Watch Analysis
The video and audio above contain the full unfiltered analysis. What follows is the razor focused version of the strongest point(s) I had to make.
Why Nem’s Sacrifice Feels Heroic and Wrong
I can’t believe they actually went there.
Kamen Rider Zeztz 47 had me worried about what was going to happen with Nem. I talked in my Inspector’s Notes about a moment where I thought Oblivion was planting the seed for Nem to kill herself, and sure enough, that’s basically what happens.
At the climax of Kamen Rider Zeztz 48, Nem walks across the water and through a door. Her identity starts disappearing, represented by her clothing giving way to pure white. Everything around her begins disappearing too. There are white flowers everywhere, and she’s holding a small bouquet of them.
It looks like she’s going away.
And the moment she does, Oblivion stops.
That’s when everyone realizes why. Oblivion has become overwhelmingly powerful because of Nem, following the same basic principle we’ve seen throughout Zeztz: Nightmares derive power from the people connected to them. We saw something similar with Catastrophe. As the person at the center of the Nightmare becomes more powerful, so does the Nightmare.
Oblivion has become so powerful that he’s shrugging off attacks, overpowering Dawn and Nox, and even Baku with his Extreme power can’t stand against him.
Then, just as Oblivion is about to kill Baku, he stops.
Nem is gone.
I thought that was absolutely fascinating, tragic and sad. I also don’t know how comfortable I am with it.
Baku Refuses to Save the World by Killing One Person
Part of what makes Nem’s choice so complicated is that Zeztz 48 directly gives us another answer to the same moral problem through Baku.
Baku is essentially presented with the argument that everything would be fine if Nem were simply gone.
He refuses.
If his goal is world peace and saving the world, how can deliberately murdering one person in order to accomplish that qualify as world peace?
I really like that moral stance.
You could easily imagine another character making the opposite decision. If Dawn decided that killing Nem was the terrible thing that needed to be done to save everyone else, for example, I would understand that dramatically. It would stand directly against Baku’s position. It would feel dark and maybe even villainous, but if it actually saved the world, there would be an uncomfortable utilitarian argument behind it.
Do the math. One person dies and the entire world lives.
Baku rejects the math because deliberately murdering that one person morally compromises the thing he’s supposedly trying to save.
But then Nem introduces a third possibility.
Nobody has to murder her.
She sacrifices herself.
Nem as the Nightmare Messiah
I’ve been calling Nem the “Nightmare Messiah,” and this episode makes that comparison considerably harder for me to ignore.
In the Christian understanding of a Messiah, the Messiah sacrifices himself so that others may live. Nem effectively does the same thing.
Before she disappears, she talks about the good memories she has of her friends, how blessed she’s been by all of these good dreams and dreams of all of them. To paraphrase the biblical language, there is no greater love than to lay down your life for your friends.
That’s effectively what Nem is doing.
And weirdly, that feels better to me.
Someone murdering Nem because the numbers say her life is worth less than the entire world feels wrong. Baku refusing to murder her feels morally right. But Nem voluntarily saying, Fine, I’ll give myself so that everybody else can live feels noble.
You kind of can’t make the same argument against it because it’s her choice.
Except I still think there’s something wrong here.
The Difference Between Sacrifice and Erasing Yourself
This is where Kamen Rider Zeztz 48 makes me genuinely uncomfortable.
Nem isn’t simply a hero throwing herself in front of an attack to save somebody else. She’s a Nightmare who believes she was never supposed to exist in the first place. By removing herself, she can seemingly make the equation balance again.
And I really don’t like the possible implication of that.
Taken by itself, it gets dangerously close to saying that if everything is wrong because of you, removing yourself might be the answer.
I don’t think that’s what Zeztz ultimately intends to say. I don’t think Nem’s story is actually finished here, either, and the next episode may completely change how this moment needs to be understood.
But in this episode, the imagery gives her choice nobility. Her disappearance saves everyone. The story demonstrates immediately that her sacrifice works.
That’s why I’m conflicted.
I appreciate the tragedy and heroism of what Nem does while simultaneously being uncomfortable with the mechanism the story uses to express it. I think it’s a little dodgy. Out of context, I think the message could be pretty bad, although a lot of things become bad when you remove their context.
So I don’t want to judge the entire idea before Zeztz finishes it.
But I do want the show to finish it.
The Lady and Phantom Gore Nightmare Are Still Confusing Me
There’s another complication in all of this involving The Lady and the Phantom Gore Nightmare.
When we return to where Nox is being held, he’s physically restraining the Phantom Gore Nightmare in her monster form. Once she realizes that Nox is going with Dawn to try to destroy Oblivion and save Nem, she cooperates.
More importantly, when Nem talks as though everything could be fixed if she were simply gone, the response is essentially: don’t do that.
That seems to suggest a desire to protect Nem.
But that creates a conflict with the earlier argument presented to Baku that getting rid of Nem would solve everything.
I’m still unsure exactly how The Lady and Phantom Gore Nightmare’s identities are functioning in relation to each other. Was one statement coming from The Lady and the other from the Nightmare? Are their desires different depending on which identity is dominant? Or is this simply an inconsistency?
I don’t know.
Right now, it’s unclear enough that I think it’s a stumble.
Sieg Is on the Path Toward Redemption
I also really liked Nem’s conversation with Sieg.
I still don’t think Sieg has completely earned his redemption, but he’s definitely on the path toward it. I’m happy that he’s back, and weirdly, I kind of hope he gets to stick around.
I don’t know how Yuya Takahashi gets things to work out this way. Although maybe some of the credit belongs to Ryutaro Akimoto, because Sieg is charming enough that despite everything that’s happened, I find myself wanting him to stay.
That’s a strange place to end up with this character, but I’m enjoying being there.
Zeztz Has Gone From Saving the World to Saving One Person
Despite how uncomfortable Kamen Rider Zeztz 48 made me, I really enjoyed it.
One of the most interesting things about this final conflict is how the scale has almost inverted. We’ve gone from saving the world to saving one person.
The whole world is statistics.
One person is somebody you can wrap your mind around and care about.
That’s why Nem deciding that it was time for her to go made me so sad. I couldn’t believe the show was actually doing it.
And with only Kamen Rider Zeztz 49 and 50 remaining, that single life may now be the emotional center of the entire ending.
There’s also one question I barely touched on that could make this even more complicated: Baku is getting weaker from entering the dream directly. What happens if he ultimately sacrifices himself to save everybody?
Would that feel okay when Nem sacrificing herself doesn’t?
Is there actually a moral difference between saying, “I’m the problem, so I’ll erase myself” and saying, “I’m going to keep fighting to save everyone, even if it kills me”?
Those feel profoundly different to me.
I’m still trying to figure out exactly why.
And I think that’s why Kamen Rider Zeztz 48 worked on me as well as it did. It made me sad. It made me uncomfortable. It gave me several moral positions that conflict with each other, and it hasn’t given me an easy answer yet.
With two episodes left, I’m hoping it doesn’t.
MJ Muñoz 