Finally! A giant robot fight! It was by no means worth the wait, but it was definitely a cut above the usual, which is the minimum the show needed to deliver after having them absent for so long. The boxing ring idea has been done before, but it's still used to good effect here. That was a nice, kinetic fight, and outside of the finisher they did a good job making sure it didn't rely too much on CGI. I also find it an interesting (and very good) development that the new form is based on Three Knights, and not just Kishiryuu-Oh alone; this helps to mitigate the problem of Red being a real mecha hog, to the point where the rest of the team hasn't been needed to use any of these new forms. Though I am left to wonder if the use of Three Knights instead of Five Knights will have any real significance (or if this was just a matter of finding places to put pointy bits!)
Tangentially, having to reunite the kid mecha with his parent is something that just feels incredibly Sentai. However I wish the execution was a bit better; I like the concept, but it zips along extremely quickly. Though if we never have to hear the kid talk again, that would be nice; that voice was not pleasant to listen to.
Speaking of upgrades, I was incredibly happy to see that someone besides Koh got the new suit upgrade for once! This has been such a Red-centric series (only stopping that to focus on Gold), so it's absolutely great to see someone else get the new upgrade. I still wish we got complete team upgrades (it's been far too long), but I will at least take an upgrade that the team earned and shares among themselves, as opposed to Red getting yet another thing he'll only use once or twice. It means the other characters can be effective fighters as well, and while Ryusoulger has kind of done away with the traditional finisher, at least there's some room now to share who gets to make that critical blow. With all of that said, time will tell how often the boxing upgrade will actually get used by someone other than Koh; it would be absolutely criminal if super-strong Asuna doesn't get to use it at least once.
And hey, it's Gachileus! The general we saw get introduced 4 months ago just so that Gold could blow him up in the latter's debut! I always knew this guy was going to be coming back. And I'm rather happy that he's not just bumping off Wiseru, but (apparently?) sticking around. One of the weak points for the show has been that the bad guys have been limited to one general at a time, who then bosses around poor Creon. So, as this episode already effectively demonstrated, having the two generals bickering among themselves adds some much-needed depth to the Druidons. It'll probably mostly be comedy given Gachileus's very straightforward one-note archetype, but that's still better than what we had. At the very least, if the comedy was as well executed as the Rabbit Season gag (I did not see that coming, and they absolutely nailed it!) then things are looking up. (And while we're on that note, Bamba falsely accusing Creon of having a well thought-out, sinister plan using the MOTW was also a well-executed gag)
However outside of the mecha fight, I wish I liked this episode more than I actually do. By no means is this is a bad episode - it's clearly meant to be this series' big mid-season two-parter where the stakes get raised and a bunch of cool stuff happens - but at the same time, what actually happens isn't especially cool and the stakes aren't raised all that much?
Ryusoulger is clearly not a heavily serialized season, and that's fine. But even in a more episodic season, the mid-season two-parter still serves an important job in moving the series' big plots forward. It's supposed to be the point in the series where the first-half of the show gets capped off and the second-half is setup. It's where you bust out a VSX, off what you thought was the big bad, or find some killer new power-up, all while belting out some cool new song. This episode, in turn,
technically does these things. But it's so watered down. A boxing power-up? A general comes
back instead of getting offed? And incredibly, incredibly vague hints about "him"?
I'm trying not to just complain here, because I do like the show. There are some good ideas and good moments to be had. But at the same time, I feel like this episode is the perfect embodiment of Ryusoulger thus far: mediocre. The series is never
bad - they're not pulling a Kyuuranger here with cockamamie plots and hyper-annoying characters. But the inverse of that is that it hasn't done a good job of being good, either. Too often in the last dozen or so episodes, it feels like the show is doing the bare minimum. The bare minimum for a new mecha, a character focus episode, or the mid-season two-parter. So it's never offensive, but also never rising to the heights of what a great Sentai can be. It's a lot like Jyuohger in this respect, but then Jyuohger at least gave us a crazy-sweet moon-shattering team cannon as part of its mid-season two-parter.
I can at least hate a bad series. But what am I supposed to say about an inoffensively mediocre one?
Here's to hoping things pick up from here, and the back-half of the series does more with its plots and its characters than the first half. Because while not being bad is okay, it's even better to be great.
takenoko wrote: ↑Sun Sep 22, 2019 7:33 am
Alt Title: Did the bad guys finally get a hideout?
They've had one now for the last 10 episodes or so? Though its kitbash nature means it's not very memorable, so I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't register with most people.
Koh better have been climbing his way out because if he had a stupid zyuden battery that could have gotten him out the first time around...
They've floated stuff several times before, so I was surprised that wasn't done here. But then that wouldn't have allowed for a dramatic fall and rescue...
Oddly enough, my problem with this is that it's like an inverse red-stealing-the-glory problem. Red's now the damsel, and blue is getting the power for having little to no character growth or focus. The only reason blue gets the armor here is because he happened to carry the kid, the real character moments were with red. It's not like an ironclad rule, but it feels like it's breaking some basic writing rules.
Purely IMO, but in my mind it's a team power-up. Red may have gone down the hole to pick up the kid-bot, but he could only do that because Pink and Blue were up above supporting him, and ultimately able to pull the kid-bot out of the hole when it was necessary. So they all worked to retrieve the power-up, albeit in different manners.
Melto, I thought you were smart. You're going to bury red if you punch the ground over his head like that. Okay, red's escape is ridiculous.
I laughed at this point. I'm fairly sure it was an exasperated laugh though rather than being legitimately funny. That was such an absurd, over-the-top means of rescuing Koh that what else are you supposed to do?
Catastrophe wrote: ↑Fri Sep 27, 2019 8:41 am
What is the point of killing off all these generals when they just bring them back again?
At times it feels like they are fighting to balance the need to have the heroes defeat some major enemies, while at the same time not having to discard these now well-developed bad guys. It was always obvious that Gachileus would be back, because he was killed 2 episodes after he was introduced, so none of this is surprising. But you're right in that it sort of undermines Gold's win after the fact.
Lunagel wrote: ↑Thu Sep 26, 2019 1:15 am
Villains were fun this ep
And this was a badly needed development, too. Creon has been holding things up almost single-handedly among the villains. The others need to have more to do if they're going to be more than a revolving door of cannon fodder.
takenoko wrote: ↑Thu Sep 26, 2019 9:00 am
Mom's don't exist in Japanese animes
To be fair, they're pretty absent from western cartoons too...
BreadToku wrote: ↑Fri Sep 27, 2019 11:47 am
Why does Nada assume Koh is the leader anyway? The show has never implied there was any form of ranks among them, formal or otherwise. Does Nada just know that this is the Super Sentai franchise where the one in red is the most important?
Genre savviness aside, I'm not sure one could really argue that this is a team of equals, and that as a result Koh isn't the leader. He gets to drive all the robos except Gold's, he gets all the major power ups, and he's often the one telling the team that they need to go. He's not a super-direct and formal leader like Boukenred, but he's clearly taking the actions of a leader on a regular basis.
Sinkuu wrote: ↑Fri Sep 27, 2019 3:11 pm
and you have a Ring made of ACTIVE POWER LINES??? WTAF
Well what else are you supposed to use to make a boxing ring for 100ft robots?