[Fish Sandwich]

It was a little shocking to see the beginning of this episode actually address things that happened last time. I mean, you know, that's kind of how serialized narratives work, but you can't always take that for granted with Donbrothers! This whole plotline with Tsuyoshi's overzealous desire to protect Miho began when Kiji Brother got a guy sliced up by the Notou, and nobody really followed up on that the week after. When Tsuyoshi was crying out an apology to Tarou at the end of last episode, I kind of assumed that was the last anyone needed to hear about it. Like, no big deal! One of the Donbrothers just literally turned into a monster, but it's all fine now, so no hard feelings! ...And appropriately enough, that's exactly how everyone besides Tsuyoshi feels about the matter, so these characters aren't going totally off the script just yet.

They might actually be improving on themselves though? It's a question of how consistent this ends up being, but some of the interactions between the team here really give me the impression that Tarou coming back is sort of the start of a new chapter for the team. They had a chance to think about how much Tarou actually means to them, and judging by his behavior in this one, it seems Tarou might be starting to understand how much his companions mean to him. It's only a little bit at a time, for sure, but you can see the characters slowly becoming functional, and it's still nice how nice that is.

Jirou though, that guy, he's gonna be a whole new project to work on. It'd be enough if he were *only* obnoxiously over-eager to help, but it turns out if you don't give the dude the attention he's after, he'll become overly eager to wipe out anyone in his way instead. I said I was excited to see what Inoue would do with the new hero routine, and I gotta say, this is pretty hilarious so far. We've had villains who become heroes, loners with great skills in combat, and dudes who are just plain weird, but Jirou is a weird hero skilled in combat who becomes a villain the episode after he gets his powers. Can't say I've seen that one before! It's hard to say I have any sort of grasp on who exactly this character is right now, but that's exactly why I'm so interested to see how his development plays out.

Something that's also making Jirou a lot of fun so far is that Inoue seems to have a real talent for giving space to his introductory arc in a way that keeps him in the spotlight without making the whole show revolve around him. His presence acts as something that drives the plot further along, but the characters we've been following this whole time are still allowed to have drama relating to things outside of how they interact with Jirou, and I really dig that. It's a pretty natural thing for how this show is written, since it's always been unafraid to do several things at once, but it's still pretty commendable. Donbrothers very much seems to take the "everyone's the main protagonist" approach to Super Sentai storytelling, and it's been getting some great results out of that.