An action-heavy episode featuring a high concept idea. This episode feels a bit misplaced to me, and like it's not fully fleshed out. If it had followed episode 16, it might work more. But episode 17 and then the next few after 18 are all similar in that they're character-focused breather episodes to come down from the first three action-packed with Yamimaru. And after those episodes, Yamimaru kind of needed to go away for a while. So it's a little weird to have this episode just thrown into the mix. I'll get to my theory about it in a minute...
The plot deals with Yamimaru freeing a Bouma-Beast who was imprisoned for eating a powerful golden apple that was meant for Ragon; the apple grows only once a millennium. Since the Bouma-Beast already has the powers it provides, he's willing to guide Yamimaru to the location of a newly grown one in exchange for his freedom. The Bouma-Beast uses his ability to create a giant cloned version of himself to cause a distraction as he and Yamimaru search for the golden apple, while Jarmine and Zuruten race to get the apple for Ragon instead.
At one point, Daichi is severely wounded and separated from the Turboranger, who remain in the mecha fighting the unstoppable giant Bouma-Beast clone. He catches Yamimaru's plan and it's up to him to stop it, but he's in such bad shape, he can't even henshin for more than five minutes, let alone take anyone on as just plain old Daichi Yamagata. So, it's a tense race to stop ANY of the hellions from getting to the golden apple, which will grant them a new power. It's a cool idea to have one of the heroes in a desperate race to stop a villain plan, with a time-limit on their ability to transform that they have to plan wisely, and director Takao Nagaishi tries to film everything in a desperate panic -- there's some seriously cool shots in this episode -- but something about the episode just doesn't all come into place for me. What the golden apple is supposed to do for the Bouma is vague. The Turboranger have taken beatings before, why a time limit now for Daichi? This episode makes it imperative that all five members are needed to perform the Turbo Crash, when we've seen Turbo Robo manage to take down plenty of Bouma Beasts without it. Even if they do always need the five members for all of Turbo Robo's final maneuvers...the way it's all done in this episode just feels like they're forcing the situation just to be more dire.
It's not a bad episode, it just doesn't work for me, it feels rushed and misplaced and made on the cheap. About that...
I really feel like this episode exists to give Daichi something important to do. He hasn't had an episode for a while -- heck, he's barely even had dialogue for a while! The next episode is a serious Shunsuke focus episode, and then Haruna, and then the weird sumo one centered on Daichi. I think Ganaha's managers were like "Hey! Our client's character is supposed to be the cool second-in-command guy! You haven't used him lately. He's had, like, three lines in the past ten episodes! And now you wrote a wacky sumo episode for him? The cool character, who you've barely used, after all this time, is going to be the butt of jokes in this sumo episode? No, no, no. Not until you write something good and serious and heroic and COOL for him."
So, they push this episode through production and toss it in amongst episodes it doesn't belong, just to have Daichi save face before taking on Sumo Bouma.
I mean, it IS cool that Daichi pushes himself as far as the time limit can go to help his friends and save the day. But they really needed to heighten the danger. I would have liked to see a scenario in which Daichi -- the smart guy of the team -- was put in a situation where he really had to figure out what moments were worth transforming and having to really plan it out and use his powers wisely.
Triceratops Bõma arrived
ReplyDeleteYeah, he's a weird design. He doesn't quite fit in with the other Bouma monsters, IMO. Definitely seems like a design or idea leftover from something else.
DeleteHis really cool for leftover standards and somewhat of a different Bomã monster
DeleteThis one feels like a rejected Maskman episode in the way it describes the artifact and depicts the battle over it. Just replace Yamimaru with Kiros, the “power of the golden apple” with something related to the Lethal Doggler, and Daichi with Kenta. The five-minute time limit even makes more sense in Maskman, given the taxing nature of aura power. In Turbo’s case, I just assumed that Fossil Bouma’s fire extinguisher foam had some kind of poison that would kill Daichi if he wore the suit too long. I wouldn’t be surprised if Soda got an ultimatum from Ganaha’s agent and dug out this old script in response, revising a few minor parts.
ReplyDeleteWhile I like the direction (making mech action look excellent both inside and outside) and the acting (even from Ganaha, whose weariness works here), the plot and script does feel like a rush job meant to fill a mandate. I do like that Yamimaru isn’t given much of a rest, but rather sticks around to demonstrate how much of a threat he is to both factions. The ending is also a solid one, as seeing Hikaru walking around is a nice reminder of how the team really isn’t safe anywhere in their lives. I don’t think it’s too much after his introduction arc, as he’s still separate enough from the main villains.
While it’s got problems, I don’t mind it too much. Episode 29 takes the “lone Daichi” concept and does it better.
I suppose the implication is the golden apple-powered Bouma-Beast's Cool-Whip attack was meant to be more severe than it plays. (And I guess you could assume there could be some problems with their powers after just getting them back after completely losing them.) They really needed to depict this better, though. You don't really get the sense that any of it is as dire as the episode's trying so hard to make you think it is.
DeleteIt reminds me a lot of Flashman's 25th episode. That episode seems like it's rushed and vague, and it's a low-cost-seeming episode that feels like it was held over from much earlier in the series. (It's also, funnily enough, another "we can't do the robot finisher without all five of us!" scenario.)
I remember liking this episode when I first saw it. But it sadly kinda diminished for me upon rewatches. It's a bit of a weird episode... actually I find the majority of Daichi's eps to be oddballs. Maybe that's why I tend to forget about him whenever I think about this show. No offense to him.
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