[Fish Sandwich]

Oh wow did this one turn out to be a delight.

The raw comedy Arakawa's scripts for this show bring floors me sometimes. He packs so many amazing little back-and-forths into his episodes, never stopping to breathe, and yet that refusal to dwell on the gags only makes them more hilarious. What's more hilarious than any single line of dialogue in the episode, however, is just Tametomo's face in half of his scenes. He is adorably transparent throughout, losing his cool factor to a degree that can only be described as "basically like a Shiguru episode". Which I know probably makes it sound redundant, but it's nothing short of high praise, honest! It's my favorite character getting in on one of my favorite comedy setups in this show; I'm only going to love that!

It's also not redundant on account of being a Plot episode in disguise. Right away it's apparent there's going to be some movement on the overarching plot since Takamachi's out searching for Dragon Balls again, but by the end it proves to be far more eventful than even that. We've got a whole new villain! And I'm kind of in love with her! Yodonna has like, pretty much the worst name ever, and a personality that's not much better, but the latter just makes her fun to watch so far. We only get a fairly small taste of her in this one, but between the amazing job her actor does being creepy, and having a built-in dynamic with, again, my favorite Kiramager (despite fierce competition), I seriously can't see myself minding her sticking around the rest of the series. Villains haven't always been this show's strongest suit, and she seems like just the bad guy to spice things up.

That being said, this is probably a great time to mention how much I adore the Jamenshi? They're pretty much everything I want out of Sentai monsters. Wildly different one-track personalities and ridiculous gimmicks that make for fun scenes where the team has to outsmart them. Or, uh, not outsmart them, in this particular case, but that's only proving my point about how varied these guys are. I wouldn't necessarily say they're my favorite Sentai monsters ever, and I don't know how strongly I'll even remember them individually once the show is over, but week after week, in the moment, they're consistently one of the most fun things about an already hugely entertaining series. And that's not even mentioning their unique design shtick with the heads. It's very budget-conscious!