[DreadBringer]

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Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

Kuuga's fight against Jaraji takes a turn for the worse when it turns out he can teleport all around the place, which he uses in combination with his more straightforward ability to shoot needles everywhere to turn Kuuga into a pincushion, because being Yuusuke is suffering. Jaraji leaves before finishing the job though, seemingly a lot less interested in taking down Kuuga than Grongi usually are. Presumably it's no "fun" hunting something that isn't afraid of him.

Being Yusuke is suffering.... but being a human victim is much worse. Yusuke can still live after all of that, and also has enhanced survival as well as Tsubaki attests. So if Jaraji fights by teleporting and throwing needles, how do he kill his victims? The object inside the victim's heads are red, aren't silver like his needles.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

Sakurako has arrived in Nagano, where it turns out the victims of that massacre were actually Grongi themselves, with it being suspected the one who did the deed was Unidentified Lifeform #0.

Yeah, the blood's symbol is shaped in Kuuga's for some reason. I know everyone here (and me as well) already know about the #0, but this does create a turning point that, Grongis are victims to another Grongi here, and this does clear up my confusion about why the Grongi number jumps up high after early few episodes. It's pretty clear now that Grongis don't prioritize upper hand, they are just playing games, and that just happens to be killing humans in certain number and certain methods, and here, it also extends to Grongi themselves.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

Kazuya is now being held at a police station in the hopes of protecting him from coming to any harm.

And Yusuke here smiles a lot smaller here even when reassuring Kazuya. Probably an indication of his rage at Jaraji later. But does being serious (he's carefree but only at the outside) need to add up more frown to show it? I don't really get it for a petition of "being serious".

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

The lone element of comic relief left in this otherwise deadly serious episode is a scene at Pole Pole with Jean and Pops bonding over their mutual favorite actresses.

The one thing I can say is.... is there a JoJo reference here??

I know that Polnareff is a name of a singer which full name is Michel Polnareff, and that Polnareff in JoJo 8is also taken up from that name (JoJo uses many outside musical reference), but if it's being done to a character named Jean (with already "Michel" as a surname), it creates an unintentionally similar one to JoJo too with full name "Jean _____ Polnareff" Pops guessed (here the gap is Michel obv, in JoJo it's Pierre). So, both traits are added up here tbh.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

The big turning point is when Yuusuke happens to catch a news broadcast announcing the deaths of the last of Jaraji's victims besides Kazuya himself, who has only become a target to begin with after one of the students' decision to commit suicide left him a person short for his "game". But even if that death doesn't count to the Grongi, it sure does to Yuusuke, and as he sees the names and faces on the screen, all he can think about is how Jaraji is doing all this for fun, and all he can feel at that thought is anger. To the point he feels the need to admit as much to Ichijou. How upset he is he couldn't stop this sooner. It's all pretty worrying behavior from a character who almost always manages to keep a lid on himself no matter how dark things get.

Well, for Yusuke, even before this, there's already many victims that Grongis killed, not only Jaraji. And for victims like Kazuya, it would be more uplifting if Yusuke shows that he's Kuuga, and that there's someone superpowered that can fight off Grongis. And Jaraji being sadistic is actually a disadvantage to himself, because Weyo only asks for kill counts (directly from Grongis), and him being sadistic led to some victims committing suicide, delaying his Weyo as it's also has a time limit in 12 days.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

The monster is dead, Kazuya is safe, and the deaths of the other students have been avenged. All of which begs one question. How does Yuusuke feel?

Why did he lost the teleport ability though? I want to know. And are there any advantage of Gouram combining with BeatChaser, compared with TryChaser? Is that the better base model also makes up for a stronger combination too? But for Yusuke, he later changes to Rising Titan, which isn't dangerous to cities as Rising Mighty so I don't feel it's that useful to move Jaraji into a remote area first.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

And of course, he feels awful. Jaraji's death hasn't brought him the slightest bit of peace, and it isn't just because of the 90 dead teenagers that won't ever come back. That's a huge part of it, but what I think is truly eating Yuusuke right in that moment, after the fight, is how upset he let that get him. At the end, he wasn't fighting just to protect someone's smile, or because it was something that needed to be done. He was fighting because he wanted to. Each of those blows to Jaraji, it was no longer simply a means to an end; Yuusuke genuinely desired to make him feel the kind of suffering he was dishing out, and that terrifies him. He doesn't want to believe he has that kind of darkness in him, but right there, in the fires of that explosion, he sees it for the first time. A vision of a Kuuga that's nothing more than a living weapon, with no purpose beyond fighting.

Oh so that's the meaning of the vision of Kuuga in the fires in the explosion, that Yusuke strays from his original purpose even if he still protects by killing a Grongi. This time he wants to fight purely for revenge.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

This is one of the most definitive episodes of the series. It pushes the show's central themes farther than they've ever gone to this point, resulting in a narrative that's wildly unlike standard hero tokusatsu fare.

I thought Hiroki and Shouta were just enemies at default, but actually they're friends who has a falling out in that moment. And so that isn't exempt from Kuuga, just killing another living being, even if they're Grongis which has no redeeming qualities at all, to preserve the greater good.