Ecole

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Hate Sink
Full Name	Ecole
Alias	Kamen Rider Zein (second host) The Dimensional Savior
Origin	Kamen Rider Outsiders
Allies	Foundation X Kamen Rider Outsiders (all formerly)
Powers/Skills	Genius-level Intellect Zein Driver Zein Cards Kamen Rider Zein Progrisekey
Goals	Wipe out half of the human population to fix various global issues (semi-succeeded) Become an infinite being and use Zein's powers and reset the entire universe under his own vision. Kill the Kamen Rider Outsiders and anyone who apposes Zein's autocracy. (all failed)
What Makes Them Despicable	Treats both the Outsiders and Zein's faction as pawns for his hidden agenda. Since he is responsible for Zein's rampage, he's also responsible for the circumstances regarding Yuto Sakurai's dystopian future. He is indirectly responsible for the innumerable Ride-Player deaths caused by Kamen Rider Chronicle. The deaths are implied to be irreversible. He is also a massive hypocrite. He condemns humanity for its capacity for evil and declares himself an arbiter of Zein's judgment, yet he embodies the absolute worst of the entire human race. He deliberately rejects his own humanity and acts and thinks like a machine while he still physically human out of pure hatred for human life. His nihilism is too shallow and one-dimensional to justify his monstrous actions. And this is deliberate because the apocalyptic nature of his plans are played out very seriously. He stands out as the evilest villain in Outsiders, next to Zein, due to the fact that he's an ordinary human being wielding the power of a godlike AI to shape all existence on a whim. Yet he is perfectly aware of what he's doing is wrong, but never admits it and went through with his omnicidal end goal out of nihilistic spite and a shallow pretense of righteousness, threatening the world with annihilation out of a mindset that if humanity cannot atone for their sins, it has no right to exist. The second he shows his true colors, Ecole's betrayal pushed Kamen Rider Outsiders from a high-stakes villain crossover against the threat of AI overreach to a nightmarish existential horror. Forcing the Outsiders and Zein's former allies to join forces for the survival of humanity and the entire Kamen Rider universe.
"Love to hate" factors	Ecole is far too hypocritical to be likable. His misanthropy and nihilism feels excessively banal even for Kamen Rider standards. However, he still manages to stand out—for both the right and wrong reasons: He subverts the usual traits associated with Yuya Takahashi's Kamen Rider villains: He is the only Takahashi villain to be an outright omnicidal maniac. He lacks the cartoonish villainy of Kuroto Dan, Gai Amatsu, Ark, and Beroba. His nihilism, while shallow and one dimensional, is played out very seriously. He stands as the darkest Kamen Rider villain in the Reiwa era, despite Outsiders being only a spinoff. He is the second Foundation X member to transform into a Kamen Rider, since Jun Kazu in W Returns: Kamen Rider Eternal On the positive side, he's the only person who views Tenjuro Banno to be both a nuisance and a repugnant individual. So much that he purposely sends Banno to be sacrificed to Zein under the pretense of confronting Horobi for his defection, which serves as a foreshadowing to his betrayal in the penultimate episode. His defeat at the hands of Gai Amatsu validates the latter's redemption arc.
Type of Hate Sink	Hypocritical Misanthrope

“	With this, I shall become an infinite being! For I am Zein!	„
	~ Ecole as he transforms into Kamen Rider Zein.

Ecole is the main antagonist of Kamen Rider Outsiders. He is a Foundation X member who serves as the co-executive for Project Outsiders alongside Joseph Rando, a gathering of past Kamen Rider villains to oppose the super-AI Zein. Behind the scenes, he is revealed to be the true mastermind of the conflicts of the anthology, using many of the Outsiders as test subjects to awaken Zein's full potential to shape all realities. He defects from Foundation X and pursued his agenda of a world reset. He is the archenemy of Gai Amatsu, the future Yuto Sakurai, and Ziin.

He is portrayed by Yamato Furuya.

What Makes Him a Hate Sink?

