Baku's death, or apparent death, is not the most
important thing that happens in episode 24 of
Kamen Rider Zetsu. It's the fact that he leaves
an injured person, whether he was a civilian
or a code employee, lying on the floor, dying,
and he does nothing to help him. He has the recovery
capsum. He could have saved this man's life,
but he chose to walk away and do what? I'm not
100 % sure. His mission is to destroy the nightmares.
or Annihilate the Nightmares, whatever 3 told
him to do. And he stayed focused on that mission,
possibly, despite the fact that he said that
he was going to do the mission that he chose,
which was to save Nem. The episode is so complex.
There's so many things going on. And I watched
the full episode a while ago, and then I just
rewatched it at double speed shortly before doing
this analysis. I don't know at that point if
he knows that Nem is supposed to be at that building
or not. I know Zero and Three know that, but
does Baku know that? I have no idea. I cannot
remember. He's also supposed to be in the real
world as opposed to the dream world, so that
kind of changes things up a little bit. And he
is accused of going rogue and failing at his
mission. to annihilate the nightmares even though
he's annihilating nightmare after nightmare after
nightmare as the lady is using her gauntlet i
think it's called the lady gauntlet as she's
using that to release all these nightmares and
he's just destroying them all in the process
he's destroying the building which i could see
as being irritating but it's not really defying
the mission it's collateral damage um code who
apparently is willing to throw away the life
or the lives of its agents should know all about
collateral damage and should be accepting of
that. And yet they are seeing him as defying
the mission, despite the fact that he's literally
annihilating shadows or nightmares, I should
say. So that's a confusing thing that really
distracts me. And I think maybe it's distracting
everybody from what's really going on here, which
is that it's horrible. And it's an evidence that
Essentially, Baku's already dead. Even though
he's operating as code number seven, as Zets
with Catastrum, he has lost his soul. He's lost
his heart. He's lost who he is. And he's no longer
the good, noble guy that we saw previously. I
believe in real life, he used impact to put himself
in front of a truck to save a kid's life. And
that's a big deal. We've seen him save other
people at critical times when he could have been
fighting instead. And that established a pattern
of what he's like. And now we see the pattern
is broken because all he's focusing on is destroying
the nightmares slash finding them. He's trying
to find them. The nightmares are in his way.
Therefore, he's destroying them. And you could
argue that that's him being focused on his mission
of finding them. if his mission is to save people
and she's a person he's trying to save, is he
justified in ignoring the lives of other people
in order to save her? Is that what Nem would
want? Is that what he really wants? I guess I'm
essentially asking, has he lost his soul? Has
he lost his heart? Has he lost his way in working
for code? And is that part of the terror or the
horror of code that knocks? odaka spoke about
and that the lady has spoken about the lady we
have context now was uh code number two so she
was an agent and she had this uh immaculate nightmare
conception and that's where nem came from um
that's kind of a distraction from my main point
though uh we don't really know where code came
from i think the wiki says that or sorry where
nem came from it kind of seems like code created
her somehow but i don't think that's what happened
i know Since she's this replica of a human made
of nightmare, Code wants her. They want to examine
her, test her, use her, observe her, whatever,
which is fairly reasonable because she could
be dangerous. But it sends the lady off on this.
She goes crazy to save this baby, which makes
sense. But then she tells Nim that she hasn't
slept for 20 years. And that's the kind of extreme
measure. that first of all, it's impossible,
but it's also impossible for, uh, you know, Baku
to do what he's doing with forming catastrophe.
And also the lady somehow created the subliminal
space, uh, with her garden and whatnot, where
she can operate from in order to stop. Uh, she's
like, she's somehow harvesting the nightmares
in order to hide them and ultimately reunite
them. Again, these things are all kind of crazy
and all, uh, you know, it's a confusing. mess
i feel like there is solid logic there but i
don't quite know what it is and i don't quite
know what it's saying but the point is that all
of these things exist as a stage to have baku
on to have him face this struggle and i don't
know what takashi's saying about this um i find
his character work very interesting um i'm thinking
about laser i can't remember his name from x
-aid his uh his human name i'm thinking about
him though right now and what he did And I'm
thinking about Aruto a little bit and his, you
know, love for the AI and how he protected the,
oh gosh, what are they called? Whatever they're
called. Humagear, something? Anyway, Humagear,
how he was protecting them and like, you know,
what exactly he was saying. I feel like he was
saying that even these artificial life forms
are deserving of life and are deserving of protection.
And he's kind of saying something similar with
NEM. but then Baku's willing to sacrifice a non
-artificial life in order to save Nem, that being
the guy that got hurt by the collapse of the
building, part of the building. But then that
goes back to my question about, is it okay to
ignore one person to save another person? And
I don't know if there's an actual ethical answer
to that question, or if that's just a... a challenging
question, a challenging idea that Takahashi is
putting forward and kind of proposing to the
audience of the show by having this here, because
obviously something is, you know, the question
is being demonstrated to us. It's not being spelled
out, but it's being shown to us that there's
this issue, this idea, this conflict that Baku's
in and that we can see going on. And I'm just
wondering, what is he trying to say and what
is the point of all this? And I think. I wonder
if most people are going to miss this idea because
there's a lot going on. But I really felt like
that little scene of him seeing the guy and then
turning away from him is just like its core.
Like it is what the episode is about. And I don't
know if that means that's what the show is about.
And generally, I don't really know what the show
is all about. But I do find it interesting and
it's riveting. It's exciting to watch. And I
absolutely love this episode. And I'm so much
looking forward to the next episode. discourse
I've seen about Zets is kind of all over the
place, and I'm mostly ignoring it because my
opinion matters most to me, not other people's
opinions. But if you'd like to, I'd love to hear
what you have to say about this. Leave me a comment.
I'd love to talk about this, get your perspective
on this. Check out the pinned comment for more.
I'm going to have some bonus content there, as
well as the playlist for Zets and everything
else that I'm doing. But while you're checking
out the pinned comment, and if you want to make
a comment of your own, I wonder, what was the
thing that stood out to you most from this episode
before watching this analysis? And do you see
what I'm getting at with me focusing so much
on this one little bit of the episode, just a
few seconds? And what do you think it means?
And what do you think this episode was about?
And what do you think the show is about as a
whole? I'd be really curious to understand, get
an understanding, hopefully from you, of what's
going on here and what exactly is being said.
Until next time, folks, this is MJ with Henshin
Inspection and Rider Tears signing out. Say hello,
kitty. Meow. Meow. Meow. There you go. Yep, there
you are. You're a cat. You're a cat. Are you
a code cat?