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What are you watching (Sentai edition)
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12-21-2021, 06:31 PM
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9042
Fish Sandwich
The Immortal King Tasty
Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: Every diner you've ever been to.
Posts: 3,833
~Fish's Zenkai Tour!~
Episode 40 – Doubutsu Sentai Zyuohger
To this day, I've never heard a better description of Zyuohger than when someone in the discussion thread for the final episode here likened it to really premium vanilla ice cream. On the surface, it appears lacking in distinguishing features, making it less obviously exciting than other, more wild flavors out there. But in exchange, by focusing solely on that basic, fundamental taste, it's able to achieve a level of subtle refinement that shouldn't be understated. It may be simple, but only those with untrained senses would ever mistake it for being made with less effort or skill.
Incidentally, I'm quite fond of vanilla ice cream. When it comes to watching Zyuohger, though, my senses may have admittedly been a little untrained at first. Five years after Gokaiger, and apparently I
still
hadn't fully figured out how to stop taking these shows for granted. For quite a while into Zyuohger's run, I was keeping up with it well enough, enjoying it on a very casual level, but after so many Sentai I (eventually) loved, there was this faint feeling I always had that it was a tiny bit
dull?
Something about it never got me totally fired up, despite all the elements of it I loved. But like, specifically because I wasn't super invested in the show, I never really interrogated those feelings enough to have any concrete idea what *exactly* I was feeling at all. The fondness I eventually (inevitably) grew for Zyuohger, I credit in large part to my interactions with people on this forum.
Like I mentioned last time, I started getting much more active around here midway through this show, and talking to people who were dismissive of a show I like as much as Ninninger, that were also saying Zyuohger was a super solid, enjoyable Sentai... it's like, I think I started wanting to
believe
in what others were seeing in it? It seemed like every Sentai after Gokaiger had a bit of a mixed reception for one reason or another, but here was Zyuohger, with that basic vanilla flavor, managing to strike a chord with so many fans. There *had* to be something to this. And throughout the latter half or so of Zyuohger, there was definitely a gradual but major shift in how I started looking at it as a series. I started appreciating more and more things about it, noticing stuff I hadn't before, even started posting in the episode threads eventually... by the end of Zyuohger, I was even a little melancholic about it being over. I had massively come around on it, and would only continue to think of it more and more fondly with further distance. All of that truly started with this very website, so when I think of Zyuohger, something I think of in particular is that sense of connection; the idea that it wasn't a series I liked
alone.
It's maybe fitting then that connection is also the central theme of Zyuohger's story.
Maybe it will sound a tiny bit dull to you too, put like this, but Zyuohger is a Sentai with an animal theme. A lot of what defines the show is that very romantic view of the Earth as a wonderous place, where countless forms of life all coexist as part of a larger system. No matter how apart we feel, we're all inseparable. Standard fare for this sort of motif, but what's important isn't only
what
Zyuohger is doing; it's
how.
The thing I wasn't understanding about Zyuohger for so long was that what I felt watching it was never boredom or disinterest. I probably would've fell way behind on yet another Sentai if it was. The thing Zyuohger was making me feel was – and I really don't know how else to put it – the kind of soothing warmth of a lullaby.
There's just something extremely
cozy
about Zyuohger and the way it leans into its themes that I'm not sure I can adequately describe. So I think I'll just start talking about the first episode and hopefully by the end of this I'll be able to explain what I mean with the end of that last paragraph.
The very first thing in the whole show is some nice relaxed narration about how many species of animals exist on Earth, and how there are still countless kinds of creatures left out there to be discovered. So right away, it's establishing a tone by appealing to the audience's sense of curiosity. What could be cooler than finding some awesome new animals nobody's ever seen, right? Maybe you can think of something, I guess, but Yamato Kazakiri sure can't. He's... well, he's an all around utterly delightful human being, to begin with, but he's also a
zoologist
, introduced here guiding a group around the forest to see all the neat animals, a subject you can tell he's deeply passionate about. Then he stumbles upon a big magic cube thing that transports him to a place full of animal people, and that last bit of the narration about there being countless undiscovered creatures out there repeats right as the opening theme starts up for the first time. The very tastefully placed repetition of the narration is my second favorite thing in the episode for how well the emphasis works.
All the Zyumans are a little on edge about this mysterious human who suddenly entered their world, but throughout the next stretch of the episode, Yamato is having the time of his life, mystified by everything he's seeing, and eager to find out everything he can about it. So here's the simple but hugely important thing about the way Zyuohger creates its particular atmosphere –
we as the viewers are encouraged to see through Yamato's eyes.
And I'm happy to do that, just like I think most people who watch this show seem to be. Yamato's actor gives an intensely charismatic performance right away, and watching the character on the screen, it's hard not to be pulled into the way he geeks out over this stuff. He has an immense love of and respect for life, beyond even the usual standards for a toku hero.
