[Paladin]

In his dream, Baku recounts his terrifying experiences to Fujimi, Nasuka, and Minami- while Nox listens in...

[Frontier]

It's surreal hearing both Playback and Visions before the episode airs.

Are they going to change the intro now that Baku can't really introduce himself as a CODE Agent when he's kind of defected and on the run from CODE?

How helpful of Baku to recap the first half of the series for his team (and Nox). Though while he's holding a briefing with HIS team, 3 is holding a briefing with 5 and 6 to come after him. 5 takes issue with hunting down a fellow CODE Agent, but he'll follow orders all the same.

We've got our new OP! Which starts off with Baku literally watching the first one like it was a dream vision! Which it kind of was! And we've got scenes of Baku hanging out with the gang, Zero and 3 (looking particularly psycho), blurred out Kamen Rider Dawn (and possibly Orderm?) Zeztz in all his main forms fighting a giant black Nightmare (possibly with Nox?), Lady being a creepy Nightmare Spewing Mom. And Zeztz once again battling a shadow being. Also we only fit the bike in reused footage.

It's funny how this is the first time the "real world" crew have seen ANY of this. Like, they never saw Zero in robot form (except Minami) or any of the Kamen Rider action. Heck, Nox is for once rendered speechless from seeing what the end result of all his vagueposting and throwing in with the Nightmares ended up, and it's not a pretty picture for him.

I can't say I'm surprised Fujimi (with even less experience with Baku) would try to arrest him for dream crimes, even though Nasuka is the only one with the authority to arrest people.

Baku, you suave agent you! Using the Projection Capsem to pull a fast one on your CODE pursuers!

It's funny how Baku and Nox are finally working together...even if only in the sense of both having to fend off their CODE hunters.

The Knights are a little underpowered against Inazuma Plasma, but respect to Kureha for trying her best.

Lady's reaction to Baku's premonition ability is...ominous, to say the least.

How are they going to resolve this standoff? With a 5th entry no one was expecting...someone who can hijack this dream world, turn it into a falling guillotine of fire, throw a giant red slash at his enemies...KAMEN RIDER DAWN. Even his Capsem blows all the other Capsems away!

Next week: More Dawn and the return of Inazuma Plasma Boost!

[Fish Sandwich]

One of the big questions I had after the whole premonition reveal was how exactly the show intends to reconcile there being all those scenes that Baku was not around for, so I was especially happy to see the show immediately explaining that in such a clear and simple way. They were also scenes in the dream, and even though his dreaming self wasn't aware of them, he remembers along with everything else after waking up. Pretty realistic, even! I think I've had a dream or two in my own life shaped by common narrative structure in a similar way, so once again, that's something about Baku that's easy to relate to. I mean, even simply as a viewer of ZEZTZ, this essentially means Baku watched the entire show up until now, exactly as we all saw it, which is *super* weird and unusual, but also another strong way to make that stuff not feel like it just went into a trash can.

Just for this episode, it also made the recap stuff visually stimulating in a way that's very on-brand for this show. Watching old clips is one thing, but when you can have the characters watching old clips like a movie in a cool location to film in, it adds a lot of much appreciated atmosphere to the proceedings.

It's also just a pretty nicely structured episode, all things considered? Really hit a nice balance of straightforward recap, letting the characters comment on things to make it interesting (love Baku explicitly calling out to NOX when talking about him, for example), and a healthy amount of actual new stuff. I was pretty impressed throughout. Usually part of the point of these things is to save money, but the action here still goes pretty dang big? There's explosions and everything! I also really have to commend the show for continuing to do fun things with Plasma's whole preemptive attack shtick? The show makes all of ZEZTZ's forms look cool, but that one in particular always impresses me. There's a creativity to the use of super speed powers with it that manages to give it a very distinct identity even with plenty of other Riders who move fast out there. That being said, I guess Projection is definitely the MVP Capsem of this episode, even without being used in the Driver.

So yeah, uh, pretty happy with this week, too! New opening is also pretty cool! I love the song, and while I think the visuals are almost too fast to process at points yet also still not timed as well as I'd like, I do appreciate the imagination of them, and especially the way pretty much the entire previous opening is still kinda in there. As something to symbolize a particularly drastic turn in the story, it does the job quite well.