[Fish Sandwich]

I really don't like when ZEZTZ finishes off a monster with a weapon? When you have an idea as great as the whole slot machine thing for the finishers, anything else can only be a downgrade. It takes away part of the uniqueness of the show whenever it happens, and thankfully, it mostly hasn't so far, but it stings a little more this time because ZEZTZ didn't finish off the monster at all in the last two-parter. I guess January just wasn't a lucky month.

That's probably the only thing I have a serious complaint about? There's part of me that wants to say something about how it maybe feels sort of inorganic when plot revelations happen entirely because NOX or somebody decides it's time for them, admittedly. But then it's like, it's also definitely not unjustified, either, and especially with NOX, I generally get the sense the staff always have a picture of why he does what he does and when he does that's much clearer than we get to see.

Crucially, I do like what the episode ends up doing with all this Plot stuff. There's a lot of it that's very transitionary and thus hard to fully gauge, but I do get excited about the possibilities suggested by stuff like NOX and Baku both clearly being just a little too free-thinking at this point to fully fit in with their respective work environments. In the moment, I did quite like the decision to have Seven's relationship with Nem be the thing that gives him the clarity to keep moving forward when it turns out they're both having doubts about themselves. There's a seriousness she always brings out in him that I find adds a lot to his character (I'm always seriously impressed by how many moods his actor can nail in a single episode), and I like the idea that even though they only know each other in dreams, that connection is sort of more real and palpable than a lot of his real ones in this strange way.

Which, I guess, makes it sorta the other side of what I'm liking about this direction for the overall story right now? It's like the uncertainty and ambiguity of dreams bleeding out into reality and forcing all these characters to question fundamental things about themselves, and that sounds pretty dramatically interesting! And it has been so far! So yeah, between all that and the monster that's probably more memorable than usual, I think these past two weeks have been another solid Mission Complete for ZEZTZ.