Honestly, good on Takahashi for managing to make the obvious twist of "this arc was a dream" still manage to be a surprise by seemingly revealing that it's all been a dream for far, far longer! The constant out of nowhere gocha's in Geats had be burnt out, but i feel like this shows way of slow dripping any info makes a truly wild twist like this have proper weight

If that's the bad dream your mind wishes for, perhaps it will come true.

I will say, judging from the way you're describing this feeling of yours, your disappointment seems to be based on the implicit assumption (as in, I know you probably aren't trying to say this) that the show's own creators somehow would care less than you about their own work up until that point being something to simply disregard in favor of a new direction? Which just seems needlessly ungenerous? I think it's a pretty basic good faith thing for criticism to at least operate on the basis that the people creating these worlds and characters also have some level of emotional investment in them, unless there's evidence that actively points to the contrary.

In other words, I don't have a problem with you thinking the show is heading in a direction you can't get behind anymore, or even necessarily with you thinking it's just a plain bad direction, but I'd strongly caution against any line of thought that leads to the conclusion the staff are making decisions maliciously. That's just not a headspace where you're going to see anything very clearly. Again, I don't actually think that's where you're at right now, to be clear! But consider this my own, much wordier NOX warning, I guess.

Don't you dare say that! Riders should always use their base forms! :lol

Seriously though, I was really happy to see Impact make a prominent appearance here. Stream showing up in 18 had me believing for a second that the lead up to Catastrom would involve at least the main four forms making at least one more appearance each, but that unfortunately turned out to not be the case at all. That was disappointing (Esprim's standby jingle even sounds like RPG music! Recovery as the party's White Mage was right there!), but the show is still ~just about~ meeting me halfway with at least having the base form. The real test is once we get into the 30's and 40's though.

I did kind of expect some emotionally deadened "I'm code number Seven" narration to really rub it in, honestly, but yeah, just not having the narration at all accomplishes the same overall goal.

It's one of the most heartbreaking moments in this episode, for sure. Like, literally the first ever thing the show tells us about Seven -- before it even gives us a clear shot of his face -- is the line "Trust those tears to me." It's really incredible just how far he's strayed from that dream of being a suave gentleman agent throughout this one.

Yeah, again, none of that stuff is probably anywhere near as big a deal as I made it sound. It was how I was feeling in the immediate moment, but the more I think about, the less it seems all that far off from business as usual for ZEZTZ.

Oh, he absolutely remembers. That's one of the things that makes this arc so interesting to me. Rider fans are inclined to process it as being in that whole genre we have now of the berserker form, and if you take him at his word, it sounds almost like some dissociative episode with Seven "taking over", but it seems pretty clear looking at a lot of his reactions to things that everything we see here IS in fact just Baku as we've always known him. He never had a split personality to begin with. It's less that there's some outside influence making him this way and more that he's desperately forcing himself to act this way, ironically thinking it will stop him from making more mistakes.

There's definitely a ton of NOX stuff people will think differently of on a rewatch, for sure. I was really excited to finally see that book again last time, for example, because we hadn't seen it since episode 5, where the camera focused on it as NOX talked about how all things would eventually break down. And you know, 20-ish episodes later, sure enough, that word choice was probably no mere coincidence!

You're right that that wasn't what I was getting at. I don't think Takahashi or whoever is actively out to attack the viewer or anything. I actually think they're doing it with the intent to improve. Heck, to give a comparison to the most recent Rider show I watched, Saber's' shift in Arc 2 did infact win people over, and as seen here, these last few episodes have been bringing more people around to Zeztz. It just sort of leaves people like me, who were all in on the original direction, out in the open.

But hey, it's not like I actively hate the way the show is as of now, and heck, maybe future developments will have me looking back on this period alot more fondly. I'm moreso just describing my feelings in the moment.

And, just to emphasize, the word I specifically used was "sad" not "angry." I just don't want to be disappointed in the end, more than anything.

To be honest I still don't understand why they introduced Inazuma Plasma Boost if he was never going to use it again.

I guess that's the part where I have trouble understanding your perspective, admittedly? I don't think you'll find many Rider fans who could more accurately be described as "all in" on the original direction of Saber than me, and with both that show and this one so far, the changes feel like a narrative organically building out its concepts in a way that was being set up from the start. Fans who only get into the series after those changes will perceive them as "corrections" in order to fix a show that was broken, but I think part of the privilege of being a fan from the start is being able to recognize that really, it's always been the one direction.

