[DreamSword]

Episode 17: Would You Care for a Nightmare?

This was a really weird one to experience.

As far as dream/nightmare episodes go, it's not the worst I've seen, but the entire thing felt really weird to sit through.

The main takeaway(or atleast, I think it is), is we learn what Koichi's' grudge against SHOT is about: That the commander is responsible for the death of his parents, and Koichi is out for revenge.

And the thing is, I kinda just shrug it off because I barely know a dang thing about Koichi outside of that. I feel like this plot would've been better served further down in the show's' run, when the audience got more time to warm up to or learn about the guy. Rather than, you know, the episode immediately after his proper introduction.

A certain other toku reviewer would probably be very happy to be fed instant answers to questions, but me? Not only do I like me a bit of a mystery, but I tend not to care too much about a character explanation, much less how tragic it is, unless I have any idea who the person is. God forbid if I dislike the character outright. Coincidentally, Kiriko and Medic, both from Kamen Rider Drive, serves as examples of this(I finished watching that recently).

That's not even getting into the credits sequence, which seems to imply that the big focal point of the episode was supposed to be the Cop Girls and like... how? They were such a minor part of the overall episode. It'd be like if Kaori was suddenly front and center when she had a grand total of two scenes in this one. And that's not even getting into how half the nightmares in this episode don't offer much of an insight into much of, well, anything. Was the police chicks having a standard falling dream really necessary?

The episode isn't a total wash though, as while again, I felt not alot for it, it does still offer character insight to Koichi. And the nightmare that Kenji has, showing a bit of his training days and how much he doesn't like his arranged marriage situation was nice to see. Plus the electric shock joke gave me a giggle as it had Kingdom Hearts I vibes. And while her involvement was minimal, showing what Kaori still hasn't fully gotten over what happened to her back in episode 2 was also a nice bit of character insight, even if it wasn't strictly necessary.

I just wish we'd been given a bit more breathing room before this episode had hit, that's all.