... but by night, he becomes "The Patte Noir," the leader of the phantom thief troupe known as the Main de Cristal! (2/2)

Striking it rich with these pulls tonight!

#pokemom #tcgpocket #megarising

🎨 @astrophiic.bsky.social

That is when things finally clicked for me. Zeztz needs to have more moments like that, where the emotional throughline feels like it has impact with its audience, instead of like it's going through the motions. It can only get by on vibes and transforming motorcycle robots for so long.

Where Baku accepts his responsibility, tries to step up, gets knocked around, is desperately scrambling and panicking, but tries stepping up again anyways, and applies the confidence he's built up as Seven in his dreams into resolve, into courage to face his fears and fight for someone else's sake.

It feels like it plays too much into Baku's lucid dreaming, and comes across like he's gaming things where he just decides "now's when I win".

The point that really got me finally invested in Zeztz was the third episode, where the Nightmare escapes into the real world and there's actual stakes.

I'm gonna say it; I think my initial fear about Zeztz's setting might be proving to be correct. That things taking place in dreams is robbing some of its impact. The visual effects we see used are pretty cool and definitely serve to give the series an interesting hook. At the same time though...

Not to say Nox can't still prove to be a good baddie; they're clearly building up to something with him. It's just that he has a bit more on his plate to sell himself as a solo antagonist when his predecessors were able to pull it off relatively effortlessly when they were a group.

-Nyelv was the brains behind operations, Glotta was the muscle, and Siita and Jiip were the suppliers on the ground). Not only that, but there was also emotional investment because, y'know, they're the hero's siblings and they killed his mom right in front of him. Tons of narrative weight there.

And on the topic of Nox, yeah, he pales in comparison as a one-man show to the Stomach family's variety act. They weren't a lot more than archetypes at this point in time too, but they were engaging for their interplay, how we saw them function as this group; (Lango was the head in charge-

Yeah, I think you're right on that too. The characters as they are too close to archetype I feel - they haven't done enough to leave an impression on you, really grow on you. Kinda makes me reflect again on how tight Gavv's writing was that it managed to make me invested in the same time frame.

-something will happen in the next few weeks to really shake things up. It feels like we're hitting a bit of a lull at the moment and that's always a bit scary when it's still early on.

-and it can be especially felt when comparing they're early episodes. Each week I was hooked on Gavv, engaged enough that I wanted to know what was going to happen next in the story. With Zeztz, despite it's strong start, for some reason the hype doesn't feel as intense with me. 🤔

I'm hoping that-

Yeah, I've been reflecting on this too.

Trying to pin it down but I feel like with Gavv, each episode did an excellent job of building off of one another so it felt a little more organic. Zeztz feels like it relies a lot on formula, which isn't bad, but it is an appreciable difference-