Naturally, then, it doesn't rub Yamato right when a bunch of aliens come down to the planet to start hunting "inferior lifeforms", which is to say, anything that isn't them. The concept for Zyuohger's bad guys is as straightforward as can be, and with how perfect a fit it is, that's once again not a bad thing. They're just hunters from space who want to kill people for
fun
, making them the ultimate antithesis to the show's whole message. They just plain
don't care
about this planet. There's no room for anything as sugary as the wonder of discovery, or coexistence or whatever, when you're busy blowing up a forest full of the natives for kicks. Four of the Zyumans who came chasing Yamato back to our world thankfully end up empowered by the little cubes that are like keys for that big cube, becoming the Zyuohgers and fighting the monsters off. When they start to get overwhelmed anyway, Yamato rushes in to try and help, desperate to protect Earth's creatures, even when he's told he can't become a Zyuohger due to being a human. His impassioned response to this is to ask what difference it makes, and assert that humans are animals too. This is my favorite thing in the episode.
Seriously, it's such a simple line, the same way everything is simple, but that always stuck with me. It's such a cool hero moment leading into Yamato becoming Zyuoh Eagle for the first time – one of my favorite debuts a Red has ever gotten, even – but it's also, like,
that really is the whole show
, right there in that obvious statement of fact.
Humans are animals.
Yamato's blunt refusal to make a distinction, to put himself above the other kinds of life inhabiting the world, or act like he somehow exists outside of all that, I can't think of a better beat for the emotional high point of Zyuohger's premiere. Like I said, you're encouraged to see the world through those exceptionally kind and caring eyes, and combined with how the villains are unusually ruthless and depraved for a modern Sentai, it's still hard not to get behind Yamato here.
The thing is, his sudden ability to transform moments after being informed he shouldn't be able to isn't even just convenient writing. There's a whole backstory the show is planting the seeds for about Yamato's connection to a mysterious bird Zyuman and why he had a little cube to begin with and all that, but Zyuohger
deliberately
downplays the very competent job it does laying the groundwork for an overarching plot here to focus instead on the raw emotional catharsis of Yamato getting his wish to fight for the planet granted. It's such a smart move.
And then the action stuff is so great too! A lot of the special effects work is particularly competent. There's a sequence of Zyuoh Eagle flying through the air dispatching a bunch of jetpack-equipped mooks, and even now, I'm a little shocked how terrible it
doesn't
look? It's cut together really nicely, and even when you can tell you're looking at a CG model of Yamato, like... it just somehow looks alright? The pilot director for Zyuohger was Takayuki Shibasaki, who I'm slowly learning seems to have a particular talent when it comes to big special effects sequences of this sort, so that probably has something to do with it. On the opposite end of the spectrum, the staff apparently made the conscious decision to do lots of miniature work with the mecha this year specifically because the basic cube designs
would've
been suited to CG, and I really do like the feel of the physical stuff in Zyuohger. These are designs that, more than usual,
look
like toys, and yet they're somehow given a proper sense of weight and grandeur. It's the same for the actual giant robots as well. Zyuoh King raised some eyebrows as a DX toy for very visibly being three blocks stacked on top of each other, but as a suit in the show, it looks fantastic. The debut fight here places a lot of importance on dirt and rubble getting kicked up from explosions and it's all just so
tactile
, you know? Classic Sentai robo action, exactly the way you'd hope for in an anniversary series.
Anyway, the episode ends with Yamato offering to take everyone in after it turns out they can't go back home, establishing their emotional dilemma for the series, as well as further showing what an absolute class act Yamato is. One of the Zyumans, Tusk, refuses the hospitality, providing a cliffhanger that will lead into a second episode that nails establishing the central theme of the show even harder than they already did.
I'm very fond of this premiere, if it needs saying, but I believe I was trying to get back to that point about lullabies eventually? I, uh... I kinda might just have to hope people who have seen the show know what I mean by that? Maybe it's literally just that Yamato is so great and I love him and the way the show makes him a leader defined by being the team's heart and soul above all else? I mean, I do *really* adore Zyuoh Eagle in particular. It kind of took me a while to notice the other characters were actually cool too because I was so immediately obsessed with him. Like, Misao, the team's obligatory sixth member, right? He's got one of the most unique concepts out there, which is that he's this socially awkward wreck of a person, desperate to have friends but prone to depressive bouts of believing he doesn't deserve them, and it's just... that guy can be a
hero
in Zyuohger. The team will get understandably fed up with his high-maintenance personality sometimes, yeah, but they take him in, and they believe in him, and help him to believe in himself.
That's the kind of thing I'm trying and failing to get at here. There's a warmth to Zyuohger that's so deeply reflected in everything about it, that I feel like summing it up with mere words is always going to undersell it. It's a show that's every bit as much
relaxing
as it is exciting, and it somehow makes those two aspects not feel at odds with one another. There was no point in going big for the 40th Sentai when Gokaiger already did the anniversary thing so definitively, so Zyuohger swings hard in the opposite direction. It's small, it's humble, it's intimate, and somehow, in being all those things, it manages to capture something that could be considered the "essence" of Super Sentai just as well in its own way. It's a series that leaves you with a good feeling, and while I never would've guessed how much I'd end up liking it, Zyuohger has become a show I'm always more than happy to go back to.
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