[AkibaSilver]

Hey rememeber last week when I whined about not knowing who or what a Juggler is? Replace the word "Juggler" with "Geed" and you have some of my thoughts for this week. Ultraman Z is not the kindest show to come into fresh. Seriously, it took me a minute after they mentioned Devil Splinters to go "Oh, wait, hang on, this is Z lore, not something from a past show."

First, the positives, because there is a lot of positives. Action, as always, is amazing. Geed *looks* wonderul - I have no idea if this is how he's always looked, but if so they did a good job on his design. The STORAGE team doesn't have that much to do (and, between electrical engineering, exo-biology, and trying to solve a millenium prize singlehandedly (????), I'm starting to think Science-Lady is wasted there), but what they do have is nice. And, while it's tough, you can sketch the vague bits of the non-Z stuff. Geed's host (Riku?) and Juggling Captain know eachother, Geed doesn't like him, and the problems in this series is due to some bad stuff that happened in the past betwene Bellial, who I've at least heard of! And, for it's credit, Z and Geed's interaction is cute. Z's attempt to explain Geed does better than the entire rest of the episode, tbf.

But yeah. If last week felt like I was missing something, this week felt like I was missing a lot more. Haruki takes a backseat, and it's Mr Geed's story at heart, so any nuance about his character is lost on me. If they'd maybe focusued more around Haruki interacting with Geed-man, so we can learn about him as our main character does, in a natural way, it could have worked better, but the two don't even exchange names until the last scene! The flashbacks help a little, but they're all action scenes, so it doesn't do much to establish character, and takes even more time away from our ostensible protagonist *and* villain! Also, Geed is another fusion Ultra, so that's another 3 Ultras for me to not remember. And it's regular Orb, not even Orb Dark Black Noir Schwarz, so points down for that.

I want to like Z. And a lot of it, I really do! If nothing else, it's visually stunning, and the core cast is likeable. But we're 6 episodes in, and already the deep lore is coming. And given they had a Bellial medal in the "buy the merch" section when all of them are accounted for other than that one which disintegrated in Celebro's hands, I get the feeling it doesn't stop coming.