[Fish Sandwich]

Jetman 4-5:

Oh boy, it's already happening!

Episode 4 was a solid enough little story about Kaori making a proper commitment to the team, and it also really underscores the issue at the center of this team. Bless his heart, but poor Ryuu is just so ill-suited to leading a team like this when all he knows how to do is spout typical stoic hero rhetoric about the importance of The Mission or whatever. It's an approach that would probably work a lot better if everyone else on the team was also Ryuu, but hey, at least Kaori eventually realizes he has a valid point about putting your desires aside to save others. Kind of a shame that doesn't magically fix Kaori's underdeveloped skills as a pilot, though! I didn't really expect such a complete cliffhanger this early on.

And what I saw coming even less was that this was all building up to episode 5 establishing the love triangle. THE love triangle. You've got Gai going after Kaori, who's fallen for Ryuu's heroic... charm? I guess we'll call it, but of course Ryuu himself is still hung up on his dead girlfriend Rie, and the identical looking Vyram general he meets here isn't exactly helping him to move on. (Wait, with this many people involved, it's not even just a mere triangle, is it?) Honestly, it's sort of impressive how concisely this episode does manage to set up every last aspect of this thing all at once, while still doing it's deeply, deeply melodramatic plot about Kaori's legs not working because of her mental hangups about her own weakness as a warrior. And you know, she gets over it to save Ryuu, and flies her jet to combine with everyone else, so it's a pretty uplifting ending, on that level, but when you've got Gai walking off all grumpy because his primary motivation for becoming a Jetman (picking up chicks, natch) isn't working out fast enough, it's hard to ignore all the complex *drama* happening around that surprisingly straightforward narrative core. That's why it was so much fun seeing Red Hawk, Yellow Owl, and Blue Swallow hanging out as a trio for a huge chunk of the action here; it feels like you're watching Super Sentai or something!