[FreshToku]

40 episodes, and like, twenty years of television roughly! Doesn't feel like it, huh?!

I wanted to say that, surprising to myself, I think the character-of-the-fortnight story here with Takuya kinda really resonated with me. I don't know if it's just because it's in the presence of Grand Zi-O, but I found this somber revenge story quite memorable. I couldn't tell you a thing about any other of Zi-O's motw stories that wasn't just purely about a returning actor, but this one really stuck with me just on the merits of the premise and the performance of the guest actors (because the actual main cast barely get involved in this story other than blowing up the monster!).

But yeah this episode's biggest priority other than throwing in more Imagin nostalgia, is Grand Zi-O, supposedly the toy to end all toys with how much marketing hyped up, even proud of how its transformation jingle is the longest yet!

I like these toku shows for the ways they work merch into the plots. In this episode, the merch in of itself is kind of the event rather than the story surrounding it, but since it is also supposed to be symbolic of twenty year's worth of shows and DX toys, and celebrating that, I'm more fine with it than I would be otherwise. There's been a lot of debuts that play out this classic formula: New form is bust out at climax and it kicks butt to a rocking insert song, it works every single time, and it especially worked here with a powerset that's specifically engineered to be both incredibly flashy and instill immediate nostalgia and fanservice every second.

Sharing for fun but I very distinctly remember a reaction I had near the end of the episode. Its when Yuuto turns to Sougo and goes "Are you really Oma Zi-O?" and for a really brief amount of time, I was absolutely frozen with fear. I was so afraid that this was foreshadowing that here in the final stretch, the show would throw in some plot twist where it turns out Sougo isn't actually the overlord they've been fighting against this whole time, and thus ruin every single story beat the show has ever had. I know that sounds unthinkable, I thought it was too so I dismissed the thought before the next episode had aired. But wow did that one line really make me shiver and panic...