[Paladin]

Baku's latest dream finds him on an RPG adventure.

[Frontier]

I have to imagine Takahashi must have felt nostalgic writing an RPG focused episode.

Toei using a discount Kingohger set to tell a discount Dragon Quest story featuring the tale of two kids setting off to defeat the Demon King...with Hero Nem in her very snazzy outfit (Baku approved!) by their side! And there's also Villager A, who is basically useless but he's trying to make kendama's look cool!

And watching them menacingly is, of course, NOX who looks like he's from a completely different RPG genre. And also Kureha/06 who is there to track down the source of the Nightmares for CODE and take down their rogue agent.

Don't you just hate it when you can't even do the first random encounter?

How do you match the sleep pattern of a child? With a man who can practically sleep on command!

Oh yeah, no one in the main cast outside Baku has actually seen what a Nightmare looks like up to this point. He should've tried taking a picture earlier! Also Minami has...wild taste.

There's something about Nasuka's outfit and hair in this episode that really does something for me.

Why did Sohta draw a being in his art that isn't his Nightmare? Is that the Demon King? Is this a Nightmare BEYOND the Nightmare's we've been dealing with?

Is it just me or does it feel like Sohta is hanging out with his IRL crush in this dream?

It's nice that Nem wants to contribute more even if she can't seem to figure out how to apply being a lucid dreamer practically. Though that's the kind of commitment that might lead her becoming the Tertiary? Potentially?

The...Eye Nightmare? Cherub Nightmare? Is probably the least threatening Nightmare up to this point. He's basically a child who only has being slightly durable going for him. Baku can easily take care of him with base Zeztz Impact but that feels like bullying.

Did you think you were about to see Nox vs Lord 06? Well it's actually Lord 05 who rushes in as backup and to tussle with Nox...even stealing the Breakam Caliber. 05 feels like he's mostly brawn and muscle, but he's definitely tough enough to get Nox on the defensive.

The problem isn't the Nightmare, it can be easily taken care of, it's that this is a mass dream among children filled with a mass amount of Nightmares with a higher possibility that they might finally be able to get a Nightmare out into the real world.

[Fish Sandwich]

Kinda working backwards here, but I thought the cliffhanger this time was extremely well done. Seven's RPG adventure and NOX being hunted down by CODE mostly play out separately, but the way they overlap right at the end to emphasize how bad whatever's going down is makes it much more effective than if it were only ZEZTZ realizing there's actually a bunch of monsters or only NOX giving yet more cryptic answers that always seem to be several questions ahead of the one he's actually being asked. (It's just his shtick at this point; he'd be nowhere near as cute as if he talked normally.)

The fact that the A plot and the B plot are kept separate isn't necessarily a negative, either. There's an argument to be made that the RPG stuff doesn't get to be in-depth enough to make the most of the premise, but it's still effective in how it sets the tone as a seemingly laid-back mission for Seven. Something which is then furthered by busting out one of my favorite toku tropes, the misfit monster, meaning the fight scene ZEZTZ gets is even more silly than usual.

It's all fun and games, but as NOX points out, it's clearly too good to last, and I like how the episode keeps that thought nagging at you in the back of your mind with everything else going on. The growing complexities of this show and its new characters are kept where Baku doesn't have to see them for a while, which lets the show do something really out there and weird with its dream premise while still doing all the spy conspiracy stuff elsewhere and keeping that big picture Plot momentum up.

This was only the setup half of the two-parter, but I thought this one was really engaging just on its own, which I guess comes down to how it manages to do those two different tones at the same time. Doesn't hurt that one of those tones was a cute pastiche of a genre I'm fond of, either.

[Fredbob392]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

Kinda working backwards here, but I thought the cliffhanger this time was extremely well done. Seven's RPG adventure and NOX being hunted down by CODE mostly play out separately, but the way they overlap right at the end to emphasize how bad whatever's going down is makes it much more effective than if it were only ZEZTZ realizing there's actually a bunch of monsters or only NOX giving yet more cryptic answers that always seem to be several questions ahead of the one he's actually being asked. (It's just his shtick at this point; he'd be nowhere near as cute as if he talked normally.)

The fact that the A plot and the B plot are kept separate isn't necessarily a negative, either. There's an argument to be made that the RPG stuff doesn't get to be in-depth enough to make the most of the premise, but it's still effective in how it sets the tone as a seemingly laid-back mission for Seven. Something which is then furthered by busting out one of my favorite toku tropes, the misfit monster, meaning the fight scene ZEZTZ gets is even more silly than usual.

It's all fun and games, but as NOX points out, it's clearly too good to last, and I like how the episode keeps that thought nagging at you in the back of your mind with everything else going on. The growing complexities of this show and its new characters are kept where Baku doesn't have to see them for a while, which lets the show do something really out there and weird with its dream premise while still doing all the spy conspiracy stuff elsewhere and keeping that big picture Plot momentum up.

This was only the setup half of the two-parter, but I thought this one was really engaging just on its own, which I guess comes down to how it manages to do those two different tones at the same time. Doesn't hurt that one of those tones was a cute pastiche of a genre I'm fond of, either.

A building sense of dread seems to be something this season has a real knack for, which fits the bad dream theme perfectly.

[JusticeMagnum]

Really liked this episode and I'm excited to see how it wraps up next week. The idea having multiple dreamers at once was a neat spin on things and Lord 5's fight with Nox was really good. I wonder if the dream world is going to start bleeding into real world more in the near future (given some of the imagery in the preview for next week), It'd be interesting to see how things develop if everyone has to fight in the real world more often (there's no way it's gonna be a one off in episode 3).

Also something interesting I noticed was that the colors of the Nightmare King in Sohta's drawing are identical to the outfit Nem is wearing. It could be a total coincidence but given that Nem is the source of the Nightmare's at the moment I wonder if it's hinting at things to come?

[DreamSword]

Man, the way they cut that next episode preview gives the next episode a real "season finale" sort of feel.