[Fish Sandwich]

Jetman 50-51:



The visual that brings the entirety of Jetman to a close ends up being an extended recreation of the show's commercial bumper, and that's significant because it's significant. While the bumper that brings the show back from ad breaks is a typical group shot of the team in costume, the one that leads into the commercials is notable for being the first time in Sentai history that the bumpers featured a team out of costume. Exactly like Gai said back in episode 13, they're human beings before they're warriors. In other words, even in something as minor as a set of two still images shown for a few seconds every week, Jetman still made it a point to demonstrate that is was as much a show about people as it was about heroes.

Naturally, Inoue stayed as true to that as ever when writing the final two episodes. It doesn't take much effort to have a climactic confrontation between a villain who wants to destroy humanity and a bunch of humans who don't want that for obvious reasons. You could get away with having no extra personal motivations in play there whatsoever, if you felt like it. So what's impressive about 50 is that it takes the idea of a final showdown between Red Hawk and Radiguet, the show's greatest hero and villain respectively, and actively makes it nothing but personal. Ryuu's dealing with all the emotional baggage he's carried the entire series becoming too much to carry, and he makes the ill-advised decision to set off on his own to settle a score with Radiguet, who, for his part, shows one last hint of deeper emotions early on before once again burying those feelings beneath pure rage. It's a setup that provides a great final hurdle for Ryuu to overcome as a character, because the very idea of him acting this selfishly would've been unthinkable back at the start. Equally unthinkable is the idea that Gai would rush out to save him, to the point of entering a deadly solo battle against Grey to allow the rest of the team to get to their leader. Even Kaori gets to ultimately be the stern voice of reason imploring Ryuu to focus back on The Mission, in a complete reversal of how those conversations went early on. It's all emphasizing the character development of the series, and it's fantastically executed stuff. Amemiya pulls off a few particular tricks with the direction that are, for lack of a better word, way more cinematic than I'm used to for Sentai from around this time period. In particular, there's a subtle transition involving Rie that really surprised me with how beautifully smooth it was. You'll know exactly the moment I'm talking about when you see it. And despite how successful I think this episode is at maintaining the usual intense human drama, what I think truly pushes it over the edge into becoming something truly awesome is that, when all is said and done, the episode comes down not to romantic worries or petty squabbling, but to five heroes uniting as one against a villain seeking to destroy humanity. After everything they've been through, the team have overcome all their personal problems, and in that moment, more than ever before, they can truly be considered a Super Sentai team.

51 tackles the dual identity of Jetman's writing in its own way. Prior to the commercial break, it's all superhero stuff, all the time. One big elongated showdown between the team's robots and the mysterious giant monster from 48, which of course turns out to be Radiguet himself. (The name made it pretty obvious.) There were a couple brief moments in there where I honestly wondered if the fight should be more exciting than it is, but pretty much every time I had that thought, something immediately happened to make the fight more exciting. There are some standout choices the episode makes, such as involving commander Odagiri directly for a truly all-hands-on-deck finale, or the way Raguem's sole weakness ties back to the drama of the characters. And on that note, as often seems to happen in the toughest robot fights, the team wind up getting knocked out of their transformations to finish things out of suit. It all concludes with the ultimate gesture of mutual trust between Ryuu and Gai, and the promise of a hopeful future for humanity with the Vyram finally defeated. It wouldn't at all be unexpected for a Sentai series to end right there, but Jetman still has an entire half of the finale left, and it dedicates it entirely to actually showing us a glimpse of that future, three years down the line. Everybody is doing well for themselves! It's almost shockingly happy, for a show that loves its *drama* so much. You get to see Kaori's wedding, which was pretty much something Inoue had to give us, after devoting so much time to who she'd end up with. Though what's just as important is that Ryuu and Gai are feeling way better about themselves and each other. Gai even explicitly calls Ryuu his best friend here, which is one of those incidental lines that's pretty emotional for how quickly it flies by. Oh, and then there's that one particularly famous thing about Gai's role in the epilogue, which everyone knows, so I don't even need to say what it is. (This is your cue to go watch Jetman if you actually don't know.) I will say, it's another plot point I've always heard boiled down solely to the literal event, and watching it in context, it became a lot clearer to me why the finale is written that way. It's all about bringing Gai's character arc to a close by stressing just how much he's capable of prioritizing the feelings of his friends over his own needs now, and while it's a heck of an extreme way to make that last statement about how much he's grown since meeting Ryuu and the others, I can't imagine the series ending in any other fashion. But then maybe that's just because the ending is famous. But then, maybe that's just because it deserves its fame.

And that's about where I stand with Jetman, having finally sat down to watch the whole thing for myself. As I've said before, I was totally ready to both go into it and come out of it primarily ribbing Toshiki Inoue for being himself, but the guy's writing has a way of reminding me why I generally say I like Inoue when asked to give a binary answer to that question. (Or wait, do I always say that consistently? Honestly, if I've ever contradicted myself on that, it probably just fits the point I'm about to make better.) The thing is, while I'm not at all above being frustrated by stuff he's wrote, and can thus sympathize quite a bit with people who never gel with his style, when you give him a show that he gets to write for himself, he always displays something that's utterly invaluable in a writer, and that something is a sense that he genuinely wants to tell the story he's writing.

In all of the *drama* that defines Jetman, I always felt Inoue's passion. He was clearly excited to see what directions he could take these characters, and how far he could push the show in the direction he wanted, and it's hard not to respect that as a viewer. The excitement of the writer becomes the excitement of the finished episodes, and that becomes my excitement while I'm watching it. You can see throughout these posts that I kept a sense of humor about it a lot of the time (something I find helps a lot in engaging with Inoue scripts!), but plain and simple, I really did become invested in where these characters were heading. There's interesting stuff going on with all of them. The drama with the heroes is often quite layered, and there's maybe a good reason Gai is so iconic that goes well beyond him being "cool". The four Vyram generals are some seriously standout Sentai villains, absolutely nailing that classic evil royalty vibe, and each getting their own growth and development throughout the series to boot. It's a strong cast that easily carries a year's worth of storytelling. The episodes from writers other than Inoue have completely different flavors from his particular direction for the series, but they're often solid adventures in their own right that give the show an appreciable amount of variety. In particular, Kenichi Araki provides the most traditional plots, balancing things out, while Naruhisa Arakawa displays the first signs of what will become his unique voice for Sentai later down the line.

Everywhere I look, it feels like there's something worth giving Jetman credit for. I'm sure it gets called overrated all the time, as is the destiny of any show that gets called the best all the time, but as for me, while it probably won't be something I immediately think of as a favorite, I found it very easy to see why it's THE favorite for so many others. Many of Jetman's sensibilities are arguably way ahead of their time, and because of that, I feel like it's safe to say it still holds up. Jetman was a grand renaissance back when it was new, and even now that it's older, for me at least, it was a darn good watch.