[Paladin]

Baku must learn the secret of the Bride.

[Switchblade]

Fujimi and Nagumo are officially my favorite characters.

As someone who has a documented history of being bitchy about weapons in tokusatsu that look like they're just roleplay toys, I really like Zeztz's sword/gun. It passes the "this looks convincingly like an actual weapon" test and I'm always a sucker for a sword that turns into a gun and vice versa.

[Zolda]

In the scene @ 08:24, Tetsuya tells Baku that from now on he and Nasuka will be supporting Baku in his missions. Last week in episode 4 @ 20:10, Tetsuya tells Nasuka that he somehow knows that Baku has a strong connection to the "black cases". These scenes confirm my hypothesis in episode 2 thread here that Tetsuya (and Nasuka) could be working as Baku's direct supporters beginning in episode 4. So far, Baku even tells Tetsuya and Nasuka that he's a secret agent for CODE, as Zero tells him to @ 04:51. This means that Commander Zero could be planning to get intels from MID's side, and Tsukasa would be getting intels from CODE's side as well. I wonder what the true motivation of these 2 top brass characters (Commander Zero and Tsukasa Toudou).

In the scene @ 22:13, Nox says that everything (which means everything physical) is destined to collapse, except for "us", while looking at Nemu's posters. This scene could be another support for my hypothesis since my 2nd post in episode 1 thread here about Nemu being another dream-dwelling entity who only possesses incorporeal existence with no actual real-life existence similar to the Nightmares (albeit she could be a benevolent variant of it).

Next week:

Nemu seemingly has parents/family (or foster parents/family), albeit only in the dream realm.

Mmmmmmmmmmaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyybbbbbbbbbbeeeeeeeeee...

[Frontier]

Don't you just hate it when a Kaijin vanishes in a murder of crows after you did the Finisher or when the VIP bride you're protecting turns out to have been the reason this Nightmare exists to begin with?

Wow, our police characters straight up sneak into a guys' room while he's sleeping without a warrant and rummage through his closet. Also I guess this is what happens when you have a secret base entrance that apparently literally anyone can use.

I don't know what I love more, Baku trying to get orders from his bike or Nasuka trying to ride said bike like it's the Boostriker again.

Thank goodness Fujimi is so deranged and obsessed that he's willing to believe everything Baku says about the plot. As long as it means Nightmare's are real and he gets to do something to contribute to stopping them, that's all he cares about.

I have to admit I'm impressed Fujimi and Nasuka stuck that landing jumping out of Baku's window. I mean, Nasuka seems really physically fit so I guess I'm not surprised. They probably did another barrel roll.

Convenient for Baku that he gets peeks into important locations in the dreamers' memories for if he ever needs to contact them in the real world to get more insight into what he's supposed to be doing.

Are they straight up going to move into the office at this rate? I mean, it's probably nicer than the truck. Just...don't drink the "tea."

Sorry Ippei, this was never about a childhood love lost, Miyuki was fine getting married...she just has a huge fear of heights after falling off a tree and doesn't think she can handle flying to New York.

I love that Baku drove for his final encounter with the Crow Nightmare. Bike riding! In Kamen Rider!

I also love the wing blades and all the kicks Zeztz managed to deliver with it.

Zeztz Stream! It lets Zeztz control the wind and LITERALLY SURF WITH AN AIRPLANE and can even create a cage of wind for wayward Nightmares! And it's specialty is a gun that it can fire the Breakam Burst Finisher! And you know this is a Takahashi season when he blows out the gun.

It's a sign that Miyuki's husband is a good guy that he's willing to call off the flight because she's having nightmares and isn't comfortable with it. It's a tough break for Ippei, but as long as Miyuki is happy, he'll take the loss like a champ. Also now Fujimi is trying to be buddies with him and supporting him because...I guess that's just what he does.

Is Nox reading up on the meaning of Zeztz' forms? And he talks about how everything breaks down...except him and Nem.

