Watch Analysis

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Kamen Rider Zeztz 47 Made Me Rethink the Final Arc

Somehow, unbelievably, there has been a reversal.

Kamen Rider Zeztz 47 has made me see that there is something more going on here. Last episode, I thought the show was spinning its wheels and not moving forward at all. This episode still didn’t move as much as I would have liked, but now I can see the trajectory.

More importantly, I think the Nem illusion arc has been redeemed, because I’ve realized that it had such an unusual construction that we’re actually still in it.

We’re Still in the Nem Illusion Arc

We’re still living in the world The Lady and Oblivion made happen so that she could live with Nem. It just didn’t unfold the way I expected it to.

If I were telling this story, I probably would have done it more linearly. We would have lived in that altered world for a couple of episodes, undone it, and then dealt with the aftermath. Zeztz hasn’t done that. The aftermath and the illusion storyline have effectively become the same thing.

The state of the world is still that everybody has been erased. Nem has appeared in everybody’s dreams, and I’m assuming that somehow she will remember everybody and bring the whole world back into being. Maybe there will be some kind of chain reaction involved. I don’t know, and that part doesn’t really matter yet.

What matters is that I thought this storyline was floundering, and apparently it isn’t.

That’s a strange position for me to be in. I didn’t misunderstand how Episode 46 felt to me while I was watching it. It felt stalled. But Episode 47 has given me more information, and now I’m looking backward and thinking, Oh. Okay. This is much better than I thought it was.

Zeztz Is Putting Its Cast Back Together

You can see that happening through the characters themselves.

Minami has finally met Nem in real life. Nem has been gone all these years, while Minami has been working in the talent industry and knew of her, so she’s incredibly excited to actually see her.

Meanwhile, Fujimi and Nasuka have their memories back. They’re working together again, researching what’s happening with Odaka and trying to trace the Black Case so they can find him.

Baku has changed too. With the Exdreamrise Capsem, he can enter dreams on his own without needing to fall asleep first. His body actually disappears from the real world while he’s inside a dream, which understandably concerns Minami when she finds Odaka in Baku’s bed but Baku himself is nowhere to be found.

Everything is coming back together.

The core cast has their memories and relationships restored, and suddenly they can move through the story together again. It almost feels like we never skipped a beat, even though we very obviously did. The story stopped. Things were put on hold. Characters and relationships disappeared.

Now Zeztz is assembling all those pieces again.

And I think the opening foreshadowed this.

We’ve had that image of the characters together in the cityscape at enormous, almost kaiju-like scale. Nem, Minami, Fujimi, Nasuka, and Baku are together, while Odaka stands apart from them in black.

Zeztz has explicitly trained us to pay attention to its opening. The production has even called attention to particular episodes where viewers should watch it carefully, so I don’t think this is an accidental resemblance.

We’re starting to make that image a reality.

Everyone is being brought back together, while Odaka remains the one piece separated from the group.

Even Sieg Is Back

Sieg has returned too, and I liked how they used him, even if it was a little bit of a cheap shot.

I actually expected Baku to wake himself up and escape the dream. Instead, Nem’s realization that “he was right” appears to bring Sieg back into the situation, allowing him to intervene.

It’s convenient, but it’s also another example of what Episode 47 is doing. Pieces that seemed to have fallen away from Zeztz are coming back into play.

I thought this was simply going to be the “rescue Odaka” arc. It still is, apparently, with Odaka essentially functioning as a two-part victim of the week. But that story is happening simultaneously with all of this other material.

We’re rescuing Odaka.

We’re rebuilding the cast.

We’re dealing with Oblivion.

And we’re still dealing with the consequences of the Nem illusion world.

Those aren’t separate arcs in the way I assumed they were. They’re overlapping pieces of the same endgame.

The Endgame Is Bringing Back Zeztz’s Old Toys Too

We also got a really cool fight between Oblivion and Baku, and I had a funny realization when Baku started using his older Capsems again.

