[Fish Sandwich]

Oh man, this is going great so far!

I think I'm just going to start from talking about that bit where Gaon pulls his hand away from Zyuran in disgust to put it under Kaito's instead during the roll call. It's such a quick moment of strong characterization, and that really sums up Zenkaiger for me so far. The episode is constantly doing little things like that, which bring out everyone's unique personalities in ways that are simultaneously helping to establish the dynamics between them while also just being plain funny. There's hardly a moment that goes by without some wacky thing like the eternally optimistic Kaito assuming one of the main villains must be Zyuran's friend simply because he recognizes him, and it's all utterly fantastic. There's SO much packed in here, without it feeling too cacophonous. This is a strong focus episode for Gaon, and yet Zyuran gets so many great moments himself bouncing off of Gaon, that it's a strong focus episode for the both of them! This level of attention to detail when it comes to the littlest interactions between the heroes is one of the things that won me over with Zyuohger, and it's why I said last time that I love Koumura's writing.

I also said the show isn't taking anything for granted when it comes to typical toku tropes, and boy does that go double for this one! First of all, Gaon making the exact same logical but incorrect assumption about what he's supposed to do with his new gun that Zyuran did killed me as much as it did that random goon. (You can totally see the poor guy on the ground twitching his leg in one of the following shots, by the way. So many little details!) But even beyond that, I was downright shocked to see Zenkaiger explain, basically from the ground up, how a typical monster of the week story happens. We have it explicitly stated that blowing up the monster is "usually" enough to undo whatever scheme they've got going, a basic rule Sentai uses to keep plots straightforward that's generally unspoken. We have the monster in question not realize what his name is for a second because he just got his new powers, which was yet one more fantastic gag for the pile. Heck, we even have them build off of that last point to explain why the monsters have weird speech quirks! This episode reaches levels of meta that absolutely should not work, and yet it's all handled so smoothly that it totally does. Color me impressed.

Getting back to the actual plot, I did quite like Gaon! He was the member of the team I was the second most interested in prior to the show premiering, and while the specific angle they took with his character turned out to be different than what I was expecting, it's arguably way more fresh and interesting. I was thinking he'd be more of a typical kind-hearted, gentle lover of animals, who maybe feels kinship with them over his own kind, but instead he's simply so into cute things that he's ~kinda~ a huge jerk to everything else, only a couple steps removed from outright self-targeted bigotry. It fits this show's vibe a lot better, for sure! Zyuran takes a lot of offense to the cold shoulder Gaon gives him, but honestly, they've got a lot of common ground when it comes to a refusal to look in the mirror. This is a team assembled out of misfits, by a misfit, and I am way here for that. Love the visual of the giant robot literally trying to pull itself apart to visualize how much trouble these people are having working together as a smooth unit. Sentai teams that start out at odds like this tend to be favorites of mine because it naturally leads to strong development, so the gradual approach Zenkaiger is taking has been very much up my alley.

Like a lot of second episodes in tokusatsu (and probably most shows in general), it's a big improvement on the first, and I thought that start was pretty dang strong to begin with.

(Also, I'm never going to find a spot to work this in naturally, so before I forget – I really appreciate that the voice actors for the Kikianoid members of the team are given big prominent credits right alongside Kaito in the opening. That was something that bugged the heck out of me during Kyuranger, and while ideally the suit actors would be listed there too, it's nice the costumed heroes are treated less like second-class citizens this time around.)