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Thread
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What are you watching (Sentai edition)
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01-17-2020, 08:46 PM
#
8268
Fish Sandwich
The Immortal King Tasty
Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: Every diner you've ever been to.
Posts: 3,833
Kakuranger 26-27:
Episode 26 hits it out of the park. It's exactly the kind of thing I was hoping for from this stretch of the show, taking the opportunity provided by splitting everyone up to drill into what makes them tick as individuals. In this case, I feel like I knew Tsuruhime better after these 20 minutes than I did in 20 episodes. I don't mean that to sound like too much of a backhanded compliment, but going back to my gripes with Kakuranger's characterization, if I hadn't been told on a few occasions she was the leader of the team, I would've never guessed. While she's obviously supposed to be in that
position
, instances of her doing actual leader things, like motivating the team, or giving them orders, are few and far in-between, and usually end with her being ignored. This episode doesn't go as far as to like, directly say she's doing a bad job or anything, but it does roll with the central idea of this whole plotline, that the Kakurangers aren't totally done baking. We get a sense of Tsuruhime's backstory here, which is nice too, but it's the way it moves her forward that makes the episode so good. Just like Sasuke was given cause to think a little harder about what he's protecting and why, Tsuruhime is put into a scenario that results in her having a deeper understanding of what she contributes to the group by the end. I'm a sucker for character-driven, introspective stories, and this one puts a very Kakuranger spin on things by having the vehicle for that be Tsuruhime being given a team of wind-up copies of the other Kakurangers, animated by ninja magic (of course), to help her get her scroll. It's a cute workaround to get the others in the episode, and comes with the rather unique emotional dilemma of her being told it's totally cool to let these guys bite the dust for the sake of the mission, since they aren't alive to begin with. It's bizarre, it's absurd, and it comes with a dramatic payoff that's expected, yet still satisfying. What more can you ask for?
I could ask for Muteki Shogun being treated with some respect, that's what. 27 is inexplicably called "The End of Muteki Shogun", despite this not being the end of Muteki Shogun, and the fact the plot isn't even remotely about the "end" that is there. He just gets wimpily defeated to once again make newer toys look cooler. The plot proper is about Seikai and Saizou. I actually don't mind the idea of pairing them up to get their scrolls. They're very similar characters in that they're both still basically the same carefree idiots they were at the start, so one plot could easily be made to service both of them. It's perhaps a missed opportunity to
make
them into more unique characters, but I like the basic plot here. Both of them start turning into monsters, suddenly finding themselves dealing with a situation that's a lot heavier than usual all on their own. There's great potential in that. It was cool seeing them get over their initial despair through the power of friendship. Something about the execution feels like a bit of a misstep for this arc though. Sasuke and Tsuruhime got excellent episodes that felt very uniquely like they
had
to be happening at this point, but this one lacks the same weight. The lesson Seikai and Saizou learn doesn't feel as particular to their characters. It's more or less a standard Sentai plot that, once again, could be slotted in wherever and make just as much sense. Super Muteki Shogun doesn't even show up, which makes it all the weirder. What the heck was Tsubasamaru off doing this episode?
In what I'm
sure
is a complete coincidence, this episode is by Hirohisa Soda, the same guy who wrote 22, which had a similarly disappointing showing for Muteki Shogun. This leads me to something I've been wanting to mention for a while. Now, Soda is a
massively
prolific writer for Sentai, and having not seen any of the many, many series he was the head of, I don't want to make any hasty judgments about the quality of his work, but I've gotta speak my mind here. The episodes of Kakuranger written by him, and fellow old-school Sentai veteran (to a lesser extent) Susumu Takaku, have
universally
been the least entertaining of the series so far, even when I still liked them. Go look at an episode I said had a thin plot, or just plain wasn't great, and rest assured Sugimura probably wasn't the one behind it. While this is the first series helmed by him I've seen too, based on how excellent this show has been, and the reputation of shows like Dairanger, I can't help getting the impression Sugimura and Arakawa were this exciting new wave for Sentai, full of fresh ideas and innovative concepts, that the old guys were starting to struggle to keep up with. That makes sense for Arakawa, who legitimately was the next generation at the time. However, Sugimura
had
actually been writing toku about as long himself, so I guess the fact he was still new to Super Sentai in particular just made
that
much of a difference. It's less that the episodes by the other writers are bad on their own merits, which they aren't, and more that they feel stylistically disconnected from how Sugimura was approaching his scripts. Their priorities are
similar
, but differ in some very noticeable ways.
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