[Fish Sandwich]

It really is the little details that make Zenkaiger what it is, isn't it? When this show is over, I think one of the things I'm going to remember about this show's action most is just fight choreography like this, where it's five people inelegantly ganging up on a single villain. I'm pretty sure most Sentai teams don't ever try and dogpile on the monster of the week the way the Zenkaigers do? Because it completely lacks the traditional flair you'd expect, and that's exactly what makes it so perfect for this show. These characters aren't the sort who are trained for combat or anything, so even after an entire year of experience fighting, they still flail around the same as ever. It's hilarious, and it's also oddly realistic, in a sense, which just makes it way funnier.

This episode spends a larger than usual amount of time on the chaotic action, and I feel like it might be one of the standouts of the show's whole run because of that? I'm not sure if I'm ready to say it's definitely one of my favorites, with so many good ones out there, but it's not every week I come away from Zenkaiger *this* impressed. I utterly adored the structure of this one, where the escalation of the show's approaching endgame is represented by the show doing three monster of the week plots in one episode, and specifically pacing them out that way, too. They're all completely separate monsters, introduced and defeated completely separately, in order. It's great. Like they had a couple leftover ideas for villains that they were thinking would ~kinda~ be fun, but who maybe couldn't carry an episode, and decided to get around that by doing a bunch of them at once before the show ends. So you get only the best gags they could think of for each concept; all killer and no filler. (A giant bat monster somehow hanging upside down on thin air was my favorite, especially since I legitimately didn't question that for a second until Zyuran did.)

And then, because Zenkaiger is the kinda show it is, there's also above-average human drama centered around Stacey. I mentioned at the start who much the details elevate Zenkaiger, and one thing I really love about the whole "Satoshi" shtick is how Yatsude only knows Stacey as an ordinary person. So everything she notices or is told or otherwise learns about him, it's all delivered in this way that cleanly underscores the very realistic subtext of his plotline. Stacey is a standoffish antagonist from another world, burdened by soap opera bloodline stuff and the whims of evil masterminds, but Satoshi is an awkward kid who's suffering from dealing with a lot of personal baggage as a result of a troubled life. So when Kaito tells Yatsude he can't mention any details about how he's hurting, it probably makes her imagine his situation is something grounded like being emotionally abused by a parent or something... which it is. This won't be the first time I've said this, and I'm sure anyone watching this show gets it, but man is it still hard to believe there was ever going to be a Stacey-less version of this series. He has added so, so much weight and emotion to Zenkaiger over its run, and that's very much the case for this specific episode as well. Both that scene with Yatsude and the one with Kaito and Stacey talking were absolutely fantastic.