• While he's just a scientist of Foundation X and the co-executive of Project Outsiders alongside Joseph Rando, he is, in fact, the true puppet master of all the conflicts and tragedies in the anthology and the main orchestrator of Zein's oppression of humanity.
• He sends Banno to be sacrificed to Zein under the pretense of confronting Horobi for detecting to Zein's faction. While Banno is already a horrible person and definitely deserved his brutal death by Zein, Ecole's true motives would eventually overshadow Banno and render him irrelevant for the last three episodes.
• On the surface, Ecole seems more professional and level-headed. His true nature reveals him as a disillusioned individual who had grown frustrated with mankind's repeated failures in addressing the planet's existential crises (i.e., climate change, economic collapse, war, political dysfunction, etc.). He has since discarded his capacity for kindness and his ability to process human emotions in favor of the logical and inhuman mindset of a robotic tyrant.
• He indirectly caused the countless Ride-Player deaths when Kamen Rider Chronicle is restarted after Zein tricks Genm Corp. into relaunching the game using Nico Saiba's voice, leaving Nico to face the ramifications of the ensuing chaos. The deaths are implied to be irreversible with no apparent way to bring the victims back to life unlike in the Ex-Aid: Another Ending trilogy. Even after the game is stopped for good, Ecole succeeded in wiping out half of the human population to circumvent the world's major crises.
• He is also responsible for the future Yuto Sakurai's slow descent into villainy by becoming Zein's host, making Yuto an unwitting pawn for Ecole's hidden agenda.
• He sacrifices Joseph Rando to the Evolt clone, so that the clone can use his body.
• He deserts Foundation X, betrays his collaborator Gai Amatsu—who used to be a Hate Sink in his home series—and by extension, the titular Kamen Rider Outsiders after he reveals his plan to reset the world.
• He tries to kill Yuto once he's no longer useful to him. But he instead throws Brain into the dimensional void when the former Roidmude executive tries to intervene.
• He is also a hypocrite, but much egregious than Zein. Ecole is transparent with his misanthropy because of mankind's repeated evils and complacency with existential issues, yet he commits immoral and unethical crimes while under the employ of Foundation X.
  • Unlike Zein, whose absolutist programming overriden its self-awareness to distinguish right from wrong. Ecole is perfectly aware of his own evil actions and became an omnicidal maniac in his own free will even if he's influenced by Zein. He stands out as the evilest character in Outsiders next to Zein itself as he is only a normal human being, who repudiated his own emotions—including the ability to feel empathy and compassion for others—to behave like a robot. Ecole is fully aware of what he's doing is wrong, but he refuses to admit it and insists on attempting to commit omnicide for no reason other than a hollow pretense of self-righteousness, threatening the world with annihilation out of an indignant mindset that if humanity can't atone for their sins, then it has no right to exist.
• Both him and Zein stand out as one of the darkest villains in all of Yuya Takahashi's works (and by extension, the entire Reiwa Kamen Rider series as a whole). While Zein seeks to subjugate humanity to impose its order upon the world by engaging brutal and dehumanizing executions on its enemies who are caught committing minor transgressions, Ecole is the only known Takahashi villain to be an omnicidal maniac. He seeks to reset the Kamen Rider multiverse and reshape it into a dystopian wasteland devoid of change and free will.
• Compared to some of Takahashi's villains—Kuroto Dan, Masamune Dan, Gai Amatsu, Ark, Girori, Kanato Sumida, Daichi Isuzu, Beroba, and Kekera—who have some tragic backgrounds, redeeming qualities, noble intentions, nuances and theatrical flair while maintaining their villainy, Ecole has none of those. He masks his misanthropy and nihilism with the veneer of a consummate professional and self-righteousness. The second he shows his true colors, the stakes are raised, where the threat of AI overreach escalates into a multiversal apocalypse where not only the prime Kamen Rider universe is at the brink of extinction, but other AR Worlds that Zein conquered through its variants. This culminates in Ziin announcing the Desire Royale by pitting the Outsiders against Zein, Ecole, and Evol-X to determine the fate of not just humanity, but of all existence.
• Unlike notable Takahashi big bads, who are primarily driven by corporate greed (Masamune), and sadistic entertainment (Suel), Ecole seeks to destroy all existence (read: the entire Kamen Rider universe) and reshape it in his own nihilistic vision.
• While Ecole's nihilism is played realistically and thoroughly justified—showing his disillusionment with humanity's repeated failures to address many of the world's persisting crises—he embodies the hypocrisy and inhumanity of the very evil he condemns.
  • However, unlike Kiyoto Maki and Storious, Ecole's nihilism is taken to its disturbing extreme, making it excessively shallow and banal to justify his actions. While Maki wanted to take everyone and everything with him because of his tragic past and desire that all things must come to an end, despite he had made himself beyond redemption, and Storious regaining his humanity upon his death. Ecole seeks to reduce all of existence into nothingness because he can and he will, so long as humanity continues to harbor malice.
• Even if Ecole's reset succeeded, the cycle of evil will find its way repeating itself in his potential rebooted world—the very same contradiction also applies to Zein, that it would remain as the only evil in existence if all malice were to be erased from the Earth. Both him and Zein ultimately failed to comprehend the very universal truth synonymous with the franchise's ethos: "Evil is eternal. So is the Kamen Riders' battle against evil." As long as there is evil, Ecole's plan is, and will always be doomed to fail. It serves as a meta-commentary on the nature of human evil that cannot be forcibly rectified by any means necessary.
• He outright rejects Ziin's offer of redemption, scorning the notion of forgiveness. Instead, he insists on passing judgment on all that exists, preferring to drag the Outsiders—and everyone else—into oblivion with him.
• In contrast to returning hate sinks in Outsiders like Asakura, Banno, and Beroba, Ecole stands out as a much worse hate sink than them because he is the most emotionally detached of them all. He purposely discarded all the qualities that make him human by being a hateful, hypocritical, irredeemable, and an inhuman and sociopathic monster. He is arguably the, if not the, most evil member in Foundation X in recent memory, superceding past members such as Lem Kannagi, who murdered Nadeshiko Misaki for her SOLU energy and as an act of spite towards Gentaro Kisaragi.
• Unlike many of the returning villains, including Banno, who is easily the most evil villain of the Heisei Phase 2 Rider villains, have comedic moments in Outsiders. Ecole, alongside Zein, is the only antagonist in the anthology whose villainy is taken very seriously.
• His downfall in the final episode is poetic:
  • He thought he could transcend humanity by wielding the power of a god-like AI to reshape the world in his own image. And once he loses that power, he's reduced to a mere fragile human.
  • Ecole deserted Foundation X to further his own agenda. Once he's gone for good, the Foundation will eventually forget Ecole even existed.
  • He mocks Brain's heroic sacrifice to bring Yuto to the light a "meaningless death", only to meet an undignified and well-deserved end at the hands of Gai Amatsu.
  • Overall, Ecole died an ironic death. He died with no ambition, no ego, and no meaning to his own existence. While the Outsiders, who each have their own agendas, prevailed against his nihilism. He also tried to drag the Outsiders and all sentient life with him into oblivion out of a self-righteous belief that evil sustains all existence. Ultimately, he found oblivion in his own demise.
• In the end, he is a delusional, fascistic, inhumane, unsympathetic, self-righteous, and unrepentant misanthrope who chooses to let the world be burned down to the ground rather than live with its imperfections to the point that any attempt to persuade him into reconsider his actions is impossible. He exhibits moral myopia taken to its natural extreme, more than Zein, wherein he understands he's committing evil, yet he stubbornly refuses to admit his guilt, and he insists on destroying all sentient life—and potentially, himself included—out of sheer arrogance and a perverse belief that humanity's extinction can vindicate him.

