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02-28-2022, 08:06 PM | #9251 |
The Immortal King Tasty
Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: Every diner you've ever been to.
Posts: 3,833
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Jetman 44-45:
44 has Inoue checking in on Gai and Kaori's relationship status at the start to reaffirm that's it's not going very well for them. And that isn't my opinion either; Kaori said so herself! She confides in Ako here that they just don't have anything to talk about when they're together, and I mean, yeah, that's not too surprising when you consider that their job is all they have in common. (It's also not surprising that Ako mostly just teases Kaori throughout the conversation, but to be fair, if you had to hear about other people's romantic problems as much as she probably does, I'm sure you'd stop taking it very seriously too. It's how Ako keeps sane, no doubt.) For his part, Gai is regressing to the point of inviting other women to hang out at the pool, and even if his heart's not totally in it, I mean... you know, let's just make like Ako and try not to get too absorbed into the *drama* between those two right now, because it's not actually the focus of the episode. No, the real star of the show here is Tranza's killer new super demon robot, Veronica. I haven't at all mentioned Jetman's main director, Keita Amemiya, yet, and that's because I don't have the strongest grasp on his style to really comment on it, but like, he not only directed this two-parter, but Veronica was personally designed by Amemiya himself, and you can absolutely tell he wanted to show this thing off. And I'm not complaining, because Veronica is pretty dang cool! The design has that particular sort of organic yet unnatural aesthetic that (I think) is 100% Amemiya's style, and there are a couple extra fancy touches to the suit like a moving mouth and eyelids to really sell the look. And instead of like, an engine, it has a creepy dark room with walls that sprout arms to grab people and drain their lifeforce to use as power, which is... man is that hardcore. The vast majority of the episode really is just a showcase for Veronica going up against all the different robots of the series. In this one episode, it takes on Jet Icarus (which loses), Jet Garuda (which loses), Tetra Boy (who loses), and Great Icarus, who the team suspect will turn the tides in the second round. (Great Icarus also loses.) It's pretty thrilling stuff, and much like Veronica's suit, there are these little specific touches to the action that elevate the overall package. In particular, there's some extensive wire-work to have all the combatants flying through the air, in a lot of cases because Veronica is throwing them around like it's nothing. This is especially great in my favorite moment of the entire episode. You see, Jet Icarus and Jet Garuda have this cool thing they do when they combine, where they start by basically high-fiving one another as part of the stock footage, which is immensely satisfying to watch. This makes it especially brutal to see Veronica run up on the two of them and grab their arms right as they're trying to combine for the first time. There are two important things to note heading into 45. One is that the Radiguet is now actively sabotaging Tranza's plan out of jealously, which is the only reason the team have even survived this far. (And yet, somehow when Radiguet ruins the evil plans, I'm still on his side.) The other is that the very tense and exciting cliffhanger leading into this episode was Great Icarus being boarded by enemy forces, resulting in the capture of Kaori, Raita, and Ako. So once again, we're in a situation where Ryuu and Gai are left to pull a win out of this somehow, only by this point in the series, they're actually tight enough that working in sync isn't too much of a problem. Heck, that may even be an understatement. There's a huge emphasis on the two of them both working together in a productive and mutually respectful fashion, to the point the episode ends on the note of them buying each other celebratory drinks. (The episode is literally named after hot milk, too, which is incredible.) It's maybe a weird swing for the story in a way, to start off on that note of how much trouble Gai and Kaori are having, only to end on this big reaffirmation of how much Gai legitimately cares about the team now, but both of those things are also equally true to how his character has grown over the course of the series, so I don't know. Maybe someone else wants to criticize that, but as for me? I'm way too invested in all the epic action going on here to be all that bothered. I mean, not only do you have Gai heroically exposing himself to absurd amounts of electricity to keep the wires on a damaged Great Icarus together long enough for Ryuu to make a desperate evasive maneuver, you've also got my man Radiguet finally taking an all-or-nothing stand against Tranza. He ends up saving the day at least as much as Ryuu and Gai do, and the best part is that, as ever, it's entirely motivated by his own selfish desires. He needs to be the one to kill the accursed Jetmen, and to that end, he's even willing to free the three captured members so he can do the deed on his own terms later. And considering Tranza's attempt to make Radiguet another battery for Veronica ends with Radiguet using Veronica as *his* power source, I have a feeling that when he makes his next move, it'll be something suitably huge. So to recap, we've got huge stakes for the heroes, tons of intrigue with the main villains, and a notable amount of extra effort put into the action and special effects. All of which makes this another darn great multi-parter, any way you slice it.
