[Fish Sandwich]

This episode and the last one were astonishingly good. My overall opinion of a series in the long-term tends to end up being heavily colored by how much I liked the finale, and for a while now, I've had a feeling that despite all the crap I've given it over the past year, Ryusoulger would pull things together for a very strong conclusion.

And it did. Because, honestly, this was always a series that clearly had a ton of potential. Not like, nebulous "wow, what a great concept!" potential either. I'm talking about the obvious sparks of creativity and even brilliance that were always flaring up throughout what could be a pretty uneven series. For its issues, Ryusoulger had a lot of moments that showed it could've been one of the better Sentai out there, if it could only keep at that level all the time. Genuinely hilarious gags. Some surprisingly heavy-hitting drama. Great action. Insanely good direction. Endearing heroes and villains.

When it was working at full capacity, Ryusoulger really delivered, and I think that's what these last episodes proved. The nature of the central conflict made a valiant effort to tie together the story into something more cohesive. We got a final showdown that broke away from a lot of the norms to do something daring and rather artistic. It felt hugely original even compared to similarly outside-the-box finales like LuPat's. The "where are they now" epilogue is a bit more straightforward, but that's hardly a bad thing in its own right.

Plus, the direction from Kamihoriuchi is... I mean, holy s***, are you guys seeing this stuff?



Do you know happy I am the very last thing in this entire show was that photo frame trick? Very happy.

So at the end of the day, Ryusoulger and I are parting on pretty good terms, I think. It's been a year with a lots of ups, a lot of downs, and a lot of randomly hearing "GIRATTO HIKARU SO~DO!" in my head at any given time of day, and I don't regret a single second of it. For all the exceedingly shoddy long-term planning, inability to find a central theme (this one is a major sticking point for me personally), or failure to do particularly thorough world-building that kept it back, there was always something balancing it out, and even when there wasn't, an episode was sure to come along that would remind me all over again not to write the series off just yet.

Is Ryusoulger one of my favorite Super Sentai series ever? Definitely not, but after a while, I started getting the hang of its unique rhythm, and I feel enough of an attachment to it now to be a little sad it's over. Flawed or not, it was a show that had a charm all its own.