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What are you watching (Sentai edition)
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02-09-2020, 07:40 PM
#
8289
Fish Sandwich
The Immortal King Tasty
Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: Every diner you've ever been to.
Posts: 3,833
Kakuranger 52-53:
52 had basically its entire plot spoiled by the preview. Which is weird, because there's plenty going on beyond that to make for exciting footage they could've focused on instead. In a lot of ways, this one feels like it already is the finale. The plot has that level of weight. There's a big robot fight that throws out all the stops. There's a big dramatic speech about humanity's inherent potential to do good or evil. It's suitably epic for an episode that resolves one of the show's biggest running plot threads. It's a great episode, but of course, the series can't end with the Kakurangers all getting killed in an explosion, so we aren't done just yet.
I say this pretty much every time I talk about one, but I'm very particular about finales. It's the most important thing for any series to get right in my mind, and it's not even simply that I can't stand them being bad. When I'm into a show enough, a final episode that's merely average, or
just
good can be a huge letdown. It should feel like the event it is. I want it to be the very best the show has to offer, and to really tie the whole thing together. It's the note you're leaving on, and regardless of the overall quality up to that point, whether it was constant perfection, a rough start, a bumpy ride, or whatever else, a good ending is your chance to forever cement that journey as one worth taking, because the destination is worth getting to. What that means to me for a show like Kakuranger, one that I fell in love with very quickly because it
was
consistently so good, is that approaching the ending comes with some trepidation. I get a little nervous that
this
might be the moment it finally trips up. There's that nagging thought in the back of my head that the show is going pick the worst possible time to do something wrong, and it'll hurt my overall opinion in the long-term. So, no pressure, right?
With standards that demanding, I hope it's clear how serious I am in saying that Kakuranger episode 53 is an
excellent
ending. It's tightly focused, has something to say, and picks a good place to leave everyone in. It's everything I always hope for, and I'd have to really struggle, having just watched it, to find something I would've liked to see done differently. Like I said, 52 feels really grand in scale, so right out of the gate, one thing that I thought was brilliant was how
small
this one feels, not just for a Kakuranger episode, but compared to every other Sentai finale I've seen. It's almost like an epilogue in that, while the threat hasn't ended, the episode starts with the writing kinda on the wall for the Youkai. Everyone but Daimaou has already bit the dust. And he's not even at full strength anymore, because he's not getting enough of the negative emotions that sustain him. The trick is, the whole situation is pretty much a stalemate, because he can't really be defeated either. Not when Daimaou actually is a literal embodiment of the darkness in the human heart. It leads to a very surreal final confrontation, where the Kakurangers are running around the city, trying to stop Daimaou from trolling the populace by doing things like shoving baby strollers into traffic. He blows up a building in there too, but by and large Daimaou comes off almost hilariously petty, moving about, invisible to the average person's eye, floating from place to place with the distinctive fashion of a suit that I'm pretty sure doesn't even have legs? I think the suit actor is just getting dragged around on a plank of wood with some wheels or something any time Daimaou moves, and he's always so low off the ground, it seems less like he's hovering, and more like he has evil roller skates, which, given this show's design sense, might actually be totally plausible. The point is, it's a unique choice for the last boss not to just turn huge and have some ultimate showdown of fate with the heroes where he shoots like a million laser beams. It's unexpected, it's weird, it's daring, and it's
Kakuranger
. Handling the conflict this way could've gone horribly wrong in less talented hands. The whole thing could've seemed like a joke. But Sugimura was smart enough to give it an angle that actually makes it
more
satisfying than just a big fight would be. The showdown here is as much
metaphorical
as anything, and, playing off of the theming about human nature in the last few episodes, the Kakurangers' final challenge is not figuring out how to beat Daimaou, but how to defeat what he
represents
. Which is all somewhat cliche fare in of itself, but the way it's delivered is
so
inspired. It adds meaning to the resolution. The Kakurangers are sealing away Daimaou to bring the world peace the same way anyone puts away their darker thoughts to let the good ones shine through. The Kakurangers and you may not be able to be rid of evil forever, but evil can only ever win out if you choose to let it. It's simple, but that's exactly why I think that's a great message to leave the children watching the show to chew on. It's put in such a literal context that even younger kids probably wouldn't have a hard time processing the point being made, and you never know. It just might get them thinking. It's a surprisingly satisfying resolution, and the actual ending, with the Kakurangers just taking it all in that their hard work is finally done, and deciding to all just keep going on a road trip in Nekomaru anyway is a wonderful capstone. One thing I've noticed about Sugimura's writing is that he tends to have a
very
strong grasp on how much story he can fit into the 17-18 minutes an episode gets minus the theme songs. He obviously can't do some elaborate "where are they now" deal, but ending on the visual of everyone just hitting the road for old times' sake is just as powerful. It's a perfect bookend to demonstrate how the main characters' bond has evolved over the series. They started off almost at each other's throats, and now they're so attached to each other's company, and the routine their lives have settled into, they actively choose to keep it up even with their original reason for doing so gone. It's a genuinely sweet, heartwarming note to leave on.
...And that's Kakuranger! This has been a fun one. Not that I'm surprised by that or anything. Kakuranger is right smack in the middle of what seems to universally be considered something of a golden age for Sentai, and uh, yeah. I'm kind of inclined to agree, and I still haven't watched Dairanger! It's not Kakuranger is even the ultimate show or anything. There are some not particularly great episodes, and it takes a second to adjust to, but it's just... who cares? Even when I had no idea what was going on way back at the start, I was still enjoying myself. There's something fundamentally charming about Kakuranger, and that's even before it starts coming at you with some absolute, all-time top-tier Sentai episodes. It helps that it feels
crazy
inspired. Like, to the point I'm not even aware of how deep some of those inspirations go to even talk about them. There are a lot of meta layers to Kakuranger to peel back that I'd love to see someone more culturally knowledgeable than me explain. This was the first ever explicitly Japanese-themed Sentai, and it's utterly
packed
with allusions to the culture, not simply as it existed when ninjas were actually relevant, but as it was right then, in the moment, back in the 90's. Occasionally it feels like it's making social commentary of some kind (one more reason the finale feels so fitting), but most of it is over my head. At the very least, I'm pretty sure the strong western influences also present in the show are not simply a random choice to make things wackier or more unique, but to accurately reflect, in a very Sentai over-the-top way, the actual strong western influence on Japan by that point. It's probably really fascinating stuff, but man, until Wikipedia told me, I didn't even notice the background music specifically
didn't
use traditional Japanese instruments in spite of the OP and ED doing so. Not that either of those were exactly traditional in their own right.
I guess what I'm trying to get at here is that Kakuranger had a lot of thought put into it. That much I'm sure about. Because even not knowing those deeper layers, there's still so much to enjoy about it. And that's just about the best summation I can think of for its quality. It takes all these elements and puts them together into something that stands on its own. It's a great show with a very balanced tone. You'll laugh, you'll cry, and if you're anything like me, you'll be very glad you finally got around to watching it. Way back when I did my rewatch of Ninninger I started a habit of leaving off with a one sentence review when I finish a Sentai show, and this seems like a good time to bring the tradition back. This one's a little abstract, but it genuinely does sum up my feelings toward Kakuranger quite well. So on behalf of an awesome show, allow me to say:
See you again, my Kakuranger.
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