[Fish Sandwich]

Jetman 27-29:

27 is incredibly surreal, and I am all over it. The first thing in the episode is Ako dying, and the main thrust of the episode ends up being Ryuu's efforts to save the souls of her, Gai, and Raita by projecting his own spirit into the monster-infested underworld and guiding them back to our mortal plane. None of this has anything to do with anything, but it's how matter-of-factly it's all presented that makes it so irresistibly cool. This is another Kenichi Araki script, and once again, it's just perfectly on that wavelength of a child watching a superhero show. You can just show Radiguet levitating himself as part of some weird ritual, say he's using his spiritual powers to defeat the Jetmen, as though that's something he always does, and leave it at that, you know? It's too awesome to bother questioning the logic of. Same deal when some rad old guy monk is brought in to act as an advisor to the team on this unusual case. I don't even slightly care about how this episode does or doesn't fit into the bigger picture of Jetman as a series, because as an episode, it's so dripping with atmosphere and excitement that there just isn't any reason to worry about that kind of thing.

28 is surreal in a different way, being Arakawa's next go at a writing a Jetman episode. His insane idea this time was, very broadly speaking, to do his own take on a "good monster" plot, but he's very much going about that in his own way. It's maybe a little early after the introduction of the Bio Dimensional Beasts for a story about a disgruntled normal style Dimensional Beast trying to prove he still has worth to have the full effect, but the placement is the only thing about this episode I would ever dare to criticize. I know I just said I was all over the last episode's style, but that goes double for this one. I am so into the idea of writing mooks and monsters of the week as blue collar dudes who think of defeating heroes as how they make a living, rather than a twisted ideal to devote their lives to, like the big wigs at the top of the food chain do. Dryer Dimension is mostly doing this out a sense of pride for his work, and he turns out to be a shockingly agreeable person, all things considered. He helps out old ladies, dogs like him... he may be a monster, but he's not a *monster*, if that gets it across. There are all sorts of things I loved about this episode, from how it cleverly works in an obligatory robot fight, to the resolution that's a lot less stock than I expected, and really capped off the whole thing beautifully. I've said it plenty of times before, and I'll say it again: Arakawa knows his stuff.

29 is another from Mami Watanabe, this time joined by a co-writer in the form of Nao... Nao... Naoki Ya... Yawa... Yawatari. Naoki Yawatari! I think! This writer is obscure enough I couldn't even find out how to read the name for sure. The episode was pretty dang good though! It's basically a do-over of the idea of fiery youths from the Reverse Dimension who parallel the heroes a bit, and while I never totally took to those last three in Jet Garuda's debut, I was pretty into these two from right away. It's an episode all about a couple who threaten to have their relationship torn apart by the Vyram, and because we're not worried about introducing a robot or any of that this time, the script is free to focus in way more on that obviously parallel between their situation and Ryuu's loss of Rie. There aren't really any particularly fancy tricks up this one's sleeve, but it's a perfectly nice, straightforward tale that touches just a bit on the corrupting nature of revenge while giving Ryuu plenty of time to shine as a hero who would give anything to make sure the tragedy that befell him never happens to anyone else.