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02-28-2022, 11:26 PM | #9252 |
Precure enthusiast
Join Date: Dec 2021
Location: Amongst the Cosmos
Posts: 304
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Quote:
Plus, I can't help but feel like it's supposed/planned to take place much earlier in the series or at the very least shortly after Akira makes his introduction into it but was being put off for some reason. Hell, it could've been made as a nice team-up episode between Mio and Akira that the other ToQgers manage to have. At least Yasuko Kobayashi, the show's head writer, didn't write that one.
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03-01-2022, 08:41 PM | #9253 |
The Immortal King Tasty
Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: Every diner you've ever been to.
Posts: 3,833
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Jetman 46-47:
You know Jetman took two whole weeks off between the original airing of 45 and 46? There was that whole epic showdown with Veronica to round off the show's run in 1991, and heading into the following year, it's like, how much more exciting are things gonna get from here? What is Radiguet's next move now that he's on his own?! What's Tranza's next big plan?! What about Gai and Kaori, and all the other ongoing plotlines in Inoue's complex web of *drama*?! ...And then the first episode after that extended break is some nonsense about tomatoes. Yes, this is the very last episode of Jetman from a writer other than Inoue, and Kenichi Araki picked a heck of a concept to go out on. I generally credit the guy's plots for how the monster drives the overall narrative, and when you've got a villain literally born from Raita's deepest childhood fears, it's definitely meeting that standard well. The whole emotional thrust of the story here relates as directly as possible to what the monster is all about. It's just, you know, the monster is about tomatoes. This is such a weird one, and I can't actually tell you if I really liked it or not, because for a lot of reasons, I find it hard to pin it down. It's like, the episode is completely incongruous with everything happening on either side of it, it's relentlessly silly and completely unashamed of that fact, Raita saves the day by eating, there's maybe some kind of moral in there about overcoming... something, but I'm not totally sure. You'll have to decide for yourself which of those sound like the bad things, and which of them sound like the good things. Or don't, because, again, I can't decide myself. This is episode is tomatoes. That's about as succinct as I can put it. Although strangely enough, a scene of Radiguet wandering through the streets and reverting to a human form after being weakened from his clash with Tranza marks one of the vanishingly few instances of a non-Inoue episode making an effort to advance the show's story. I mean, going into 47, you could probably just assume why Radiguet looks that way without it being a huge deal, but still, this is worth noting. Anyways, 47 is awesome. Tranza makes himself a big bazooka thing that basically turns people directly into his commemorative trophies, and he promptly sets out to hunt down the team, secure in the knowledge that Radiguet is definitely not going to get in his way anymore, because that dude is a loser who's probably dead by now. No points for guessing that Radiguet is very much alive, gets in Tranza's way some more, and by the end, proves himself the ultimate winner of their longstanding feud. Tranza's goofy bazooka scheme isn't exactly the most thrilling plot ever by itself, but when it allows us to have an episode where an injured Ryuu works together with Radiguet to defeat Tranza once and for all, the episode as a whole becomes so, so much more. This is really the whole point of Radiguet ditching his usual look. He gets to present himself to a clueless Ryuu as simply a mysterious man who also wants to see Tranza taken down, and with nobody else left to turn to, Ryuu desperately needs that help. It's this interesting sort of camaraderie between them, where Radiguet makes a big deal about how it will be the powers of the two of them combined that will defeat Tranza, as though he's genuinely eager to help Ryuu. Radiguet saves Ryuu's life, reminds him he's a warrior, tells him not to give up, and just generally does his absolute best to be a team player. Because after all, Radiguet is genuinely eager to help Red Hawk... just as long as their goals align. But as soon he finds the moment is right to take down two of his most hated adversaries at once, Radiguet doesn't hesitate to reveal that this is exactly the opportunity he was waiting for. He doesn't end up taking down Ryuu, but Tranza gets pretty much the most brutal possible reminder who the actual main bad guy in this series is. I'm honestly shocked the episode ends the way it does. I definitely didn't hate it though. (Especially the reversal of the whole "say my name" bit from Tranza's debut.) I think I've made it more than clear at this point how much I'm into Radiguet's twisted pride, and this episode is an utterly fantastic showcase for that. He is filled with nothing but sheer loathing and hatred, and what makes him so threatening is that, as he demonstrates through teaming up with Red Hawk, his raw anger often gives him a level of focus most people only achieve from being calm. He's also never had the luxury of complacency, and if you read back the second sentence of this paragraph, you'll realize exactly what the difference between Radiguet and Tranza was in the end.
