show. After these arcs, the show was affected by the COVID pandemic, stopping production completely. Once this was over, the show picked up with Ark Saga, and this is the second-best arc. Although this arc felt rushed, they picked up with MetsubouJinrai and the Ark being the main villain. This with the hype of reaching the endgame made this felt great.

Characters
Most characters were okay to good in Zero-One. The biggest thing going against most of them was the lack of character backstory/ development. Aruto never changed throughout the story until the end. But I did love how Aruto and Izu played off each other. I really like Fuwa and his backstory and Yaiba was fun to watch on screen. She did lack major backstory, in my opinion, but her presence was good. Jin and Horobi were good, but Jin lacked any explanation on himself and his connections to Zaia.

Acting/Casting
I really liked the cast. I have to mention Tsurushima Noa and how she did a good job to portray two characters that felt completely different.

Rewatch Value
Personally, I tend to not rewatch a series but knowing how the story was, I think others can enjoy rewatching this and enjoying it again.

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Everything the show did well:
-Most of the cast is consistently likeable.
-The action is consistently amazing and some of the franchise's best.
-The case of the week each focusing on a different humagear helps the world-building and makes it feel more a alive and concise.
-The concept behind the main antagonist is really interesting and of the franchise most unique, which also leads to one of the most 'different' final arcs in this franchise.
-First quarter of the show is consistently really great.
-Amazing soundtrack.
-Izu is one of the best main girls the franchise ever had.
-Interesting depiction of A.I. when compared to other attempts in media.
-One of the best final fights in the franchise.

Everything the show did bad:
-The show's second arc is kind of mediocre. While the humagears are mostly still enjoyable and everything relating to the character Fuwa is well done and really interesting, the arc's main antagonist Gai Amatsu is really bad and the new monster of the week introduced the raiders are very hit or miss.
Essentially the show tries to play off Gai as this evil mastermind but barely any of his plans are actually intelligent and generally makes the cast feels dumber than they actually are. The raiders are mostly made to be completely unlikeable which feels like a step down from the first arc. Also the show shifts from cases of the week to two-parters which would work if they were actually doing something interesting with this format, but for the most part it just slows down the pacing for the worse since it's mostly doing this for the raiders.
-The one time a humagear of the week is seemingly legitimately evil (which also happens in the second arc) it's barely actually explained or acknowledged by the hero cast which comes of as weird and hypocritical to the show's message.
-Gai Amatsu's main goal is pretty boring.
-There's a character redemption during the third arc that feels really cheap, especially because it happens the episode after we're shown the character is even more irredeemable than it originally seemed.
-Yua Yaiba not having backstory hurts her character and makes here less interesting than most of the cast despite not being a bad character overall.
-The show lacks slice of life scenes to further the cast relationships and show more of their interactions.
-Plot points like Aruto's father and grandfather, while not overly necessary for the plot, they are relegated to the movie Reiwa First Generation. And even then, it doesn't properly explains some of his grandpa's actions. (Highly recommend watching the movie if you liked the show, it's really great).
-Characters like Naki, Raiden and Jun get heavily shafted. Granted this was mostly due to covid reducing the episode count.
-The show has a lot of dropped plot-points due to the covid rewrite. This forces one to watch the Project Thouser special in order to get all the answers, which makes the show feel incomplete, at least one can watch them after the show with little issue without breaking the show's pacing.
-Despite the pretty amazing final arc and final fight, the finale kind of turns Aruto into an hypocrite and makes the hunagears feel more negative than positive which makes it feel like the show ended on a whimper. The sequel movie RealxTime kind of fixes this but it sucks that one has to watch a movie in order to get a proper emotional closure for the show.
-After Fuwa's character arc is resolved in the second arc, he kind of gets relegated to comedy character that doesn't have much to do with the actual plot. I personally didn't mind this because he remained enjoyable from start to finish and kept having cool moments, plus I didn't feel these moments erased all his character development. But I've seem some people finding issue with this so felt like pointing it out.

Reasons for the show strenghts:
In order to differentiate the Reiwa era from Heisei, from this point onward the franchise decided to storyboard its fights which did wonders for the action. Producer Omori wanted to make a more unique world which led to the idea of the Humagears. Main writer Yuya Takahashi excels and making a fast paced show which led to an amazing first quarter. Due to covid-19 causing a hiatus and reducing the episode count, main producer Omori gave main writer Yuya Takahashi complete creative freedom for the final arc, which resulted in one of the most interesting and different ones of the franchise and made the main antagonist more unique.

Reasons for the show flaws:
Due to this being a milestone show, Omori decided to take fan feedback in order to make the show better but this pretty much caused most of the show's issues. First Metsubojinrai was only supposed to have 2 members but since a lot of people theorized that it had 4, he forced the creation of new two members, this really helped Fuwa's character arc.
The second change was that since the humagear of the week had such a positive feedback, he came up with the idea to delay the 'Hiden Manufacture' plot-line which would have been the start of the second arc and make it happen in the third arc. This was so that the show wouldn't have such a massive change of status quo so quickly, in order to realize this he came with the idea of a job competition arc and have new humagears appear alongside the raiders, however but him and Takahashi struggled to make this idea interesting which led to the problems with the second arc.
After said arc there was a lot of negative feedback for one of the show's villains, this resulted in Omori requesting a redemption however for some reason the staff decided to keep most of his evil deeds in the third arc which made this redemption make less sense, also the redemption itself was sloppily written. This redemption was originally supposed to have negative connotations, however covid-19 ended up reducing the episode count which led to the final arc being rewritten and said plot point being dropped which made the redemption feel even cheaper. The rewritten final arc only focused on the most important characters which led to the two members of Metsubojinrai being shafted and also leaving bunch of plot points open and forcing a rewrite for the part two of Project Thouser in order to close them. The hypocritical ending apparently was always planned from. The beginning for some reason, so the virus delaying RealxTime actually helped the movie be even better. Also Yua Yaiba backstory was cut for unspecified reasons, I assume for pacing reasons it was moved from the 3rd arc to the final but then was removed when the covid rewrite. I've seen some people argue that it was because it was too dark, but even post-earthquake OOO was darker so I doubt that, either way her backstory ended up being included in the Zero-One Others spin-off.
Also just a general flaw of Takahashi's writing is that he tends to run out of ideas for the secondary rider and due to his breakneck-paced style of writing his characters don't get enough downtime to have proper slice of life moments.

Overall:
The show is an enjoyable show overall but very heavily flawed. While the first and last quarter are mostly amazing, the show's middle drags a lot, the ending does a lot of harm to the main protagonist character and the show overall feels incomplete due to Project Thouser being necessary to close off the plot points and RealxTime to get proper emotional closure. That said the show has ton of interesting ideas and a mostly likeable cast which leads to most of the show being fun. Also Project Thouser, Reiwa First Generation and RealxTime are good specials so if you liked the characters and concepts it's pretty much a must-watch and builds upon the show's ideas. Just, under no circumstances, watch the Zero-One Others duology, as it ruins the RealxTime ending, has surprisingly poor direction and action and the AIMS one is generally considered to be one of the worst movies in the franchise. The show probably deserves a lower rating like 6 but I liked its concepts enough to give it a 7.

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