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Last week's rating: 4.08 / 5 (13 votes)

Alt Title: A passionate clash of ideals, this sort of is?

From the notes:

What the fuck is Keiichirou talking about?

/me waits to see why Keiichirou is better than green and pink

Nope. Fuck it all, it makes no sense.

Huh, seeing Noel's comment about LupinRed and PatRan Ichigou being a good combi makes me wonder if this episode would have been stronger if LupinRed and Ichigou settled things themselves. Noel acting as a proxy duel feels like an unnatural third party and a weird fucking thing to be doing when a monster is going around destroying monsters.

Okay, the entire premise of this episode only works if Keiichirou is a raging asshole that would rather let buildings get destroyed while he fights in a pointless duel. No, it doesn't count if he lets Noel win, because he still wasted everyone's time over his foolish pride.

Given a different context, the idea of the duel is really great. Just let PatRan let out all his frustration while also gaining insight from the person he fights. Few things:

1) Don't do it in a high stake situation. It goes against Keiichirou's character, since from episode 1 he's been characterized as understanding "Prioritize the Ganglar first". I don't even understand how Kei's trying to justify his stubbornness in this episode, and it sucks because it's such a major part of both his character and this series's main conflict.

2) Like I said above, this really should have been Kei VS Kairi, since they've built up the strongest rapport. Noel doesn't work because we still don't know his motivations or his backstory. I know Noel says he's trying to save someone too, but I'm not even sure if I believe him.

3) Really why can't they go to Tsukasa or Kazuya for help?

The way so many things are hand waved away in this episode just comes off as extremely lazy writing just to because they wanted to cram a duel in there.

We're 3/5 of the way through the series. The Lupin/Pat conflict can still exist, but it has to evolve. It can't back peddle in a way such that Keiichirou makes less sense now than he did at the start of the series. Either double down on the conflict by having an episode where Kei's right, the Lupins do something and people are hurt, and Kei harps on this sticking point as evidence for why he gets to be stubborn about this.

Orrrr... move past this shit already and realize you're all on the same side. I guess it's good that Kei is realizing there's some stakes behind the phantom thieves, but is it enough to evolve their relationship?

Stuff still not addressed:
-Where the fuck is Zamigo? You introduce this character that's key to the Lupin's main story, and he's been in like two episodes.
-Why don't we know more about Noel? He's been with us for a while, shouldn't we know something that fleshes him out as a character? Remember when Tsukasa was like "Hmmm, I wonder why he doesn't summon vehicles"? I want to know that too!

Action was fine, but the story took a real back seat. I feel like they don't know what to do with the PatRangers. The Pats are there mainly to act as minor antagonists for the Lupins, occasional allies, and maybe they'll get some half assed solo episodes. But overall, it feels like they liked the idea of setting up this threeway conflict, but didn't really want to put the thought into how any of it should play out. It's still really just the LupinRanger's story.

Teamwork VS The Ganglerstein. The opponent’s safes can’t be cracked into unless 5 Dial Fighters hit the 5 safes simultaneously. And the Mobirates piece can negate Striker's Lupin Boost. And another ClusterKaiser battle. Yay, Teamwork.

The Inspector Javert VS Wildcard fight we’ve all been waiting for. I do love the fight. While Noel won, the silver lining was that he kicked Keiichirou’s head into gear about unraveling the 3 thieves' identities and their humane intentions with the Collection.

Of course, Kogure being shady again. Excited that his team got a haul but then gets triggered when Gueris Le Monde/The Sougan Blade piece gets mentioned. Here’s why that certain piece is an issue:

Catastrophe wrote: ↑Thu Apr 05, 2018 4:55 am Kogure is definitely shady as fuck. I think he's worried that the Lupins will get their hands on Gauches collection piece and see he's a piece of shit. I still think he's that ice Ganglar.

Production crew, don’t stall this part of the story anymore. We have 16-18 episodes left. Show us who Jeeves really is and what he wants with the entire Collection.

Okay episode.

I forgot what the binoculars do...? Does anyone have a list of the five phones used in this episode? Definitely saw Mobirates and the MagiPhone. Think the second phone at the end is the Boukenger one? So that'd mean the fourth and fifth ones are...?

Based on Gauche's use of it in Episode 8, the Gueris Le Monde can scan and analyze anything, hence why she was able to keep Kairi on his toes when he fought her.

The Collection pieces of this week are the Mobirates, Shodophone, Go-Phone, Accellular and the MagiPhone.

The fact that Noel and Kogure were worried about that collection piece, it will have something to do with their true natures.

I have to disagree with what you've said about Keiichirou. He is a police officer and doesn't want to work with criminals. It'd be the same if the police worked with the Yakuza to take out a 3rd party. Noel continues to be a smug shit.