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03-02-2022, 07:45 PM | #9254 |
Henshin Heaven
Join Date: Jan 2016
Location: Inside a Hyper Battle Video, help.
Posts: 1,234
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More Gaoranger!
EP 9: Turns out GaoBeasts can be more than just random pieces of construction equipment, they can also be random creepy children who really, really want flowers. This is part of what gets me with this show, conceptually an episode where Yellow gets to show off his softer side by helping some GaoBeasts in disguise so nice, but the implementation ends up so utterly surreal it takes me out of the story. EP 10: Anyways, speaking of surreal... The GaoRangers travel to the past through a moon portal to get a magic healing mushroom and also a GaoBeast is there in the past but not the present for some reason. I should really stop thinking too hard about this show. EP 11: Okay, now that I'm done bullying the last 2 episodes I'll hand it to this one. This episode and the nice little plot with White and her father was genuinely good. It actually might be the first episode of the show that felt like an actual Sentai episode to me, as opposed to a string of inoffensive but surreal happenings. White is winning me over quite a lot at this point, she's probably my favorite so far.
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03-02-2022, 08:55 PM | #9255 |
The Immortal King Tasty
Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: Every diner you've ever been to.
Posts: 3,833
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Jetman 48-49:
48 is where Inoue really starts to push the show towards its ending, and since this is Jetman we're talking about, that means he's mainly focused on pushing one of the romantic arcs towards its conclusion. In this case, we've got three people who have feelings for Maria in three extremely different ways. Radiguet considers her to be of great value as a possession, and using his new powers, he tries to make her into a truly perfect puppet, bestowing her with vampiric abilities that are also gradually turning her into a bestial creature with none of her own identity left. Maria insists she's willing to give anything for the strength to defeat her enemies, but this turn of events doesn't sit right with Grey, who loves Maria for the beauty he sees in who she is, rather than what Radiguet wants to make her. It also doesn't sit right with Ryuu, who loves Maria for who she was, and would still do anything to be back together with Rie. In typical Inoue fashion, this is emphasized as strongly as possible, as we also get to see Ryuu head to a birthday dinner early on here. It's Rie's, of course, and Ryuu is completely alone at the table. He's good at playing it off around the team most of the time, but the poor guy has been seriously hurting the entire series, and a scene like this (that, once again, really doesn't feel like something you'd normally see in Super Sentai), I honestly think it's a great way to remind the viewer just how deeply Ryuu feels all this stuff. In a show with this much *drama*, it's not easy being in love, and it only gets that much more painful when Maria turns him into a vampire monster slave too, which makes for a heck of a cliffhanger. An episode that ends with the star of the show screaming with glowing red evil eyes and fangs is the kind of thing that will make you come back the next week! (There's also a fight with a new giant monster robot thing wrecking the city, which serves the purpose of isolating the rest of the team from Maria and Ryuu, but the episode weirdly glosses over this whole thread, to the point that 49 just kind of skips explaining what exactly happened to it after trashing Great Icarus. I guess it just left?) So obviously, heading into 49, it's the usual grim scenario. Maria is still going around sucking people dry, completely apathetic to the monster she's becoming, and now Ryuu is in the same position. But it seems like there's some hope! After all, Grey comes to the conclusion that it's best for Maria to be in human hands again, clearly a decision inspired not only by how awful the Vyram lifestyle is treating her, but by his own development back in 42. So that's good, and what's even better is that Ryuu manages to reclaim control of himself through the power of love. And if it works for him, then maybe it'll still work for Rie too? ...Well, I guess draw your own conclusions, because I prefer to not spoil too much about these episodes, and I don't know how I can talk about the resolution of this one at all without giving everything away. Suffice it to say, there's a lot of emotion packed in here, and some suitably huge twists and turns for some of the last episodes of the show. It's another very definitively Jetman episode, in the way it chooses to give dramatic context to the typical good vs. evil struggle of a Sentai show. There's something I remember reading about back when I was doing the Zenkai Tour, and I'm glad I had this pointed out to me, because I wouldn't have noticed on my own: Ryuu never transforms at all in this one, and I think that says a ton by itself.
