[Paladin]

Upon learning the truth, Baku is disappointed and furious, realizing that Minami had merely been "pretending to be family."

[Frontier]

We now return to our regularly scheduled Baku emotional breakdown. Hey, at least NOX is at least recovering from the dramatic bombshell by trying to heal Minami with Recovery, but Sieg is just eating up all this drama and the futility of trying to "Save the Cat" and how impossible it is to save Minami.

Oh snap, Minami was the cat eyes the whole time!

Baku was REALLY hoping it wasn't true...but it is. Minami is CODE NO. 17. Appreciate the shared 7 theme with Baku, and it seems like CODE Agents CAN go into the double digits, but they're less in the know than the main agents and get cat accessories instead of rings.

Minami genuinely did not know Baku wasn't her biological brother until four years ago when Zero just waltzed in and revealed THEIR PARENTS were CODE Agents who took Baku in to monitor and raise him. And it was up to Minami to take over for them, because it was the only means she had of staying with and keeping Baku safe.

So just for future reference, Minami CAN kick butt, she just hasn't had an opportunity to show it outside that flashback.

I love how IRL Odaka just walks into the command room and totally ignores Fujimi so he can try and get Zeztz laser-focused on completing the mission. Though maybe it was intentional because Fujimi reminds him of the man he once was, a man who truly believed in and fought for justice. Is Odaka so determined to stop CODE because he knows about CODE: Somnia and what it will do? That's what makes CODE the true villains? But he also seems like someone grasping for a chance to truly fight for justice again.

Thank goodness Mama Nem was there to make Baku realize that, CODE Agent or otherwise, Minami was always there for him as his sister.

Sieg's biggest mistake was thinking Baku only had the binary choice of stopping Minami or letting her kill him...that Catastrom could only be used to destroy and inflict a bad dream on his enemies...that Minami was never family to him...and it's with Baku's desire to save his sister and save this dream that he unlocks a new power. Anatomize! Rider! Zeztz Orderm!!!

It's time to re-order and reconstruct this dream! Because freed from the absolute power of Catastrom, Zeztz Orderm has total control of the dream world, allowing Zeztz to free Minami and absolutely dominate the Cat Nightmare with every dream structure it can come up with! And it's Rider Kick? The Orderm End!

Sieg was NOT expecting this direction and he is NOT happy about it. Baku trying to prove he's a hero and not someone consumed by a bad dream, versus Sieg who embraces it, just ticks him off. Which is probably why he's going to double down on his plan to use "Nightmare Girl" Nem to cause a real bad dream.

Nothing says family reconciliation like a family meal with Baku's somewhat edible food! They're not Seven and Seventeen, Agents of CODE, but Baku and Minami, brother and sister!

Next Week: Zeztz vs Zero! The return of the bike! Zeztz Nem! Zeztz vs Dark Zeztz!? Sieg with Nem!? BAKU'S DAD!?

[Fish Sandwich]

I really like that the resolution this two-parter reaches is also just reiterating the very first thing we ever knew about Minami -- she's Baku's family.

It's more of the fun of the structure I was talking about last week. The cleverness of the first part is in how it distracts from a truth it tells you upfront, and the cleverness of the back half is how it distracts you from a truth you've known since the first episode of the show.

The story itself is actually remarkably simple, at the end of the day. Minami's involvement with CODE as Seventeen is certainly a new bit of lore that will likely connect to further revelations down the line, but nobody really has an arc here that doesn't end right back where they already were. And again, that's also the beauty of the story -- that Baku ultimately makes the same choice Minami already has to reject that change to their status quo -- but that does make the narrative seem ~maybe~ a bit thin, if you're only looking at the plot beats. Baku doesn't end up needing any super particular or surprising impetus to reach that climax, and it's almost kind of weird how upset he gets in the first place? I kind of wonder if that's also part of the point -- that his hatred of CODE has become *too* strong, and it prevents him from seeing Minami's side of things sooner -- and that's also a thread that will be relevant to future events.

And it's no surprise I would wonder about that, because another thing I really liked about this one is how heavily it reinforces how much everything in this show is liable to come back around in some way. That recent scene with Minami's necklace being revealed as exactly what you could've guessed based on the last episode, the meteor thing that's another Baku accident we've heard about before, a good meaty scene between Fujimi and Odaka that, just like so many other scenes here, makes good of use of flashbacks to rub in how all the things we've learned before got us to where the show is at now.

It's funny, because I think this two-parter is kinda more than the sum of its parts, which is the exact opposite of how I described some of the early episodes of ZEZTZ. When I stop to think about it, there's honestly maybe not a whole lot going on compared to a lot of the stories this show has done, but on top of what is there being handled well enough, it also gets to benefit from existing in this much larger context of the whole series. Perhaps I've just gone soft at this point, like I inevitably do with Kamen Rider. Even the debut of Orderm, you know, it's the same of thing as Plasma and Catastrom where it's only sort of clear what exactly even causes ZEZTZ to gain that power, but at this point, I honestly actively hope that trend holds true for any future upgrade forms he gets too? There's something fascinating about how willing the show is to present these things on a purely emotional/thematic level first, and then address the logic later.