[Fish Sandwich]

Kakuranger 18-19:

18 is an instant winner for me simply for being about Jiraiya, so anything else it does right is basically extra credit. Which would make this episode a serious overachiever. Not only is the focus on my favorite character, the plot they chose to put him at the forefront of is my absolute favorite stock Sentai plot, the reluctant monster. In this case, a perfectly nice Youkai taking the form of a child, who Jiraiya becomes extraordinarily invested in befriending in a very short span of time, since he's so dang warmhearted. Which means it really stinks for him when Junior shows up to turn everything to s*** and brainwash said Youkai into going on a rampage. Junior kinda steals the spotlight in this one. Every scene he's in is just such a delight. You've seen villains teleport away from a battle before, but how many of them do it while laughing maniacally and giving the bird to the heroes? This guy is so nuts. I hate him, and I love that I hate him. Dude comes after Jiraiya, knocks him out of his transformation so he's lying helpless on the ground, and then busts out the chainsaw. He even tells Jiraiya "goodbye" in English, just to make the barely averted gruesome murder that much more personal. And all this is before he straight up roasts the Youkai to death by firing evil red lighting from the eyes of his ever-terrifying "sky skull" form. Which is naturally followed by more laughter. Yeah, suffice it to say, between this and the forest trap thing a few episodes back, Kakuranger has found itself a heck of a villain. And this is a heck of an episode. They even skip out on doing the quiz at the end so as not to kill the emotion.

This is all followed up in 19, which is its own plot featuring a gross spider Youkai and something of a horror flavor, with a lot of awesome darkly-lit cinematography, but as it goes along it puts in some extra effort to connect back to the last episode, and really give the impression there's a growing animosity between the Kakurangers and Junior. There's a great back and forth right now where Junior is pretty much untouchable, and yet the Kakurangers don't come off as ineffectual. They're still stopping the monsters of the week, but that's of little long-term consequence to Junior, and even if they have the skills to get out of it, everyone but Sasuke deliberately walking into a trap because they're that desperate to get back at him says a lot about how much Junior is getting into their heads. All in all, a solid episode, which has at least one advantage over 18 in that this one features Muteki Shogun, complete with its own insert theme, slicing up the monster, which is awesome. Although it probably says something about how good 18 was that I didn't even feel the need to mention them only using the Jusho Fighters in it.