[Fish Sandwich]

EPISODE 23: "Uneasiness"

Toshiki Inoue is back on writing duties for these ones, and he's basically doing a sequel to episodes 5 and 6. Possibly the kind of sequel that might as well be a remake? We'll work this out as we go along, but given this one also starts with a cold open of Sakurako in a room with Jean, getting worried about things, it's certainly looking pretty similar. The first key difference is that this time, she's specifically worried about some text she's translated, which the audience is kept in the dark about for the time being. Familiar or not, this scene does hit all three of my personal criteria for a great Kuuga cold open. It's under a minute, has only as much dialogue as is needed, and properly establishes the central concept of the plot. Good stuff.



After the opening, Nana shows up to Pole Pole, where a conversation with Pops quickly brushes the whole "teacher got violently murdered" plot point under a rug so we can get back to more Pops Puns, which only makes me further question why the idea was introduced in the first place when the show seems actively uninterested in exploring it at the moment. Beyond that, the scene's only other purpose is to have Nana ask where Yuusuke is, so we can find out he's off to the university, where he asks where Sakurako is, which fortunately isn't just so we can find out she's off asking where someone is, ending this chain before it becomes the entire plot of the episode, which, thinking about it, might've actually looped around into being kind of impressive.

Before we see what she's up to, there's a quick scene with the police reiterating the revelations about the Grongi from the last episodes, which I'm going to be generous and say is helpful for viewers who missed a week back in the day. Things start getting exciting when the scene shifts to Gooma, over in Nagano, performing some kind of crazy demonic chanting to summon forth... something. It came out of the ground like magic, so it's probably pretty cool though. Whatever it is, Gooma seems super happy about it. Ichijou meets up with Yuusuke to discuss everything that's been going on. In a touch I really love, when Ichijou asks him, mostly rhetorically, how many Grongi casualties he thinks there have been up to this point, Yuusuke replies with the exact correct number of 1,389. It's a subtle thing, but it shows how heavily all this weighs on Yuusuke, despite his carefree attitude. Ichijou is bringing this up because he figures going after the Grongi from the source, taking down their leader, would be the best approach to keep that number as low as possible. The problem being figuring out who that is. Gooma's constant trips to Nagano point to Unidentified Lifeform #0 being their leader, and Ichijou even theorizes here that the woman with the rose tattoo could actually be #0. It's not a bad guess, considering the information available. After all, she's clearly in a position of authority, and we've never seen what her monster form looks like. For all anyone knows right now, it might be her.

Getting back to Sakurako, it turns out she's with Tsubaki, intent on asking him about any changes that have happened to Yuusuke lately. One thing I want to note about this scene is how much it reinforces my fan theory about Tsubaki being kind of a creeper, because on either end of the conversation, he makes some pretty embarrassingly bad-taste comments to Sakurako, culminating in him abruptly trying to ask her out to lunch, which, sheesh. I think Inoue was having even more fun with Tsubaki than I am. In-between looking for a date anywhere he can find one, however, Tsubaki explains that Yuusuke thinks the electrical shocks he's been feeling as Kuuga over the past few episodes are a sign that he's becoming stronger, which has Tsubaki pretty optimistic, since the Grongi have been getting more and more fierce themselves lately. Sakurako, on the other hand, thinks this might have a connection to the text she translated earlier, and that's what she's afraid of. She asks Tsubaki about the possibility that Kuuga might actually use up all his energy that way, but it's apparent even she's not too sure what she's talking about right now. On the way back, Sakurako is handed a lighter as a promotional gift before she boards her train... which mantis-like monster Me-Garima-Ba also enters. Is she following Sakurako? What's the nature of the mysterious incense-looking thing she's wearing? Why isn't she flipping out and murdering people right then and there? Hopefully you haven't cracked this case already, because this is the big mystery for these episodes.

Yuusuke goes to see Tsubaki himself, and is surprised to find out that Sakurako was there earlier. Tsubaki fills him in on how anxious she was about the electric shocks, and also throws out the possibility him using the defibrillator on Yuusuke when he was "dead" actually caused them, but it's a little hard to tell how serious he's being, considering he's still cracking jokes about Sakurako coming just to see his face. To be fair, this did all start happening after Yuusuke came back. Sakurako, it turns out, isn't much more informed than anyone, confessing to Ichijou she's hitting a point where the ancient texts are getting more mysterious, and more difficult to decipher as a result. But at the very end of the episode, as Kuuga takes on Garima, we finally find out what she's figured out that's got her so concerned. It's a passage cryptically describing the sun being swallowed by darkness when a "holy spring" dries up, and a "fearsome warrior" appears like lightning. That last bit being the connection she's worried about. Definitely not the kind of ancient prophecy that sounds like good news!



THUMBS UP COUNTING CORNER

Just a couple of thumbs here.