Trivia

• He is the only Hate Sink exclusive to Kamen Rider Outsiders, in addition to returning ones like Asakura, Banno, and Beroba.
  • As shown in both episodes 3 and 4, he and his colleague Joseph Rando view Banno as a joke. In addition to foreshadowing his betrayal in episode 6, the fact that he sent Banno to be sacrificed to Zein marks only the instance in the anthology where a Hate Sink kills another Hate Sink, albeit indrectly.
  • Ironically, he meets his end at the hands of another (former) Hate Sink: Gai Amatsu.
• Ecole is an interesting example of an emotionally detached Hate Sink in the franchise.
• Given that Kuroto Dan and Gai Amatsu are the main protagonists of Kamen Rider Outsiders, Ecole established himself as a darker reflection to both of them. He embodies of what could they become without their character development in their home series.
• Ecole can be seen as a corrupted character copy of Rau Le Creuset from Mobile Suit Gundam SEED, both seek to eradicate all sentient life out of the belief that humanity is beyond redemption. Unlike Rau, who is a tragic villain and a Magnificent Baddie, Ecole is a Hate Sink and a Pure Evil Villain.
• Given Ecole's nihilism and his intent to use Zein to reset the entire Kamen Rider multiverse, his actions reflects on how artificial intelligence pose an existential threat. The fact that he behaves more robotic than human shows the long-term consequences of AI can override human agency, autonomy, and morality.

External Links

• Ecole on the Villains Wiki
• Ecole on the Pure Evil Wiki
• Ecole on the Kamen Rider Wiki