Turboranger Episode 40

It's weird that the previous episode felt so big, but was set in such close quarters, and now we have this episode which feels so small, but they try to dress it up with action pieces and on location shoots. (It's set at Iyomishima.) I have mixed feelings on this episode...

For their first plans as head villains, Yamimaru and Kirika opt for good old fashioned revenge; they use Bouma-Beast Picture Book Bouma to transform all books and paper products to "demonic books" which put the reader in a trance and commands them to walk as far as they can. This is Yamimaru's revenge for his being persecuted and made to just wander the lands for 20,000 years, walking for so long and in such rough conditions that his feet often bled. So, on one hand, it seems like a small plan, but it's fitting with Yamimaru's character, and when you get down to it, it's pretty evil and Pied Piper-like...

But you get the sense that the show's softening the premise; the episode title specifically mentions kids of Shikoku, and the Bouma-Beast is named PICTURE Book Bouma, which suggests he's going to target kids through picture books, but...he doesn't have anything to do with picture books. The books he makes are just three words of text. ("Walk, walk, as far as you can...") And we see a scene where older folks are shown to be walking in a trance along with kids, so it's not just kids being targeted. But if it HAD been only kids, again, that puts you in mind of the Pied Piper, and the plan becomes surprisingly evil for Yamimaru.

The episode focuses on one kid, Toshio, who was being given swimming lessons by Youhei before he had to move, so Youhei sent him a picture book he drew himself, giving pointers on swimming. Youhei's homemade picture book was one of the targets, transformed by Picture Book Bouma into being one of his evil books, and Toshio begins to walk nonstop across the city, feet bloodied, unaware of the potential danger he's just walking on into. He's pursued the entire way by his panicked mother, who calls Youhei for help. (So, if not for Youhei sending this kid this book, there might have actually been a chance that the Nagare Bouma would be successful.) So, Youhei's extra determined to put a stop to this plan. (Toshio nearly ends up walking himself off of a cliff before he snaps out of the spell, upon Turboranger's defeating the monster.)

This episode has a lot of scenes set at paper factories, and my research team at Wikipedia says that Iyomishima was known for its paper products industry, so...it feels a little Mr. Rogers-y. "Hey, kids! Let's find out how paper is made! Got it? Good! Now let's find out how Picture Book Bouma makes his evil books, too!" So we get some weird scenes of fights in mills and warehouses stacked with paper products. But the big action centerpiece of the episode comes when Youhei has a chopper take him to follow the truckload of evil books the Bouma are having transported, with the plans to ship 'em to Tokyo and take this plan countrywide, WAHOO! (They have a perfectly good truck, but they were making this delivery to Dragras to carry away in his talons. I don't understand that, but Yamimaru's let this head villain thing go to his head, so he's making some weird choices that only make sense when you're a level 1 in the villain club.)

Keiya Asakura gets some cool action in this episode. In the aforementioned helicopter scene, he's hanging out of the side of the helicopter himself, shouting threats down to Kirika, before she knocks him down. Youhei takes a beating, but keeps soldiering on to save the day.

So, my problems with this episode. I already mentioned the softening of the plan, but that's nothing compared to my real problems with it.

1) Toshio's mother is played by Toku Legend Miyuki Nagato. Nagato's awesome. Nagato's an action actress. Nagato is only 27 years old at the time of this episode. So, not only is she too cool to just play a nameless mother role, but way too young. I don't understand why they got her. I mean, she's a good actress, so she pulls it off, but it still seems like a waste of her talents.

Toshio's mother also manages to keep up with Toshio for his entire journey. Unlike everyone who's under the spell to make this long walk, her feet never bleed. I guess THAT's the reason for casting Nagato, because this lady is a supermom.

2) The really big problem for me. When Yamimaru is explaining the motivation behind his plan to the Turboranger, we're shown a clip of Yamimaru in old times, walking with bloodied feet. He's not alone, though, he's wandering the land with the skull monsters who raised Kirika, who have with them BABY KIRIKA! What fucking sense does this make? The skull monsters raised Kirika as a baby in the human world starting in the early '70s. So how and why and what are they doing walking the earth with Yamimaru? Also: Yamimaru didn't know shit about Kirika, even when she was appearing to him in prophetic dreams! He pretty much chanced upon her that day of her 18th birthday. But here we see him taking baby Kirika off the exhausted skull monsters to protect her? WHAT IS THIS?!?! DOES NOT COMPUTE! I really don't like this.

Usually when a character is talking about something and we're shown a clip, it represents that character's actual memory. Here we're shown something we know couldn't have possibly have been, unless the show's doing a massive retcon, which I don't think it is. So I view this brief clip as either the Turboranger's interpretation of Yamimaru's words or the show simplifying the Nagare Bouma's backstory for the sake of the viewers, mainly ones who might have missed the debut of these late-addition villains and the new developments to the series they've caused. It's a confusing choice the director made. If they wanted this flashback to depict more than just Yamimaru's struggle, just design and introduce a couple of other Nagare Bouma to feature in the flashback. I'm sure it wouldn't have been hard to go rummage around for some weird shit to kitbash from Juspion or Spielban or something.

I think the show kinda shot itself in the foot by at first implying Yamimaru was one of a kind, but they then bring in Kirika and outright say they're supposed to be the last two Nagare Bouma left in the world. So they treat these two like they're the only two that matter, when the flashback depicted in this episode would have been greatly improved by having Yamimaru and throwing in a few other, newly created, random figures to get across the Nagare Bouma's struggle. (Take out the skull parents and infant Kirika.) There simply had to be more Nagare Bouma, and of course not a lot of them would have made it as long as Yamimaru. I don't think it would have been too confusing to just have some new random extra Nagare Bouma.

The episode ends teasing the Bouma-Beast of the next episode, which will again be set at Iyomishima. I always thought that was kinda strange, giving an indication that these episodes are tied together, when they're really not, and giving the impression this monster is more important than he really ends up being.