Oh, right. This is the end of the show.

We’ve got to make sure everything gets one last good showing.

I was particularly happy to see the Winged abilities again because, if you’ve followed me for any amount of time, you know I love birds. I’m a bird man. I loved the earlier bird episode with the black feathers appearing from the Black Case, so getting Baku flying around again was neat.

Beyond my personal bird agenda, though, it contributes to this larger feeling that Zeztz is gathering everything together for the end.

Does the Payoff Excuse the Frustration?

This is where Episode 47 leaves me in a weird place.

I now believe in what Zeztz is doing.

What I don’t know is whether taking this kind of storytelling risk is worthwhile if doing so makes the narrative feel weaker on a weekly basis.

Maybe this entire stretch will feel great when you eventually watch these episodes back-to-back in rapid succession. You won’t have a week sitting between installments wondering why the story seems to have stopped. The next piece of information will arrive immediately and contextualize what you just watched.

But that’s not how I’m watching Zeztz right now.

Week to week, some of these choices have frustrated me. Then another episode comes along and makes me say, Oh, never mind. I’m okay with this now.

I don’t think that’s me being wishy-washy. I’m trying to honestly assess the show as it unfolds. Is this individual episode entertaining? Is the larger story holding together? Does this connect with what came before it? Is everything actually building toward something?

After Episode 47, I think the answer to that last question is yes.

That doesn’t mean my earlier frustrations weren’t legitimate. It means I have more information now, so my assessment has changed.

Zeztz’s Strange Storytelling Might Actually Be Working

That’s ultimately where Kamen Rider Zeztz 47 leaves me.

I like this episode, and I think the show overall is still holding up despite some strange moves. I’m not even sure I should call them missteps anymore. They may simply be unorthodox storytelling choices.

Part of me wants to praise Zeztz for that. It’s taking a novel approach instead of arranging everything according to the normal rhythms I expect from a story like this.

At the same time, breaking convention doesn’t automatically make something work. Sometimes crazy doesn’t work.

Sometimes crazy is amazing.

Zeztz keeps bouncing me between those two possibilities.

But Episode 47 has shifted me toward the second one again. The story I thought had ended is apparently still happening. The characters who were scattered are being assembled again. Relationships are being restored. Old elements are returning. Odaka remains conspicuously separated from everyone else. And what looked to me like the show spinning its wheels now looks like part of a much stranger final-arc structure than I realized.

I still don’t know whether Zeztz has executed all of this as well as it could have.

But I can finally see what it’s doing.

And somehow, unbelievably, that’s enough to make me change my mind.

Inspector’s Notes

Kamen Rider Needs More Breakable Suits

Watching Oblivion tear the wings off my boy Zeztz in Kamen Rider Zeztz 47 was shocking and horrifying and, honestly, a little delightful.

It made me wonder: Do we need more of this in Kamen Rider and Henshin Hero shows in general?

We’ve seen something similar in Ultraman, where an Ultra will sometimes break a horn or another piece off a kaiju and use it against them. Oblivion doesn’t go that far here. He just tears off Zeztz’s Rem Wings and tosses them aside.

Which seems like a missed opportunity, Oblivion. Those things have blades on them. Why wouldn’t you use one? I would.

But what really interests me is the design possibility behind the moment. Zeztz Physicam Wing has these additional physical pieces attached to the suit, and that means the fight can do something beyond simply having Zeztz get punched, kicked, blasted, or thrown around. Oblivion can actually tear part of Zeztz away.

I’d love to see Henshin Hero suits designed with more components like this specifically so they can be removed without actually damaging the costume.

Give a Rider wings, armor, a cape, a weapon mounted to the body, whatever. Then construct those pieces so that a fight can rip them away when the story calls for it.

Suddenly you’ve added another dimension of play to the choreography.

