Welcome back Super Sentai fans!
As you might have noticed the recaps are a little late in coming. In
my defense, reviewing the adventures of colorful superheroes isn't as
much of a priority as keeping a cats bladder from exploding or trying
to restart my college education. Thankfully the cat is doing aces.
Meanwhile I'm only partially sure that I've registered for a Summer
class, this shit is so vague. Anyway there's finally time to catch up
with Lupinranger vs Patranger and
man do we ever have a lot to talk about. Today's crop of
stories makes some big strides in bringing more conflict and depth to
the Patranger side of things while still giving the thieves time to
shine. Let's get cracking.
Episode thirteen is part of a proud
tradition of heroine-centric adventures though this one has the
distinction of each girl belonging to a different team. Both Tsukasa
and Umika have the day off and plan to spend it at an amusement park
in order to obtain some special stuffed animals. For the lovely cop
this is all to feed her weird obsession for plush beasts while Umika
is going as more of tribute to her lost friend, Shiho.
Since the park runs out of single
tickets the two girls go in as a pair and work their way through the
rides before ending up in the haunted house which is not something
Tsukasa enjoys. Turns out she's easily scared by this stuff which
Umika takes in stride. Back when she used to come to this park with
her friend she would shield her from all the scary stuff.
Of course this wouldn't be a proper
adventure without a Gangler showing up to complicate matters. This
one makes a dome around the park, sealing in all the guests. After
separating, Umika fashions a disguise to protect her identity. This
comes in handy when the baddie chains the girls together by the
wrist. It takes a little work but they are able to overcome their
differences and work together, though Tsukasa takes the bigger
beating of the two. Umika is nice enough to get their stuffed animals
afterward only to find that her new friend wasn't interested in the
bear but the weird pig.
The best part of this episode is how
well it showcases the inverse nature of each girl. While Tsukasa is
very firm and stoic on the outside, she's much more of the
traditional girly type. Umika on the other hand may seem like an
adorable little ball of energy but she carries around a lot of
emotional maturity and some good manipulation skills. This pairing
has already proved to be so popular that they're getting another
outing in a video special later this year.
Fourteen and fifteen mark a two-parter
that brings the Patranger crew deeper into conflict with the Ganglers
when a pair of villains seeks to kill a cop in order to rise through
the ranks. A fun detail about one of them is that his brother was
previously killed by Patranger during a giant-robot battle. He wasn't
a combatant is the fight, just squashed underfoot.
The evil plan is a bit of a long-con.
An elementary school may have to cancel their field-trip due to
Gangler activity and some mysterious underground rumblings. Keiichiro
being the all-around good guy that he is won't allow these kids to
miss out on their trip and promises to fix the situation. We actually
get some backstory on his childhood when he attempted to protect a
playground from some creeper before a local cop convinced him of a
policeman's duty to protect everyone.
Gonna try and make a long story short
but the villains purposefully leave their treasure behind, which is
another vehicle that will allow the cops to dig underground and check
out the seismic activity. Little do they know the machine is
booby-trapped with poison spikes. He finds another treasure to be the
source of the rumblings and defeats one of the villains only to be
left on deaths door with poison corsing through his veins. His
teammates likewise are savagely beaten by the Don himself who shows
up to watch some death only to be disappointed by further failures
from his thugs.
The continuation works towards
bringing the gap between both teams when both Kairi and Umika go to
the hospital to keep tabs on the competition. Each of them earns
greater respect for the other half as Kairi learns just how dedicated
Keiichiro is to his duty and sees a hint of caring, perhaps love,
from Tsukasa for her partner. Meanwhile Umika learns that Sakuya is
actually a fairly decent guy and not just some daffy womanizer. With
renewed respect they set out to defeat the remaining Gangler before
the Patranger get themselves in further trouble. Of course that's not
how things work out as the cops finish off their opponent with just a
little help from the yellow thief.