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03-03-2022, 08:22 PM | #9256 |
The Immortal King Tasty
Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: Every diner you've ever been to.
Posts: 3,833
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Jetman 50-51:
The visual that brings the entirety of Jetman to a close ends up being an extended recreation of the show's commercial bumper, and that's significant because it's significant. While the bumper that brings the show back from ad breaks is a typical group shot of the team in costume, the one that leads into the commercials is notable for being the first time in Sentai history that the bumpers featured a team out of costume. Exactly like Gai said back in episode 13, they're human beings before they're warriors. In other words, even in something as minor as a set of two still images shown for a few seconds every week, Jetman still made it a point to demonstrate that is was as much a show about people as it was about heroes. Naturally, Inoue stayed as true to that as ever when writing the final two episodes. It doesn't take much effort to have a climactic confrontation between a villain who wants to destroy humanity and a bunch of humans who don't want that for obvious reasons. You could get away with having no extra personal motivations in play there whatsoever, if you felt like it. So what's impressive about 50 is that it takes the idea of a final showdown between Red Hawk and Radiguet, the show's greatest hero and villain respectively, and actively makes it nothing but personal. Ryuu's dealing with all the emotional baggage he's carried the entire series becoming too much to carry, and he makes the ill-advised decision to set off on his own to settle a score with Radiguet, who, for his part, shows one last hint of deeper emotions early on before once again burying those feelings beneath pure rage. It's a setup that provides a great final hurdle for Ryuu to overcome as a character, because the very idea of him acting this selfishly would've been unthinkable back at the start. Equally unthinkable is the idea that Gai would rush out to save him, to the point of entering a deadly solo battle against Grey to allow the rest of the team to get to their leader. Even Kaori gets to ultimately be the stern voice of reason imploring Ryuu to focus back on The Mission, in a complete reversal of how those conversations went early on. It's all emphasizing the character development of the series, and it's fantastically executed stuff. Amemiya pulls off a few particular tricks with the direction that are, for lack of a better word, way more cinematic than I'm used to for Sentai from around this time period. In particular, there's a subtle transition involving Rie that really surprised me with how beautifully smooth it was. You'll know exactly the moment I'm talking about when you see it. And despite how successful I think this episode is at maintaining the usual intense human drama, what I think truly pushes it over the edge into becoming something truly awesome is that, when all is said and done, the episode comes down not to romantic worries or petty squabbling, but to five heroes uniting as one against a villain seeking to destroy humanity. After everything they've been through, the team have overcome all their personal problems, and in that moment, more than ever before, they can truly be considered a Super Sentai team. 51 tackles the dual identity of Jetman's writing in its own way. Prior to the commercial break, it's all superhero stuff, all the time. One big elongated showdown between the team's robots and the mysterious giant monster from 48, which of course turns out to be Radiguet himself. (The name made it pretty obvious.) There were a couple brief moments in there where I honestly wondered if the fight should be more exciting than it is, but pretty much every time I had that thought, something immediately happened to make the fight more exciting. There are some standout choices the episode makes, such as involving commander Odagiri directly for a truly all-hands-on-deck finale, or the way Raguem's sole weakness ties back to the drama of the characters. And on that note, as often seems to happen in the toughest robot fights, the team wind up getting knocked out of their transformations to finish things out of suit. It all concludes with the ultimate gesture of mutual trust between Ryuu and Gai, and the promise of a hopeful future for humanity with the Vyram finally defeated. It wouldn't at all be unexpected for a Sentai series to end right there, but Jetman still has an entire half of the finale left, and it dedicates it entirely to actually showing us a glimpse of that future, three years down the line. Everybody is doing well for themselves! It's almost shockingly happy, for a show that loves its *drama* so much. You get to see Kaori's wedding, which was pretty much something Inoue had to give us, after devoting so much time to who she'd end up with. Though what's just as important is that Ryuu and Gai are feeling way better about themselves and each other. Gai even explicitly calls Ryuu his best friend here, which is one of those incidental lines that's pretty emotional for how quickly it flies by. Oh, and then there's that one particularly famous thing about Gai's role in the epilogue, which everyone knows, so I don't even need to say what it is. (This is