kamen rider zero one issue 1 review

written By Ethan

Edited by Kwame Obiri-Addai

 

Now, as you may have guessed from my last article, I'm a big fan of tokusatsu. After stumbling onto clips of Kamen Rider Ex-aid on instagram in 2017 and deciding to seek it out, I've watched Ultraman, Super Sentai and Kamen Rider weekly. You can imagine my excitement when they announced Kamen Rider Zero-One was going to get a 4-issue comic book miniseries written by Brandon Eastonwith art by Hendry Prasetya, published by StoneBot Studios and Titan Publishing. So does this live up to the hype ? No, I don't think it really does if I'm honest, and before this review is done I'm going to get into what I think might have happened. But before that, I should really summarise the story.

So the first issue opens with our main character Aruto hidden and his humagear (imagine the robots from Detroit: Become Human) secretary Izu being detained by A.I.Ms and interrogated by Yaiba and Fuwa, who are attempting to get Aruto on record as part of their investigations (and in case there's a civil suit filed against Aruto for the public damage caused by his superhero fights). Following the interrogation, Aruto and Izu get jumped in the park by some guy calling himself Ragnarok, who uses a red progrise key to take  a form that looks like Aruto’s Blazing Tiger form causing Aruto to transform and fight back, eventually Aruto manages to freeze him using one of his transformations.

This leads to Izu and Aruto having a conversation about Aruto’s conflict over whether or not he deserves to be named as his Grandpa's successor and take over as CEO of his company and the nanotech that Ragnarok is using in his suit. Ragnarok then (possibly reminded by Izu) uses their nanomachines to break out of the ice and continue the attack. The mystery person that sent Ragnarok to attack tries to override them to force a retreat, but Ragnrok overrides them and uses his tentacles to hack into Aruto’s driver. This seemingly locks Aruto’s ability to transform the normal way and raises his power to the point they actually look like the design on the cover and in all of the promo material. The issue ends with Ragnarok letting out a finisher move with his weapon and standing triumphant over a passed out Aruto, who was knocked out of his transformation.

Okay, let’s start with what I liked. While I had a couple of issues with it later in the issue, the art for the most part is really good, and the design of Ragnarok's powered up start is amazing. The fact that it looks like something they would make for the show is really just perfect.

Now for the things I didn’t like. Firstly, I understand that between this only being 4 issues long and a lot of people’s first exposure to Kamen Rider, this means you have a lot of exposition to cover to get people up to speed so that they can enjoy the story without having to wiki dive. Because of this, I can forgive the clunky interview scene. But one nitpicky complaint I have is that whenever Aruto tells a joke in the 40+ series & movies, he will say his catchphrase “Hai, Aruto ja naito!” (which translates to “Now that was the work of Aruto!” or “that's how you know it's Aruto”) and in the interrogation scene he doesn't say his catchphrase, which just felt weird as a fan. The other big thing i didn’t like is Ragnarok. While i adore the design, this guy just appearing out of nowhere and giving bland villain dialog about how he’s going to kill all Riders felt bland and generic to me. 

Aruto and izu being told to leave as they A pose out of the room 

Now at the start of this, I mentioned I had a theory as to why some of the problems I had with this comic and also that I had some issues with the art. Well, to get into them, I need to make a couple of things clear first:

1. This is a theory based on very little but speculative evidence. I'm not affiliated with anyone that worked on this comic book in any way.

2. I'm going to have to get into spoilers for the Zero One show and post series movies. If you wanna avoid them, skip to the last paragraph.

So, this comic seems to take place before episode 17, the debut of Kamen Rider Thouser. 

We can tell this because, well, Fuwa alive for one and according to the character index at the start of the issue, hasn’t found out he had his memories altered to think he was orphaned during the daybreak town incident. Not to mention, Aruto uses his freezing bear form but also has the flying falcon key (which he lost briefly around the time when he first used the freezing bear form but regained later). This is an odd time to set a comic that, for a lot of people, will be their first interaction with this world. Especially odd when everyone going into it assumed it would be set after the series, so why would this be? Also, why would Ragnarok’s weapon make the finisher sounds of one of the briefcase weapons used by the other riders when it's blatantly not a briefcase?  Well, my theory answers these questions. 

Now, during the credits, there's one name that I think is extra special to point out: “ Story and original characters by David Clark ''.David works with Team Rider to bring Kamen Rider to the west, by which they mean only America. ook, after the amount of times I've been disappointed to learn that they are getting more rider stuff over there and I'm still left out I get to be a little sassy over it) As well as this, David Clark is also a brand manager for Kamen Rider at Bluefin Brands. This would imply that David came up with the story and the comic publishers asked Brandon Easton to actually write the 4 issues. So my theory is that the reason why the comic is set in this early part of Zero One and why Ragnarok’s weapon makes the finisher sounds of one of the briefcase weapons is because Brandon didn’t watch all of Zero One - he watched just enough to get a feel for the characters and to be sure he could write them just fine. Which in and of itself is fine but someone should have caught the finisher sound thing at very least.

Speaking of sounds in this issue, I mentioned I had an issue with some of the art. The sequence before the finisher, you can see Izu throw Aruto the flying falcon key as the flaming tiger was activated and Aruto makes a quip about “fighting fire with fire”.... Was that meant to be Flaming Tiger? I ask because it’s a little confusing if it is or not. On one hand, it could be Ragnarok activating the flaming tiger key he used to turn into his base form, but if that is the case they still messed that up because it’s not clear when he turns into his base form as they didn't include any sound effect boxes for it like they do later in the issue. On the other hand, Aruto's fire quip doesn't work with the falcon key. Either way it’s not great. 

So to bring this review to a close, would I recommend you buy this issue? Yes but only to show that there's an audience outside of Japan for Kamen Rider. Although, we need to hold ourselves to higher standards . The Marvel-published Ultraman comics, for example, are fantastic and really make the problems I've described even worse by comparison. 

This issue, as well as the remaining 3, will be available digitally via amazon/comixology or from your local comic book store/online comic book distributor.