Total thumbs up count: 38+2 = 40

EPISODE 24: "Strengthening"

It's made readily apparent how strong the Grongi are becoming when Kuuga's fight with Garima ends with her taking a direct hit from the Try Gouram and still living. It still hurts her, and she quickly retreats to lick her wounds, but for a finishing move that was blowing up entire shipping trucks and the Grongi inside them, you'd expect a better result. Yuusuke is looking on the bright side as usual, though, telling Ichijou he thinks he's finally starting to understand how to harness the extra power of the electrical shocks, planning to head to Enokida for help with the matter, but not before checking in on Sakurako. She's obviously feeling pretty low right now, to the point she's stooped to shameless product placement.



Putting aside how happy McDonald's must've been to have one of Japan's biggest heroes call their food delicious (even when cold!), this is actually another very Yuusuke moment that I think Inoue did a great job with. He's here to talk about why she's so upset, but he doesn't bluntly ask about that right away, instead sliding into that only after getting her to smile first with by talking with his mouth full like a goofball. Like with Chouno, it's maybe not quite how Arakawa writes him, with his followup prodding of "we're friends, so you can tell me anything" being a bit more of a platitude than usual, but the sentiment is still nice, and it's still evident that Yuusuke puts other people's emotions above everything else. Sakurako shows him what she deciphered, but Yuusuke is confident it's completely unrelated to what's happening to him right now. He points out that a warrior who "appears like lightning" doesn't actually describe him, since he's a warrior from whom lightning is appearing. Simple logic, but he might have a point. There's still a lot of mystery surrounding the text, but the visit from Yuusuke succeeds in cheering Sakurako back up, and he heads off to see Enokida.

Meanwhile, Ichijou and Sugita are trying to track down the mystery behind Garima's targets. First they realize a bunch of the victims were carrying those same lighters being given out that Sakurako has, so they go to check the store that was handing them out. Then they realize the victims who had the lighters all boarded a nearby train around the same time. Then they realize some of the victims who didn't have lighters boarded the train around the same time. Then they realize the victims who didn't board the train were probably already on the... the... thetrain...

*snoring*

Oh, sorry, I must've fallen asleep for a second there. Yeah, allow me to throw a bone to anyone who thinks I take it too easy on this show: the mystery plot this time just isn't a mystery. Inoue seems to be under the impression there was something ambiguous about Garima's actions, with the lighters presumably meant to be a red herring, but it's just... way too obvious she's tracking down the people who were on that train car. It's not all that unusual to have episodes of Kuuga where the viewers have more clues than the heroes do, but here it's too easy to connect those dots before them, rendering the investigation scenes here utterly limp. Despite the joke above, I'm not actually bored to death watching it. It's not a huge chunk of the episode or anything, but the fact that the only defense I can come up with amounts to "at least you don't have to see that much of it" kind of underscores the problem. This is another example of Inoue not having a solid grasp on Kuuga's style, and it dragging the story down. Anyways, the eventual, inevitable result of all this is Sakurako being warned she's a target just in time for Garima to show up anyway.

A little behind this, Enokida has provided Yuusuke an isolated room to do... whatever it is he does. The show doesn't dwell on it too much, perhaps ironically figuring this part of the plot wasn't ambiguous. So let's play detective ourselves here. Yuusuke specifically mentioned to Sakurako he wanted a room to shut himself in, we see insane amounts of flashing electricity from in there, and when he's done, he's visibly dripping sweat. Those are our facts. It's not too hard to figure out from there that Yuusuke presumably wanted a safe space to just let all that power loose to see what it did, and get a feel for it, but once again, this story's priorities are maybe not totally straight. At any rate, Yuusuke catches up to Sakurako in the nick of time, and gives Garima everything he's got. That means it's finally time for the Rising forms!



I also want to take a second to specifically talk about this shot which I found neat. It depicts Titan Form's initial shift to Rising Titan, and, since the designs physically nearly identical, they seem to have accomplished this with the simple but effective method of digitally editing the hue of Kuuga's armor in post, only using CG for the belt, the addition on the sword... and the torso, for some reason. It's identical to Titan's normal torso as far as I can tell, so why that spot in particular needed the extra treatment, I have no clue. Whatever the reasons, the end result was a fairly convincing shot that I took notice of specifically because of how much I didn't notice it, if that makes sense. Although the torso becomes glaring when you know what you're looking for.

Rising Titan, though! Definitely just as cool as the original, and also like the original, its debut consists of nothing but it annihilating the enemy with a single stab to the guts, although this time the monster comes to him. It's a short fight, but while it doesn't do a whole lot to show off what's so special about these new golden powers, Kuuga does destroy with a single hit an enemy previously shown to survive even Gouram's power, so it's clear enough this is an upgrade. And that's pretty much it for the episode, aside from a brief hint that Sakurako is still a little worried, and the "to be continued" screen completing its own little arc, as the lightning from the past few episodes becomes a radiant golden glow instead. Attention to detail like that is appreciated. Which is why these episodes are once again, not the show's best material. For different reasons than the Chouno episodes. These ones are focused enough, but between the combination of Sakurako's arc being too redundant for an A-plot, and the barely mysterious mystery B-plot, there's not a ton here to get particularly excited about. Just about serviceable, with some cool action, and some solid movement on the overarching plot, but little more.

THUMBS UP COUNTING CORNER

A few more thumbs here too.





Total thumbs up count: 40+3 = 43