[DISCUSSION] Kamen Rider Zero-One, Episodes 16-35

[Toku Prime]

I'm here to drink tea and ruin your show
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Just a catch-up thread in case anyone wanted to discuss this stuff. I haven't been doing weekly threads for Zero-One because that period of time when the forum was down was also when Thouser showed up and basically ruined my enjoyment of the show while they slowly ground through a god-awful competition arc. Anyway, the show has been better more recently so hopefully they can salvage it. The show is now on pause for COVID-19 so we'll have to wait and see what happens when it returns.

 

[Shogun_Master]

Soooo..... Like, is anyone else caught up? I just finished ep 38.

Well, all I really have to say about episodes 16-35 is that the show is definitely not going where I thought it was going to go. By the end of the first arc of the season, I figured that the Arc was going to be pissed off by a semi-successful attempt by Thouser to use him for his own plans. Then, it would go psycho, rebuild Metsuboujinrai.net for real, kill Thouser and have him replaced by a puppet & try to use him to bend all of Zaia & Hiden's combined assets to its wishes. Then, Izu would be caught in between, as the Arc tries to convince her to act as Jin's mother in the same way that Horobi is his father & it would all lead to a somewhat more mild, robot version of Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

Although I have difficulty understanding Thouser's motivations for constantly screwing himself over by making his supposed enemies increasingly more powerful, I like where it's going.

No spoilers, but seeing episodes 36-38, I'm starting to see signs of that wanting to make a more happy, hopeful show for the kids in light of the pandemic. So far, I am not against it.

 

[Toku Prime]

The Thouser arc just sucked all the life out of a show that I'd been enjoying up until that point. It didn't help that no-one was trying to stop him, they just all went along with his game. Not a fan of their attempt to rehabilitate him in the recent episodes either.