[DreamSword]

Episode 17: Ultimate Prime Minister!

There's so much going on in this episode!

To be as concise as I can on it though, this episode is literally Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. And I would not doubt if that were the inspiration.

So uh, let's start unpacking this step by step. Firstly, all of Masayoshi's' friends have stayed in contact, and have been preparing for the day that he returns. Harazuka in particular arrives with a brand new set of gadgets and a new suit for Masa to wear.

As such, Samurai Flamenco is reborn, and with the help of his friends and Mister Justice(and the Flamenco Girls), the former Flamenger plans to speak with the Prime Minister directly before he can fully pass his anti-vigilante bill. Although the Samurai only plans to talk, the PM has other ideas...

Turns out that the reason the Prime Minister was able to take out Flamen Blue a couple episodes ago(yeah that happened) was because he has his own power suit that increases his power the higher his approval rating is. He plans to use the live feed of his fight with Flamenco(with the audio cut) to raise his rating to 100% and thus achieve ultimate power and control over the country.

He doesn't care by what means he gets such power either, even all the while talking about how the masses are stupid and need his hand to guide them. Classic supervillain stuff while alot making jokes about government officials. Nice. But the power of friendship eventually prevails, as soon enough his approval rating begins to drop, and he is defeated. Oh, and there's one other important detail too: His middle name is Flamenco.

But things don't quite end there, as it turns out that Mister Justice was actually an alien all along. A rogue alien by the name of Alien Flamenco, who's managed to infiltrate governments all around the world and replace their leaders with other aliens. The Prime Minister wanted ultimate power in order to drive back the secret invasion that'd been plaguing the world all along. Alien Flamenco tells Samurai Flamenco to surrender, but of course our hero doesn't, and as such a full scale invasion of Japan is about to begin...

Okay, so uh, to even try and begin to unpack all of this, while this is certainly another episode full of crazy like how 7 and 11 were, I actually think all of this is really brilliant? First off though, while I get that the show is trying to portray the Minister as an utterly desperate man given the worldwide situation, his plan in general just kinda makes no sense. Why wouldn't he want the help of every hero ever to fight the aliens off? And even then, his wanting to save the world from Alien Flamenco doesn't change that he still wanted to essentially enslave the populace. He's a scumbag; Whether or not he wanted to be a hero.

But that in turn also works to the show's' favor, as it continues the recurring theme of Samurai Flamenco being one of the few genuine heroic types among all of the new heroes that have been popping up since the show began. As well, the word Flamenco growing ever more popular, to the point that it even reaches out to space, works really well with the show's' commentary about the power of popular and heroic figures, as well as how media can shape our reality. Heck, when you think about it, many of our heroes will outlive us.

This is all such a wonderful continuation of the stuff that Samurai Flamenco as a show has been gunning at ontop of setting up for more exploration not just of those ideas, but also bringing in new ones. Many a superhero comic has had setups similar to the scenario presented by the end of the episode, afterall. And in terms of world building, it does in turn establish just what the rest of the world thinks not only of all the stuff that's been going on in Japan, but just where the heck they've even been this entire time. Their heroes, Mister Justice included, all failed in their efforts to drive by the alien hoard. And now, the fate of not just the country, but the world, rests on Samurai Flamenco, just like so many hero shows.

Needless to say, the writers of this show really know what they're doing with this stuff, and I'm here for it.