[Sh Ranger]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Frontier

Are they going to change the intro now that Baku can't really introduce himself as a CODE Agent when he's kind of defected and on the run from CODE?

He already introduced himself as a CODE agent in Episode 1, before Zero even recruited him. He only found out later from Nox in a rare non-vague dialogue that it's a real organization and not made up by his subconscious.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Frontier

I can't say I'm surprised Fujimi (with even less experience with Baku) would try to arrest him for dream crimes, even though Nasuka is the only one with the authority to arrest people.

As Fujimi himself pointed out in Episode 24, CODE outrank him, so he couldn't arrest Baku for eliminating a legitimate target anyway.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Frontier

Lady's reaction to Baku's premonition ability is...ominous, to say the least.

She can see the dream world, so yeah, she knows more than anybody, except maybe Sieg. I'm intrigued to find out about him in the next episode!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

One of the big questions I had after the whole premonition reveal was how exactly the show intends to reconcile there being all those scenes that Baku was not around for, so I was especially happy to see the show immediately explaining that in such a clear and simple way. They were also scenes in the dream, and even though his dreaming self wasn't aware of them, he remembers along with everything else after waking up. Pretty realistic, even! I think I've had a dream or two in my own life shaped by common narrative structure in a similar way, so once again, that's something about Baku that's easy to relate to. I mean, even simply as a viewer of ZEZTZ, this essentially means Baku watched the entire show up until now, exactly as we all saw it, which is *super* weird and unusual, but also another strong way to make that stuff not feel like it just went into a trash can.

Honestly, I kind of just took that for granted anyway. I've had experience with third-person dreaming as well, so I'm a little surprised that such a dream has never been brought up in the dream world within the dream. The dreamers are always dreaming as themselves and never as other people, which makes it easy for Baku to identify them. Like, for example, what if one of those Blockreate kids had dreamed they were a tiefling? Good luck finding that guy in the real world.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

So yeah, uh, pretty happy with this week, too! New opening is also pretty cool! I love the song, and while I think the visuals are almost too fast to process at points yet also still not timed as well as I'd like, I do appreciate the imagination of them, and especially the way pretty much the entire previous opening is still kinda in there. As something to symbolize a particularly drastic turn in the story, it does the job quite well.

While Visions better emphasizes the feeling of Seven's coolness, I agree that Play Back does seem fitting for where the story goes from here and I like the song a little more now after hearing it with all the cool visuals. I would've been totally cool with it being an insert, but I'm relieved to see that it actually works great as an OP as well.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mesnick

Another interesting detail is that Agent Five doubts the wisdom of attacking Baku. Considering that he previously called himself "the dog of CODE," this is a surprise.

A dog is not necessarily only loyal to his masters, he can also be a loyal big bro to his younger pups, like Kureha.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mesnick

Nem's outfit-changing performance is beautiful.

Best scene of the OP!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mesnick

Overall, it's good episode from good show. But I still think that if there were five episodes instead of 23, it would have been better. At the same time, the recap could be made more interesting, like last year's. Although, I repeat, it's not bad as is.

Gavv's recap did give us the much anticipated return of Hajime, but other than that, I thought it was mostly uneventful. "The best kind of worst episode", as I called it, although now I would call it the third worst since Gavv's last 2 episodes were so unexpectedly poor.

Zeztz has a few episodes where I think they could've been executed better, for missions like Destroy the Biological Weapon and Capture the Enemy's Base, so I cannot call this recap the worst. It's still a recap, so it's not, like, amazing or anything, but I appreciate how it's treated as a mission and depicted in the style of a debriefing which totally gives the feeling of the agent genre. It's also another episode where we get to watch Seven in his full glory, like the Shadow Nightmare arc. I think this is important since the image of the coldhearted man who ignored a crying girl is still a fresh memory, so viewers can remember why he's a hero they should cheer for.