[Fish Sandwich]

Really great to see this show still proudly standing by that core concept of heroes who are kinda bad at their jobs.

I mean, this episode is essentially the Zenkaigers trying to deal with a sudden zombie apocalypse, and them proving themselves at every turn to be completely incapable of thinking quickly enough to maintain even a semblance of control of the situation. By the time Twokaiser shows up to save the day, it's become almost exactly the losing scenario they had discussed earlier, where Kaito alone has managed to keep clear of the horde at the expense of being able to actually do anything about it in the long-term. The team does not, by any stretch of the imagination, come out of this one looking competent, and I honestly loved every second of it.

You can't and shouldn't do this every week, for sure, (and it helps a ton that last week gave them the exact opposite treatment) but I think Zenkaiger isn't realizing its full potential if it doesn't have at least an episode or two like this. It's the Sentai team that's 80% robots, but so much of their charm is in that very human fallibility, and a narrative progression like this highlights that so thoroughly. Like, I'm seriously not even remotely upset that Twokaiser just falls from the sky to shill his merch while quickly resolving the entire dilemma, because somehow, against all odds, it feels like a satisfying story all the same.

And part of why is that, obviously, even in an episode that goes this poorly for them, the primary cast do get some moments to be helpful, which prevents things from feeling outright mean-spirited. In particular, Kaito cheering Flint up by being himself is clearly meant to be key to her contribution to taking down the monster... which is bootlegging the Zenkaigers' property, but you know what I mean. I really appreciated Kaito calling back to that kitschy advice from his parents there, and I also appreciated that the episode did its job of warming me up to... well, to Flint, anyway. I'm still not too sure how I feel about Ricky and Cutanner. Sentient merch is usually the easiest sell in the world for me in any toku show, but their personalities are still kinda homogenous, and while some of their animation is clearly a conscious stylistic decision (especially the stiff limbs), I've realized it bugs me a ton because I'm so used to how nice the cute SD characters in Legend Heroes look by now. I'll warm up to them eventually, I'm sure.

Where this episode shined the most for me was in the direction though. It's got a lot of what I've learned to love about Ryuuta Tasaki's style, which means I can point at it and go "oh this is so the optimal way to shoot this scene" without being able to explain much of it very well. Just, you know, things like Magine's crystal ball being out of focus in the foreground as everyone is pondering their game plan right before she volunteers her own idea. The staging has a way of drawing your eyes exactly where they need to go. The word I always use is "clarity", and hopefully that's enough to get across what I mean!

That clarity is especially important for an episode as unrelentingly kinetic as this one, too. All the scenes of people chasing each other around are always delivered in such a delightful manner, from Kaito and Vroom dashing through cramped alleys all the way to the team running a figure eight around some trees while transforming. And that's not even mentioning the miserable attempt at doing the roll call, because apparently this show will never run out of amusing twists to put on the roll call. It's some fantastic stuff all around.

So yeah, not a particularly deep episode in terms of narrative or anything, but it's owning that irreverent madness so hard that I can't be bothered to care.

(And I couldn't find a spot to work it in elsewhere, but let it be known that Gaon showing zero hesitation to shoot Vroom in order to save Kaito is another fabulous bit of Koumura character consistency.)