A nice, but bittersweet episode for Sara, and a kind of episode you'd never see nowadays. (There's no toy to sell to fix her emotional pain! She's not going to get over her problems by just going "SMILE, HAPPY!")
It's autumn and Sara's strolling down a leave-covered path, lost in her thoughts. She's down in the dumps, lonely, connecting the start of this feeling to the season. She sees couples happy and feels a bit envious. She thinks thoughts and feels feelings everybody does (male or female), but is always embarrassed to admit. So, it's far from the best time for Neferu to be testing the latest monster's abilities, which is creating goggles that let you "read" thoughts, but Neferu's a villain and that's what she does...and then she, Ulk and Kiruto taunt and torment Sara's feelings of loneliness, her wanting to live life and fall in love. Sara's mortified to have her private thoughts known, least of all by the enemy!
Mess' plan is to distribute these goggles/glasses and have the city erupt in arguments, distrust and hatred once everyone learns each other's true feelings. I have to say...that's a cynical take that's pretty surprising for 1986. It's in more recent shows and movies where there will be something similar, with a character who can read minds, and everything that's heard is always just negative. I think people can be easily judgmental, and there's times where they can have a negative thought easily surface and it will actually horrify them, but pop culture really goes overboard with just what absolutely horrific shit they think people are thinking nonstop. Says something about these showbiz types, eh?
Anyway, once Sara sees the goggles in action, she successfully tracks down and fights off a Mess attack. When the others end up joining her, she just grabs Pink's Flash Hawk and takes off after the villains on her own. Red's worried because he hasn't seen her behave in such a way, which leads up to the heart of the episode, which is when Jin finds Sara and saves her from an attack, Sara's once again taunted by Mess for her secret feelings, and you can see her just shrivel and die inside since, this time, someone else is here to hear about it, and it's Jin. Later after they escape, Jin shows genuine concern for her being unusually hotheaded. I always think of Sara as melancholic and an introvert -- she doesn't bring other people down with her sadness, but she keeps it private and suffers in silence. So, to see her show some anger has to be shocking to Jin, who as eldest pretty much knows everyone on the team best and is not only their leader, but is in the role of elder brother. She finally opens up, talking of how embarrassed she is to feel the way she does, that it doesn't make her feel like a warrior, and Jin corrects her. That she feels the way she does is just proof that she's a normal Earth girl. Isn't that their goal? For their hardships, they just want back a shot at a normal life on their home planet? (At this stage of the game, writer Hirohisa Soda obviously knew the endgame, and so this episode becomes twice as sad.) Jin's happy for her, congratulating her, offering her words of kindness, when maybe she expected to be scolded or ridiculed, and that breaks through her feelings of shame and motivates her to face off with Neferu...
Since Sara's deepest, most personal and private thoughts are violated, since she was preyed upon in such a vulnerable time, it becomes a personal battle for her. She wants to put a stop to Neferu's plans herself, for the sake of everyone else who is suffering like her -- maybe even worse. And what's great is that she uses the goggles against Neferu, when Neferu becomes Neferura and starts sending illusions Sara's way, she uses the goggles to discover Neferura's plan of attack and just walks 'em off. When Neferura causes a fiery explosion, Sara knows it's an illusion and charges through. When Neferura splits the earth, Sara just runs right over the supposed crevice. So much for those nifty illusion powers, eh?
It's just a nice little episode, with a great emotional performance from Nakamura, and some nice filming in the fall setting by Minoru Yamada. And not only does Nakamura bring a lot of emotion to her performance, but fearlessness later when she takes on a lot of action scenes -- swinging from a crane, running from a massive Yamaoka explosion that would make Dynaman squirm. And before anyone scoffs about an episode that deals with the heroine just wanting romance, I'll point you to the final scene of the episode, when the other Flashman are wondering if Ruu's anything like that. Does autumn conjure up feelings of romance for Ruu, dreams of dates? "Nah, I just think about the eats."
This episode marks the debut of the improved design for Neferura -- they don't even explain it, but it's so much better than the original. (They don't try to gloss over the original either; Neferu transforms into that cutesy-faced version and then does a Goranger-y spin and becomes the new, more fearsome design.)
There's also a bit on the Keflen v Kaura front. Keflen's going through his hopes for the plans for La Deus, as Kaura spies nearby. Kaura's just kind of thinking to himself "Eh, Keflen, that mook, *grumble*" and Keflen lets Kaura know he's standing there, not as stealthy as he thought. Keflen raises a pair of the monster's goggles as if he's putting them on, but tosses them at Kaura instead. He says something like "I don't need these to read your mind. And you're to refer to me as Great Professor Lee Keflen." How'd he know?! Kaura's a bad-ass, but Keflen's no slouch.
One small thing I'd like to note. When Sara's fantasizing about a boyfriend, she's with a guy whose identity is being concealed with special-effects -- but if you watch the episode preview at the end of 38, you can see the footage WITHOUT the effects. I can't tell for certain who it is, but I always thought it would be funny if it was Yellow Flash suit actor Masato Akada. (It probably IS just some JAC guy.)
Neferu Disguise Watch: She, Ulk and Kiruto -- for reasons unknown -- are disguised as schoolgirls at the start of the episode.
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