WEBVTT 00:00:00.400 --> 00:00:02.580 Are they quietly turning Knox into the sympathetic 00:00:02.580 --> 00:00:05.639 figure and Baku into the danger? Because if you 00:00:05.639 --> 00:00:08.339 look at how episode 14 is framed, Knox feels 00:00:08.339 --> 00:00:11.519 like the one being hunted and Baku feels like 00:00:11.519 --> 00:00:14.300 the one imposing his will. I like this episode. 00:00:14.519 --> 00:00:16.859 Spectable was great, but thematically, I think 00:00:16.859 --> 00:00:19.000 something big shifted here and I want to unpack 00:00:19.000 --> 00:00:25.620 it. So we have a lot of interesting camera perspectives 00:00:25.620 --> 00:00:31.839 and framing shot compositions. that make Nox 00:00:31.839 --> 00:00:35.740 feel like he's the one who's being hunted, like 00:00:35.740 --> 00:00:38.560 he's the one whose dream we're in at some point. 00:00:38.579 --> 00:00:43.520 Don't know how that works. And we feel like we're 00:00:43.520 --> 00:00:46.439 with him as if he's the protagonist of this show. 00:00:46.880 --> 00:00:48.840 Whether he's a villainous protagonist or heroic 00:00:48.840 --> 00:00:50.939 protagonist, it doesn't matter. He's the one 00:00:50.939 --> 00:00:52.820 that we're following for some portion. And we 00:00:52.820 --> 00:00:55.219 leave Baku behind and get this real tight focus 00:00:55.219 --> 00:00:59.659 with Nox. And I can't help... feeling sympathy 00:00:59.659 --> 00:01:01.840 for him and also rooting for him that he's able 00:01:01.840 --> 00:01:05.359 to defeat this ghostly, haunting nightmare that 00:01:05.359 --> 00:01:11.319 keeps coming after him. It's interesting because 00:01:11.319 --> 00:01:15.900 Nox is framed as someone facing a fear and Baku 00:01:15.900 --> 00:01:17.920 on the other side is framed as someone who's 00:01:17.920 --> 00:01:20.659 eliminating a problem. He's tasked with eliminating 00:01:20.659 --> 00:01:23.719 the threat or the enemy, which is Baku. I'm sorry, 00:01:23.780 --> 00:01:27.280 which is Nox. Baku is tasked with, he's given 00:01:27.280 --> 00:01:30.400 the mission. to eliminate the threat who is Nox 00:01:30.400 --> 00:01:35.659 but he seems to be powerless or in a vulnerable 00:01:35.659 --> 00:01:38.420 position as he's back in his own memories and 00:01:38.420 --> 00:01:43.500 in order to deal with that he ends up seizing 00:01:43.500 --> 00:01:45.760 the power of the nightmare specifically the one 00:01:45.760 --> 00:01:47.939 that struck him down with lightning as a kid 00:01:47.939 --> 00:01:51.040 and he turns that into what he needs in order 00:01:51.040 --> 00:01:56.659 to eliminate the threat and when he does that 00:01:56.659 --> 00:02:01.159 he takes on the visual language of the figure 00:02:01.159 --> 00:02:03.500 haunting Nox, which I find to be very strange 00:02:03.500 --> 00:02:07.180 because he becomes villainous while Nox is on 00:02:07.180 --> 00:02:09.080 the back foot and he becomes almost more heroic 00:02:09.080 --> 00:02:11.000 looking. That's what it looks like visually. 00:02:13.360 --> 00:02:15.159 The dream mechanics are intentionally slippery, 00:02:15.300 --> 00:02:17.139 but that slipperiness matters because it affects 00:02:17.139 --> 00:02:21.740 character framing. Whoever the dreams belong 00:02:21.740 --> 00:02:24.680 to, Baku moves through it without reflection. 