Next week: Prison arc! The Saw Nightmare! And Nem's backstory!

[Fish Sandwich]

I'm gonna be way meaner to this one than I want, but my gut is telling me the story here doesn't quite click together in a way that's very satisfying. The whole twist of finding out what's *really* going on with the Dreamer and all, it's great for how it puts the events up to that point in a new light, but even though it changes the context of the plot in a way that makes things more interesting than they were before, I think it might have failed to accomplish changing the emotions of the plot in the same way?

I just didn't get much resonance out of anything by the end, which sucks to say. Baku's self-doubt doesn't resolve in any particularly climactic manner, and his interactions with Miyuki almost seem to suggest limitations to the show's format when it's probably important to be suggesting the potential instead, this early on. I thought those second and third episodes built a really strong engine with the idea of a hero who has to confront people's deepest desires, both conscious and unconscious, and learn to understand them in ways they might not even understand themselves, but it didn't seem to amount to much this time? Miyuki ends up solving her real life problems mostly because she decided to tell her new husband about a bad dream she had, which kinda inadvertently means the bad dream saved the day as much as ZEZTZ did? Obviously it's important that he stopped the capital-letter Nightmare, but I'd sort of hope that, even if they only really meet within a dream, Baku himself could form a more impactful connection with the people he's helping. Maybe those people could even help him in some unexpected way! Might make a good story!

So yeah, I think there's a lot that maybe needs to be ironed out still if the show wants to do standard two-parters focused more around guest characters than an overarching story, but A) I don't actually know yet if that *is* the format the show will stick with, and B) in spite of everything I just said, this was still an episode that was entertaining enough, all things considered. I did especially like the action setpiece at the end. It gets a little wonky looking at points, but that's the part of this one where I felt the show actively trying to expand what it can do, because all that plane stuff is the sort of sequence I feel like Kamen Rider would ordinarily not even attempt as part of just a regular TV episode.

[DreamSword]

As a two-parter that's mainly been about communicating your thoughts and feelings, I felt these two episodes worked out pretty well for the most part.

The bride is able to find more love and support from her husband thanks to tell him about her fears. Baku is able to become better as an agent and fulfill his mission more efficiently than last time thanks to him being honest with the Investigators, and the guy pining after his childhood friend is able to accept things and move on because he's able to acknowledge both his own affections as well as hers. Honesty just worked out for everyone here.

I also liked the twist about the big fear actually being able a plane crash, as it's a very normal, human fear that many people have. Not every bad dream is about something super romantic or fantastical, afterall. And yet despite that they still managed to pull off some very stylish action scenes(even if YouTube's' notoriously bad bitrate didn't do them any favors).

During this episode I also noticed that Wing form doesn't have the red shoes, which I guess means that whatever is red/blue/whatever is the thing that's being most enhanced by Zeztz's' current form. I think that's a really neat design detail and I'm looking forward to other designs we get out of it.

One can also tell where this show saved some budget, since something tells me we'll never see the rest of Baku's' house; Given that the window is used as a door and all, haha.

Overall, I liked this pair of episodes. They were fun.

[GoldenXtreme]

I think this episode was a big improvement over the last few episodes for me, I had a lot of fun with this one. I think Fujimi and Nasuka are finally giving me exactly what I wanted, some cast members who help bridge the real and dream worlds and also give Baku someone to have meaningful interactions with related to his Kamen Rider work. Also helping things is the fact the two of them are both useful and extremely entertaining. Fujimi brings just the right amount of hamminess to everything and Nasuka trying to be straight laced but always going along with the chaos anyways makes it even better. Great chemistry between the two of them and also with Baku. I also liked the way they turned the mystery on its head in the second part, it was a nice bit of misdirection to have the drama of the wedding be a distraction to the real source of the Dreamer's fear. The place sequence was kinda goofy but it's kinda hard not to have fun with a Kamen Rider fighting a crow monster while riding on top of an airplane. Still have to see how I will feel about this show in the long-term, but this was a step in the right direction for me.