[Fish Sandwich]

Man, I really love Junko Koumura's writing. I mean, don't get me wrong, she's got her quirks, for sure – I fully expect to forget about at least a half dozen seemingly innocuous lines of dialogue early on that turn out to be important foreshadowing for future reveals, for one thing. But that's all part of the fun, you know? And this show is looking like it will be plenty of fun for me.

This certainly isn't a premiere that wastes any time, and yet it also does a remarkable job trying not to overstuff itself, I thought. A pretty succinct introduction of the bad guys' scheme quickly gives way to a strong focus on introducing the absolute bare essentials of what can technically constitute a Sentai. All five of them are here (blink and you'll miss Gaon though), but the show takes the pretty extreme measure of only giving two of the team any real time in the spotlight to keep the story as light on its feet as possible. It's not totally unprecedented to leave some members out at first, but the lengths Zenkaiger went to here were still rather bold, and I feel like this episode is better off for that.

Kaito is obviously the glue holding everything together, and I came out fairly endeared to the guy when all was said and done. He brings to mind a ton of other kid surrogate sorts of protagonists, to be sure. In particular, I thought his whole thing of wanting to be the first at something cool that pays off with him becoming Zenkaiser reminded me of Kouta's thing about "transforming" in Kamen Rider Gaim's first episode, and that thought was actually key to why I started liking him so fast. Just like in Gaim, it was a solid little backbone for the story to give itself a nice self-contained arc just in the one episode while presumably setting up a larger theme. I guess in Zenkaiger's case, that theme is just being awesome and doing exciting things? We'll see if the show manages to pull some deep messages out of that later, but as a motivation for the hero of an action-adventure series, you can't exactly go wrong with that, can you? I trust a guy introduced trying to jump off a tower for kicks to, at the very least, never be dull.

I also trust him to be heroic on top of that, thanks to the way the script chose to contextualize him bringing the team together. Some of the exposition with his parents is maybe a little on-the-nose if I'm pretending to be objective for a second, but it gets the job done. Actions speak louder than words, though, and I am in love with the idea of Kaito recruiting the first random robot he happened to find on the street simply because he saw him helping a kid out. If I had to sum up Kaito's personality based on this episode, I think I'd go with "irresponsibly earnest"? Everything he does is crazy, but there's a genuine place that's coming from which won me over. Dude is just so excited to be alive, and wants everyone else in on the party. And speaking of parties, I dug Zyuran's personality despite it getting a lot less attention. Being a guy whose shtick is thinking he's young and hip, he has a slightly more mellow energy that helps balance out the insanity of everything going on around him.

So yeah, it was neat seeing these two strike up a friendship on short notice, and the subsequent fight scene had a meta tone to it that I once again ended up being extremely won over by. Stuff like having Zyuran break toku etiquette by just shooting a grunt immediately, and needing every single aspect of how his new toy works explained to him while the bad guys watch in confusion at these two weirdoes confronting them was all delightful. Like, this isn't a show that's taking any of this stuff for granted, and it makes these things I've seen a million times still feel sorta novel, and keeps it grounded in interactions between the characters, something Koumura excels at.

With Shoujirou Nakazawa directing, it's just as fun visually too. Super cleanly and easy to follow, with the requisite Nakazawa killer use of slow-motion in that awesome shot of Zenkaiser and Zyuran both in the air, about to finish off their respective foes. It's honestly hard to even talk about other shots in the episode when that one was so good for how it blends together the two separate threads going on, emphasizes the duo as a single unit, and just looks awesome with the shifting focus and— Look, I swear the rest of the episode has pretty cinematography too, okay? One thing that stood out to was the use of the composite backgrounds for both the heroes' and the villains' respective bases. Kamen Rider Saber has been obsessed with that trick too, and it can be hit-or-miss there, but there's a seemingly deliberate sense of unreality to the locations here that made it surprisingly not jarring. The aesthetics in general seem pretty considered? It'll take a bit for me to decide how much I really like them, but there's a vibe to the whole show that's even more lively than usual for Sentai nowadays. Again, it's very cleanly, with stuff like the opening and transformations sharing Zenkaiser's color scheme of blinding white with rainbow flourishes. It's so darn happy and in your face I definitely don't hate it. Even the text in the logo doesn't have a gradient, so there's no shadows or anything getting in the way of those bright red letters. (It's also maybe to make it look more old-school? I just really like the logo okay)

But uh, if I'm getting to the point where I'm digging into the show's graphic design choices, I should probably wrap this up, huh? I thought this post would be pretty short, but evidently I'm more into this show than even I thought I'd be! Probably not the greatest premiere ever or anything, but it clearly did the trick for me. It's weird and fun and full of heart, as any good Sentai ought to be. Very much looking forward to a whole year of this.