[DreamSword]

Episode 1: A Hero!! Me?

What... what did I just watch?

So uh, to sum up the basic premise of Changerion as best I can: This is essentially Kamen Rider W if it was written by Inoue.

Our lead character is Akira Suzumura, a detective who struggles to make ends meat due to only getting basic jobs consisting of things like finding lost pets. Not to mention having to pay his assistant, Akemi.

One day though, Akira seems to get his big break when a local school hires him to figure out the whereabouts of six missing school children. But this case quickly turns into more than it might initially seem, as an alien organization known as DarkZide soon reveals themselves via sentient portal.

One thing leads to another, and after a fateful meeting with truck-kun, Akira ends up absorbing the Crystal Power developed by SAIDOC, allowing him to transform into Changerion, and humanity's' biggest hope against the invaders from another dimension. He's incredibly happy about it, but the workers of SAIDOC most certainly are not.

If my description at all made the show sound mundane to you, then let me assure that, going by this first episode alone, Changerion most certainly is not. Things start off relatively simple at first, but once Akira gets the job to finds the kids, all bets are off and the whole rest of the episode goes by at what I can only describe as classic Power Rangers pacing, where things get thrown at you so quickly that you barely have any time to process it all.

In other words, this episode, and I imagine by extension the show as a whole, is a roller coaster ride, and me? I'm all for it. Sure, this episode is basically all setup in terms of characters and plot, but the atmosphere as well as the seemingly genuine effort to play with superhero tropes of the time(usually in the way of humor via subverted expectations), like with Akira having almost no standard heroic traits to him. Even the school children mock him! And sure, I didn't find most of the humor to be laugh out loud funny, but none of it was annoying.

I did get one genuine laugh though. The shot towards the beginning where the schedule says "ENTIRELY EMPTY." Yeah it's basic, but it got a good giggle out of me. And in the realm of ironic laughs, oh man that dated CGI. Let me just say that if I didn't know beforehand that SEGA helped fund this thing, the style of which the CG is done, especially in the very beginning, would've reminded me, say, Pepsiman right away. Pretty sure I've seen the exact portal gif they use in a SEGA game too, though don't expect me to nail down which. The Changerion suit itself is a cool one, though!

So... yeah. I dunno what I can really say about this episode in terms of specifics outside of that I had fun watching it, and if the next episode preview is anything to go by, I'm in for a wild ride with this show. You'd better believe I'm looking forward to it if so.