[DreamSword]

Episode 5: Who's the Culprit!

When a woman gets kidnapped on a bus by DarkZide, it's up to our main trio to track down and figure out who the culprit is. The prime suspects being the only other three passengers on said bus.

It's a relatively simple, but an interesting one. The group splitting up certainly offers a chance at diving deeper into the personalities and development of our main cast.

...But Changerion isn't really interested in any of that.

See, here's the thing. Despite the obvious set up for story and character development, our run time is spent instead injecting character and ironic humor into pretty much every scenario. And in the end, very little actual detective work is even done.

And while in many other stories I'd find this a bit annoying or disappointing, when it comes to Changerion specifically, I think it ultimately works out. Because I think this episode, more than any of the previous ones, signals exactly what this show is setting out to be: An adult-oriented parody of common Toku tropes of the time period.

To that end, while I did get a small chuckle or two out of the episode, the humor overall was nothing stellar to me. But hey, I at the very least didn't find any of it obnoxious, and it at the very least wasn't ruining any sort of pre-established dramatic mood or tension that the episode had built up. The episode remains tonally consistent all throughout, and if that seems like I'm giving some sort of backhanded compliment, I'm really not.

There is one interesting plot detail dropped that I found pretty cool and unique though: The reveal that DarkZide isn't actually fully aware of SAIDOC yet. Because they've all been splitting up on their own to infiltrate humanity, no one has been able to report in on how Changerion has been killing them one by one. I don't think that's an angle I've ever seen another superhero show do, much less a toku, and is one I'd love to see expanded on in a more story focused show someday.