[Fish Sandwich]

Kakuranger 48-49:

Hirohisa Soda guilt-trips me hard by making 48 another Jiraiya spotlight episode. And I mean, he's really in the spotlight this time. It's a level of focus not many Kakuranger episodes do, so I can only assume that Jiraiya had proven to be a popular character back in the day to justify this. An entire quarter of the episode goes by before the rest of the team even show up, and once they do, Jiraiya is still consistently taking charge throughout the action, to the point he pretty much defeats the Youkai here solo. All of which means I'm pretty head over heels for this one, even if it isn't anything too special. Any episode where Jiraiya looks like he's about to cry after hearing someone else's problem is a good episode. It's that simple. Okay, well, it definitely helped that there's some great action, too. It feels like the kind of episode Sakamoto would do these days. There's a lot of the Kakurangers getting in on the fights before transforming, which leads to some awesome moments. Early on, you've got a fantastic sequence where Seikai, Saizou, and Jiraiya each transform while fending off mooks, and the cuts are hidden in a way to make each transformation look like a seamless shot. It's beautiful stuff. Later on, you've got an extended sequence of Jiraiya driving a truck around, the highlight of which is probably him getting kicked out and hanging off the back, getting dragged over the ground. All this, plus Muteki Shogun popping in to turn up the heat. There's a whole lot to love. Getting back to the story for a second, the climax also uses a pattern that this show has been getting a ton of mileage out of, where right at the darkest hour, the Kakurangers reveal to the bad guys (and the audience) they actually solved the problem a couple minutes ago offscreen, and have just been punking everyone since then. I can't say I mind how often plots bust this move out, because it's always satisfying to see the heroes using their brains to work out clever solutions. The fact they do this at least once every fifth episode only serves to make the Kakurangers look that much more competent in dealing with evil. You can try and take them by surprise, but they'll just flip the script before you realize it.

49 is the very last guest-written episode of the series, and it's, fittingly enough, good but not great. Which, again, is a relative thing. Really, in this case, I might just be saying that because almost anything would seem lamer after a Jiraiya episode. This one was loads of fun in its own right. Binbougami is a Youkai bursting with comedic potential, and that's what you get here. Seeing what the Kakurangers look like with no budget is hilarious, and it just keeps escalating as the plot moves along. It's so funny even Daimaou is laughing! No, really! He makes his entrance in the episode flying in on his skull fortress to laugh at some people Binbougami just made poor. It abruptly cuts to a close-up of him letting off a singular, hearty "HWEH!". It's pretty much the most amazing thing ever. So while the episode is no masterpiece, it's not a bad one for Soda to go out on. He redeems his earlier mistreatment of Muteki Shogun, too, by giving him an appearance two weeks in a row, despite there being no particular occasion for it, which I'm sure whoever had to wear that suit was real happy about.