00:02:25.210 --> 00:02:27.150 He does not process, he advances. He's just a 00:02:27.150 --> 00:02:30.810 machine, effectively. He loops through this one 00:02:30.810 --> 00:02:33.370 section of the dream, and then he gains the power, 00:02:33.490 --> 00:02:36.969 and then he takes Nem, who is this person who 00:02:36.969 --> 00:02:39.810 gets cast in dreams and is able to appear in 00:02:39.810 --> 00:02:42.770 them at will, or, well, at will, but whose will, 00:02:42.830 --> 00:02:44.930 hers or somebody else's, we don't know. And he's 00:02:44.930 --> 00:02:47.270 able to take her somewhere else, and he knows 00:02:47.270 --> 00:02:51.009 that whatever dream they're in now, she's been 00:02:51.009 --> 00:02:52.569 cast in a role, and he tells her to play it while 00:02:52.569 --> 00:02:55.710 he goes to play his role. which is to eliminate 00:02:55.710 --> 00:02:58.169 the threat. A threat that he was questioning, 00:02:58.409 --> 00:03:01.770 eliminating indiscriminately before, and now 00:03:01.770 --> 00:03:05.449 he's not. He just is interested in killing Knox 00:03:05.449 --> 00:03:13.169 effectively. And I don't quite know why. I want 00:03:13.169 --> 00:03:17.710 to touch back on this lightning ball thing. Instead 00:03:17.710 --> 00:03:19.610 of confronting the nightmare and dealing with 00:03:19.610 --> 00:03:22.050 it, somehow and figuring out what to do and why 00:03:22.050 --> 00:03:23.750 he's there and what was happening to him as a 00:03:23.750 --> 00:03:27.569 kid, he just captures the power of the nightmare. 00:03:27.810 --> 00:03:35.509 And Knox has posed capsums as the thing that 00:03:35.509 --> 00:03:38.969 makes nightmares possible or able to come real. 00:03:39.490 --> 00:03:44.330 And I believe Zero has said that the capsums 00:03:44.330 --> 00:03:50.030 are what makes Rather, the nightmares are what 00:03:50.030 --> 00:03:53.490 makes the capsums have power. And when Knox shot 00:03:53.490 --> 00:03:59.189 the barrier capsum, he released this phantom 00:03:59.189 --> 00:04:04.870 form from it of a capsum zets, or a barrier zets 00:04:04.870 --> 00:04:07.469 rather, that was attacking both of them. And 00:04:07.469 --> 00:04:19.790 I don't quite know how that ties into this. I 00:04:19.790 --> 00:04:21.269 guess I don't really know which one is true. 00:04:21.389 --> 00:04:23.029 Is it that the capsules are captured nightmare 00:04:23.029 --> 00:04:25.750 energy? Or is it that the capsules are what gives 00:04:25.750 --> 00:04:29.269 rise to nightmares? Depending on how you frame 00:04:29.269 --> 00:04:31.850 out and which perspective you come from, it can 00:04:31.850 --> 00:04:34.750 be either. Regardless though, what we see concretely 00:04:34.750 --> 00:04:38.310 is that there's something in this lightning strike, 00:04:38.509 --> 00:04:45.029 which we see only because Nem, or we see only 00:04:45.029 --> 00:04:46.889 after Nem asks Spock who his first nightmare 00:04:46.889 --> 00:04:51.579 was. And he says, started when he was stricken 00:04:51.579 --> 00:04:52.879 by the lightning and then we go back to that 00:04:52.879 --> 00:04:55.459 moment and then he's able to capture that so 00:04:55.459 --> 00:04:59.319 is the lightning itself the nightmare is it the 00:04:59.319 --> 00:05:00.939 light was the lightning sent from a nightmare 00:05:00.939 --> 00:05:07.660 who attacked him we don't really know however 00:05:07.660 --> 00:05:13.819 we see that baku gets this extreme increase in 00:05:13.819 --> 00:05:16.720 power he's like the flashback basically he's 00:05:17.959 --> 00:05:23.560 dealing with nox very well and the fight only 00:05:23.560 --> 00:05:27.639 stops and de -escalates when the power becomes 00:05:27.639 --> 00:05:30.720 too much for him he gets all dark and he his 00:05:30.720 --> 00:05:33.319 transformation breaks and disintegrates and he's 00:05:33.319 --> 00:05:45.600 unable to use that power anymore so we don't 00:05:45.600 --> 00:05:48.850 know if baku is actually somebody