Flashman Episode 15

I'm so glad it worked out that Nagaishi was the one to direct this episode. Because this is the big one. This is the arrival of Sir Kaura, OBE. A very important part of the series, and Nagaishi makes sure to debut this character with the flair and grandness required in an episode that ends on a shocking cliffhanger, marking a new direction for the franchise.

This episode begins by misleading the audience into thinking it's going to be some quirky and comedically-flavored episode, but...oh, no. It ain't. Far from it. We start with a tiny Kragen in the midst of regenerating, when he suddenly flees the Lab in horror! The Mess officers chase after him, the Flashman get involved. But what is it that's scaring Kragen? Deus and Keflen know -- he senses the return of Kaura. And Kragen was right to be afraid, because he soon finds himself EATEN by a mysterious Beast Soldier, The Zukonda, who ends up being an underling of Kaura's. Kaura then makes his presence known...

I love the way they film this scene. The way it's presented, the way it's filmed, the use of music. Everything goes dark and the wind kicks up. The sky turns red and a ship lands. A big figure walks heavily down the stairs which extend from the ship, each footfall kicking off an electric charge. They do a damn good job of making this such a big reveal, conveying just what a formidable and dangerous threat this guy is. Neferu looks more than a little scared to find out who he is, and if you're able to scare freaking Neferu...!

Kaura and his group of hoodlums are the Alien Hunters, the group who works for Mess and tracks down and kidnaps lifeforms from all over the universe to be used in Mess's experiments. Kaura's arrived because word has hit him of the trouble Mess has had in dealing with the Flashman, so he's here to help. And that's bad news for our heroes, who are going to be engaging directly with the man responsible for their trauma, and that he's such a tough bastard. (His first reaction to noticing the Flashman? Giving them the line your grandparents give you when they haven't seen you for a while. "Flashman, you've gotten big." That's a pretty mean way to say "I know who you are, and you know who I am and what I did. Let's get along, eh?") Nagaishi's direction in this reveal...he's really committed to getting you to realize just how momentous this character's arrival is. Kaura's not just the latest forgettable lieutenant goon who's going to be failing to fight the Flashman, he's an important part of the series, and a very deadly enemy.

Kaura's my favorite Sentai villain. I love what he brings to the show; he's the guy who kidnapped our heroes, he's a smart and resourceful character, he's strong and intimidating, he's a ruthless son of a bitch, and yet at the same time...he's the one who has all of our heroes' answers. They hate his guts, but we'll see a few times throughout the show where they'll question killing him or his cohorts since they know better than anyone else the details of their past. So he really has the upper hand over our heroes, in many ways. I always felt like he had a bit of an upper hand over our villains, as well! Mess NEEDS him, but he don't need them! He's traveled the universe, he's amassed knowledge and connections. And he knows some of their secrets, too. But he's a pro. Right now, he works for Mess, so that's who he's going to side with. And you get the feeling that he isn't some greedy guy who goes where the work is, but that this sick little venture of capturing lifeforms is Kaura's area of expertise, so he's allied with whoever values that skill. But you never feel like he's the new guy or some hired hand; Kaura really comes across like an equal to Deus and Keflen, even if he really isn't. I see Kaura as being kind of "street smart," so you know the mad scientists like Deus and Keflen look down on him, but they're very fixated on their one area of interest, while Kaura comes across as a man of the universe, with knowledge in a wide-spanning range of areas.

So much of what makes Kaura successful is Jouji Nakata's performance. Keeping with the rest of the Mess performers, he hits the ground running and immediately finds the character. And Nakata was surprisingly young at the time, he's in his early 30s here! But he conveys such a power of a seasoned warrior and this sense that Kaura has really just done and seen it all. He moves with deliberateness, he speaks quietly. He seems so much more mature and threatening to the Flashman. He can get pissed and growl and be damned intimidating, but he's never over-the-top. Most of Nakata's performance is extremely understated. And Nakata's also able to keep right up with and seem like an equal to a veteran actor like Koji Shimizu. Nakata makes Kaura believable. And as I mentioned before with the other Mess actors, it seems to me like Nakata has a secret to the character only he knows. (I do remember an interview with him where he went into detail about a backstory he created for Kaura, thinking of him as a vicious soldier who rallied up similar allies and became a mercenary.)

Remember I have a name for the villains that join a show late, I call them The Sixth Villains. Privately, I call them "the Kauras," because since I jumped into Changeman well into its run, I didn't know Ahames was a late addition to the show. To me, she was always there. Seeing Flashman from the start, seeing what a big presentation it was bringing in Kaura, I was under the impression it was a new thing they were doing, so any time a new villain was brought into a show, it was "Oh, he's this show's Kaura." A common trait in a lot of the Sixth Villains is their outsider status or outright rejection of the regular villains, or they'll have some ulterior motive for helping the regular villains. While that will come into play later in the series, right now it's neat to see a new villain who's on the same page as our regular villains, is on a kind of equal ground and who isn't sneaking around to fulfill their own agenda. Spoiler alert: things go to shit between Mess and Kaura, and he'll be just as deadly an enemy to them as he is Flashman, but right now, he's working for them.

The majority of this episode is Kaura causing mayhem in the city and kicking the Flashman's asses all over the map. At one point, the Beast Soldier working for him clones itself, which ultimately ends with the Flash King fighting TWO giant Beast Soldiers by the end of this episode and...losing. It's a rough fight, the Flashman manage to take the clone down, but not before Flash King's given a thrashing himself, losing an arm and leg. The episode ends on a quiet, eerie shot of the Flash King lying in pieces in the night, as a panicked Magu calls for the Flashman to respond over the com. (A nice touch is a shooting star going by in the background.) They're silent, and the narrator even puts out the idea that they could be dead. We're also shown a scene of a pretty joyful Mess. A pretty dark way to end the episode, and a bit of a shock at the time. Mechas take beatings in one of the final episodes, but here's episode FIFTEEN and Flash King hasn't just taken a beating but is BROKEN! We're used to these mecha fights going down the same way; here you're expecting the typical formula, the attacks, the Super Cosmo Flash, the pose of victory. We're not supposed to have the mecha's limbs torn off, it go down in a sparking mess, with our heroes unconscious! What the hell are our heroes going to do, man?! Well, you gotta wait a week to find out.

So...Kaura totally stomps all over the Flashman in his first episode. It's a GREAT way to bring in an awesome new villain. Kaura's my favorite, and he's just going to keep bringing the pain for our heroes. Physical pain, psychological pain. It's like he's a writer on this show -- he's not going to make things easy for the Flashman.

This episode features the debut of the tease of what lies behind La Deus's mask. In his celebration of the Flashman's defeat, he turns from the others, his mask cracks, and we see just a spooky eyeball that belongs to a whitened face. This will happen several times throughout the show and we don't quite get a pay-off, but it's creepy and memorable. The show ends up kinda changing its tune about what's behind that mask, but it still ends up keeping him mysterious in a good way.