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Last week's rating: 4.69 / 5 (16 votes)
Alt title: At least the cockpit roll call was cool
Every week, I'm baffled by how the storytelling is done in Jyuohger. So they introduce Yamato's dad, but don't openly acknowledge it. If this were a better show, I'd assume they were seeding the plot. But it feels like there've been too many times when they start a story, forget about it for weeks, then suddenly go "Oh yeah, let's go back to that thing we kind of mentioned a month ago."
I'll have to admit that I thought Yamato's dad was dead or Bado. Who knew that he's alive and a doctor? Also, the guy's a fucking busy doctor. Stop breaking his balls about not being there for your mom's death, you prick, Yamato. What exactly is your characterization anyway? I don't even know anymore. I hope they'll take a week off of Yamato's personal life drama next week to tell a story for one of the Jyumans. I don't care who, just make it about a Jyuman and make it not suck!
So as my alt title suggests, I'm not wild about this episode. It wasn't terrible, but you basically took the most interesting character in the show and basically made him insane for the sake of it. I guess it makes sense for Cubal to be a coward, but is a suicide run on the planet really the best way to survive Genis's wrath? What happened to teaming up with the Jyuohgers to beat Genis?
Speaking of plots that won't matter till later, Azauld just walked off with 4 cubes. Way to fumble that, Bado! It's a mess! There's never any set up or major pay offs. Cubal dies off like a monster of the week. It was kind of funny to see Naria be salty when she brought Cubal back to life. But man, what a waste of a good villain. He's not even outwitted, he just goes nuts and is offed by the Jyuohgers. Genis didn't even have to lift a finger. And it's weird, since they spend all this time showing Cubal being deceitful and manipulative, building him up to be this great traitor. And they spend most of the time having Genis be a bored guy who walks around on crazy stilts. Like maybe they should have built Genis up to explain why Cubal's so afraid of him?
But back to the positives for this episode. We seem to finally have a redemptive arc for Micchan. We even get a return of his cool animal chorus. The only dumb thing is that instead of Micchan explaining his new change, we have Yamato explaining it to us. Got to love Jyuohger's Tell not Show policy.
Final nitpicks: Cubal and JyuohWhale doing Wing Chun kung fu with bad effects that don't match their limited movements and the mecha levitating up from the ground, since they probably can't gracefully get up on their own while in those bulky suits.
4 stars. Riddled with flaws, but it has some good moments.
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