who's good 00:05:48.850 --> 00:05:53.170 and has been warning sorry we don't know if nox 00:05:53.170 --> 00:05:54.529 is somebody who's good and who's been warning 00:05:54.529 --> 00:05:57.670 baku this whole time about the danger that he's 00:05:57.670 --> 00:06:00.610 in and we don't know because of the way the timeline 00:06:00.610 --> 00:06:03.870 works out when that started to happen we get 00:06:03.870 --> 00:06:08.930 to see an image of nox in or odaka in his hospital 00:06:08.930 --> 00:06:14.029 bed somewhere and we see that at this cram school 00:06:14.029 --> 00:06:17.170 that Baku was at as a kid before he got stricken 00:06:17.170 --> 00:06:20.670 by lightning that first time that the teacher 00:06:20.670 --> 00:06:23.189 was Knox. And I believe he was wearing his agent 00:06:23.189 --> 00:06:25.750 four ring, which means he was working for code 00:06:25.750 --> 00:06:29.670 or with code at the time. And there's this question 00:06:29.670 --> 00:06:34.350 of what was going on there at the cram school. 00:06:34.810 --> 00:06:41.850 And Knox makes it sound like a memory of code 00:06:41.850 --> 00:06:46.259 was being erased from Baku. at the time which 00:06:46.259 --> 00:06:48.220 leads me to wonder where all these other kids 00:06:48.220 --> 00:06:51.839 in the classroom there was maybe 12 of them getting 00:06:51.839 --> 00:06:54.779 programmed by code or being accessed by code 00:06:54.779 --> 00:06:56.480 or being manipulated by code somehow and was 00:06:56.480 --> 00:06:59.660 knox doing that odaka doing that as agent four 00:06:59.660 --> 00:07:04.779 and if he was why was he and what was he doing 00:07:04.779 --> 00:07:13.160 and what was the goal of that as well it's only 00:07:13.160 --> 00:07:15.860 after He's unable to fight anymore and he's unable 00:07:15.860 --> 00:07:20.480 to kill Knox that Baku stops and asks these questions 00:07:20.480 --> 00:07:22.300 and tries to find out the truth of what's going 00:07:22.300 --> 00:07:27.540 on. And I find that to be fascinating. I didn't 00:07:27.540 --> 00:07:29.319 expect to be rooting for Knox at this point. 00:07:29.779 --> 00:07:31.279 And that tells me the show is doing something 00:07:31.279 --> 00:07:36.699 intentional here. I'm intrigued. I'm unsettled. 00:07:36.920 --> 00:07:40.339 And I do not think episode 14 is confused. I 00:07:40.339 --> 00:07:43.670 think it's deliberately uncomfortable. I just 00:07:43.670 --> 00:07:47.009 don't know why. Did this episode change how you 00:07:47.009 --> 00:07:50.230 see Baku or Nox or Zero for that matter? Did 00:07:50.230 --> 00:07:53.870 the lightning moment work for you? Are we watching 00:07:53.870 --> 00:07:56.389 the start of corruption or something else? And 00:07:56.389 --> 00:08:01.490 if it's corruption of Baku and code is potentially 00:08:01.490 --> 00:08:04.230 evil, is that corruption a good thing or not? 00:08:06.310 --> 00:08:14.110 A lot of questions in this one. And I don't have 00:08:14.110 --> 00:08:17.850 a lot of answers yet. I think next episode will 00:08:17.850 --> 00:08:20.550 give us a lot more answers. Anyway, you can check 00:08:20.550 --> 00:08:23.709 out the rest of my Zets coverage in the playlist, 00:08:23.790 --> 00:08:27.949 which will be in the pinned comment. And contribute. 00:08:28.649 --> 00:08:30.250 Tell me what you think. Tell me what your theories 00:08:30.250 --> 00:08:31.930 are. Tell me what your thoughts are. And tell 00:08:31.930 --> 00:08:33.889 me what you thought about this overall. Until 00:08:33.889 --> 00:08:36.250 next time, folks, this is MJ with Rider Tears 00:08:36.250 --> 00:08:37.570 and Henshin Inspection signing out.