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Thread
:
What are you watching (Sentai edition)
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02-22-2022, 09:09 PM
#
9216
Fish Sandwich
The Immortal King Tasty
Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: Every diner you've ever been to.
Posts: 3,833
Jetman 33-35:
I hate to be hard on a Kenichi Araki episode at this point, but 33 didn't do a whole lot for me, taken as a whole. The starring monster is still amazing, mind you. Adhesive Cockroach is a delight to watch confound the heroes. There's a whole bit in there where Maria encourages him to enact revenge on humanity on behalf of all the countless cockroaches that have been needlessly slaughtered at the cruel, uncaring hands of our foolish species, and like, right away, I'm way into that. I also love watching this guy in action, with his movements sped up through camera trickery to (very successfully!) convey the creepy feeling of an insect scurrying about the place. And then the most genius part of all of this is how he
keeps surviving finishing moves
, living up to the stubborn reputation of his motif. This serves a practical purpose in that it justifies the team needing yet another new toy to take him down, but where the episode starts to go wrong is in how that's just about the
only
thing tying the monster plot into the more personal story that's truly at the core of this one. Which is a bummer, because the way the monsters drive Araki's plots is usually a point of praise from me, but unless I'm maybe missing something thematic, I'm just not seeing that this time. This isn't necessarily a deal-breaker, as long as both sides of the episode are interesting in their own right, but unfortunately, the more human drama here never really clicked with me. It's a toku plot you see all over the place, especially in older shows: a child begrudges a parent for not being around, and eventually comes to understand they had Reasons, or whatever. Okay, that's maybe a little
too
dismissive, but while this particular instance doesn't fall *completely* into the trap of basically telling the kids at home they just need to suck it up, it still lacks enough nuance to rise above the somewhat trite subject matter in my eyes.
34 though, that one was my jam! Arakawa is back, and as crazy as ever, writing a story that opens with Ryuu betraying his entire team to cut a deal with the Vyram. And yeah,
I
know there's no way, and
you
probably know there's no way, but what I think makes this one so great is that, from the perspective of like a seven year old kid without extensive experience with how fiction works, this would be pretty much the single most mind-blowing episode of anything ever. It's just a totally full throttle action thriller right out of the gate, with Ryuu shaking off the rest of the team in an epic vehicle chase scene, and then showing up to negotiate with Grey while rocking a sick new bad boy outfit to complete his turn to the dark side. He's talking about forking over Tetra Boy in exchange for Rie, the team are listening in from the shadows, unable to believe this shocking turn of events, and when Ryuu finally makes the exchange, Grey double-crosses him on the spot and
guns Ryuu down right then and there.
I was totally floored by the raw intensity of all this, and it's only the first half of the episode. It doesn't even stop being crazy once you get to the back half where the pieces of this mystery start falling into place. The episode is also an excuse to showcase the twisted and surreal layout of the Vyram base by way of a heroic infiltration, and while it's hard to top where the episode started, it never really lets up on the tension to the very end. Even the sketchy explanation for what exactly was going on when Ryuu seemingly got shot to death fits the tone of the episode so well it's mostly just
charming.
This episode totally rules.
35 provides a swift redemption for Araki though, because I was also pretty into this one. It addresses my chief complaint about the last one by bridging the monster attacks and the human drama with something of a focus on nature. You've got a sickly girl in the hospital who's friends with a dove, and said dove is very upset about all the pollution going on, especially that caused by a certain Poison Gas Rat. So you've got the Vyram with their latest scheme to rub humanity's failings in our faces, making a monster out of illegally dumped toxic waste, and you've got a dove who became friends with someone who nursed him back to health after industrial smog and whatnot had him too sick to even fly. It's a clear through line for the story, and a lot of fun elements spring out of that pretty naturally. Poison Gas Rat himself looks like a D-list Ninja Turtles villain (this is a compliment), and it's easy to hate a bad guy that's going around gassing people. This is also an episode where Radiguet is defeated by a flock of birds, which probably sounds pathetic, but trust me, these are some tough birds. It's hard to not get excited when nature itself is rising up against the main villain. It's also a pretty nice episode for Ako, not because it expands on her character or anything, but simply in how she hangs out with the girl the whole time. The whole episode is a super uplifting narrative about a child finding the courage to stand up to her own problems through seeing the courage of others, and I think it capitalizes nicely on that very direct parallel between her and why the kids watching are probably attracted to superheroes to begin with. Ako is the young one who isn't constantly talking about oddly mature romantic dilemmas, so if you're a little kid, then, yeah absolutely, she's gonna be the one you'd wanna hang out with. She'll even let you shoot the lasers in the giant robot! There's a lot of genuine heart to this episode, and that makes it a very satisfying watch.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Kamen Rider Lucha
I'm so glad to see that you're enjoying Jetman as much as you are. It's really one of the most unique (and, by far, my favorite) sentai out there.
And I'm glad to be enjoying Jetman the way I am! There's absolutely a lot about the way Inoue is structuring these stories that I dig, for sure. I didn't really mention this specifically when I was talking about the episodes, but when I realized the plot with Rie was being moved forward because the plot with Kaori and Gai was moving in a direction that would leave Ryuu in need of a new source of drama, I was impressed how quickly Inoue solved that problem. As in, he did it before it had
time
to become a problem.
Also:
Quote:
Inoue is one of the best writers
Quote:
other than Yasuko Kobayashi
Thank you for saying that second part for me so I didn't have to.
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