Avataro Sentai DonBrothers Episode 7- "Group Of Teachers" Discussion
 

Shinichi and Taro become guest teachers at Haruka's school.

https://i.imgur.com/3vaizdj.png

I think it says a lot about Donbrothers that I didn't even care whether or not Tarou showed up to that class, let alone whether or not there was any tokusatsu action in this tokusatsu action show.

It was just like, the absolute last thing on my mind, in the moment. A moment I found myself utterly absorbed in, exactly the way every scene in this show seems to draw me in. Just Haruka's snarky inner monologue contrasted against Shinichi's pretentious yet earnest lecturing would've been more than enough to fill a bit over 20 minutes. Heck, I could've watched just that for an hour without getting bored. When Donbrothers creates a fun scenario like this, the question of what "point" the episode may or may not be building up to stops being relevant to me. I'm having loads of fun watching what I'm seeing, and for a show, that fact alone is everything.

But of course, the escalation only makes things even more fun. Once Tarou does show up, you've got another wildly different strong personality thrown into the mix, and as much as I wasn't particularly asking for him to be there, I quickly became glad he lost that game of rock paper scissors. ...Especially because him being there because he lost a game of rock paper scissors is a wonderful bit of continuity. It's the less tragic side of Tarou's disconnect from the average person again, as the humor of him being on such a different wavelength takes center stage. ...A stage he tries to abandon immediately after giving the most blunt, concise, and accurate possible description of his career to those kids. For a guy who loves to party, working a crowd might be one thing Shinichi can claim to beat him at. I love that energy, though. Like Tarou only barely understands why he's actually there. Knowing what I do about Tarou, I doubt he was just eager to leave, so much as he just genuinely believed his task had been accomplished.

Although of course, it can often be hard to say I know anything about Tarou, and as far as a real "purpose" for this episode goes, fleshing out the dynamic between our primary color trio a bit more seems to be it. We get enough Q&A time for Tarou to confirm through his own words that he is indeed smacking around his companions after fights as some particularly strict form of training, even, which is nice. Good on Shinichi for being right on the mark about that, I guess.

There's also the actual fight scene that eventually makes its way into the episode. There was a moment when I realized it was time for an exciting action climax where I was almost upset to see this goofy comedy skit interrupted, but sure enough, that escalation also turned out to be for the best in the end. If the one I went with didn't fit what I'm talking about way more, the picture at the top of this post would've been Oni Sister pouting in the background as Don Momotaro is commanding everyone to do the finishing move. I've mentioned before how expressive I find both of those suit actors are, and that shot of the two of them sitting down with such radically different emotions conveyed by their respective postures was easily my favorite visual in the whole episode, simple as it may seem. Oh, and this is one of the episodes that gets a giant robot fight, which is always a plus in my book, but you know the drill by now: why would I talk about that when I could rave about these characters and their interactions forever and ever?

Haruko's reaction to finding out why Taro attacks them was my favorite moment.

I must say the actor performances have been really good. I'm not sure if people know how hard it is to do scenes where the inner monologue is added in after the acting. This show does that a lot! Though perhaps tokusatsu is already adept with that due to the suit actors having to be dubbed in already. Haruko in particular is doing so much face and body language acting. She is absolutely the main character right now and I hope it stays that way. It really helps sell the idea that Momoi Taro is a larger than life character.

The one episode of Zenakiger with this very similar school premise is still rather fresh in my mind. Shame none of the Donbrothers ended up dressing like delinquents!

Shinichi really tried to claim to be just normal in the last episode, huh. ...Also I can't believe they just reused last episode's entire joke of imagining a challenge to compete with Tarou with, and I also can't believe I laughed as hard as I did at the fact they did that.

Speaking of laughing though, uuuuh, this is the first episode where I think maybe DonMomotaro was kinda overdoing it? It was like every other line in this one!

It took me this many episodes to notice they don't have a rollcall. Huh.

