Mami Watanabe's first of three scripts for Turboranger. Watanabe went on to write a few episodes each for Fiveman and Jetman, but then never worked for any other toku. She did some good work, and I certainly like her Turboranger episodes; she showed promise, so it would have been interesting if she had been given more. This episode's one of my favorites of the series...
Jarmine frees a Bouma-Beast, Suzunari (Bell Ring) Bouma, a princess of her tribe. The rest of her tribe are kept prisoner, sealed within ceramic bells; Jarmine uses these bells to hold over the Bouma-Beast to get her to carry out her plan. Suzunari Bouma has the ability to, once she gains a person's trust, to execute a spell in which she can manipulate them. Jarmine wants to use her to infiltrate the Turboranger and gives her the human-looking guise of Rin. Rin's played by Hiromi Yuhara, who I've talked about before in my Black and Jetman posts. (She popped up in a ton of late '80s and early '90s toku!) She's a good performer who takes small guest roles and dives in with zest. She often gets sad or tragic characters and is easily sympathetic. (She's also good at playing villainous, even at a young age.) Meanwhile, Suzunari-Bouma is voiced by Rika Matsumoto, so we get two great guest actors bringing this character to life and making her really stand out.
Jarmine stages a scene -- conveniently near the Turboranger -- of her and Uras chasing down Rin, accusing her of treason. The Turboranger become involved and chase off the Bouma forces, taking the unconscious Rin back to Dazai to be patched up. When she comes to, and is asked what the brouhaha was all about, she says she's the last fighter of a tribe that rebelled against Ragon. Here's something that bugs me about the episode; they don't make clear if this has any truth, or if it's more of Jarmine's script. Since Rin/Suzunari is obviously being forced into this plan, with the threat to her trapped tribespeople as the motivation -- and since Suzunari begs Ragon to free her people from those bells at the beginning of the episode -- it seems to me like her story holds some truth. They needed to make it a little clearer, though, that her people were opposed to Ragon and that he's the one responsible for imprisoning them.
Youhei takes a liking to Rin and feels sorry for her for two reasons: one, because he's meant to be the one on the team with a weakness for the ladies. Two, because he's kind of mesmerized by the bells she wears. This episode starts off with the others taking notice of a bell Youhei wears on his schoolbag. He doesn't tell the others, but later only reveals to Rin that the bell is from one of his old teachers; when he was a kid, a teacher he had a crush on got married and quit her job, leaving him with this bell as a reminder of her. So, basically, this strange girl he's taken a liking to is kicking up memories of that puppy love on top of it. While the other four are suspicious of Rin -- with Shiron outright saying she's dangerous -- Youhei wants to have faith in Rin.
And while Rin might be coerced into this by Jarmine, and despite the fact that she's played by the likable Yuhara, Rin has no problem attacking Shiron when Shiron catches Rin letting her act slip, and that's very yurusan. Before anyone knows of this attack, though, Youhei whisks Rin away on his motorcycle to get her away from his suspicious pals. They reach the beach and connect, with Rin genuinely puzzled by why Youhei's being so kind to her. Eventually, she realizes that she's earned his trust, with Jarmine appearing and ordering her to manpiulate him with her magic...and she finds she can't, so she runs off. She's eventually captured by Jarmine, who punishes her for her failure to act, while also destroying some of the ceramic bells which hold her people. (Jarmine's COLD.) This causes Rin/Suzunari to not let any feelings for Youhei stop her, so she reappears and takes control of him, giving us a Blue Turbo VS Red Turbo fight, as the others try to locate and stop her.
When she's stopped by the other Turboranger, losing her control over Blue, it pisses Jarmine off so much that she shatters the last remaining bells AND kills Suzunari-Bouma, reviving her as a giant. (Watanabe really picks up on the nastiness of the Jarmine character the way Inoue did.) Blue Turbo gets pissed off and gets one of those awesome dashes-through-enemy-fire shots, making his way to strike Jarmine, but she stops him with a blast, robbing him of vengeance.
The episode ends with Youhei realizing that while Rin deceived them, she did have that moment where she refused to control Youhei, so he chooses to see that as good in her, before throwing one of her surviving bells into the sea.
A really solid episode, reminiscent of a Changeman, with great performances from Asakura, Ohmura, Kishi and guest-star Yuhara.
I liked all of Yuhara's roles in tokusatsu. Probably my favorite was in the episode 4 of Jiban, where she plays a girl who wants to avenge her father's death and is manipulated by Biolon.
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It´s a shame she doesn´t had a regular role in a series. She had the same age of Reiko Chiba – probably Yuhara would have been a better Mei than her.
Chiba fits the wholesome princess Mei was supposed to be, but she just doesn't come across as being heroic to me. I could see Yuhara working as a different type of Mei, but Chiba fit the softness of that show.
ReplyDeleteI definitely would have liked Yuhara to have had a regular role of some kind. I can also picture her as a more serious Blue Swallow, or Ninja White (if Tsuruhime had been depicted as cool as she was meant to be). When I did my Wishful Casting post about Black Bison and Green Sai, Yuhara was my original pick for Sai -- she would have been really young, but I thought that might have led to interesting stories. (The Liveman could have let her on the team as a way to keep her safe.) But I ended up going for Shibata because I didn't think they'd cast someone as young as Yuhara for a heroine at the time.