[Layton13]

Quote:

Originally Posted by DreamSword

I personally have no idea how you get all of that out of the line "The power of ruin... is that the best it can do?" But hey, if it speaks to you, great.

I was also factoring in his later little back and forth with Baku when he calls Catastrom "Cati"

[Fish Sandwich]

Quote:

Originally Posted by DreamSword

I personally have no idea how you get all of that out of the line "The power of ruin... is that the best it can do?"

I'm a little confused myself about how you could possibly take that line to instead be the direct opinion of like, either the show's staff or just The Show as some kind of personified entity, rather than taking it as a line of dialogue that merely reflects the perspective of the single character who speaks it.

Saying the show "does not give the slightest crap about what was established before" seems to me like a needlessly firm statement. I don't think the things you're seeing as clear evidence of that would seem like evidence at all unless you'd already decided on your conclusion beforehand. You've already acknowledged that some of what's going on here is business as usual for Rider narratives, and it only takes a couple further steps from there to see all the ways ZEZTZ is also still building the narrative outward from everything that's been previously established as usual, too. I don't begrudge you for not being into this new chapter for the show, or even for thinking it's a downgrade in quality or uniqueness or anything of that sort, but I feel compelled to argue against this notion that anything it's doing right now is an effort to cast aside anything it's done before.

[DreamSword]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

I'm a little confused myself about how you could possibly take that line to instead be the direct opinion of like, either the show's staff or just The Show as some kind of personified entity, rather than taking it as a line of dialogue that merely reflects the perspective of the single character who speaks it.

Because it's directly pointing out a flaw in the narrative.

If we really are meant to see the things established in the first half as still important, then the Power of Ruin was hyped up as basically one of, if not the most important things in the narrative of this universe.

As such, yeah, Dawn is right. Catastrom should by all means be no selling Dawn himself outright. But it's not.

I get that yeah, this is likely leading up to "the next big form" and what have you, but if the script itself is gonna call this "not actually all that impressive" then like, why should I be invested, you know? It's sort of why many Rider/Battle shows just outright don't address it. Or if they do, take a measure to course correct basically immediately.

And incase anyone thinks I'm glazing Catastrom a bit too much, I wasn't much of a fan of the how and why of it replacing Inazuma Plasma either, though atleast there, the show has established why Baku wouldn't just jump to Catastrom immediately with every encounter. So the second half gets a point there.

[Fish Sandwich]

Quote:

Originally Posted by DreamSword

If we really are meant to see the things established in the first half as still important, then the Power of Ruin was hyped up as basically one of, if not the most important things in the narrative of this universe.

...Which is why this episode has so much talk of the similarities between Baku and Sieg, and abandoning your humanity for power and all that, complete with a very meaningful cut to the Dualmare Capsem as Three is tempting Five. Because the fact Baku has this power now is still very, very significant, and will probably continue to have ramifications for a long time to come, which itself has precedent for Takahashi as a writer, considering he's done things like that with other powerups in his other shows, even after newer toys come along.

Again, the fact that Catastrom didn't win a fight seems like a weirdly specific thing to be hyper-focused on at the expense of everything else in the story. We don't even know exactly what DAWN's powers are to say for sure it doesn't make perfect sense, and the clear implication is that Sieg is basically someone even further gone down the same path of using the power of Nightmares, so I'm not seeing any immediate, obvious contradiction there.

[DreamSword]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

Again, the fact that Catastrom didn't win a fight seems like a weirdly specific thing to be hyper-focused on at the expense of everything else in the story

Because not only is that exactly what the quote I'm focusing on is talking about, but "power" is not only what everyone talks about in regards to Catastrom/Ruin, but also what Battle shows tend to focus on.

If you wanna argue that Zeztz isn't a battle show, I won't argue against that, but from my perspective it's certainly leaning that way more and more as we move forward. But again, I'd love to be proven wrong.

Like, the script can hype up Catastrom all it wants in terms of dialogue via other characters, but if it doesn't live up to that hype, then I kinda have a hard time believing in it.

[Frontier]

I'm just thinking to myself, how many active agents does CODE even have?

1, 2, and 4 went rogue, 3 barely does anything outside office work, Kureha was decommissioned, so that only leaves 5 until Baku was activated as 7.

[Locke]

@DreamSword can I take from your posts then that you felt really strongly about the first half of this show then? Can I ask why? As everyone else said, your opinion is your opinion, and this isn't me trying to attack your opinion or tell you it is wrong, but to me the first half of this show was so overwhelmingly bland ultimately, that I just can't imagine what anyone would latch into to feel so strongly about that portion that they'd want it protected and respected.

Like maybe I'm just old and have been at this too long and disconnected from what people want from their Rider shows, but honestly I haven't seen many takes like yours out in the wild really.

[DreamSword]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Locke

@DreamSword can I take from your posts then that you felt really strongly about the first half of this show then? Can I ask why? As everyone else said, your opinion is your opinion, and this isn't me trying to attack your opinion or tell you it is wrong, but to me the first half of this show was so overwhelmingly bland ultimately, that I just can't imagine what anyone would latch into to feel so strongly about that portion that they'd want it protected and respected.