A hero can lose part of their armor. A villain can break off a weapon. Something that normally defines the silhouette of a form can disappear halfway through the fight. Maybe the opponent can even pick it up and use it against them.

You don’t need to destroy an expensive suit to make the damage feel physical. You just need to design parts of that suit that are allowed to come off.

Watching Oblivion rip the Rem Wings from Zeztz made me realize how much I want to see tokusatsu play with that idea more often.

Is Baku Becoming More Like a Nightmare?

The effect of Baku falling into dreams is really cool. It’s a great visual effect and a very fun idea. He’s “falling asleep,” so to speak, except now he’s doing it without actually falling asleep.

But I wonder: Is he going to be okay?

In Kamen Rider Zeztz 47, Manami mentions that Baku once thought he was dreaming when he was actually awake, which is already not good. Now Baku can physically disappear from the real world and enter the dream world.

That feels different.

Nem has been trapped in dreams before, but her body was still there, asleep in the real world. Baku is actually bodily leaving this earthly existence and entering the dream realm.

That’s kind of dangerous.

It also makes Baku something else. I guess, in a way, it makes him more like a Nightmare than ever, which is pretty classic Kamen Rider. The hero keeps getting closer to the thing he fights.

So is Baku going to be okay?

Is physically entering dreams going to have some horrible repercussion for him? Is something bad eventually going to happen because he’s crossed this line?

That would be fitting. It could be interesting, tragic and dark in exactly the way Kamen Rider can be.

Or maybe he’ll be perfectly fine.

I don’t know. But watching Baku’s entire body dissolve out of reality and fall into a dream makes me wonder what becoming Zeztz Exdream is actually doing to him.

Why Is Nem the Key to Everything?

Kamen Rider Zeztz 47 has me wondering about this whole Nightmare Messiah thing with Nem, especially why she seems to be the key to bringing people’s memories back, or even bringing people themselves back after Oblivion erases them.

Oblivion kind of explains it.

I think.

He says that Nem’s dream is so powerful that he keeps drawing power from it, kind of like how Catastrophe was drawing more power from Baku.

So if Nem believes that she shouldn’t exist, and Oblivion is her Nightmare, then maybe erasing her is the goal.

Except Nem is awake in the real world now.

So is Oblivion erasing the real world because, if the world doesn’t exist around Nem, it’s as if she doesn’t exist in the world?

I think that’s what’s going on.

That at least kind of explains his motivation.

But then there’s the memory stuff.

Oblivion has the ability to make Nem forget people, and somehow those people are also banished from the real world. I don’t know where they go. But when those memories are released or reintegrated into Nem, the people come back too.

That doesn’t entirely make sense to me.

I think I kind of get it, and I think I understand why Nem is the key. Oblivion is her Nightmare. If he’s somehow the inverse of her dream, then maybe that makes all of this work.

Somehow.

But I’m not sure.

Do you understand what I’m talking about? More importantly, do you understand what the show is talking about?

Because I would genuinely love to understand exactly what’s going on with Nem, Oblivion, her memories and the people being erased from reality.

Loose Threads

Loose Thread: Nem Chooses to Fight

There’s a very interesting thing that happens during Nem’s conflict with Oblivion. Baku has basically been defeated. His Capsems are gone, he’s knocked out, and Oblivion is telling Nem that all of this is happening because she’s here. Nem shouldn’t be here, and because she is, all these people are suffering.

Honestly, the way Oblivion is talking and the way the scene is framed almost made it feel like the argument was that Nem should kill herself.

Baku is collapsed on his right side. His gun is holstered on his left side, and Nem is right there. She could reach down, grab his gun and shoot herself. Maybe Oblivion would disappear.

For a few horrible moments, I thought, Are they actually going to do that? Are they actually going to try to say that’s an answer to this problem?

They didn’t, but the dread of it was there for me. Oblivion is telling Nem that everyone is suffering because she exists, and the possibility is sitting right beside her that she could simply remove herself.

