[Fish Sandwich]

Jetman 22-24:

Sometimes you've just gotta wonder how exactly kids at the time felt about this show. Inoue is utterly absorbed in his own romantic drama in 22, to the point there's only the faintest hint of a Vyram scheme for most of the runtime. Sure, you've got a few scenes to remind you Radiguet's pet monster cocoon is going to hatch aaaaaany time now, which *eventually* leads to a confrontation between the Jetmen and the other three Vyram commanders in the closing minutes of the episode, but none of that is evenly remotely driving the plot. There's no interference from the bad guys to set the drama in motion, or that intertwines with the heroes at some point to escalate the situation. This team of superheroes Inoue created are so good at making their own drama that, arguably, what the bad guys accomplish by confronting them is deescalating the tension by getting everyone to focus on their job for a bit, instead of their relationship problems. And this episode is rife with relationship problems. It starts out with Ryuu making an active effort to resolve the tension between him, Gai, and Kaori, and as you probably expect, it goes so poorly that by the end, Ryuu, Gai, and Raita are all smacking each other around in a pond. It's just a total mess all around. You've got Ryuu finally explicitly telling Kaori about how he can't move on from Rie, which ends up meaning nothing, because Kaori can't move on from Ryuu. You've also Ryuu trying to set Gai up with Kaori, which ends up meaning nothing, because Gai reads everything Ryuu does as insensitive meddling. Let me put it this way: Ako is there to see the big pond fight, and she actually wouldn't be eating popcorn if she had any. The situation has degraded that much. This won't be the first time I've said something like this about Jetman, but my biggest reaction to this episode is just sheer awe that it got made. This show's style is truly something else.

23 opens up with everybody coping from last time's events in their own way: Ryuu is burying himself in his work; Raita is stress eating; Kaori won't leave her house; and Gai is hitting up the club. Although, shockingly enough in that last case, Gai actively turns away women who are interested in him because he can't stop thinking about Kaori. When Ryuu was so sure Gai was serious about pursuing a relationship with her, I kind of assumed that was just the usual undue heroic optimism, but maybe he's more sensitive to this stuff than I give him credit for. Not that Ryuu doesn't still have his own quirks. He flips right back to his default settings here, trying to brush the entire incident under the rug by giving a spiel about how everyone needs to remember The Mission takes precedent over everything to Kaori, who actually pushes back to explain to Ryuu that they aren't machines, using those exact words. So once again, there's plenty going on here already, but the Vyram take a much more active role in events this time as the subplot with Semimaru that's been running in the background finally comes to a head, meaning a big scary monster is laying waste to the city, and to Jet Icarus, which ends up an armless pile of scrap after their first fight. All in all, it's an episode that maintains an extremely high level of tension throughout, and makes it feel like a huge turning point is coming for the series, meaning it's very appropriate timing to debut the big second robot for the show, Jet Garuda. (Oh, and the robot also comes courtesy of some dorky kids from another dimension who want to fight the Vyram too, but as you can gather from me calling them dorks, they don't do much to impress in this one.)

Credit where credit is due, the purpose of the Reverse Dimension trio becomes a lot clearer in 24. It does a much nicer job tying them into the show's plot, even when it comes to little things like Ryuu observing two warriors in love hoping to find happiness, and clearly feeling a sense of familiarity there. The similarity to his relationship with Rie doesn't exactly amount to much, beyond being an ill omen, but it does a lot to make this whole plot thread feel less out of left field. The remaining member of the trio then, the youngest one, dressed in blue, serves to give Ako someone to hang out with, putting her at the forefront of this episode's emotional arc, which breaks from the previous two parts of this story to do something far, far more straightforward. This is pretty strictly the tale of three dorky kids, and the dorkiest of them all, who eventually rises to save the day even at great personal cost. It's all about good guys taking on the bad guys, all building up to a suitably spectacular debut for the combined Great Icarus, which finally allows our heroes to turn the tables on Semimaru, leaving Radiguet rather devastated, while the other Vyram generals laugh at his misfortune. I guess I could be complaining how much of a sudden swerve the story takes from the usual *drama*, considering how it started, but honestly, it didn't feel all that jarring? If anything, it's actually super refreshing to see that Inoue was both willing and capable of writing an episode of Super Sentai that feels as normal as this one does. These kinds of exciting new robot debuts have a general formula that doesn't really need messing with, and I guess Inoue didn't feel the need to argue with that.

(I'm not sure this thought really goes anywhere, but I also found it interesting that with a first part that's basically all romance, a conclusion that's almost entirely superheroics, and a middle that's about half and half, when you view these three episodes as a single big script, it's actually balanced rather evenly between typical Jetman soap opera stuff and traditional Sentai drama.)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Androzani84

There's also a slight gag in episode 21 where the broken toy that Poh-tan repairs near the start is Star Five from the previous series.

At least somebody cares about Fiveman merch!