[Tokumonkey]

Holy socks.

That may have been the single strongest episode of Sentai I've seen; it was absolutely top five. Even better than the Lupinranger vs. Patranger finale, which nearly excused all the blandness that had preceded it.

The mecha moment at the beginning called back to the awesome mecha fight from the first episode, doing stuff we don't usually get to see.

We got drama that actually had some narrative heft! Osaki Ichika absolutely slayed Asuna's big moment. (Asuna may have been a relatively one-dimensional character, bu Osaki clearly has a bright future ahead of her.) Canalo's big moment actually felt earned, and Hyodo Katsumi showed he's better at drama than comedy.

Interesting that we got no credits sequence; isn't that usually saved for the actual finale?

And unf, that finally assemblage. The auxiliary Kishiryuu with actual personalities each got a little moment. (Sorry, CosmoRaptor.) Really, most of the characters in this episode got a Moment of some sort, although not all the same size. Did the writers all run out to see "My Hero Academia 2" together and get super-inspired by the what-if-we-gave-every-character-a-moment-to-shine thing?

I dunno if the finale can live up to this one. Great, great episode.