ZEZTZ Episode 1 Explained — How the Series Begins

Kamen Rider ZEZTZ opened on TV Asahi on September 7, 2025 (September 6 for international audiences), written by Yuya Takahashi and directed by Kazuya Kamihoriuchi. Case 1, titled "Start," sets up the show's entire premise in about twenty minutes — and its final scene is the reason people are still talking about it a year later. This is a full recap for anyone deciding whether to start the series or catching up before the finale.

The dream: Agent Seven saves Nem

The episode opens mid-mission: national celebrity Nem has been kidnapped and held for a ten-billion-yen ransom. A secret agent identified only as Code Number: Seven infiltrates the hideout, fights off the kidnappers with rubber bullets, and rescues her in classic hero fashion — right down to conjuring a rose out of nowhere for the near-kiss moment. It plays like the cold open of a spy franchise.

Then a lackey pulls back her hood, brandishes a soup ladle, and screams at Seven to wake up. It was a dream the entire time.

The waking world: Baku Yorozu, unlucky and unemployed

Seven is the dream alter-ego of Baku Yorozu, a lucid dreamer with terrible real-world luck who lives with his younger sister Minami. Where Seven is invincible, Baku can't hold down a job. He heads out job hunting, ends up chasing down a missing girl named Kaede on instinct, and is hit by a car in the process — witnessed by police inspector Tetsuya Fujimi. While Baku is in surgery, Fujimi is introduced alongside his new partner Nasuka Nagumo, both investigating a string of "impossible" incidents they suspect are connected to supernatural beings called Nightmares.

The Gun Nightmare and the Zeztz Driver

That night, a Nightmare invades Baku's hospital room and chases him through a shifting dreamscape — the street, his old job interview, his own bedroom — mocking him as a coward hiding in his own fantasies. Cornered, Baku finds Nem again, tied up exactly as she was in his dream, this time guarded by the Gun Nightmare in its true form. Realizing he must be dreaming, Baku puts the Agent Seven persona back on — but this time it isn't enough. The Nightmare overpowers him and needles him with the one thing that actually hurts: illusions of Minami and Kaede telling him he can never really save anyone.

In the real world, Baku flatlines on the operating table. But instead of giving up, he decides that if this is his own mind, he gets to decide what happens in it. A mysterious man — later identified as Zero — pulls him through a glowing door into CODE's base, explains that this place is Baku's own subconscious, and hands him the ZEZTZ Driver and an Impact Capsem. Baku straps the Driver across his chest — the act itself restarts his heart in the real world — and transforms into Kamen Rider ZEZTZ for the first time. He overpowers the Gun Nightmare and finishes it with the Impact Banish rider kick.

The ending that changes everything

Baku wakes up in his hospital bed, brushes the whole thing off as "a weird dream" to an unimpressed Minami — and then notices the ZEZTZ Driver is physically strapped to his chest. Outside his room, Fujimi and Nagumo witness the same thing. A phone beside Baku's bed plays a message from Zero, addressing him as Code Number: Seven. Only then does Baku realize none of it was a dream at all.

That's the hook the entire series runs on: ZEZTZ never lets you fully trust the line between Baku's dreaming mind and the waking world, and Case 1 spends its whole runtime training the audience to expect a twist before revealing the real one.

Related reading

ZEZTZ Dream Twist Explained · ZEZTZ Cast Guide · ZEZTZ Cases 45–46 Explained

Written by Kakebo · Updated August 19, 2026. Sourced from the TV Asahi Case 1 broadcast record and the official cast/credits listing.