This episode didn't really make sense to me. Why would Saruhara be approached to teach a special class? Why would they schedule two teachers for the special class on the same day? Why is Taro so uncharacteristically uncharismatic (Seriously, for a guy who is "Good at everything", one would assume he would understand that a lecturer would do more than say what they do and leave)? Why do the students just suddenly start challenging him to random stuff?

Like, I know the common counterargument is "So the plot can happen", but this episode just seemed so contrived it was hard to get into it. Not helped that, once morphed, Taro never stopped laughing obnoxiously.

Haruka pouting in the background after being pushed aside was a cute detail midfight, though.

Saruhara has a reputation as someone who gives advice and has a unique life. Perfect for this class.

They're less like teachers and more like guest speakers, think like a parents day or career day; there's more than one speaker

It's been shown that the one thing Tarou's not good at is connecting to people. He's very helpful but doesn't understand other people's limits. He's not really meant to be "charismatic", he's honest and frank about his opinions and whether he comes off as charismatic depends on who he's with. You either respect him like Tsuyoshi or you're infuriated by him like Haruna.

this was another great and funny episode haruka is the best character of this show and i love the classroom full suit morph scene, the way the fiveman monster was punishing the rangers was hilarious, not to menion taro was just sitting waving the fan around like he know how to handle to the monster i freaking love that.

not to menion the fiveman monster was actually blowing his nose in the suit was freaking hilarious. i mean there's so many things i could say about this episode was awesome and funny. awesome season so far.

This was the first episode in this show that, while still very good, only felt "okay" to me. It was bound to happen sooner than later, but it was still very much entertaining.

Well he seems to be successful in helping people with their troubles, justified or not, word spreads about that stuff fast, so someone must have either heard about the program and recommended him or someone from the school who knew about him asked directly.

That doesn't make much sense yeah, but given how schools work, they wanted both to come, they only had that single timeframe to work with, so: Surprise! You get two teachers today.

That's kind of the problem he encountered ever since he was a child: He knows the way it should be done so everyone else is wrong and he has no chill about it. For him being blunt about it makes sense. But because of that he's alone. He can't figure out why, that's what his character is currently about. Just social incompetence galore.

Because they want to embarrass him for his attitude. They see him as a target to make fun of.

Have we even been watching the same show? Taro is good at everything but people. He totally does not understand people at all. He definitely would not understand how other people learn, as he just picks everything up instantly.

That's one of the things I like about him. He's a Marty Stu done right. He has this huge and logical flaw that balances out the fact the he is otherwise perfect at everything else he does.

Keep in mind that we are not even sure Taro is human. He was born from a peach found at a river. There's still a lot to unwrap about him.

Wow, that was the most Inoue episode of the show so far. I definitely mean that in a good way!

Saruhara's aversion to money was novel before, but now he's basically psychologically allergic to it, to the point that even the thought of money disgusts him.

Tarou walking in to a classroom and beating the students at their own games was awesome. Saruhara's imagined contests with him shows that unlike his Sarubrother Avatarou, his human physique is otherwise average. I wonder why Tarou and the karate student didn't get sucked in to the paper for property damage with those chairs.

The principal is way too strict for sure, although he's the only one in the school who actually calls Kito by her name, instead of "Plagiarist". Even then, he omits the "san" honorific, which is a pretty unprofessional way to call your female students only with their names.

Those students were so chill about Kito casually discussing Donbrothers stuff with Tarou and Saruhara. They probably just dismissed it as, "that wacky plagiarist and her wacky friends". It's amazing that the Donbrothers are able to keep their identities secret at all.

"My my my my my brother! My my my my my sister!"

That lyric from Fiveman's OP sounds like it would be suitable for this show.

EDIT: 1100th post, yay!

I know I'm not the only one already thinking this, but like, Tarou's definitely a Nouto, right?

I was thinking that too. The way they totally don't get humans is too similar to him. He cares on a level they don't, but there's too many parallels.