[Fish Sandwich]

I think it says a lot about Donbrothers that I didn't even care whether or not Tarou showed up to that class, let alone whether or not there was any tokusatsu action in this tokusatsu action show.

It was just like, the absolute last thing on my mind, in the moment. A moment I found myself utterly absorbed in, exactly the way every scene in this show seems to draw me in. Just Haruka's snarky inner monologue contrasted against Shinichi's pretentious yet earnest lecturing would've been more than enough to fill a bit over 20 minutes. Heck, I could've watched just that for an hour without getting bored. When Donbrothers creates a fun scenario like this, the question of what "point" the episode may or may not be building up to stops being relevant to me. I'm having loads of fun watching what I'm seeing, and for a show, that fact alone is everything.

But of course, the escalation only makes things even more fun. Once Tarou does show up, you've got another wildly different strong personality thrown into the mix, and as much as I wasn't particularly asking for him to be there, I quickly became glad he lost that game of rock paper scissors. ...Especially because him being there because he lost a game of rock paper scissors is a wonderful bit of continuity. It's the less tragic side of Tarou's disconnect from the average person again, as the humor of him being on such a different wavelength takes center stage. ...A stage he tries to abandon immediately after giving the most blunt, concise, and accurate possible description of his career to those kids. For a guy who loves to party, working a crowd might be one thing Shinichi can claim to beat him at. I love that energy, though. Like Tarou only barely understands why he's actually there. Knowing what I do about Tarou, I doubt he was just eager to leave, so much as he just genuinely believed his task had been accomplished.

Although of course, it can often be hard to say I know anything about Tarou, and as far as a real "purpose" for this episode goes, fleshing out the dynamic between our primary color trio a bit more seems to be it. We get enough Q&A time for Tarou to confirm through his own words that he is indeed smacking around his companions after fights as some particularly strict form of training, even, which is nice. Good on Shinichi for being right on the mark about that, I guess.

There's also the actual fight scene that eventually makes its way into the episode. There was a moment when I realized it was time for an exciting action climax where I was almost upset to see this goofy comedy skit interrupted, but sure enough, that escalation also turned out to be for the best in the end. If the one I went with didn't fit what I'm talking about way more, the picture at the top of this post would've been Oni Sister pouting in the background as Don Momotaro is commanding everyone to do the finishing move. I've mentioned before how expressive I find both of those suit actors are, and that shot of the two of them sitting down with such radically different emotions conveyed by their respective postures was easily my favorite visual in the whole episode, simple as it may seem. Oh, and this is one of the episodes that gets a giant robot fight, which is always a plus in my book, but you know the drill by now: why would I talk about that when I could rave about these characters and their interactions forever and ever?