[Fish Sandwich]

Kakuranger 44-45:

Going into 44, we've got four out of the five Kakurangers, plus Ninjaman, all captured, and the Three God Generals ready to square off against a monster they can't hope to defeat without paying a steep price. Amidst all of this, Sasuke is stranded in the woods, being hunted down by the Kunoichi. With a setup like that, it probably won't surprise anyone paying attention to hear that this episode is another grand slam masterpiece from this show. In fact, this whole trilogy was a roaring success that serves as a sort of sequel to the similarly amazing 15-16 two-parter. It's unrelentingly intense the whole way through, establishes the stakes masterfully, and brings things to as low a point as they can get away with before turning it all back around in the most exciting way possible. This is the definition of a thrilling conclusion. The plot breaks down into two equally exciting halves, with an extremely well directed mecha fight that runs so long the sun has time to rise, with Daimaou gloating over his inevitable victory as the heroes writhe in agony, and then you've got Sasuke running around behind the scenes, working himself to the bone the way only he can to turn things around, in the process learning some more revelations about larger ongoing story threads. By the time all is said and done, there's still a bittersweet element to the victory, and Daimaou's fancy new skeleton fortress definitely doesn't bode well for the future, but in the moment, the Kakurangers are back together, and boy did they ever earn it.

45 continues a hot streak for Hirohisa Soda, who continues to make me look like a huge jerk by delivering a crazy fun Christmas-themed episode that takes the show back to its roots. Epic drama is great and all, but a huge part of Kakuranger's identity was built on somewhat surreal plots with a comedic slant, and this one is a doozy. It turns out there's actually an entire... tribe? Society? Race? ...of Santas, who all live in a castle, and, much like the Youkai, they're a lot less behind the times than you might think. They've got escalators, and computers, and make their yearly deliveries with vans instead of sleighs, because of course they do. The levels of absurdity the episode squeezes out of this concept are something to behold. I'm not even going to spoil what's probably the best little gag, which involves what's playing at the local Santa theater. It's a real romp of a story. "x saves Christmas" is my favorite stock plot out there, and this is one of the more creative takes on it I've seen.