ToQger Episode 8

There's always a point in a story where underlying themes begin to present themselves. Whether the creators intended for such ideas to pop up is another matter of course as you can get those bits of depth that were never planed out in advance. Today's episode marks the advent of a strange realization on my part thanks to the larger presence of the conductor/ticket and Ms. Wagon. Despite this show's face value of imagination fueled train superheroes it's starting to seem like one of those lifetime channel movies where some thrill killers kidnap a batch of kids for a road trip. No, really! Hear me out for a second.

Consider the conductor. A nameless manchild who collects movies and refuses to be parted from his hand puppet whom he swears is alive. His demeanor is very uptight and sexless in direct contrast to the verbal abuse he throws out through the puppet.

Now let's take Ms. Wagon into account. While a robot by appearance she obsesses over vanity with her narcissistic selfie addiction. Topping that off is a twisted focus on romance and sexuality in situations that don't call for it. Take for instance when she ties up Tokatti in ribbon to secure him in place after a bomb has been placed on him. Considering that her main duty is feeding the team, this very superficial outlook takes on a sinister tone.

 

Don't take this to be some kind of condemnation of the show. If anything I think this adds that extra layer of madness that any proper tokusatsu requires. Of course I'm waiting to see what the eventual explanation for these two is. Will they be figments of the teams collective imagination standing in for what they believe adults to be like? Or are they truly magically beings who spirit people away?

While I wait for those answers I suppose I should give an overview of our tale. Pretty simple one today. The crew heads into a town tracking the signal of the old diesel train car so they can gain its support. They fight a monster and seemingly destroy it only to find that a smaller version of it sneaks onto their train and starts fucking things up. Oh and right is tracking down another support train.

 

The idea of the team dealing with sabotage on their train had the potential to be something special given the proper execution. Sadly we weren't so lucky this time. While the action is ok and we get a few good bits of comedy (most notably from the aforementioned kidnappers) the other characters were just sleepwalking through this one. Especially Right who almost completely ditches the dumb proactive persona I enjoy so much in favor of getting all misty eyed over the old diesel train he's been sent to track down. This isn't explained either. He just gets all serious about it cause it's old.

 

Hope everyone out there had a good Easter. I had a really, really good one myself. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to snatch up the last egg shaped candy.