...That's probably one of my weird 4D logic opinions that won't make much sense to anyone though, so I won't push back much further than that.

Plasma Booster is honestly one of those forms where I'm kinda fine with it only showing up the one time? I think of it as like the final episode form Reiwa does sometimes, but for the final episode of the year. It leaves enough of an impression as is that I'm okay with it just being a special one-off occasion, if it stays that way.

Well, I can't agree with that. Show production is a collaborative effort, and it's common knowledge that scripts change both before and during filming. Even on Donbrothers, where Inoue wrote all but one episode and had maximum creative freedom, changes were made. How you view these changes is another matter. Personally, I prefer to think of them as for the better, as they reflect current developments.
Returning to Zeztz, I think it makes sense to see exactly where this twist leads before making any conclusions. It's entirely possible that it will simply be an illusion, like Kouta's dream in Gaim.

So Baku will go from Ethan Hunt to a totally different Tom Cruise movie.

I presume Lady is using some kind of Nightmare magic to prolong her consciousness indefinitely, as a human normally wouldn't survive a year without sleep.

Yeah, most creators surely care about their creations and any bad decisions are usually the result of flawed writing, executive meddling or behind the scenes problems. Nothing is immune to any of the above, as these people are humans like us, who live in the same world as us. Of course, there can be some exceptions of creators not caring when they don't get to do whatever they want (looks at Revice).

I mean, I think Zeztz could've at least changed from Impact to Plasma after realizing Three had the advantage.

Like how he was introduced with that "Trust those tears to me." line you mentioned, it's always been clear that Seven is a good guy who we should want to root for. He's always been cool, but he's only recently been cold after being willed in to the real world. The way I see it, the Cool Seven we know and love is the purest representation of Baku's identity, with his conscious and subconscious in alignment thanks to the power of lucid dreaming, where "kokoro" may as well mean both heart and mind as he uses them in sync. This is a person Baku could become, with enough experience and wisdom. The Cold Seven is the result of Baku forcing his "I'm on it" subconscious to the foreground after devaluing his conscious feelings, like putting the wagon before the horse except in this analogy the wagon is autonomous and a loose cannon.

This is the time of year in a Takahashi show where we get Kamen Rider Chronicle Hell or Job Competition (Ohmori's fault), so I can't deny that I'm a little apprehensive about where Zeztz goes from here. But I know that I've been enjoying it so far, so I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt that he can carry the current arc like he did with the previous one. Also, count me in the club of people who enjoyed Saber's first arc!

So Premium Bandai get new merchandise to sell.

Actually, Booster was a campaign item (similar to Tycoon's ID Core and Zangetsu's face plate) it's just without a Rider to attach it to, it pretty much got only a few real uses (Plasma Booster, Zero personally using it & Reactivating the CODE Zeroider) before it kinda just fell into obscurity since like, it's a limited addition bonus people get for buying certain things, they don't need to really sell it as hard as the other ones.

He was still nursing the bullet wound and the debilitating pain from that so I don't think he was mentally thinking ahead to what the best form should have been, just relying on pure instinct which is why he went with Impact.

He might not have even been in the physical state to use Plasma.

The recent discussion about where the line between Baku and Seven is drawn got me thinking. Because there's always been one big tell about who's who when it comes to which persona we're exactly looking at:

https://i.imgur.com/wBS0EWD.png

And that's his eyes. Baku's' eyes are brown, whereas Seven's' eyes are golden.

And when it comes to the vast majority of this episode, look what color our protagonists eyes are:

https://i.imgur.com/d6cNdnT.png

So it is Seven whom we're following all throughout. However, upon rewatching the episode, I did notice something that I found interesting. From the moment that The Lady gets shot, Seven's' eyes remain covered by his hair for the entire rest of the episode.

And sure, it's an easy way to show just how beaten down and distressed he is, but I think it also might be an intentional way to keep it ambiguous over who exactly is fighting against Three(and gets shot by him right after) in that moment. But, given that shot of the Moonscoop logo at the very end, I theorize that, were the past few episodes actually a dream, then the dream started right when Baku brofisted his inner Nightmare.

Next episode could easily prove me entirely wrong of course, but that's what I'm theorizing as of right now.