Are they quietly turning Knox into the sympathetic
figure and Baku into the danger? Because if you
look at how episode 14 is framed, Knox feels
like the one being hunted and Baku feels like
the one imposing his will. I like this episode.
Spectable was great, but thematically, I think
something big shifted here and I want to unpack
it. So we have a lot of interesting camera perspectives
and framing shot compositions. that make Nox
feel like he's the one who's being hunted, like
he's the one whose dream we're in at some point.
Don't know how that works. And we feel like we're
with him as if he's the protagonist of this show.
Whether he's a villainous protagonist or heroic
protagonist, it doesn't matter. He's the one
that we're following for some portion. And we
leave Baku behind and get this real tight focus
with Nox. And I can't help... feeling sympathy
for him and also rooting for him that he's able
to defeat this ghostly, haunting nightmare that
keeps coming after him. It's interesting because
Nox is framed as someone facing a fear and Baku
on the other side is framed as someone who's
eliminating a problem. He's tasked with eliminating
the threat or the enemy, which is Baku. I'm sorry,
which is Nox. Baku is tasked with, he's given
the mission. to eliminate the threat who is Nox
but he seems to be powerless or in a vulnerable
position as he's back in his own memories and
in order to deal with that he ends up seizing
the power of the nightmare specifically the one
that struck him down with lightning as a kid
and he turns that into what he needs in order
to eliminate the threat and when he does that
he takes on the visual language of the figure
haunting Nox, which I find to be very strange
because he becomes villainous while Nox is on
the back foot and he becomes almost more heroic
looking. That's what it looks like visually.
The dream mechanics are intentionally slippery,
but that slipperiness matters because it affects
character framing. Whoever the dreams belong
to, Baku moves through it without reflection.
He does not process, he advances. He's just a
machine, effectively. He loops through this one
section of the dream, and then he gains the power,
and then he takes Nem, who is this person who
gets cast in dreams and is able to appear in
them at will, or, well, at will, but whose will,
hers or somebody else's, we don't know. And he's
able to take her somewhere else, and he knows
that whatever dream they're in now, she's been
cast in a role, and he tells her to play it while
he goes to play his role. which is to eliminate
the threat. A threat that he was questioning,
eliminating indiscriminately before, and now
he's not. He just is interested in killing Knox
effectively. And I don't quite know why. I want
to touch back on this lightning ball thing. Instead
of confronting the nightmare and dealing with
it, somehow and figuring out what to do and why
he's there and what was happening to him as a
kid, he just captures the power of the nightmare.
And Knox has posed capsums as the thing that
makes nightmares possible or able to come real.
And I believe Zero has said that the capsums
are what makes Rather, the nightmares are what
makes the capsums have power. And when Knox shot
the barrier capsum, he released this phantom
form from it of a capsum zets, or a barrier zets
rather, that was attacking both of them. And
I don't quite know how that ties into this. I
guess I don't really know which one is true.
Is it that the capsules are captured nightmare
energy? Or is it that the capsules are what gives
rise to nightmares? Depending on how you frame
out and which perspective you come from, it can
be either. Regardless though, what we see concretely
is that there's something in this lightning strike,
which we see only because Nem, or we see only
after Nem asks Spock who his first nightmare
was. And he says, started when he was stricken
by the lightning and then we go back to that
moment and then he's able to capture that so
is the lightning itself the nightmare is it the
light was the lightning sent from a nightmare
who attacked him we don't really know however
we see that baku gets this extreme increase in
power he's like the flashback basically he's
dealing with nox very well and the fight only
stops and de -escalates when the power becomes
too much for him he gets all dark and he his
transformation breaks and disintegrates and he's
unable to use that power anymore so we don't
know if baku is actually somebody who's good
and has been warning sorry we don't know if nox
is somebody who's good and who's been warning
baku this whole time about the danger that he's
in and we don't know because of the way the timeline
works out when that started to happen we get
to see an image of nox in or odaka in his hospital
bed somewhere and we see that at this cram school
that Baku was at as a kid before he got stricken
by lightning that first time that the teacher
was Knox. And I believe he was wearing his agent
four ring, which means he was working for code
or with code at the time. And there's this question
of what was going on there at the cram school.
And Knox makes it sound like a memory of code
was being erased from Baku. at the time which
leads me to wonder where all these other kids
in the classroom there was maybe 12 of them getting
programmed by code or being accessed by code
or being manipulated by code somehow and was
knox doing that odaka doing that as agent four
and if he was why was he and what was he doing
and what was the goal of that as well it's only
after He's unable to fight anymore and he's unable
to kill Knox that Baku stops and asks these questions
and tries to find out the truth of what's going
on. And I find that to be fascinating. I didn't
expect to be rooting for Knox at this point.
And that tells me the show is doing something
intentional here. I'm intrigued. I'm unsettled.
And I do not think episode 14 is confused. I
think it's deliberately uncomfortable. I just
don't know why. Did this episode change how you
see Baku or Nox or Zero for that matter? Did
the lightning moment work for you? Are we watching
the start of corruption or something else? And
if it's corruption of Baku and code is potentially
evil, is that corruption a good thing or not?
A lot of questions in this one. And I don't have
a lot of answers yet. I think next episode will
give us a lot more answers. Anyway, you can check
out the rest of my Zets coverage in the playlist,
which will be in the pinned comment. And contribute.
Tell me what you think. Tell me what your theories
are. Tell me what your thoughts are. And tell
me what you thought about this overall. Until
next time, folks, this is MJ with Rider Tears
and Henshin Inspection signing out.