[Fish Sandwich]

Hey, they stuck the landing and everything!

This two-parter is ~just~ about the total package? I'd still love to see a Zeztz story that has some really strong and obvious central theme tying everything together, if I'm being honest, but I also have yet to see the show actively aiming for the kind of storytelling I'm thinking of in a way where that can be much more than a personal gripe.

And that sorta gets at the key to why these episodes clicked with me -- it's the first time I've truly felt the whole balance of the formula working the way I think the show has intended from the start. Crucially, the way the plot is framed around that national secret makes it very clear this *isn't* some big emotional story about the Dreamer, and that ended up carrying all the way through this back part, where there isn't some climactic emotional catharsis for the guy I feel like I don't have context for. He's here, he's important, he's worth saving -- they even still do some clever things with him like the gap between his dream self and his real self -- but he's just one element of the story, presented as just one element, which means that I can finally let the show off the hook about that for once.

I mean, they've also already done one story where the Dreamer was a bigger focus that I quite liked too, but I am getting the impression that was meant to be more of an exception than the rule, so it's nice to see the show finally nailing down the basic formula of how to tell a standard Zeztz story. There's a hugely successful amount of intrigue going on throughout, little moments moving a bunch of the characters along, and even a spectacularly creative action climax that I think raises the bar for what every episode following this is going to have to live up to now. All that, plus leaving off on a preview that creates the thrilling suspsense of whether or not I might have to apologize in a week's time for some of the things I've complained about previously! It's not necessarily my favorite outing from this show so far, but it certainly feels very definitve, even if it's hard for that statement to have any weight when my understanding of Zeztz is always being reframed a little with each new episode.