[Paladin]

Tormented by Sieg, Baku approaches Nox in an attempt to uncover Sieg?s true identity.

[Frontier]

It's nice to see Impact has been upgraded to be able to better fight Nightmares it couldn't handle the first go-around.

I love Nem leaning into the "Tough Girl" act for this persona.

Man, Dawn is making a bad habit of beating Baku so thoroughly until he wakes up.

So Sieg feels some kinship with Nem because of their shared Nightmare aspect? Feel like Sieg mentally broke which drove him to embrace nightmares as the only way to 'save" the world.

The command room has now basically become the dining room. Minami giving Baku a good reality check about how he's not alone and he's got a little sister who still needs him.

So Zero wants the three Riders to fight and tire each other out so CODE can swoop in...but he also has an attachment to Zeztz as a whole, which is why he's restraining himself? But 3 seems like he's planning to disobey him and ropes 5 into CODE: Somnia. If it makes you stronger at the cost of your humanity, does it turn you into a humanoid Nightmare?

I missed 7 being smooth with Nem. Though he's really not 7 anymore...so now he's Zeztz! And he even makes fun of how Odaka had to be so Chuuni in coming up with the "NOX" codename.

Sieg WAS Code 01 and he and the Lady were the pioneers of Dream Learning. Though he was still slightly unhinged and devil-may-care about everything, though what could he possibly have had a thousand-year prison sentence that would lead him to work for CODE to avoid being in prison?

So basically Sieg is what Baku could be like if he let the Catastrophe Nightmare fully fuse into him. Sieg embraced the Punish Nightmare and became a living Nightmare himself.

Kouhai vs Senpai! Zeztz Catastrom vs Dawn! Power-wise they seem about even but Dawn can maneuver and is more agile than Catastrom.

There's absolute victory and then there's draining the upgrade out of the Wolf Nightmare so you can punch him into the moon...and then Rider Kick him in said moon, destroying it AND him. Too bad Zeztz didn't have enough juice left to keep fighting.

Just when it seemed like Odaka was finally going to wake up, having gained newfound respect/appreciation for both Baku and Nem...Sieg grabs him for his underground Nightmare dungeon. Yikes.

Next week: Agent Minami! The return of Kamen Rider Nox! The Cat Nightmare! And Zeztz Orderm!?

[Fish Sandwich]

I was always happy Kamihoriuchi was the pilot director on this series, because if Toei wants to push ZEZTZ on a more global level, as something that's meant to become a lot of people's first real experience with Kamen Rider, the kind of work he brings to an episode is exactly the sort of thing I'd want people to see. I *also* would really want those same people to experience the kind of work Teruaki Sugihara does when he directs Rider episodes, so even though it took half the show to get here, I was naturally very excited to finally see him get involved with these last two episodes, with the perfect excuse of this being a new era for the show in general.

This week is definitely more where he gets to show his stuff, in terms of the usual insanely kinetic sequences and requisite amount of crazy anime compositions and all that. A lot here had me grinning as I was watching it, between Capsems being spun with bullets instead of hands, and finishing moves so over the top they blow up moons. He even got to do a proper sequence with Impact right away and everything! And as usual for Sugihara, it's all really pretty, really energetic, really fun to look at, and just plain cool.

Story is still playing its cards real well for me, too. I'm almost never going to be upset when a Kamen Rider show wants to actively frame its hero as being a monster in his own right, but it also does a lot to make Sieg feel like a critical piece of the narrative right away by choosing to in turn frame him as the monster Baku could end up becoming. Or perhaps even the monster he's pretending he hasn't already become. It instantly makes sense of why Sieg can only show up now, both thematically and for literal plot reasons, and starts building parallels between the two of them that seem like they'll do for this half of the series what the parallels between Baku and NOX did for the first half. And also this half, of course, because the quest to make NOX an ally continues here, getting us a ton of other neat stuff going on, like NOX as the dashing hero protecting Nem, and ZEZTZ deciding to formally retire his code number in a way that playfully pokes fun at his old teacher while also kinda paying tribute to him at the same time.

And you know, even all that isn't getting into all the other stuff happening on the side here. Six is still just lying in bed, and I'd say I'm still waiting for Fujimi and Nasuka to really have something meaty going on again, but pretty much every principal character gets a good moment or two here, even if it's a small moment.

[Locke]

Man, it is crazy what one character can do for a show. I didn’t actively dislike Zeztz in the first half, I just think it lacked a unique spark to it, it was just all very functional. But Sieg here really is like a lightning rod for this show.

Since he has shown up, the energy of the entire production feels ignited. And stuff that was already pretty good in Zeztz like the action scenes, just feel somehow even more elevated, now the show around it feels like it is finally firing on all cylinders.

Assuming the ending isn’t fumbled, it is gonna be interesting to see how history looks back on this show, because like the highs of the show right now are very removed from what the experience must of been like of watching those early episodes week by week, and stuff like that gets lost to time when the show becomes a bingeable thing for future audiences. Like if I hadn't joined this show late, and wasn't able to watch the first half in clumps, I probably would have given up and missed out on the show developing into something really good. Just saying.