Kamen Rider Zero-One (2019-2020) episode 1 “I am the President and a Kamen Rider”
Given that Kamen Rider Ex-Aid presaged the covid pandemic by a couple years, I can’t help but feel a bit nervous about the existence of Kamen Rider Zero-One… a Rider series about AI gone amok! Kamen Rider Zero-One is the first Kamen Rider series from the Reiwa period, which started in 2019 in Japan, so the title works as a reference to that transition, as a pun on the word “Reiwa” (“Rei” can be a reading for the kanji for “zero”), and as a reference to the binary code of computers and thus the central theme of AI danger and corrupted robots.
The story goes that Hiden Intelligence is a big AI group like OpenAI, and they have created a line of robots called Humagears. However, their CEO has just died, but has left a letter handing over the company to grandson Aruto Hiden… except his grandson is a loser (here we go again…) who wants to become a comedian and make everyone laugh (I’m having another flashback to Ultraman Trigger and it’s “smile, smile” catchphrase), and he doesn’t want anything to do with running a company. When Aruto goes to a local amusement park, however, a comedian Humagear about to do a show gets infected with a program that changes him into a mantis-themed killer robot with a jonesing for murder. A cute robot girl gives Aruto a Rider belt so he can protect the guests of the amusement park from the spreading infected robots, and he changes into Kamen Rider Zero-One and kicking a considerable volume of robot buttocks.
One nice touch of the first Reiwa Rider is that, even though Aruto is another in the long line of losers, because of the AI bit, he can download gluteus-whalloping skills from the sky and forthwith go medieval on the sinister robot scum with alacrity. Zero-One’s transformation, too, features a big CGI grasshopper-bot that snaps apart and clicks onto his body, becoming the armor and readying the guy for action! I jive with Zero-One’s day-glow yellow and black color scheme, and the resulting fight includes some wicked action insanity as the Rider jumps and ricochets through a bus mid-flight (things get tossed around a lot). While I wasn’t so keen on the monster design here, lots of energy blasts are exchanged, and the minion-droids look appropriately deadly. Maybe this one was not as unique or cool as some of the previous Riders, and the comedian angle comes across as more than a little grating on this first outing, but I think there was a lot to get charged up and positive about in this incarnation.