your cue to go watch Jetman if you actually don't know.) I will say, it's another plot point I've always heard boiled down solely to the literal event, and watching it in context, it became a lot clearer to me why the finale is written that way. It's all about bringing Gai's character arc to a close by stressing just how much he's capable of prioritizing the feelings of his friends over his own needs now, and while it's a heck of an extreme way to make that last statement about how much he's grown since meeting Ryuu and the others, I can't imagine the series ending in any other fashion. But then maybe that's just because the ending is famous. But then, maybe that's just because it deserves its fame. And that's about where I stand with Jetman, having finally sat down to watch the whole thing for myself. As I've said before, I was totally ready to both go into it and come out of it primarily ribbing Toshiki Inoue for being himself, but the guy's writing has a way of reminding me why I generally say I like Inoue when asked to give a binary answer to that question. (Or wait, do I always say that consistently? Honestly, if I've ever contradicted myself on that, it probably just fits the point I'm about to make better.) The thing is, while I'm not at all above being frustrated by stuff he's wrote, and can thus sympathize quite a bit with people who never gel with his style, when you give him a show that he gets to write for himself, he always displays something that's utterly invaluable in a writer, and that something is a sense that he genuinely wants to tell the story he's writing. In all of the *drama* that defines Jetman, I always felt Inoue's passion. He was clearly excited to see what directions he could take these characters, and how far he could push the show in the direction he wanted, and it's hard not to respect that as a viewer. The excitement of the writer becomes the excitement of the finished episodes, and that becomes my excitement while I'm watching it. You can see throughout these posts that I kept a sense of humor about it a lot of the time (something I find helps a lot in engaging with Inoue scripts!), but plain and simple, I really did become invested in where these characters were heading. There's interesting stuff going on with all of them. The drama with the heroes is often quite layered, and there's maybe a good reason Gai is so iconic that goes well beyond him being "cool". The four Vyram generals are some seriously standout Sentai villains, absolutely nailing that classic evil royalty vibe, and each getting their own growth and development throughout the series to boot. It's a strong cast that easily carries a year's worth of storytelling. The episodes from writers other than Inoue have completely different flavors from his particular direction for the series, but they're often solid adventures in their own right that give the show an appreciable amount of variety. In particular, Kenichi Araki provides the most traditional plots, balancing things out, while Naruhisa Arakawa displays the first signs of what will become his unique voice for Sentai later down the line. Everywhere I look, it feels like there's something worth giving Jetman credit for. I'm sure it gets called overrated all the time, as is the destiny of any show that gets called the best all the time, but as for me, while it probably won't be something I immediately think of as a favorite, I found it very easy to see why it's THE favorite for so many others. Many of Jetman's sensibilities are arguably way ahead of their time, and because of that, I feel like it's safe to say it still holds up. Jetman was a grand renaissance back when it was new, and even now that it's older, for me at least, it was a darn good watch.
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03-03-2022, 08:29 PM | #9257 |
take me to space
Join Date: Sep 2017
Posts: 1,406
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Those that have finished Jetman, you can celebrate by rewatching that scene from Zenkaiger. You know the one.
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03-04-2022, 02:40 AM | #9258 |
Veteran Member
Join Date: May 2019
Posts: 2,545
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Ah yes, the one hing that gets referenced in any fanfiction featuring Jetman (or at least, all but one of the ones I’ve read/read of. To the point where one person said that if he was writing a big crossover and HAD to feature Jetman, he’d go with Ako and Tranza due to how overdone Gai and Radiguet were in other stories.
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03-04-2022, 10:00 AM | #9259 |
Standing By
Join Date: Feb 2020
Location: USA
Posts: 2,078
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I heard what happened to Gai in the finale was an idea that Inoue came up with pretty much spontaneously. What's ironic is that the guy who did the thing to Gai was his own suit actor, Black Condor in the flesh! I thought it was a fitting end for his arc though and I still call him my favorite Black Ranger.
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03-04-2022, 11:12 AM | #9260 |
Stronger Than You
Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: nyet
Posts: 25,326
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I'd much prefer to see what Raita's been up to. He was my fav
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