This one picks up the thread from the previous episode, with the Flash heroines now knowing one of them is the Tokimura. This gets mixed up with the bizarre (but, IMO, cool) villain plan of luring the Flashman into video games after kidnapped kids, which kind of clashes with the seriousness of the hero half of the episode. I guess this is the show's attempt at kinda having a "goofy one before the serious shit goes down," but...it ain't easy to do when things are getting so emotional for our heroes, and we're also just a couple of episodes away from them finding out the Earth is killing them, so...there's not a lot of room for holiday shenanigans or palling around with a villain! Flashman has real shit to contend with.
You've gotta feel bad for Ruu in the first scene of the episode, when she's giddily preparing to meet Setsuko Tokimura, with a bouquet of roses, only to see that Sara's beaten her to the punch in getting to her and asking her stuff. It's twice as sad when you're familiar with the series, knowing how overlooked Ruu's been and know that she's not the Tokimura daughter. Sara spots her and she tries to BS her way out with some excuse that she was on patrol and was just stopping to say hi, but...yeah, poor Ruu. This leads Sara to wonder how they can find out for sure what happened on that day 20 years ago, which leads her to going to check out an Earth observation center for reports of odd occurrences and UFO sightings at the time. Too bad that the computer she's researching this info on is overtaken by the latest monster, who can enter machines and take over its circuitry, but she manages to save the info on a floppy disc before getting into a Mess battle.
She pins all of her hopes of finding out the answers to her questions on this floppy disc, which ends up just quickly being destroyed by Kaura. "You think I'm going to let you find any answers?" He's a bastard, because...he knows! Chances are, Sara wasn't going to get much out of that disk, but he breaks it, anyway, and just laughs his ass off. Meanwhile, the nitpicker in me is wondering why Sara or one of the others didn't think to look into something like this episodes and episodes ago, but...I guess, maybe, emotions have been running so high lately that they're at a place where they feel they can ignore their initial vow to not spend time looking for their parents (when there was work as Flashman to be done).
The big action of the episode is the Flashman choosing to enter a computer to save a bunch of people Mess has kidnapped; they try to depict this, as best they can, as like a video game, first starting out as a sidescroller fighting game, but then it just gets increasingly crazy. Ideally, the show would have had 8-bit animated Flashman and make this all look like a video game, but...they make the best of it when it's just meant to be a nutty little bit of fun. They totally convey the completely random and bizarre feel of '80s video games, though, in what the show throws at the Flashman -- climbing up poles to save a victim, swinging from vines, being attacked by giant oni and tengu masks. There's so many times I'll revisit a video game from the '80s and just be like "What the hell were the programmers smoking to come up with this?" A very unique Japanese wacky tobaccy which was outlawed after the Famicom was dunzo. The heroines are the ones to save the day, bringing back their twinning attacks from 35 (which I think is cool) and breaking everyone out of the game.
Keflen's main plan with this monster, though, was for it to get information from the Lab's main computer. Kaura catches him and outs him in front of La Deus -- with the added thought that perhaps Keflen was trying to discover secrets of La Deus' -- who punishes him. It's quite a sight to see Keflen lying in pain on the Lab's floor, Kaura standing over him and chuckling. Despite the way this looks, Keflen won't take it lying down, and this will lead directly to the next episode when Keflen takes the silver gloves off and gives it back to Kaura. I like the idea of this episode being that both the Flashman and Keflen are making attempts at finding the answers to their past.
All in all, this episode is kinda uneven. But, like I said, I think it's really trying to fill the role of the goofy/silly/weird one before the final episodes, which is hard to do when things aren't really turning out for our heroes. It stays true to the characters and what they're going through; so I give the show credit for not dropping stuff just for the sake of putting them in a completely comedic scenario. As wacky as the video game stuff, as humorously as some of those scenes are directed, it's still an urgent situation -- the Flashman are racing to save the hostages. No room for a musical number there.
I'd also like to note that, after it's made giant, the monster of the week successfully jumps into Flash King and makes it go amok and send attack blasts throughout the cockpit. The Flashman's solution to this problem is the solution given to me by every single tech support person I'd call for computer problems in the '90s -- shut down/restart the computer. But unlike then, this solution ends up working out for the Flashman.
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