"Kamen Rider Zero-One" series: Episode one recap

 Air Dates: September 1, 2019 until ???? on TV-Asahi, Sundays at 9:00 am

There will probably be fifty episodes and the subs were done by Ignis/Over-Time subs

Main Characters:  First off Hiden Intelligence's personnel

Fumiya Takahashi as Aruto Hiden.... 22 year old lad who is a failure at being a comedian. Inherited the presidency of Hiden Intelligence when his grandfather died and his cahracter turns into the Zero-One hero

Noa Tsurushima as Izu.... HumaGear who is the presidential aide to Aruto Hiden.

Kazuya Kojima as Jun Fukuzoe.... VP of Hiden Technology who wanted to be president, Aruto's new enemy

Asumi Narita as Shesta..... HumaGear who is secretary to the president

Arata Saeki as Sanzo Yamashita.... Senior managing director at Hiden

Tokuma Nishioka as Koronosuke Hiden.... Aruto's grandfather, died in episode one

Other main characters:

Hiroe Igeta as Yua Yaiba.... Technical advisor for A.I,M.S., also a leader of the field unit

Ryutaro Okada as Isamu Fuwa.... Hotshot terrorist fighter for A.I,M.S.

Syuya Sunagawa as Horobi.... Leader of the MetsubouJinrai.net terrorist group, rogue HumaGear

Daisuke Nakagawa as Jin.... Hacker for MetsubouJinrai.net

Ryunosuke Matsumura as 'Little Assassin'.... MetsubouJinrai.net assassin, a HumaGear

Terms:

Hiden Intelligence- Company started by the elder Hiden to create A.I., developed HumaGears

A.I.M.S.- Artificial Intelligence Military Service, dedicated to destroying rouge HumaGears plus Maigas or anything to do with MetsubouJinrai.net

MetsubouJinrai.net- Cyper-terrorist group whose purpose is to hack into HumaGears and turn them rogue or more precisely, Maigas

HumaGear- A.I. Humanoids developed by the Hiden Company to serve mankind

Magias- Rogue HumaGears, turned evil due to the hacking of MetsubouJinrai.net

 Usually don't give that much info to start things off but thought it may work out better this way. You'll have a handy-dandy guide to the characters and such, will be adding on to it when new things or persons are introduced. Plus it'll save me from repeating myself too often during a recap, though the heading may be long don't think these recaps will be as a show is just 23 minutes long.

 Been a while since I've viewed a series in this genre, last one was 'Lupinranger' from last year. Have been a fan of these kinds of Sentai/Tokusatsu shows though I rarely post about them. Won't be doing the entire series which may have a total of fifty episodes and will just play it by ear as time goes on. As mentioned above the recaps won't be too long, the hardest part by far was writing up the above info. However sometimes the first few recaps are a tad longer as there's so many characters and storylines to introduce to you. Am a bit late starting this show as nine episodes have aired but if I do two recaps per week will catch up soon enough, there's another recap below this one.

 Episode one title: 'I Am the President and a Kamen Rider'

 These shows always have an upbeat song to open with but this doesn't for now. Read that's the case for these first two episodes and in the third show we'll finally heave an opening song where the characters are also usually introduced. Right above is the main character/hero of this series, as you can see his name is Aruto Hiden(American order) who is 22 years old. He's a wanna-be comedian who has been working at an amusement park but is a complete failure with his stand-up act.
 So bad that customers normally stream out of the venue when he appears on stage, it's gotten so bad his boss who owns the park has canned Aruto as to him HumaGears are much funnier. That scenario happened in the opening moments of this first episode as Aruto is out of a job but perhaps not for long. Shortly after his dismissal he was confronted by an overly cute HumaGear named Izu. As mentioned in the opening HumaGears are A.I. humanoids created to help and serve mankind, they often do look like humans.
 Izu had been sent to bring Aruto to the Hiden Technology Company, she's explained that his grandfather Koronosuke Hiden has recently passed away. The grandfather stressed that his will can only be opened and read by his grandson Aruto who reluctantly goes to the company with Izu. There the main directors are having a meeting on what direction the company will now take as they all presumed the presidency would be given to the VP Kojima. We only met him briefly in this first show but what a bad ass he appears to be and looks like Aruto has gained an enemy.
 With Aruto now present at the Hiden Technology meeting the grandfather's will can now be opened and read. Kojima gave the honor to Aruto who was still in a daze on why he needed to be at this meeting. That daze increased tenfold once he read the will to himself, Kojima was curious on why Aruto suddenly was pale and grabbed the will which he read to the rest of the board of directors. In it the elder Hiden had predicted one day the majority of HumaGears will be corrupted due to a devilish terrorist group. Because of that fact and the need for new blood the grandfather has left the company in the hands of Aruto!

