See kids? Doesn't everything work so much better when you play nicely together?
Where was this episode 3 months ago? The usual mid-30s Sentai Slog aside, Lupin vs. Pat has been stuck in a rut in big part because it kept the teams isolated, and most of the focus on the Lupins. Now that the two teams are deliberately working together on something and not fighting in the process, and both teams are being given equal screentime, everything is awesome. I mean hell, does anyone else feel like this episode felt like a mini-finale? It's only episode 42 and Destra has already leveled Tokyo!
(Seriously, the show just unambiguously killed a whole lot of people)
I really can't say enough nice things about this episode. Everything worked to well. The pacing was on point, the plot was driven by a significant thread, major series' plot threads were advanced, and the characters' actions and planning were driven in a believable manner. Which is to say based on character interaction and not happenstance or the plot moving that way because it needed to. We got to see the resolve of both teams, and it was rooted in their appropriate backstories. I can't even complain about Noel for once - it's clear we're finally going to start unraveling him.
I will say this though: why does Destra get a cool gravity weapon when he has Siren Striker, while all Noel gets is a chest cannon?
I really hope they can keep up this pace. In our side-thread complaining about the Pats not getting any attention and what went wrong with the series, it's clear that this show went off the rails around episode 30 in order to accommodate some toy promotion changes. However now that we're in the final stretch, hopefully things are being forced back on the rails since we're basically done with toys and the show needs to wrap up its already long-established plot threads.
Also, did anyone catch that drink at the end between the Lupins? I'm pretty sure Touma's actor wasn't meant to drink the whole glass.
takenoko wrote: ↑Sat Dec 01, 2018 10:54 pm
Man, what is with this imagery. I know they want to up the ante, but has Destra always been able to launch a mini nuke in the city?
Well with two very powerful collection pieces - particularly Siren Striker - I don't see why not. He was already very powerful to begin with, and at least in his hands, that thing is incredibly potent.
Did anyone else think Kairi and Kei would reach out their hands to each other when they were on the ground?
Oh good, that wasn't just me.
-Finally, a mecha fires the Lupin Magnum as a gun
It's about damn time!
But it would have been nice if this episode had happened a little earlier? Then we could have had more time for Lupin and Pats to work together against a common foe. They didn't even need to be outright allies either, just more episodes where they're reluctant bedfellows or they agree to work together but are still distrustful of each other. Kind of feels like there won't be much time for that with how few episodes are left, but still, would be nice to see.
You will get no argument here. Something like this needed to happen sooner. The two teams being so distant ceased to be a virtue and started to become a problem for the show after the midway point. Their development had to come to a screeching halt in order to justify them remaining full-time enemies.
xiiliea wrote: ↑Tue Dec 04, 2018 4:17 am
09:50 - Destra shoots missiles at the police building. 20 seconds later, the camera shows the exact same building with absolutely no damage at all.
I'm pretty sure the Pats shot all of the missiles down, didn't they?
Catastrophe wrote: ↑Wed Dec 05, 2018 2:08 am
VSX being all CGI really takes the impact out of the robot fight. The episode was pretty good up to that point but the giant battle seemed underwhelming.
Toei must have spent a small fortune on the first VSX fight. They once again recycled almost all of the animation and models for this episode. They even added Lupin Magnum to VSX's victory pose.
And the points where they created new footage, it was clearly inferior. Shooting down the missiles and having the left train hand fire at Destra was done at a much lower quality level. And I'm 99% sure that for the recycled melee attack footage, they used footage of the Destra suit instead of a CGI Ganglar like in the original fight. So the two combatants don't match each other in materials and lighting, because you can pick up on the small differences even Toei's realistic CGI misses. And then they CGI'd that cannon body on Destra, and that too was subpar quality...
There's no way for that fight not to be underwhelming. An all CGI formation only works well if Toei is going to be willing to do high quality CGI all the time with it. Their standard CGI simply leaves too much to be desired. And the fact that they're mixing the two only makes it more obvious how bad the low-quality VSX looks.
Number of episodes since the last PatKaiser fight: 6