Like maybe I'm just old and have been at this too long and disconnected from what people want from their Rider shows, but honestly I haven't seen many takes like yours out in the wild really.

Appreciate the curiosity. But outside of what I've already said in previous episode topics, I think it'd be better to wait until the end of the show before going into any more detail, as I think that'd lead to a much better compare?contrast on my part.

But, as for how things are right now, I guess the TLDR version is that I find an introspective spy story to be much more appealing than a bunch of shonen anime cliches.

[Layton13]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Locke

@DreamSword can I take from your posts then that you felt really strongly about the first half of this show then? Can I ask why? As everyone else said, your opinion is your opinion, and this isn't me trying to attack your opinion or tell you it is wrong, but to me the first half of this show was so overwhelmingly bland ultimately, that I just can't imagine what anyone would latch into to feel so strongly about that portion that they'd want it protected and respected.

Not Dream, but I personally quite enjoyed the first half. It's just a well executed slowburn.

It's mostly set up, establishing a comfortable status quo, while constantly chipping away at the fact that this can't last. Baku gains more and more distrust of CODE while the narrative inches forward bit by bit, with Zero going out of commission being the big turning point where things just deteriorate without ever calming down again, only to end in the worst possible outcome.

I personally just like Rider when it focuses on establishing itself for the first arc or even the second on character development and small plot progression, so when they want to knock over all those dominos, they hit fast and hit hard. And Zeztz has done that for me. even in a unique way. Yes, we erased the side-casts development on the surface, but we still know who they are and we are using this knowledge to push them further than last time as well as reveal new sides to them. We still like them, we just hope that they manage to become even better versions of themself.

Part 1 of Zeztz is the foundation this second half needed to knock it out of the park and it's doing just that for me right now!

[Sh Ranger]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

"To be burdened with sin even before birth... That's one unfair bad dream."

"Don't falter. Don't suffer. Enjoy the bad dream. That's how you change the whole world."

That scene right before the opening here was personally the most interesting I've found Sieg so far, because it definitely seems like it's in the episode specifically to speak to as-of-yet untold deeper facets of the guy?

When he talks about Nem's circumstances, it kinda sounds like he's also speaking about his own -- like his interest in Nem, much like his interest in ZEZTZ, is a sort of twisted kinship he feels with his fellow children of bad dreams. Which could itself suggest someone who, consciously or otherwise, wants to feel a sense of connection to somebody, or to just feel understood by them. A very Rider-esque loneliness or some other such thing that would add at least another note to his personality.

I love the idea of Sieg being tragically misunderstood to the point of not caring what happens to him since as far as he knows, nobody else does. Maybe he's actually a lot like Baku in that sense. Baku only feels truly alive when he's dreaming and I can totally imagine how the vivid unpredictable sensation of a nightmare could be something that Sieg clings to as an unhealthy way of dealing with a void he feels in life. When there is nothing, the power to grasp anything, even something terrible, might look like salvation.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

This reminds me: has it actually been clear to everyone that all the episodes titles are specifically verbs? Some of the English translations they choose make that less obvious, which I'd maybe be more bothered by if I knew *why* the episode titles were all verbs.

Of course! I think there's way more backing than raging in this episode, with Zeztz backing Nox to wake up, Minami backing Baku to not die and the flashback of Zero backing Sieg to Be The One. Kamen Rider Hibiki had similar titles, with a verb followed by a noun, including titles that reference both OPs with Kagayaku Shounen and Hajimaru Kimi.

Quote:

Originally Posted by DreamSword

My biggest fear right now is that Zeztz becomes the next Faiz for me: A show that I was really liking, only for a specific part to hit which completely turns all that good will around. And at the rate these past few episodes have been going, it's feeling more and more like the best I can hope for is that this show pulls a Blade and the ending totally saves it for me.

My biggest hope is that Zeztz becomes the next Faiz. Regarding your fear though, I've felt the same way ever since Takahashi was announced as the writer, as that "specific part" is something I associate with every show he's previously written. It's possible that like you fear, that specific part has already hit for Zeztz, but for now I'm not noticing any significant decline in quality, only a lateral movement. So I'll reserve my opinion until I see what comes of this new chapter.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Locke

@DreamSword can I take from your posts then that you felt really strongly about the first half of this show then? Can I ask why? As everyone else said, your opinion is your opinion, and this isn't me trying to attack your opinion or tell you it is wrong, but to me the first half of this show was so overwhelmingly bland ultimately, that I just can't imagine what anyone would latch into to feel so strongly about that portion that they'd want it protected and respected.

Like maybe I'm just old and have been at this too long and disconnected from what people want from their Rider shows, but honestly I haven't seen many takes like yours out in the wild really.

I'm not Dream either, but I guess I just enjoy the formula of Zeztz being a cool agent and going on fun missions to live out that power fantasy many of us dream about. I'm totally cool with the second half focusing more on the 4-way rift between CODE, Team Zeztz, Lady and Dawn, as agent genre usually ends up going there at some point, but like Layton said, this new direction only works thanks to the effort of the first half to make those factions worth caring about. I mean, you have to see Zeztz and Zero being bros to feel the tragedy of their breakup.