Kamen Rider Z's episode 20 is a good escalation
for the series, for the trajectory of the show,
for everything that's been going on. Because
we are still in kind of a holding pattern with
Nem and Baku. They repeat some things to each
other in this episode that they said to each
other last episode, if not last episode and the
episode before that. So they're kind of at this
new status quo, at this plateau of what they're
feeling and how they're thinking and how they're
perceiving each other and their part. in the
world and the role that they play in this dream
world and all this other stuff. The battle between
Code and the lady, I guess. The nightmares. I'm
not sure how to frame that. But there's nothing
revolutionary with them. And this is definitely
the first part of a two -part story. However,
in the background, we do see other things going
on. We see a little spycraft between 3 and 6,
or Kureha. She does something in the beginning
of the episode that you don't understand until
later. It's really cool. She plants a tracker.
I'm going to spoil it. Anodaka unknocks. And
she's supposed to be using that to find out where
the enemy's base is and infiltrate it, attack
it, whatever. Which is funny because the mission
in the game is also capture the enemy base. So,
kind of a parallelism going on right there. And
then she enters the dream and there's this whole
thing where she... is a decoy for agent number
five to come in and attack Knox from the back.
And he ends up capturing him for now, imprisoning
him for a short amount of time in this torture
room that Code has, because of course Code has
a torture room. And there he talks to him and
asks him what's going on. And we learn, which
is something amazing, that the failure in episode
three to stop Fujimi's nightmare from coming
true, that released all those butterflies, has
been... slowly cooking in the background, and
now a bunch of these children, which these kids
were not out at night, so that's kind of weird.
It appears to be saying, the show appears to
be saying that all those butterflies that were
released created a cohort of dreamers who are
all locked in this dream together now. And I
don't know why it's video game flavored, like
Dragon Quest. I don't know why the kids are kind
of the targets. The only thing I'm thinking is
that it's running like a counter code operation
where code used kids to... turn into dream warriors.
Maybe the lady is trying to use kids to turn
into nightmare warriors in the future. I'm not
sure. Uh, that calls for speculation and I'm
not supposed to be doing that right now. Um,
So, like, it was a very steady episode, very
even -keeled episode. The action was cool. I
was disappointed that we didn't get to see Kareha
transform, but we got to see Five, and Agent
Number Five, and he was interesting. He's, like,
a very aggressive guy, very tough guy. He sounds
like he wants to kill Knox. I don't want Knox
to get killed. I want him to be redeemed. I want
something to happen with him. I almost expected
Knox to, like, counter him? Counter -counter
him? Do counterterrorism stuff? Whatever. And,
like... hey, if you don't believe in code anymore,
come with me. But obviously, it seems clear that
this number five is a code loyalist, which is
interesting because where's he been and why hasn't
he been doing stuff? Why has Baku been doing
things instead? And why does he have a different
system? Why does he have the knight system or
the lord system as opposed to the knight system
that four slash odaka slash nox. had. And, uh,
why doesn't he have what, you know, Zets has
with his Zets driver or whatever it's called.
I find all those things to be curious and interesting.
Um, but like, we didn't get too much from the
kids that were the dreamers in this episode.
Uh, it was weird to see Baku beating up a baby
nightmare. And the fact that it's, you know,
baby is weird. Um, I imagine it's because it's
going to grow into the adult form of the nightmare.
Like when, um, the boy, I, might've been Shota,
um, had the, uh, the picture that he'd drawn.
And that's part of a black case. It's very possible
that the baby that we're seeing, the baby nightmares,
the baby form of this, you know, demon King emperor
or whatever, we're going to see, I think it's
a demon King, um, that we're going to see, you
know, presumably in the next episode, I don't
think this is going to go more than, you know,
standard two episodes, you know, set to tell
the story, but. That's kind of what I figured
was going to happen. Maybe these other baby nightmares
are all his children or whatever. I don't know.
Again, calling for speculation. I don't want
to do that. But it was weird to see him beat
him up, beat up the baby. But also kind of funny.
And I think we're in a good place. It was an
amazing episode, but it's doing what it needs
to do. And it's like, it has to be there. It
has to be this transitional episode. I wish it
was a little bit better, but I did like... It
overall, I had very positive feelings about it.
It was just like, oh, okay, so this is kind of
like more subdued and you're not ratcheting things
up so much in the A -plot of the episode. And
that's okay. We'll get more later. Despite me
saying that Yu Yu Hakutoshi is the goat, I'm
okay saying this episode is just like passable.
It's doing what it's, it's serviceable. It's
doing what it's supposed to be doing. And it's
not this big explosive thing. However, I'll be
curious to see whether or not the next episode.
is a lot better, because I hope it will be, and
I hope we'll get to see a lot more interesting
things going on in forward development. That's
what I'm interested in. What are you interested
in this? What do you think about the episode
overall? Answer me in the comments. Check out
the pinned comment for my other stuff. I have
links to the full Zets playlist and other things
I'm doing. Until next time, folks, this is MJ
with Tension Inspection and Rider Tears, signing
out.