Catastrophe wrote: ↑Wed Sep 19, 2018 5:50 pm I have to disagree with what you've said about Keiichirou. He is a police officer and doesn't want to work with criminals. It'd be the same if the police worked with the Yakuza to take out a 3rd party. Noel continues to be a smug shit.

Agreed

It is just me or the collection piece Gauche is adding to the monster (Time index 9:30 to 9:41) is a Magiranger Mystic Mobile Phone Morpher painted in red ?

Edit: They all look past Sentai morphers...

Edit 2: Yes it is. Magiranger, Boukenger, Gokaiger, Go-onger and Shikenger morphers phones.
When Kogure put the Gokaiger phone into the book, it read "Les Voyous" in French, meaning "The Thugs" which is quite logical for Pirates

Edit 3: I should read the Wiki more often..

Except they work together all the time! That analogy doesn't work in so many ways, since the LupinRangers are barely criminals, and the public actually like and support their actions. The artifice falls away due to the flimsiness of the reasoning.

But they are criminals. Vigilantism is still a crime.

Like for the purpose of a childrens show, they are heroes. But given that the Japan branch of GSPO has an objective to arrest them and Hilltop wasn't around to consult, I don't feel like his decision was incorrect.

Well, when the PatRangers are able to do anything by themselves, maybe the people of Japan will have more confidence in them.

It's interesting in that, on some level, the suits at Toei likely picked a team like Lupinranger in regards to Persona 5 coming out and in that game, the police (or at least, Sae Nijima) did come around to realizing the Thieves had a point and ends up helping them out to take down the bigger threat in the country. Does that make what the Thieves were doing all peachy-keen? Not really and that's something that comes up multiple times but at least by the 4th Palace, you got the sense that there was a breakthrough between Joker and Sae.

From what it sounds like in this show (I need to catch up myself), the obvious end goal is to have the teams work together but well... that's what happens when you're a title with Utsonimiya as your Toei producer. Aside from some glimpses, you go nowhere between episodes 13-38. So, I can imagine the teams being tsundere about joining forces is about as annoying as watching Doukoku sit and pour wine down his gullet for 40 episodes. We'd have a smoother, maybe closer transition if it was someone like Takatera or Suzuki in the producer's chair, instead.

Unless I've lost the ability to count, there were definitely 5 of them fighting the ganglar while the duel was happening. Why exactly didn't they go ahead and try to work together then to open the safes? It would've been a much more entertaining twist if Noel and Keiichiro arrived just in time to see the others recover the collection pieces and defeat the monster.

Also, the show hasn't exactly shown us much that would implicate the Lupinrangers as criminals. It really makes Kei's stubbornness on the issue difficult to sympathize with. Have they really let the ganglars get away in the past? Like, if we're going to go about this logically, the global police didn't even have the ability to deal with ganglars before the season started and it's implied that the lupinrangers have been active for some time. Since it doesn't seem like they are familiar with any of the ganglar so far, that would mean that the lupinrangers have defeated ganglars along the way which makes the crusade against them even more ridiculous.

On another note, are they making a collection piece for every previous season?

This conversation has made me want to see a chart listing how many Ganglars have been taken down by which factions a la a big giant scorecard. At least early on, I feel like the Lupins and Pats were pretty even on who took down which monster, or if one defeated the small one, the other team would take down the big version.

I know someone's maintaining a list of the Collection pieces on our wiki, but I wouldn't mind seeing a list of all the Sentai series and watching each piece get slotted in and filled as the series progresses:
http://wiki.tvnihon.com/wiki/Category:K ... Collection

I'm not arguing that the Lupins aren't heroic. Them swiping collection pieces usually allows for the Ganglar to be beaten easily.

What I'm saying is that Keis point and not wanting to work with them, in universe is justified because they are criminals. They are labelled by the GSPO as thieves. As an officer, Kei has a moral and ethical responsibility to arrest them as part of his job. The only reason he throws the duel is because he is a big softy and realises the thieves goals aren't 100% selfish, which was something he wasn't aware of before.

In a lot of small towns and low income communities, you'll find gangs are popular with the communities because they usually keep other low level criminals off the streets. Still doesn't mean that they aren't criminals and you'd never have the police teaming up with them to do anything.

What about informants then? They are mostly criminals who provide information to the police while still in criminal circles. So saying police never work with criminals is naive.

Also I don't think Toei thought "Persona 5 came out and should do our next Sentai based on them". Phantom thieves have long existed in Japan. It's annoying to me that people outside of Japan think the Phantom Thief concept started with Persona 5 since it's popular.