Flashman Episode 43

Oh-ho-ho...one of my favorite Sentai episodes. Not just Flashman, SENTAI. Crazy, unpredictable, shit-hitting-the-fanning.

A spiteful Keflen uses a Beast Soldier that needs to eat Kaura's Alien Hunters in order to power-up. There's no other reason this monster exists other than for Keflen to torment Kaura and get back at him. But Keflen sells La Deus on the idea of this monster gaining so much power it will cause mass destruction, so La Deus allows it. I love how Kaura bursts into the Lab, grabbing Keflen by the collar, just FURIOUS. Once away from Deus, Keflen offers to call off this plan if Kaura reveals to him what he claims to know of Keflen's past; Kaura refuses and says he'll save his allies on his own. When Keflen tells him that will be treason, Kaura's like "So what?"

It can sometimes be a little too easy when villains are undone by their pride or stubbornness. But with what you know about Kaura and Keflen, it's believable. While Keflen's always just treated Kaura like the hired help, you know Kaura considers himself more than that. The audience knows he's more than that. It's easy to imagine a show where Kaura would have just been the latest goon and a pushover, but through a combination of writing and acting, Kaura's always been so much more important, so much more of a presence. I really feel like -- and you can tell Nakata plays it -- as though Kaura's an equal. Like I said, there's a reason Nakata goes on to play a head villain in just a couple more years.

Nakata's age really helps. While he doesn't disclose his birthyear anymore, Flashman books at the time list it as 1954, making him 32 at the time. (That he no longer reveals his birthyear makes me wonder if he's even older.) So many times in toku they will cast a villain who's supposed to command respect or be mighty and formidable or very experienced, but they'll end up casting someone who's far too young to ever make any of that believable. Since I'm coming off of my RX posts, I'll again just bring up Dasmader as an example of a failure in casting. Nakata conveys all of that and more. You're never even given much background info on Kaura, but you can easily get a sense of who he is. Not unlike Ahames, he's someone who's traveled the universe, seeing all there is to see, gathering knowledge, making connections. Keflen, being an egotistical man of science, thinks that alone makes him superior to Kaura. But Kaura is wise in many other ways due to his experiences. He has knowledge Keflen would never be able to gain...including about Keflen himself. Kaura's a strong warrior, but also intelligent and cunning. You get the impression he's always one step ahead of his opponent or picking up on things that they wouldn't. He's a very dangerous person to have as an enemy.

Keflen took it too far this time. Kaura doesn't want to give him the satisfaction, so he's going to put a stop to the plan. When the Flashman see the Mess targeting the Alien Hunters from the sidelines, they don't know what to make of it. The episode puts the Flashman in the interesting position of saving and protecting their most hated of enemies, because they decide that the Alien Hunters know best of their past, so they can't just sit back and watch them all be killed. Putting a stop to the attack, the Alien Hunters scatter, with the Flashman splitting up to find each member.

We follow Bun as he takes a look around some abandoned buildings, and he eventually spots an injured Kerao within one building. He gets to Kerao and has mixed emotions -- he didn't set out to fight with an Alien Hunter if he found it, but he can't help but be angry and rough as he's grabbing and demanding answers from the wounded alien, as he's then stopped by a group of three kids. These three boys found and tried to dress Kerao's wounds and brought him to this building, which they've made a hideout. The walls are decorated with posters from all of the great genre films at the time -- Return of the Jedi, ET, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Last Starfighter. (There's also a poster of Cocoon.) The trio are sci-fi junkies who have radio equipment at the place, trying to send messages to space in the hopes of contacting an alien who wants to be buds. (They probably weren't the only kids who had that fantasy at that time, c'mon.) And with Kerao, they think their dreams have come true, and he's come to them and was injured when he crashed into Earth. They recognize he's in need and decide to extend a helping hand as all of those sci-fi movies taught them to, so they're trying to nurse him back to health. Bun voices his concerns, but the kids aren't listening, and especially don't like how angry and violent he was just being with Kerao.

He might be a suited villain, but Kerao's pretty pathetic here. His head's bandaged. The mask has seen better days, but you can just imagine they're further wounds. The suit actor is Minoru "Magu" Watanabe, who's a little guy, and Kerao has a huge noggin, so he just looks weighed down by it, it gives him a kind of exhausted look. As the kids give him water to drink, Kerao just makes these grunting, sad, Mr. Bean noises. But you know he's in bad shape when he's willing to accept water from these strange kids. And you know he's actually appreciative when he garbles out his name when the kids ask him. Even Bun's doubtful at how dangerous Kerao actually is at this point, but before he can mull it over any more, the place is found and attacked by Wanda and the Beast Soldier and a troop of Zoros. Bun tries to get the kids to safety, but they won't budge unless Kerao's helped, too, so they try to get him up and going while Bun stays in the enclosed space fighting off Wanda!

The kids and Kerao end up running right into the center of Mess, being attacked by Ulk and Kiruto. By the time Bun joins them, everyone's on the battlefield -- Mess, the other Flashman, Kaura, the remaining Alien Hunters. A mysterious blast attacks nearly everyone as a strange figure descends from the sky...Yoshinori mothafuckin' Okamoto! The man is dressed similar to Kaura and joins Kaura's side, announcing he's Bo Gardan, Kaura's right-hand man. (Fun fact: my family used to refer to this guy as "Kaura's brother.") The Flashman and Mess are in deep shit now, Francis. As a big old fight breaks out, Red tells Bun to get Kerao out of danger. Don't the Flashman have enough opponents? Did they really need Yoshinori Okamoto to come along and kick their ass? I've always loved how Kaura basically has his own Sentai team with the Alien Hunters, and then Gardan comes along as basically the sixth hero of his team.

