Kikai Sentai Zenkaiger Episode 2- "The Gao Beast Is Troublesome!" Discussion
 

Kaito sets out to learn more about the power of the Sentai Gear and find others to fight alongside him.

The Zenkaioh song is sung by the legendary duo that sang the Gorenger theme songs, Isao Sasaki and Mitsuko Horie, the duo whose names are also the same as Kaito's parents.

Man, Gaon's passive aggression towards his fellow robots was humorous! Like, that handpile where he put his on top of Juran's before quickly removing it and putting it under Zenkaizer's instead, it's a small detail that's easy to miss but it really shows how petty and hypocritical he is. He's even disrespectful towards non-Kikainoid robots like Secchan.

The rivalry between Juran and Gaon forces Zenkaizer to become the glue to literally hold Zenkai Oh together. It's very comedic, but I think Gaon's development will involve him becoming less prejudicial towards robots and realizing that his spite is misdirected. He'll need to learn to get along with the other three people on the team who aren't Kaito, after all.

It's a little annoying how the middle part the OP keeps getting talked over. I want to hear the TV size theme without interruption.

The artist’s Twitter is your friend.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=kXRCKCaHfvs

Gotta say, this episode was actually pretty fun, i love that the villains themselves don't know everything about their own powers, that moment when Ijurude got shocked alongside everyone when the giant monster appeared was great.

It's a rare occasion when a villain in Super Sentai is just as shocked that the villain of the week actually becomes giant too.

These episodes are quite the spectacle. I wonder if they'll be able to keep up the non-stop energy for the whole season.

I can't wait for the whole team to assemble. Kaito is going to have his hands full managing what appears to be 4 very quirky teammates.

Much better episode than last week. I do hope Gaon gets toned down a little bit, since while it did have it's humorous moments, it's definitely the type of gag that can get old very quickly if overused. Maybe he'll have a character arc about him growing to like his fellow Kikainoids. Who knows.

Action scenes were great, very fun to watch (And that little smooch between Gaon and Zyuran was adorable). Most definitely dug the retro styled song for the mech battle.

Also enjoyed seeing the villains basically as confused as to what's going on as well. Also seems that while transformation is a free action, explaining how to transform isn't. Thank goodness the baddies are nice enough to wait :lol

Also we got eye animation on Gaon! That's 2 for 2. Why do I care about something so minor...

There was this recent interview with Junko Komura and there is a section here that I thought was interesting
https://news.mynavi.jp/article/20210307-1782717/

translated via DeepL
"--In the trailers and promotional videos for the movie, Zenkaiser/Kaito Goshikida, played by Kiita Komagine, seems to have a more cheerful, gentle, and passionate personality than the previous Red characters.

There have been a lot of "Baka Red" characters in the past Super Sentai, who are hot-blooded but not in the least bit stupid, and Kaito is not that unusual. Mr. Shirakura asked me to make all the heroes in "Kiramager" rather "solid", so he wanted all the heroes in "Zenkaiger" to be "bad". So the image of the heroes may change completely from "Kiramager"

The bit with Shirakura is translated a bit wonky, but I think it's something to the effect "since all the heroes Kiramager were solid, make the heroes in Zenkaiger rough"

Thought this would be relevant to bring up, given how this episode introduced Gaon, what with his fondness for animals/humans and dislike of other Kikainoids/robots

This show is just fun. The way that they're playing up how new all this sentai stuff is to all the characters, hero and villain alike, makes it feel new and exciting to me too. I especially like Ijirude (who I just realized is based on a microscope) is surprised by his own monsters. He's my favorite kind of mad scientist, the kind who'll just plug a power source into a minion without knowing what will happen, because hey, it's worth a try!

I hope Gaon gets over his dislike of machines and his fellow Kikainoids (it would be a good subject for a focus episode or two), but I do find his love for organic life cute.

I feel sorry for Vroon, not only is he treated like scrap by his bosses, he also seems to be falling down and getting dizzy in the opening. Poor guy.

And in the middle of all the comedy, there's a montage of people choking on poisonous spores. Talk about mood whiplash.

I think what he meant was, in Kiramager, the heroes got along very well, and were pretty much besties with everyone straight up and didn't have any major flaws.
So in Zenkaiger, the relationship will be very dysfunctional and need some team building over the course of the show.
Overall, I find refreshing. When I knew Junko was writing the show I knew it'll be very character focused and show the heroes as very flawed individuals, not the goody two shoes like Kiramager were.

I do like we got more information about the worlds, mostly that the villains don't seem to do much with the worlds after trapping them, they barely heard about Super Sentai as just a thing some worlds have, unless they managed to beat every team so easily it wasn't even worth talking about, which i doubt unless they really really want to say the Zenkaigers are totally the best, so it seems that the Kikanoids haven't done much with their worlds.

It does make me question what life in those gear worlds is like, i assume that, since every Super Sentai team was fighting villains when they were trapped, from what we can see in the 1st episode, that they at least likely kept on fighting their villains and are just trying to figure out what happened.