For episode sixteen we shift focus
back to Lupinranger with another tale of Touma. I mentioned before
that he may be one of those characters cursed with lousy focus
episodes and this one doesn't buck the trend. Thankfully it's just as
much of a Kairi adventure which helps to balance things out. The
short of it is that a Gangler swaps bodies with our blue friend. The
main conflict revolves around whether they can swap him back into his
original body, and if not, does Kairi have the will to kill his
friend?
As stories go it's not exactly bad,
even has a few good moments, just not up to the level it should be.
Writing about it makes it seem as if this should have been a richly
dramatic story yet I can recall very little of what happened. The
only part that should matter in the long run is the discovery that
Gangler's safes are a biological component of their bodies, acting as
something of a core or heart. It's currently unclear if this detail
will play into a later plot-twist or perhaps serve as a metaphor but
I can't imagine the writers introducing it for no reason.
At least we come to the moment I've
been waiting for, an episode that focuses on series MVPs, Keiichiro
and Umika. It's nearly as good as I'd hoped for too. Turns out our
red policeman has a lady admirer named Mana. They met at the bistro
and share an interest in classical music which leads to light gift
exchanges as he lends her records and she brings him flowers from her
garden that she claims are just leftovers from work.
Umika takes an interest in the budding
romance and pushes to see these two get together. Problem is Mana
will soon be going out of country for school which leaves just a
couple of days to get keiichiro to profess his feelings. And you know
some monster is going to get in the way of young love. This one has
the ability to lock people into a blissful dream-dimension while it's
treasure allows it to fight be stretching parts of its body. It takes
adventage of those skills to trap all three Patranger along with
Lupin Yellow in the dreamworld.
While lost in la la land, Umika
searches for Keiichiro in the hopes of waking him so he can get to
Mana before she flies off to Europe. Initially he's too lost in a
blisfull daze, unaware that some monster is draining the life-force
from his body. It's then that Umika remembers a song the two
potential lovebirds shared an interest in and begins to hum it. This
leads to a semi-musical moment that comes across as more odd than it
should have. Still; her plan works and everyone's awake and fighting
again.
Even with the world saved yet again,
Keiichiro neglects to see Mana off at the airport. She doesn't hold
this against him. In fact she seems to understand why he didn't show
and wishes him luck in his fight against the Ganglers. Umika is far
less forgiving when she confronts him that night. When she asks why
he didn't go to the airport, he responds that he can't pursue two
things at once as he's too awkward. She storms off while he begins to
reconsider her and her friends as suspects. She was in the dreamworld
after Lupin Yellow had been knocked out after all.
Unfortunately there is a something
missing from this episode. When Umika wakes up in dreamland she finds
everyone hypnotized by the things they love most yet she remains
unaffected. Are we simply supposed to accept that she was so driven
to get two people together that nothing would stand in her way? If so
then there's some real missed potential as she could have reunited
with a fake of her friend, Shiho. Maybe this incident will be brought
up again later on but for now it seems odd that the monsters powers
didn't affect her.
Looking ahead it seems like the main
plot is about to undergo a few big events. The villains are making
more back-alley deals, something seems to be going on with
Goody-Striker, and it's about time for the new ranger to make himself
known.
The show continues to provide
excellent entertainment week after week. More than that it has
smoothed out nearly every issues that has popped up. Currently the
biggest issues are that some of the dangling plot-threads should
probably start getting picked up, and Touma needs to bond more with
other characters. As it stands, the Patrangers enjoy the company of
the bistro workers and occasionally have civil interactions with
their thief counterparts, Kairi has a decent level of respect for the
cops, and Umika could almost be considered a member of both teams by
this point. Touma is still very separate from everyone, and while
that fits his personality, it could quickly become a detriment to the
character if he can only develop through interactions with kairi.
Phew! (wipes brow) Was that ever one
hell of a big recap. Now that everything is starting to settle down I
hope to get back to normal length recaps. If you don't mind, I have
to figure out whether or not I'm actually enrolled in college again.
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