[Fish Sandwich]

Kakuranger 34-35:

34 seems to be Hirohisa Soda's attempt to make me eat my words for talking smack about his writing earlier, because it's great. It still feels a lot less thoughtful than the average Sugimura script, but thoughtful isn't what I'm looking for in an episode that pushes Kakuranger to new heights of absurdity when I didn't think it possible. Sunakake-Babaa is among the best worst monster designs in Sentai history. An astonishing amount of care and skill were put into creating a super well-realized, detailed suit (complete with a moving face!)... of a completely absurd abomination of a Youkai who manages to look more stupid than any other monster in the show so far, and this is a show with a proud history of stupid looking monsters! What makes the episode really click into place though, is that this is all playing out against a surprisingly engaging story about Saizou helping some kid learn to make crepes. It works out way better than it has any right to. Naoki is genuinely a likable character, standing out from the usual hordes of random mopey kids by also being proactive about solving his problems. His friendship with Saizou is endearing, and makes Saizou look that much better, too, because we get to see his affable nature in a situation where it actually does someone some good. He's crazy charismatic in this one, even if it's not the kind of charisma he probably thinks he has. Also, more crazy arm antics with Kakure Dai-Shogun this time, with God Logan launching off to attack the monster with its tail blade thing like some sort of extremely elaborate Rocket Punch. Awesome.

35 features the return of Naruhisa Arakawa for his second and final go at writing Kakuranger. I'm sure it was a total coincidence that he only came back to the show after they dropped the narrator, by the way. The best part is, he even puts a clever spin of the new form of narration, having it take the form of a lecture at the school the Youkai are currently brainwashing kids at. Oh yeah! The Youkai are brainwashing kids in this one! Man, there's so much to talk about with this episode I don't even know how to keep it organized. Sentai plots where the villains directly and specifically target the youth like this are something I'm quite fond of. It's a very, very effective way to make the bad guys look as scummy as possible, and yet there's also something so strangely mundane about the sight of a monster in a classroom feeding children propaganda, it's also kind of funny. A perfect fit for Kakuranger, to be sure. Kamaitachi might be my favorite Youkai design in the series, too. The old-school/new-school mix is perfect. Kamaitachi are known for riding on the wind, so obviously the modern version would be wearing a bomber jacket and a jetpack, right? That's totally genius. This episode is wonderful, even if I would've liked to see some mecha action. I mean, come on, a dogfight between a giant Kamaitachi and God Kark? I guess they figured there had to be some limit to how cool things got.

Apparently Sasuke doing the monster bio in 33 was just a fluke, by the way. It's back to how it's been right there in 34. Until Arakawa mixes it up in 35, of course. Which means I jumped the gun in assuming the show was changing things again. Which is also exactly why I keep commenting on these things. Kakuranger's inability to make up its mind about minor points like this is totally fascinating to me. Heck, here I am talking about this, and I never even mentioned that the quizzes got discontinued alongside the narrator.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Androzani84

Just a heads up, the next two episodes are a lot more comical, with one of them basically being a joke on how the actor playing Tsuruhime was in a Fushigi Comedy series before doing Kakuranger.

Thank you for telling me that, because, even with the episode preview being as blatant as it is, I probably wouldn't have got the reference, on account of only barely knowing about the Fushigi Comedy series. Kakuranger has been a weirdly educational experience with all the things I've had to look up to understand jokes.