[Paladin]

Baku's latest dream finds him at a Space Center with a meteor approaching Earth.

[Fish Sandwich]

Wait, so Baku's assumption this whole time was that CODE existed because he somehow made it exist?

Like, that makes as much as sense as anything else, probably more sense, even, it's just... was that ever made explicit, or was I just not paying attention? Because I was assuming up until now it was the opposite -- that Baku believed the organization he dreamed of being part of had turned out to be real, and thus he became a real agent. This sort of thing is as simple as having an exchange early on where Baku expresses amazement that's he managed to dream Zero into reality and Zero just sorta looks off to the side or changes the subject or whatever, but I don't recall anything like that happening?

It also bugged me back early on when Baku ran outside to see if his belt works in reality only to not answer that question outside of a situation where everything was going nuts anyway, which ended up blurring the issue enough that I'm now a bit surprised this week to see him use Barrier outside of his dreams here. Again, no reason I shouldn't have assumed that he has the toys in real life too because they work there too, but... I'm just still questioning the way Zeztz has handled establishing so many things, which is a very strange thing to be saying about a Takahashi show, because I've always thought having a tight grip on that sort of plot-driven setup/payoff stuff is one of his biggest strengths.

I loved this episode, and everything it portends, but I can't shake the feeling the indecisiveness of the previous 11 episodes has let it down? There are just so many things that were never properly framed as mysteries, but were also never sneakily made out to be clear certainties, either. I can't quite be shocked ZEZTZ is possibly powered by bad dreams because I never had any preconceptions of what ZEZTZ was to begin with, beyond what Baku chooses to do with that power. This ended up coming off less like the shocking recontextualization of a story I thought I knew, and more like the story of this show has finally started after three months of waiting? I love that I'm getting to know characters like Fujimi and Baku so much better, but I love it in nearly the same way I love finally getting to know NOX better, and I thought only one of those characters was supposed to be the mysterious one?

So, uh, yeah, guess it turns out I'm not exactly ready to properly take back most of the negative things I've had to say about Zeztz so far, but, to stress the other side of that a little more -- I do love the episode in front of me this week. I like how the two sides of NOX let it flesh out both Fujimi and Baku; I like how we get to see Nasuka starting to change within that; I like that we're finally digging into that inevitable Rider trope of the hero's powers being rooted in evil; I like how *all* these elements are just starting to tie together so much more cleanly, and we even get to do that all within the framework of a classic tokusatsu plot about helping some kid and a classic shounen rival deal where the cool edgy stoic guy dons his own hero suit to take on our lead character. Zeztz at its most frustrating for me has still been entertaining, and the thing that always ends up going unsung in these posts is that for all the big-picture issues I keep having, it's generally absolutely nailing a lot of the moment-to-moment parts of its execution.