[DreamSword]

I really dug this episode a ton, and it surprisingly managed to hit me on a pretty personal level.

If you don't care to read my personal anecdote, just know that the important part is that this episode really resonated with me in everything it did, and it made me very excited to see where the show's gonna go from here on out.

As for my personal stakes though, I related alot to Baku here. His first, most striking nightmare being that involving him getting struck by lightning is also a big aspect of a reoccurring nightmare I myself have had on and off for years. It's become more sparse over time, but I still do have it occasionally.

And part of the process of me coming to terms with the feelings that bad dream represented was done via me taking inspiration from that dream to make into one of my OCs. In other words, channeling the nightmare into something more positive. And that's exactly what Baku does here. As has been seen with NOX(and apparently, CODE)'s' tendency to "erase" things; If you run from the problem, that typically only holds things off for a little while, if not makes them outright worse.

NOX's' personal fears are what hold him back from being able to return to reality; keeping him in the dramatic irony of the exact thing he accused Baku of. Baku, meanwhile, is facing various truths head on, and chooses to instead try and channel his personal darkness into something better. I think it's rather telling that rather than follow his mission to a T and kill NOX outright, Baku instead disables his target and demands answers out of him. He doesn't want to be in a never ending dream, regardless of how much he embraces the ideal of being a secret agent. He's a dreamer, but he's not delusional.

And I gotta say, big props to whoever handled the directing on this one, as it captured the necessary mood and emotions to carry this sort of story perfectly. I especially loved how the screen filtered between the colors of Zeztz's' various forms as Baku confronts his first nightmare, thus showing that Baku is embracing everything he's experienced up to this point.

Just... man, fantastic episode this week. Easily my favorite so far.