Flashman Episode 47

"Time Stop? If we could, we'd stop time...we'd be able to stay on Earth. But time is what we don't have..." ~Jin

Kaura's at it again, tormenting Deus with the sounds emitting from his Gene Synthesizer. This time the signal's being broadcast from Kaura's ship as it's on the move. La Deus is growling with pain, Unshou Ishizuka's voice performance really good here, as he tells Keflen to find a way to stop Kaura. What's really interesting here is that in his state, Deus' medical readout appears on the ship's screen, revealing that La Deus consists of many, many types of genes, that's he's undergone surgeries on himself in order to make himself the most supreme being in existence. Here he reveals that he's had his previous Great Professors perform surgery on him. Shocked to discover there were any before him, Keflen quickly gets a little too cocky here, suggesting that maybe he help operate on Deus, which gets him a deserved blast from La Deus. Who knows where things would have gone from there if not for Wanda, who steps in and offers his own genes for the next monster...

Like Neferuss, Deus Beast Soldier Wandal doesn't resemble Wanda much, other than having a bit of a white pompadour. But the nasty bastard can work with Wandala and extend his Time Stop maneuver to being infinite. When Red Flash senses something bad like that's going to happen when the two foes coordinate their attacks, he shoves the other Flashman out of danger and is frozen on his own. Not only that, but the area surrounding him, Wandala and Wandal are protected by a barrier that the others can't break through. So, the frozen-in-time Red Flash takes repeated hits from the monsters...

Meanwhile, missing her father, Kaori Tokimura takes it upon herself to set out and find him using his time machine. Ignoring the pleas of her mother and sister, she activates it. Not knowing how to use it, the machine only kicks on for a moment, but it's enough to send an energy ripple through time and end up breaking through Wandala's own manipulation of it. With Red Flash freed, the others decide to retreat in order to get him to safety...

Untransformed, they flee through a forest, where they discover the latest stage of the Anti-Flash -- the sun (solar corona) is causing them intense pain. It manages to pass just in time for Wanda and Wandal to catch up to them, this time freezing them all in a permanent Time Stop. Kaura sees this unfold on a monitor in his ship and is like "Good. All that leaves now is La Deus." I'm so, so glad that this is Kaura's thinking. You just know that nowadays Kaura would have interfered and basically saved the Flashman with one of those cop-out "Only I get to kill the Flashman!" routines. Here he's just like "Good riddance. Less work for me. I can focus on the guy I'm really pissed at." Too bad for Kaura that Professor Tokimura also sees this unfold. Desperate to help the Flashman, he makes a gambit -- he dashes towards a control switch on the ship and teleports himself away, Gardan upset and Kaura not too pleased with this turn.

The professor is teleported back to his basement, which...is convenient, but this episode only has so many minutes! He knows the way to help the Flashman is what Kaori unknowingly and accidentally did -- he needs to activate his time machine and break through time. He does so, succeeding in breaking Wanda's Time Stop, but also ends up sending the Flashman through a brief time slip, in which they only get glimpses of the past, twenty years ago. A house and smiling Tokimura parents seem to draw Sara, but then they're all quickly flung out of the time slip and back into regular time. Professor Tokimura's time machine is totaled, but he doesn't regret it since he was able to save the Flashman. Nearby a furious Wanda discovers he can no longer transform into Wandala or perform the Time Stop. (I like this brief little introspective scene here of Jin thinking that the Flashman want nothing more than to stop time to stay on Earth, what's quoted at the top of this post.) Wanda's temper is short, so this leads into a big battle where he challenges Red Flash...

It's Hirose's first villain role, and already he was the rival of Red, the Red Foe. Wanda's rivalry with Red Flash goes back, first really getting intense when he has the superpowers and literally and figuratively opens old wounds of Jin's. Wanda gets pushed aside a bit once Kaura come along, and Kaura obviously is a more important character in what he represents to the Flashman's past, and is so much more formidable and outranks Wanda. But I appreciate that they DO give Wanda one last fight with Red, and it's a good one. I love that crazy shot where they're just clashing swords and it's a low angle, the camera running along with them through the wheat field. I also love the detail of the clashing swords giving off smoke, indicating the power that each sword has, recalling episode 38. Wanda's just really not fighting with a clearness or confidence he usually has, just pure anger. Red gets in a Super Cutter and that makes Wanda even worse for wear. Red Flash even warns Wanda to cease battling, because it's not going to turn out well for him. But Wanda's pride gets in the way, he wants to keep going, so he just charges at Red Flash, who just stands there coolly. Wanda gets nearer, Killer Saber extended. The blade comes within centimeters of Red Flash's throat and stops...Wanda begins to have a biomolecular meltdown and dies on the spot. (Red Flash is too cool in this scene, man.)

It's funny, if you watch the preview for this episode at the end of 46, you'll see an alternate version of Wanda's final moments. In the preview, Hirose's just kind of doing a stage collapse, going weak in the shoulders, falling to his knees, falling face down. In the episode, he does this cooler little twist flip backward before he explodes.

The Flashman continue their fight with Wandal, while Professor Tokimura's finally like, "What the hell am I doing here, I'm gettin' outta here!" On the sidelines, Bo Gardan is readying to recapture the professor. Suddenly, he's restrained...by Neferu! She had only faked her death and was biding her time! She takes Gardan prisoner, which will have explosive ramifications in the next episode. Speaking of explosions...the lack of an explosion when Neferu "died" should have been a tip off. But I think that scene was still filmed so well, with Hagiwara's performance just right that it made it seem like a convincing death scene. Flashman only being the tenth Sentai, maybe the conventions weren't established enough to expect otherwise. I could imagine someone seeing her "death" scene and thinking it was just a stylistic choice to be so restrained. Anyway, I like Neferu's facial expressions as she makes herself known and sneak attacks Gardan -- just absolute rage. No gloating or anything. She's PISSED. These past two episodes are Takao Nagaishi's last episodes of the series, and he makes 'em count.

The episode ends with the five revealing to the Tokimuras their time limit, which Midori Tokimura takes hardest. But the Flashman lay it out -- they've got to stick to their duty and be rid of Mess by that time. While Sara wonders what it was exactly she responded to so much in the time slip, the narrator informs us that, at this point, the Flashman realize it's useless to try to solve the mystery of who their parents are. The episode once again ends with them looking at the sunset -- the end of another day. One day closer to death.

15 DAYS REMAINING