Sunday, April 13, 2014

ToQger Episode 7

It's truly a rare occurrence to feel like you've been attacked by the monster of the week but that is exactly the kind of week I had. Let me explain. The critter for this episode stamps people on the head so that they lose all their energy and willpower, simply becoming mopey sacks. For whatever reason the very slow shift into spring had a similar effect on me. Of course mine had the added bonus of worrying while being too lethargic to do anything about it. I even went through a job interview that way. It was flat out awful. Any consistent readers may have noticed those very blahs pop up at the end of my last recap. So after more than a week feeling off my game I've got a more positive outlook going. Let's see if we can keep it up.
OK, so this one was focused on Kagura and Hikari so we had the cross section of our most childish and most adult team members working together. I'm still not completely sold on Kagura since I mostly find her antics to either be weird or creepy but here she helped to bring out a little more meat from the so far underdeveloped green ranger. The trial these two have to face starts when she spends a night watching ninja flicks in order to practice her pretending. While hopping about during her ninja routine she breaks Hikari's kendama. That's a little wooden toy thing....kinda like advanced ball in a cup (don't be mad at me kendama fans). Anyway he gets all pissy, I'm talking judgmental kind of pissy, and storms off. Before they can hug it out the team has to rush off for monster fighting time.
 
We get a good fight with some choreography that surprised me in a few spots. Of course this is still early in the ep so there's no way the monster's going down. Nope. He stamps the other three rangers causing them to all become something not unlike my recent self. They have no energy and just don't give a fuck bout nothin'.
All that stuff is pretty solid but one thing that is bugging me in the series so far are the repetitive villain scenes. Each week is essentially a remix of the same exact elements. Two of them argue over who's the better evildoer and whether the shadows should be fed to the emperor or his budding bride Gritta who just keeps lusting after the General. One of these characters needs to either step up or get ganked cause they can't even match up with most of the episode specific enemies so far.
Back to the team. Hikari finally admits to being a total douche the previous night while Kagura whines for forgiveness. There is a great bit here though when she remarks that he probably thinks her pretending is stupid. His response is pure gold.

 
I love it! This is such a great thing to see from a family show. I mean it. Consider when we have a team show for kids over here. Either all the characters lightly mock each-other for their differences or they all get creepy over supportive about them. I think it's great if people can just say like yeah I don't get it, but it's your thing so have fun. This is such a realistic answer to the problem, and I hope kids watching remember it as they grow up.
Of course since this is a two person story we get to see them solve the problem using both of their talents. Hikari has Kagura serve as the ball for a giant kendama in order to beat the monster. To get into character she has to repeat “I'm hard” to herself a few times which is...just..upsetting. They smack him around enough that the others snap to attention, join the fight, and yeah you can fill in the rest yourself by now.
In the end, everything is as it should be and the gang is off to find another support car for the train. A pretty good episode even if I wasn't in the right frame of mind for it. As yall know by now, I can't guarantee when or what the next article will be but fairly soon I should be back with either more sentai or somethings about peeps. In the meantime, thanks to anyone out there who gave this a read. Seriously! Thanks you!

No comments:

Post a Comment