I mean, their knowledge is so low they didn't know about giant monsters of the week, as Ijurude was happy to repeat the same giant from episode 1, and i doubt they knew about combining mecha, well, Kaito sure didn't at least seeing as he thought the Zenkaigers had the first giant mecha.

I wonder if this means that the villains will now look at the worlds with Super Sentai they have just to study them and learn how to beat the Zenkaigers, i assume some robots will also be powered up by Super Sentai worlds.

Yeah, that's probably a more accurate interpretation of what's being said there

This makes me want to ask, but is the Zenkaiger movie something anyone here has seen?

I hear it is a big crossover so i assume it's set late in the events of this season...or just in the VS/Gokaiger/Ninninger/Zyuohger universe considering a ton of Red Rangers appear to help, wonder how that happens.

The interview I linked earlier said it happens roughly around episode 7 of the series. As for how the other Red Rangers are there, they just get summoned through a special gear

https://i.imgur.com/aShhZtw.png

Oh man, this is going great so far!

I think I'm just going to start from talking about that bit where Gaon pulls his hand away from Zyuran in disgust to put it under Kaito's instead during the roll call. It's such a quick moment of strong characterization, and that really sums up Zenkaiger for me so far. The episode is constantly doing little things like that, which bring out everyone's unique personalities in ways that are simultaneously helping to establish the dynamics between them while also just being plain funny. There's hardly a moment that goes by without some wacky thing like the eternally optimistic Kaito assuming one of the main villains must be Zyuran's friend simply because he recognizes him, and it's all utterly fantastic. There's SO much packed in here, without it feeling too cacophonous. This is a strong focus episode for Gaon, and yet Zyuran gets so many great moments himself bouncing off of Gaon, that it's a strong focus episode for the both of them! This level of attention to detail when it comes to the littlest interactions between the heroes is one of the things that won me over with Zyuohger, and it's why I said last time that I love Koumura's writing.

I also said the show isn't taking anything for granted when it comes to typical toku tropes, and boy does that go double for this one! First of all, Gaon making the exact same logical but incorrect assumption about what he's supposed to do with his new gun that Zyuran did killed me as much as it did that random goon. (You can totally see the poor guy on the ground twitching his leg in one of the following shots, by the way. So many little details!) But even beyond that, I was downright shocked to see Zenkaiger explain, basically from the ground up, how a typical monster of the week story happens. We have it explicitly stated that blowing up the monster is "usually" enough to undo whatever scheme they've got going, a basic rule Sentai uses to keep plots straightforward that's generally unspoken. We have the monster in question not realize what his name is for a second because he just got his new powers, which was yet one more fantastic gag for the pile. Heck, we even have them build off of that last point to explain why the monsters have weird speech quirks! This episode reaches levels of meta that absolutely should not work, and yet it's all handled so smoothly that it totally does. Color me impressed.

Getting back to the actual plot, I did quite like Gaon! He was the member of the team I was the second most interested in prior to the show premiering, and while the specific angle they took with his character turned out to be different than what I was expecting, it's arguably way more fresh and interesting. I was thinking he'd be more of a typical kind-hearted, gentle lover of animals, who maybe feels kinship with them over his own kind, but instead he's simply so into cute things that he's ~kinda~ a huge jerk to everything else, only a couple steps removed from outright self-targeted bigotry. It fits this show's vibe a lot better, for sure! Zyuran takes a lot of offense to the cold shoulder Gaon gives him, but honestly, they've got a lot of common ground when it comes to a refusal to look in the mirror. This is a team assembled out of misfits, by a misfit, and I am way here for that. Love the visual of the giant robot literally trying to pull itself apart to visualize how much trouble these people are having working together as a smooth unit. Sentai teams that start out at odds like this tend to be favorites of mine because it naturally leads to strong development, so the gradual approach Zenkaiger is taking has been very much up my alley.

Like a lot of second episodes in tokusatsu (and probably most shows in general), it's a big improvement on the first, and I thought that start was pretty dang strong to begin with.

(Also, I'm never going to find a spot to work this in naturally, so before I forget – I really appreciate that the voice actors for the Kikianoid members of the team are given big prominent credits right alongside Kaito in the opening. That was something that bugged the heck out of me during Kyuranger, and while ideally the suit actors would be listed there too, it's nice the costumed heroes are treated less like second-class citizens this time around.)

Gaon in a nutshell

Gaon: Organic lifeforms are so uwu!!!!!
Kaito: This is Secchan!
Secchan: Nice to meet you!
Gaon: Cool story bro*throws Secchan away*

Love it! :lolol

I just really want to point how Chuumei Watanabe and Kenichiro Oishi's score for the show so far has been absolutely FANTASTIC. It nails that late '70s-early '80s flavor but still sounds fresh and modern. I'm finding myself paying more attention to this show's soundtrack than I usually do with most toku lately.

