Episodes 3 and 4… they’re just a better introduction to this show? In almost every way?

It’s not wildly different than the first two episodes, when you think about it. The broad strokes are the same: Another Rider, mistrust, exposition, Time Jacker, a Legend Rider gracefully abdicating their power to the newest hero, Sougo hilariously screwing up a finisher, lessons learned. It’s a standard early-series thing, where we’re establishing a formula so that the viewers can get comfortable with this year’s storytelling. The beats are pretty similar.

They’re just executed so well, where the show is both leveraging the Legend Rider aspect better, and letting the kids of Team Zi-O feel more like characters and less like plot pieces.

It’s a set of episodes that draw smartly from Ex-Aid’s version of Teamwork, where it’s more about finding commonality with people you don’t like in order to achieve a shared goal. The heroes of Ex-Aid mostly despised each other, but they still managed some Perfect Co-op when the moment required it. They looked past their conflicting motivations and general messiah/martyr complexes to see that they wanted the same thing, just for different reasons. Achieving their shared goal was a positive for everyone, so it was worth tabling their feuds for a few minutes.

That’s pretty much Geiz and Sougo? Geiz isn’t convinced that Oma Zi-O isn’t only a couple charmingly-obtained RideWatches away for Sougo, and Sougo can’t really convince him that there isn’t a chance that Oma Zi-O is where this all ends up. There’s all this mistrust and uncertainty to what the future holds, and what the best course of action is… so maybe it’s easier to focus on the present? On the immediate task? Fighting Another Rider, saving a life, it doesn’t really matter what Sougo thinks of Geiz or what Geiz thinks of Sougo. The outcome is positive, so it’s worth pursuing together.

The Ex-Aid character comparisons from last episode, with Geiz and Hiiro, continue in this episode, but not at all how I’d expected. It’s a little thread about how the bottomless empathy and desire to avoid conflict for Team Zi-O is Tsukuyomi, not Sougo. (He's a sweet kid in this one, though.) While Geiz is the headstrong I’m Not Here To Make Friends grump that made Hiiro go It Me, Sougo listens to Emu plead with a crazed father to stop harming innocents and looks to Tsukuyomi, to say We Have One Of Those On Our Team Too. Sougo sees the way that she holds out hope that people can be better than their worst moment, and sees Emu’s compassion, and really gets how he fits into this group of weirdo teenagers.

It’s an episode that massively rehabilitates Sougo’s place in the group from the horrifying disregard of the first couple episodes. He’s starting to see that Geiz and Tsukuyomi aren’t wacky neighbors or impetuous killers, they’re two people who are here to host a year-long intervention for him. The series stakes are legitimized by humanizing them; by seeing Geiz’z anger and Tsukuyomi’s uncertainty, and caring about them both, Sougo has to treat Oma Zi-O as a real threat. He has to be a better person, now, today, for these two kids. He needs to be a positive influence on the world, because he sees how worried they are. His actions matter now.

It’s a phenomenal episode for our team. It takes all of the best non-Lazer parts of Ex-Aid (I love how they explicitly set the 2016 stuff in the second episode of Ex-Aid so that 1, Hiiro could be a massive asshole; and 2, there’d be a canonical reason why only Brave and Ex-Aid are around) to tell a story about working with people who you aren’t quite friendly with, and how a good team includes multiple viewpoints to see all the possibilities. It’s a story so smart and mature that I think it put Emu through puberty again? (His voice got so deep!)



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KAMEN RIDER ZI-O COMPLEMENTATION PROJECT EPISODE 4.5 - “A CONFESSION FROM LEGENDS”

PLEASE STOP TRYING TO EXPLAIN THESE THINGS.

THE EXPLANATIONS ARE CONFUSING AND RIDDLED WITH PLOTHOLES.

EX-AID LOSING HIS POWERS IN 2016 WOULDN’T AFFECT BRAVE, BECAUSE BRAVE GOT HIS POWERS FIRST.

IT DEFINITELY ALSO WOULDN’T AFFECT GENM, WHO WOULD PROBABLY END UP RULING THE WORLD.

YOU ARE ONLY MAKING IT WORSE.

You’re also making Sougo more relatable by his confusion, so I guess it’s not all bad? (Also, Geiz, you and Sougo are friends. Just accept it.) (Also also, no, I will not be calling Emu “B-M”. Never. That’s rude.)