It's cool how the first episode was called Start and now this one after the plot twist is called Get Started, as Seven is assigning his own missions rather than waiting for them.

Play Back doesn't give me the agent genre feeling like Visions, so I kind of want it to get the You Be One Winner treatment. In hindsight though, I think You Be One Winner was a great OP while it lasted and I'm glad it stuck around as an insert like Busters Ready Go. Well, if it's here to stay, then I hope Visions at least gets the Busters Ready Go treatment and plays for all the climactic moments.

Zero cannot get out and stay at the same time.

I'm worried that Baku may have played his hand too early though. He had the opportunity to become a double agent and find out the true meaning of the darkness inside CODE.

We're totally watching Ethan Hunt and Edge of Tomorrow in the same show!

Being vague is less fun when you realize the new guy's more informed than you. Yep, Nox will need to find a new hobby now.

Oh, speaking of Nox, turns out his defenders' conclusion that he was only pretending to murder Five and Six and children are pretty much debunked, as even though the real world he tried to destroy wasn't actually real, he believed it was.

I hope you only have good dreams from now on as well.

You mean like how Houtarou's father was actually Evil Ikki all along and while adventuring in Granute world, he took out the mafia before they could assassinate the Stomachs? :p

That explains why nobody in the show has ever talked about it until now, with the revelation that Baku hasn't been dreaming lucidly since the Gun Nightmare incident. He's been looking at the same red moonscoop as everybody else, thinking it's totally normal, only remembering what the moon actually looks like when he wakes up.

Please share!

Basically it was revealed in the interview that Dawn is fully aware of Baku's precognitive dream and is intent on meddling in this new route.

The full quote (and again forgive the machine translation) is: "Regarding future developments, he said, "With the 'Strong New Game' depicted in episode 25 and the 'Butterfly Effect,' even more exciting developments await," and added, "A new Kamen Rider, Dawn, who observed Baku's precognitive dream, will appear and disrupt the situation as if refusing to let this be just another 'second playthrough,' so you'll never get bored. Look forward to it!!"" (the person interviewed is producer Hideaki Yanaka, head producer of Zeztz)

I just realized that because Baku stopped the Bomb Nightmare from appearing in the real world, nobody got infected by the Nightmare butterflies so most of the Black Case incidents they'd dealt with won't happen. And I guess all the victims of the week will have to get by without facing/overcoming their Nightmare with Baku's help?

Also NOX should still be in a coma, right?
It'll be interesting to compare when we get actual visuals but I feel like "Playback" is going to be a lot less trippy visually than Visions was...for obvious reasons, now.

That reminds me, I was thinking that Dawn's eyes kind of look like a butterfly. So he's the true lucid dreamer, being aware of everything that has happened and the likely consequences that may occur with divergence. Perhaps he will steal the National Secret before Baku! However, he's also not on any side except his own, a wild card, so his intervention might work either for or against him depending on the situation. Nox ironically is the least informed Rider.

Yep, I hope Miyuki can still find the courage to be honest with her husband.

I kind of loved the trippiness and mysteriousness of the Visions OP though.

EDIT: 2800th post!

He was so thrown off he couldn't even vaguepost about the Darkness of Code for once!
It definitely made it unique, though I won't miss that long shot of Baku just walking to the camera at the end.
Congratulations!

I was holding off judgement on the "all just a dream" reveal until I saw this episode, and now... yeah, I like it! It was a very risky move by the writers, but I love what this premonition does to the story and to Baku as the protagonist. IMO it actually makes the crushing defeat in the previous episode feel more meaningful, not less, because there was no comeback, no last-minute turnaround, no way Baku somehow managed to make things work out. He just lost!

And now he has to move forward knowing that if he doesn't prevent that premonition in time, it will happen in the real world too. Even the way he acts seems like this really lit a fire under him (shoutout to Ryutaro Imai for showing that so well, especially in the final scene of gathering his team). It's like if in the beginning he was in the dark, blindly following orders and chasing whispers of information, then he started to show sparks of independence and demanding answers, and now he's ignited into a flame, setting his own mission in open rebellion against CODE, and while there's still a lot he doesn't know, he also has knowledge no one else does.

There's a also some really neat symbolism between waking up from a dream and breaking free from a lie. If everything he did under CODE was him being lied to and used, a "dream" in the metaphorical sense, what better way to emphasize that in Zeztz's context than by making it a literal dream? And what better way to show him finally breaking free from their control than by waking up?

Honestly feels like the missing piece slotted in here to really establish this show as something uniquely its own. The twist was well earned, and they stuck to their guns and didn't pull the trigger on it too early. That doesn't mean I don't wish the first half of this was better, as I wonder how many bounced on this before we even got to this point.

But oh well, for those of us still here, now we get to see Baku New Game+ his way through the Nightmares and see what new directions it takes the story in, the universe has already had some major alterations just in this episode alone and given how well they landed this twist, I am excited to see how they pay off these changes, and I hope they hold their nerve throughout.

Well....definitely took me by surprise to find out everything up to this point was a dream. And I applaud them going this route full tilt.

He definitely jumped the gun telling Nem about her mother. You know, butterfly effect and all. But at least he's getting a head start getting the Dream Team together while also pushing Zero away.