[DreamSword]

Episode 13: Night Before the Decisive Battle!

This episode tackles alot of common questions that people who only casually know shows like Power Rangers tend to ask.

Questions such as "Why do the enemy forces only ever attack one city/country?" "Why doesn't the big bad just send all of their monsters at once?" "Where the heck is the government in all of this?' and so forth.

And while basically every Toku shows I can think of has some sort of in-universe explanation/justification for all of these, Samurai Flamenco instead decides to meet the people who ask those types of questions on their own level. As it turns out, the people in-universe have asked these questions too, and the answers are ones that are not at all pretty.

The episode itself is 99% just talking, making me draw mental comparisons to .hack//SIGN(which, by the way, is one of my favorite anime ever), and it worked just as well here and it did there. Masayoshi's' genuine nature really begins to feel the strain when real world politics intervene in superheroics.

So what exactly is the catalyst for all of this? Well, as it turns out, From Beyond as an organization is much, much bigger than anyone could have ever imagined. It has over 65,000 members for goodness' sake! And adding onto that, the Flamengers learn that the alien invaders plan to initiate and all-out attack on Japan in the coming days. Those initial attacks simply being testing grounds to judge the strength of Japan's' defense force.

This is of course a state of emergency for the nation as a whole, because there's no way that the Flamengers can take on that big of a force all at once. Even worse, due to wanting to look good in both the eyes of the public and the political world, the Prime Minister declares that announcing a state of emergency is to be held off until Japan's' leaders and their families can be evacuated into shelters. It's a selfish move that no one on the team is happy with, but despite their protests, all the team gets out of it is that each member can choose up to five people to tell the truth to and evacuate.

This results in a sequence I really dug, wherein we get small glimpses into the personal lives of each member of the team, and the star of our show, Masayoshi, practically crumbles under the weight of such a big decision. He can barely keep the entire situation a secret, let alone narrow things down to just five people to save! The ensuing conversations he has with Goto and Kaname are really engrossing stuff too; Talking about both personal responsibilities as well as ones placed onto those who decide to become heroes.

And man, the ending cuts at the exact perfect time, too. After the nightmares and the heavy burden that's been placed on his shoulders, he says screw what the government says, and lets the world know the truth.

Really excited to see where this all goes next episode, that's for sure.