Turboranger Episode 26

Inoue returns with a home-run. Riki's put through the wringer this time, practically dying three times.

The episode begins with our heroes cleaning the schoolgrounds as punishment for not turning in homework. (They lament the nice day getting away from them, noting that they don't neglect homework because of goofing off, but because they're saving the world! A funny and accurate observation only Inoue would make.) They're interrupted by Nagareboshi making an announcement over the P.A. -- a challenge to a showdown for just Riki.

Riki shows up to the destination. "We settle things today, Nagareboshi," Riki announces. "After I defeat you, I'll raise a toast with a glass of your blood," Nagareboshi replies, which is one of Inoue's greatest villain lines. We get an extended battle of them fighting each other both untransformed and transformed, where Yamimaru debuts a new bunshin move, really beating the crap out of Red Turbo. The duel ends in one of those classic they-just-struck-each-other-a-big-blow-and-wait-to-see-who-falls-first scenarios out of a samurai movie. Red Turbo falls first, a huge tear and wound in his left side. Yamimaru soon falls, as well, as the four others get Red the hell out of there and back to Dazai, who informs them that if the cut had been just a centimeter deeper, Riki would be dead.

Ragon witnesses the duel from the Bouma Castle, knowing how serious Red Turbo's injury is and deciding it's the best time to strike the others. So they send the latest Bouma-Beast, who traps victims within an egg that mutates them into his offspring, to cause mayhem in the city. This is one of the best examples of Daichi actually feeling like the reliable second-in-command he's meant to be: the others are panicking about Riki, they see the Bouma-Beast causing destruction on the monitor and worry, and Daichi's strong and collected, saying like "We just gotta do our best without Riki, so shape up and ship out, guys." The monster's a tough one, though, deflecting or breaking all of their attacks and weapons and then successfully trapping all four within an egg. And so...

It's up to Riki to save the day. Riki, who's a bloody, beaten mess, with that almost-fatal gash in his side. Dazai thinks it's madness that Riki's even thinking of attempting to go and save them, but knows there's really no choice. And the episode doesn't make things easy for Riki...

He tracks down the Bouma-Beast's lair and the eggs containing his pals, but the eggs can only be broken by the crystal blade the Bouma-Beast possesses. When Riki tries to take the monster on, the monster easily beats him, stepping on his wounded abdomen and re-opening the wound. The rest of the episode is pretty much a bleeding, barely-clinging-to-life Riki on the run from the Bouma-Beast, while needing to get close enough to steal his dagger, while needing to beat the clock as his buddies are gradually mutating AND as Nagareboshi is hunting him down to finish their battle. At one point, the Bouma-Beast catches up to him and strangles him with a chain. Riki loses consciousness and would probably have died, but...a hidden Nagareboshi stops the monster by shooting him from afar. When Riki makes a getaway, and hides out in an abandoned shed, he begins to lose consciousness again, before making himself snap to at thoughts of his friends.

Riki's a pathetic, bloody mess throughout this episode. His wound soaks his entire left side, down to his tennis shoes. The villains don't let up, he's constantly being beaten. He's on the run when he can barely move. He's being targeted in multiple directions. He's racing against time. He gets knocked around, into ditches, into lakes. He's a bloody and filthy mess by the end of this episode, and I really can't think of another time a Sentai hero's looked so beat-up and awful. Kenta Sato gives a really good performance, he looks like he's in so much pain and just feels awful. (He's also giving a lot of these crazy Schwarzenegger-level "ARGHYARGHARGHYARGH" yells of pain throughout.) Not only does Riki look like he's going through Hell, but Sato sells the hell out of it. Riki just keeps pressing on, even saying to himself he won't die until he saves his friends.

After Nagareboshi knocks Riki off a cliff, thinking that's finally finished him, Jinba and the Bouma-Beast arrive to then take care of Nagareboshi, which he totally wasn't expecting. When Riki returns and transforms, placing his priority on the Bouma-Beast and obtaining his dagger, Yamimaru's *pissed* to be held back by a little skirmish with Jinba, he's really wanting to go after Red Turbo. So he lets Red Turbo know where the Bouma-Beast is weakest, allowing him to harm the monster enough to grab the dagger and go off and free his friends in the nick of time, where they make the monster pay for the pain he's caused.

Nagareboshi wants to defeat the Turboranger himself, which is why he helps Riki by sneak-attacking the Bouma-Beast and then later revealing its weakness to him. While that's kind of a play out of that cop-out Wolzard School of Villainy I often complain about -- a seemingly arbitrary excuse for our villain to let a hero off the hook when the hero's as good as dead -- I can buy it more from Yamimaru. He's not on the Bouma's side and he's against the Turboranger, so whether Jinba's plan fails or not doesn't affect him, but it certainly doesn't help him in any way. When he was so close to being rid of his enemy, only to have the Bouma jump in and easily finish the job, I think it's believable that this particular character would try to interfere and prevent it. Some people read this as the hints of Nagareboshi's redemption, but the episode doesn't present it that way to me: Nagareboshi acts just as he says; he truly wants to be the one to kill the Turboranger, and his anger and hatred of them never ceases.

If there's a weakness to the episode, I think it might be the Bouma-Beast. He looks more like a Baranoia monster. I think it would have been creepier if he had been more monstrous and beast-like, and the four other Turboranger were mutating into monsters, instead of what looks like robots from a '50s sci-fi B-movie.