When they reach a safe spot, Bun's rejoined by the kids, who he tells to leave since things are going nuts. They make him promise to look after Kerao and he does; one of the boys gifts Kerao with his dog-tags, saying they're something he treasures. Kerao barely can croak out a pained thank you. (Kerao speaks for the first time in this episode, his name and just these two words. No voice actor is credited, but they do a lot with so little. Call me crazy for playing Name That Voice with three words, but it sounds a little like Takeshi Kuwabara.) Bun carries Kerao away on his back -- Bun's a small guy, and even though Kerao is, too, you can tell he's having some trouble. Eventually, along the way, Bun drops Kerao. Panicked that he further injured him, he checks him over and then goes to a nearby stream to get a handful of water for him. Bun kinda marvels that he's somehow found compassion for the injured alien, an enemy. (The boys' belief in peace and decency and that nothing comes from hate helps inspire Bun.) Before his thoughts can dwell too long, he gets a taste of Kaura's laser whip -- Kaura arrives with Gardan, and offers Bun a dry thanks for taking care of Kerao. Bun loses consciousness just as Mess catches up with Kaura, leading to the big showdown...

Wanda announces that the Alien Hunters must be handed over. Kaura refuses. From the Lab, Keflen communicates -- if Kaura persists, that means he's going against Mess. He'd be a traitor, their enemy. Kaura says that with Bo Gardan now with him, he ain't afraid of Keflen OR Deus. And then we get the big, crazy sight of Mess VS the Alien Hunters -- Gardan's beating up Ulk and Kiruto, Kaura's taking on Neferu (strangling her with his whip!) while fighting off Wanda, while the other Alien Hunters beat up Zoros. I remember finding this a pretty shocking turn of events, weird to see the villains fighting each other like this, in such a nasty and brutal way. Soda takes what he did with Super Giluke and goes to the next level -- while Super Giluke was fueled by revenge and took advantage of his officers, sacrificing them as he saw fit, he was still a part of Gozma. Even if Ahames was in charge at that point, Bazuu sanctioned his actions. So to have a villain completely break free from the villain faction, becoming their enemy who then spends the rest of the series trying to interfere with them was pretty surprising. And nowadays, they'd have Kaura henshin into some superhero-ish form and that would take away from it all.

Bun regains consciousness and catches a glimpse of this madness, seeing that Kerao is still knocking on death's door. He makes his way over to check on Kerao only to find the monster of the week trying to nab Kerao on one of its tentacles, to eat him. Bun shields Kerao and ends up entangled, urging Kerao to get to safety. Unsuccessfully trying to fight off the monster, Bun is shocked to see Kerao grab his gun and rise. He aims at Bun, which upsets him. He tried to bury all of his hatred and ill-feelings towards Kerao in order to help him, to try to believe in him as much as those kids did. What was all of that for if Kerao's now just going to essentially shoot him in the back? Only Kerao shoots the monster's tentacle attached to Bun, freeing him. He then shoots at the monster, only to find a newly launched tentacle attaching to him; the monster pulls Kerao into its large mouth, devouring him within seconds, the dog-tags he was gifted falling to the ground. While it's just Kerao's suit actor crawling through the open mouth of the empty monster costume, the way it's filmed and just the quick, sudden brutality of Kerao being eaten was always a lasting shock to me. It's a violent image. And, somehow, despite the guy being a vicious villain, despite him being masked and mainly silent, this death scene works. Watanabe's acting the heck out of it, Ishiwata's selling the emotion. You actually feel sorry and even sad for Kerao. (Listen to how pissed Ishiwata's voiceovers are when he's transforming and posing as Blue Flash.)

But the kids and Bun DID get through to the Alien Hunter Kerao, and when the battle's over, Bun tracks down the kids to return the dog-tags and tell them what happened. At least he doesn't sugarcoat it, like coming up with some BS that Kerao got better and left Earth! No, he tells them that Kerao died saving him, that the kindness they showed him got through to him. (Ruu notes that maybe he didn't originate as an evil alien.) It gives the kids happiness and a sense of hope, they feel triumph. They wanted to believe in the feelings of those movies. I like that this story is told in this way, with the outright reference to those films by Spielberg and others that were so monumental at the time.

The sci-fi wave created by Star Wars was calming down by 1986, and I certainly think Flashman and Spielban were the culmination of all of those works, all of the feelings for and about those movies, and end up being great send-offs to the sci-fi reign. To call to mind those movies and their depictions of space and aliens, and their desire for expansion of knowledge and kindness and universal peace in this story where a nasty *villain* character has a change of heart and saves one of our heroes is a fitting tribute to the spirit of those films. It's a nice acknowledgement of the way those movies inspired not only people, but other pop-culture, including this show we're watching right now. It's a nice little love-letter and tip of the hat as Flashman, SCI-FI MADNESS, as the space and sci-fi era of toku winds down.

Spielban gets a much happier ending than Flashman, though. Which is interesting when you think about it. Flashman, a Sentai show, those shows that are for just the stupid little kids who eat their boogers while Kamen Rider and Metal Heroes are for discerning viewers and adults who collect art and drink the finest wine! (If you're a foreigner using Google to translate this from English to your own language, the preceding sentence is sarcasm. This one, too.) Spielban's finale is notorious for how little it makes sense, and it's the one written by the more famous writer, Shozo Uehara. Hirohisa Soda needs more respect, man.