I don’t know if that was actually supposed to be implied. I don’t know if it was me as a writer looking at all these ingredients and thinking about what you could do with them, or if it was simply me as an audience member thinking, Is Nem really going to kill herself?

But I cared enough about Nem that it felt possible.

She’s not just this dream girl or a person born from a Nightmare or whatever. She feels like a real person, and her relationships with these characters are meaningful. The Nem and Baku relationship is very strong, but she’s also a good part of the ensemble. She goes well with all of them. Zeztz has put enough attention into making those relationships matter that, in that moment, I honestly thought, Oh my gosh, are they really going to go down this path?

Fortunately, they didn’t.

Instead of letting herself die, or making herself die to end the threat, Nem decides to take up the last remaining weapon she sees.

She grabs the Exdreamrise Capsem.

She runs at Oblivion. She faces her Nightmare. She confronts the Nightmare telling her that she doesn’t deserve to exist, and she fights.

I love that.

She can’t really beat him. Oblivion is too powerful, and she doesn’t have the strength within her yet. Honestly, I thought for a moment that maybe Nem was going to use the Exdreamrise Capsem herself and become Zeztz. It’s a dream. Just transform her into Zeztz, use the same suit actor and have Nem voice it. Who cares? I would love to see Nem fight.

But she fights anyway.

The sweet release of death is right there before her, and instead of choosing that easy path, she chooses to fight, to try to save Baku, to try to save everybody else.

That’s awesome and noble and lovely.

Even though she fails, she’s trying. The girl is doing her best. There’s something genuinely inspirational and aspirational about that. This is the kind of heroic stuff that we need to see in order to feed our souls so that we don’t just become empty, cynical, sad shells of ourselves.

At least I think so.

It feeds me. It makes me want to be better. It’s not the only thing nourishing my soul, obviously, but it’s part of the diet. This is good stuff. It’s telling you to be a good person, to be strong and noble, to help your fellow man, to help yourself, not to give up, and to fight.

I love it.

There’s another interesting layer to Oblivion’s argument, though, because he also tries to justify what he’s doing to Nem.

He brings up that Nem is a Nightmare and that she shouldn’t exist in this world. It’s almost like, from his perspective, the correct scenario is that the rest of the world exists and Nem doesn’t. So if Nem is going to exist, then the rest of the world shouldn’t.

That’s kind of spaghetti in my brain. It’s hard to put into words, but that seems to be the central conflict here.

It supposedly justifies why Oblivion is doing what he’s doing. I don’t think it does, obviously, but he thinks it does, and that’s what matters. It gives us an interesting way to examine what’s happening from Oblivion’s perspective and why he thinks what he’s doing makes sense.

And that brings me to something I hadn’t really understood before.

The more powerful Nem and Baku become, respectively, the more powerful Oblivion and Catastrophe become.

The typical Kamen Rider thing is for the hero to use the power of evil. The Kamen Rider takes the power of the bad guys, takes what they did to him, and uses it as a tool and a weapon to rebel against them. He takes evil power and uses it for good.

These Nightmares are doing the opposite.

They’re taking the good, noble, heroic power and willpower of their specific hosts, Nem and Baku, and using it to fuel themselves. They’re making themselves more powerful with it.

They’re almost reverse Kamen Riders.

I hadn’t really clocked that when Catastrophe was doing it to Baku. But seeing it happen with Nem and Oblivion made it click. Nem builds up her will and determination, that silvery stuff appears, it becomes those petal-like things around Oblivion, and then he uses them against her.

She’s building up her will, and he’s taking it and using it against her.

That’s exactly what’s going on.

I find that fascinating. It’s a fantastic little inversion of what Kamen Rider usually does. And because Nightmares have always taken power from dreamers, it still falls in line with how this world originally worked.

I don’t know whose idea it was to push that concept this far, but I think it’s pretty brilliant.