Always a pleasure. :rock:

Speaking of which, one cliche in Japanese fiction that intrigued me when I was younger was the harisen-to-head slap. It could be a little hand-sized one or a huge-ass one that's on par with Kaori's mallet from City Hunter, it's a very unique to Japan cliche that fascinated me when I started getting more invested in anime and Japanese comedy shows. :lolol

I'm finding that, like W, my overall thoughts on these episodes tend to be shaped by how each pair of episodes work together, rather than on a one by one basis.

Zeztz slamming the Nightmare into the energy shield was a pretty sick maneuver though.

Like Visions says, whether it's good or bad luck is up in the air. I guess it would've been more appropriate if Baku had asked about the color meanings after he drew 2 Technoloms in Episode 6, considering how prominent the symbols are inside the Prison Nightmare.

At least in Zero's case, he's only piloting the body remotely, so he should be spared the fate of a certain other talking bike. I think everybody besides Baku and Nem are not safe from Christmas though.

In my Shinkenger rewatch, Act 45, Kaoru used a projectile variant, which I thought was pretty cool!

I think she was just trying to bring some rationality to the situation by making it clear that the stuff they see in dreams can't exactly be relied on for evidence and that there's only so much they can let Baku get involved as a civilian compared to what they already have him doing because Fujimi was acting like they should just take him to crime scenes/questioning.

Well, this mission is obviously much more closely intertwined with the show's main plot. Nightmare steals paintings in dreams, causing them to disappear in reality. Incidentally, all missing masterpieces were anonymously donated by Kensei Odaka, a.k.a. Nox. I have a theory that the sleeping Taro Atsumi isn't really a collector, but a counterfeiter who created these paintings for Nox and secretly hid something in them (that "national treasure"). We'll see where this leads.
It's also funny how Baku is becoming more and more like Seven. Our hero is now using not only the gadgets from his dreams but also disguises in reality. As if he really were a spy.
Also, Baku already knows about Kensei Odaka, which means Fujimi will soon find out about Nox too. I'll be interested to see his reaction.
And the next episode teases Zeztz's shrinking, which is sure to be fun. And Zero also talked a little about capsems (though he has plenty of secrets).

I'm wondering if anyone has actually been confused by this, but I can't help but notice the subs seem to be struggling to understand the story of Zeztz at least as much as I am?

The translation of this line in particular this week strikes me as odd:

https://i.imgur.com/lusnj77.png

It comes off as a really basic, TV-Nihon kinda error I'd think Shout was well above, where they ignored the actual particles in the sentence and have it as if the line were 現実の世界「を」復元する instead of the actual に that goes in there. My understanding of this plot thread is that the thing NOX wants to restore is himself, *to* the real world, which is supported by all the surrounding talk of him being another being that only exists in dreams like Nem.

Throughout episode 9, too, a lot of the dialogue regarding NOX's interest in the Recovery Capsem is translated in very vague ways, seemingly so as not to accidentally make any premature assumptions. Like the very last lines of the episode, which at least get the "to" part correct.

https://i.imgur.com/WC5SDiz.png
https://i.imgur.com/05OcTZG.png

But then I go back and check to make this post, and realize that when this same dialogue is used again in the opening of 10, it's now written like this:

https://i.imgur.com/Z0y5kEz.png
https://i.imgur.com/XXPsY77.png

So now it actually commits to the one specific thing. Which is just like... now I'm not sure if these translations are a result of what Shout doesn't know, or if it's because of what they do know, that I might not yet. Even though I don't find the grammar or the context all that ambiguous, it feels a little tough to say these are outright mistakes at the moment, because almost all of NOX's dialogue so far is so cryptic I can't definitively say this stuff isn't secretly correct in broader terms, even if I can be pretty sure the indiviudal lines are being handled pretty loosely.

I will admit that even from episode 1 the translations seemed more awkward than what I am used to from Shout, so I actually am inclined to say some of this stuff like "restoring the real world" is a mistake. It might just be the unfortunate price we have to pay for getting a simulcast translation, since they are working on a tighter deadline and possibly without knowledge of how the complete plot plays out as you mentioned. It think it's about on par with a quality fansub release, but the issues do stand out since Shout has become known for their excellent KR subs for completed series. I hope they end up going back and giving them a good editing pass before the inevitable Blu-ray release down the line.

inb4 "restoring the real world" is actually correct and it's connected to the bad dream Baku had that was alluded to a few episodes ago.

It does make you wonder how much Toei might be QQ or checking to make sure everything is accurate...because Shout also probably gets a lot of stuff back from them.