Also, you can definitely tell Komura was a writer on Akibranger with her mild riffing on past Sentai tropes (the villains saying their names repeatedly, acknowledging that evil powers somehow fade away when the villains die). I haven't watched a Sentai weekly since I stopped watching Lupinranger Vs Patranger halfway through, but I'm glad I'm jumping back in on this one. This show is reminding me why Sentai is special in its own right compared to the solitary heroes you often see in Ultraman or Kamen Rider.

I lost my mind when Zenkaioh's theme went straight up Showa! The entire soundtrack has been phenomenal but that was the standout moment so far

I lost my mind the moment I heard the voice of Isao Sasaki and Mitsuko Horie. Now THAT is how you do a insert song to an anniversary show. :rock:

Yeah I can't wait until we get a full clear version of the song. I realize that Show Era music has really defined the kind of music I like the most- even outside of Toku.

I am back! I am late! But I finally watched the next episode!

A little bit I forgot to mention last episode, I still love how Jyuran did a flying Godzilla move in the first episode.

Anyway, gotta say, much like Saber, it's a little rushed for the start, but maybe a bit better here. I liked how Gaon's first transformation went the same way Jyuran's went, and seeing the villains' reactions to it just gets me every time for some reason. I'm still loving the absurd, over-the-top villains Sentai does, since I simply adore these crazy bad guys, and just now, noticing the 70's esque, boxy look for the Kikanoid's Zenkaiger forms is a really nice detail.

And the Showa style music that was playing for Zenkai-Oh Jyurangaron was simply fantastic, though I kind of wish it wasn't as quiet during the action, since I've been trying to get some focus on the score for this series (since this composer is a legend) and not to denote the action and sound effects, but the music is slightly bogged down by it, not that I have anything against it, since I quite like them, particularly the Geatlinger's standby gig.

Next episode: We meet the Robo-Waifu-Fortune Teller!:lolol

Why are the anniversary seasons for Super Sentai SO GOOD? I hadn't felt this kind of happy over a series since GoKaiger.

I'll just state the same as everyone else. This series is FUN. Visually it has some deep throwbacks to Showa era colors, action sequences are definitely more dynamic, and it's lighthearted enough to give the nods to prior seasons without it being too campy. Even the jokes are just right as is the timing. The Geartlinger having the writing of what it is on the side is such a massive deep cut to the old toys and how they had written on the sides what they were. Even if it's not my thing for a henshin device it's still retro fun.

If anything could be thought as a catch to the series might be that it's almost too overstimulating visually. Trying to catch every animation and nuance takes two watches.

Even the plausibly implausible writing for how the current world was created is not slapped together. And the episodes just feel longer overall because it's just right. I think the phrase is 'story fulfillment'.

So yeah, super pumped about this season and we're 2 episodes in. I expect the formulaic usual of introducing each prior sentai team, but at least it doesn't feel stale and overcompensated.

THIS. So much this.

Also, can I get a shout out for Navi 2.0? I never realized how much I missed a lot of these voice actors.

Wow... uh... this episode was pretty dang extraordinary. I loved it a lot.

Most of my reservations from ep 1 have been obliterated. THIS is EXACTLY what I wanted from a Komura-scripted anniversary series. Can't wait to see this team of freakin' weirdos fully assembled.

A series which keeps on giving.

I feel like Tojitendo is heavily inspired by Go-Onger, right down to Ijirude giving me Kitaneidasu vibes! However, there are moments I don't fully get. Ijirude gives a Kudakk the Mushroom Gear, which turns it first into a Kudaiter, and then into Mushroom World. How does a Kudakk even become a Kudaiter in the first place? Also, what about the rest of the Sentai Multiverse? Go-Onger was predicated on multiple dimensions, and Kyuranger was firmly established to be its own universe. Are all dimensions being turned into gears? Additionally, even if a world is liberated, what's stopping Tojitendo from turning it back into a gear?

I have concerns about Gege, the Tojitendo bird. I feel like that one will be much more dangerous than Bokkowaus! By the same token, I feel as though Seechan will also transition from being a handheld prop into something...MORE!

The idea of a gear which survives a battle feels strangely similar to Sporix in Dino Fury, even if it is unintentional.

I still don't like the Geartlinger! It just doesn't do it for me.

Why is it Zenkaioh JuraGaon instead of "Zenkaioh GaoJuran" given the placement of the two?

Even if Kaito isn't a Kiramager, I feel as though he would fit right at home with them!

I thought that Ep. 1 would leave much of the public with concerns regarding Kikainoids, but those fears were apparently unwarranted as there doesn't seem to be any resentment. Everyone seems to understand right off the bat that the main threat is Tojitendo, and not Kikainoids in general, which is definitely a progressive plus.

How did Seechan actually know what would happen when Kaito flips his gear if the Super Sentai Gears were never field tested? Did Seechan know that Kaito would find Kikainoid allies who would transform and combine long before the series began? If so, how did Kaito's parents learn so much and prepare?

Still interested enough to want to keep going.