[Fish Sandwich]

Wow did I ever like this one. Did a spectacular job making me love Twokaiser while also doing a spectacular job remembering this isn't a show about Twokaiser. Those statements shouldn't even make sense together, either, which makes it all the more appropriate for Zenkaiger. That's just the kind of crazy show this is!

Starting off quickly with Twokaiser, I'm definitely starting to see the appeal. Take the dancing, for example. It was a cute enough gimmick on its own, but the script here makes it a point why he insists on doing it so incessantly, and in a very casual, smooth way at that. All it takes is a few lines from the monster expressing frustration with Zox's showboating, and suddenly I get it – Zox knows it cheeses off his opponents, which is all the more reason for him to never stop dancing. I mean, I'm sure that was obvious to most people, but I genuinely didn't stop to give it any thought before this (dancing for no reason at all would not be out of the question with this show's tone), so it ended up impressing me more than it probably should have.

Beyond that, action scenes with the guy continue to be fun, his entrance into that tunnel was genuinely too cool, and establishing a proper emotional stake for him to be fighting is much appreciated. I think you could complain about how abruptly the information is tossed out there, but again, that feels very Zenkaiger to me, just having Flint blurt it out in frustration to shut Kaito up instead of prolonging the melodramatic mystery of their motivations for weeks or something.

Way more important than anything about how Twokaiser is cool, though, is all the stuff about how cool he's not. This is where the episode really went right for me. It was fun from the start, of course, but it was only once the plot came together that I realized this is probably going down as another personal favorite.

I'm sure examples exist, but it strikes me as pretty rare for a Sentai to do an episode this disconnected from the big extra Ranger basically immediately after they debut. Ordinarily, the whole direction for the show ends up being defined for a while by gradually tying the new character into the team – which is what's happening here – but the thing this particular episode does, that I don't see very often, is have the arc be the main team reaffirming themselves as the true heroes we should be rooting for. Zox will no doubt continue to grow a conscience as things progress and he inevitably becomes another part of the group, and that'll be neat as well, but right here and now, Twokaiser is basically just some jerk who goes around causing tons of collateral damage (which admittedly made for a sequence with a very nice sense of scale) that the episode ends up mostly leaving behind. The continued refusal to introduce his robot especially helps on that front, as he has zero participation in the final bit of action for the story.

And it's totally fine that he does end up taking a back seat! Like I said upfront, they still do more than enough to shill the new guy; it's just that this story makes it abundantly clear why he can't always be the center of attention. That scene with the team saving everyone from the rubble is one of the best of the whole show. I mean, I'm a sucker for seeing heroes actually directly rescue people to begin with, but then Koumura has to go and write that bit where Kaito and a random Kikainoid simultaneously ask each other if the other is okay and make it perfect. I struggle to describe it, but that's another fantastic example of the kind of character interaction I feel is so unique to her scripts. It's such a quick moment, and maybe not that significant, and yet it also gets across so much meaning in so few words. Just the sort of warmth behind that, I guess, how the first thing Kaito and Literally Just Some Guy were thinking about there was somebody else, and how that contrasts with Zox.

And then after that, the team does their roll call while tanking bullets for the same crowd of civilians! What even IS this show, besides awesome!?