 Needless to say the board of directors along with Kojima were in a state of shock but not to the extent Aruto was. When he realized that the will was legit he pondered for a few moments until he announced he wanted no part of running his grandfathers technology company. Aruto's main goal in life was still to be a comedian and he left the meeting to return to the amusement park though of course he had been fired earlier in the day from his gig there. One reason Aruto didn't want to be the company president as he wasn't fond of HumaGears which is what Hiden produced. At the park there's one who constantly draws large crowds as he's so funny which has made Aruto very jealous.

 Off the track for a few sentences to talk briefly about MetsubouJinrai.net though we haven't seen too much of them in the first two shows and know very little about their background. It's a Cyper Terrorist organization whose goal is to corrupt HumaGears as Aruto's grandfather predicted. It's run by two young males named Horobi, the leader, and Jin who is the hacker. By hacker it means he can reprogram HunmaGears into becoming evil ones or Magias. Seems the pair want revenge on what took place in Daybreak Town a dozen years ago, with 48 episodes to go sure the reasons for their revenge will be explained much more as time goes on.

 After departing Hiden Technology Aruto headed back to the amusement park figuring his boss would give him one more chance. The small venue was packed for a HumaGear act but someone had arrived first to tinker with the A/I. humanoid. That was Jin who uses a special device he thrusts into a HumaGear's stomach. He did that to the comedian that was about to entertain the crowd. Entertaining was the last thing on the now evil HumaGear's 'mind' as instead he stormed onto the stage where he violently threw the MC aside and ran into the crowd attacking them.
 The HumaGear had transformed into a Magia named Berotha, all in the future will have different names. When a Magia is created so aren't a small army of helpers and if you've seen any of these Sentai series you know how inept they are. Aruto watched the scene from the very beginning and rushed to help his boss out but was no match for the powerful rogue HumaGear Berotha. Aruto was powerless to do anything as it appeared the monster would kill the entire crowd at the park but in the nick of time the presidential aide Izu arrived on the scene.

 Izu was carrying a special briefcase which contained two important gadgets. Only the president of Hiden Technology has access to use them, now that Aruto has been appointed to that position the gadgets are his to use, the combo are referred to as 'Progrise Keys'. With them the user can transform into the 'Zero-One' superhero with many powerful abilities. Realizing the only way to save the people at the amusement park was to transform into 'Zero-One', that's what Aruto did with the guidance of Izu. At first Aruto was naturally overwhelmed with his new powers and often could not control them.
But he soon learned the trick of what power to use and when, those are things which I think will continue on for many episodes.
 The weapons and such used by a Zero-One are controlled through a satellite circling the Earth called Zea, it may be so far away but there's no lag time when using a weapon. Once Aruto discovered how to use his new powers more efficiently Berotha and his small army of Trilobites were no match for him. But it wasn't just Zero-One/Aruto the evil doers were fighting as there was also a small group of military personnel called A.I.M.S. That stands for 'Artificial Intelligence Military Service' and you can see the two main characters in the group above.
 They too fought against the rogue HumaGear and his band of Trilobites, whoever Aruto couldn't destroy they did. Those two main characters above are Yua who is on the left. She seems to be the leader of the five man group and her specialty is technical weapons. With her is Isamu who is a bit of a hothead and Yua constantly needs to keep him in check. We'll learn much more of him in the next show which is kind of confusing at first, actually still is.
 The A.I.M.S. team doesn't know who Aruto is, though he escaped to the military he's also an outlaw as they know nothing about Zero-One. Aruto is now a happy young man after successfully beating back the Magia Berotha and saving the people at the park. So happy he's decided to return to the offices of Hiden Technology with Izu as Aruto has informed her he will accept the position of president if it means he can save humanity from the evil rogue HumaGears. With that this first recap comes to it's end and as mentioned the first few are longer in order to explain everything.

 These series are always entertaining and though aimed at a younger crowd they're much more complicated then you would think. There's so many characters, weapons, organizations, etc. that it actually should be aimed at an older crowd. One main reason for watching this was because of Hiroe who I had never seen in a show. She looks better on screen than she does in magazines, we didn't see her or her team until 2/3 of the way through this episode but next show her part becomes so much bigger. The recap for that episode is the post below this one, have plenty of screenshots and in a series like this one they're very helpful to look at.