Flashman Episode 48

"Spilt blood flowing in the setting sun...is beautiful." ~Kaura

A crazy, great, unpredictable episode. It stuck out to me as a kid, it's been one of my all-time favorite toku episodes. This thing is packed.

Neferu brings Gardan before Keflen at the Lab. Keflen's surprised that Neferu's still alive, and that she's returned with a gift. Without hesitation, it's off to the experiment chamber for Gardan, who's turned into the Deus Beast Soldier Gardess, which is just a huge damn suit. Obviously, the suit actor is looking out through the shoulder area, but it's massive, and we get our first real glimpse of it as he's strolling into the designated battle area with Neferu by his side, after Mess challenges the Flashman to battle.

Quickly into the fight, Red Flash manages to stab Gardess through the gut with the Prism Sei-ken. Whether it's some faulty work of Keflen's or just the strength of Gardan, he briefly reverts to Gardan. Watching this duel on the sidelines, Kaura is NOT happy to see what's become of Gardan, striking Red Flash with his laser whip to get him away from the monster. Gardess strikes Kaura in the arm, giving him a wound which bleeds heavily down his arm. Kaura doesn't seem to notice -- he's having a reaction like when his Alien Hunters were mutilated. He cares more for his accomplice than anything else in that moment. The Flashman's powers begin to go on the fritz and they unhenshin, too weak to keep up the fight. They're brought back to their feet by Magu's commands over the Prism Flash. As the fight continues with the weakened and untransformed Flashman, Kaura calls for his ship and kidnaps Sara.

Aboard his ship, Kaura explains to Sara that, since his arm's badly injured, he needs someone to play the Gene Synthesizer. He chose Sara for her delicate hands, but also I believe for reasons that will become clear in the next episode. He tells her that her comrades can't keep up the fight, but if he can cancel out Gardan's transformation and revert him back to his ordinary self, the fight will stop. And he offers her the same promise as the professor -- if she helps, he'll reveal which Flashman is the Tokimura. She might not have much of a choice, but it's obvious that Kaura's making some sense to her, so Sara gets to work playing. In a great callback, she's playing the "Starry Sky Duet" from episode 35; I love that attention to detail. Not only does Gardan return to normal, but the playing again causes La Deus immense suffering. Gardan leaves the fight scene, which gives the other Flashman a chance to get away, as well.

We then begin the scene that I once had on YouTube as one of my favorite fight scenes of all time -- if I had been doing the Toku Moments of Awesometicity at the time, it definitely would have been one. Kaura is storming the Lab. Zoros attempt to stop him, but he just cuts his way through them. He's joined by Gardan, fighting off his own group of Zoros. Happy to be reunited, obviously feeling reinvigorated, Kaura and Gardan make their way to Deus. Nakata is GREAT in this scene, growling with hatred at Deus, threatening his life. Considering Deus is mainly immobile, it's amazing this scene comes off as action-packed and frenzied as it does; good performances and direction by action director Junji Yamaoka and director Shouhei Toujou. It really comes across like a tough fight between Kaura, Gardan and Deus, and absolute mayhem, when Deus is only able to blast Force Lightning at them. Kaura gets in hits with his laser whip (Lightwhip?) and Gardan hauls out his weaponry to attack (my favorite bit being when he javelins his weapon right at Deus). Deus' horns blast off, his mask busts open, both leaking fluid and light. He screams and is just reduced to pieces of his armor.

As Kaura and Gardan approach the remains to confirm their kill, Keflen transports them out of the Lab, inspecting the corpse on his own. Blood runs down the remaining portion of Deus' armor. Keflen deduces that Deus' true form was just a gathering of genetic liquid, but...that's kinda never made much sense to me. You mean that awesome Izubuchi design was just supposed to be filled with goo? We've seen many times in this show -- up until even the last couple of episodes -- Deus' mask cracking to reveal a white face and monstrous eyeball. I think Deus obviously originated as a creature who experimented on himself and willingly underwent so many surgeries that it wore his body down and transformed it, so he needed a suit. I guess it's basically the same implication -- he transformed himself so much, he became just living genetic material, but...I don't know. Seems like a change of plans to me, like they thought this reveal would be more mysterious without having to provide all of the details on who La Deus could have originally been.

Kaura and Gardan land on a seaside where the four Flashman soon approach. Kaura boasts of killing La Deus, with Gardan naming Kaura the strongest being in the universe. Kaura is mighty cocky here. (Meanwhile, Kaura's ship, carrying Sara, crash-landed while Kaura and Gardan were off on their vendetta, and Sara's been unconscious.) The Flashman transform and Red Flash challenges Kaura to a duel. It's surprising, because usually it's the villain who challenges a hero to the final duel in a toku -- the thinking being that it tends to not go the villain's way when that happens, a death flag. But the Flashman don't have time to mess around, they're worried about Sara, and if Kaura's telling the truth about killing Deus? Well, that's a big worry wiped away for them. They've fought Kaura enough times to know what he'll bring in battle. La Deus? That was going to be a whole different beast.

Kaura accepts the duel and he and Red Flash square off separated from the others, who take on Gardan. They all take a beating here, but the most brutal battle is between Red and Kaura. The scene is amazingly staged and filmed by Yamaoka, who's really trying to recapture some of that Change Dragon VS Buuba magic. I'll dare to say that while the Red Flash VS Kaura fight has much more meaning than Dragon VS Buuba, Changeman's fight scene was just filmed better. It took its time and has more detail. Flashman's fight is a bit too quick and there's the odd choice to slow the battle maneuvers down, but then speed up the film on certain moments. It's a method of Yamaoka's I associate most with Goggle V, and it just doesn't work in a fight this important or brutal or epic. I have to wonder if this sped-up technique is a kind of way to censor the battle -- it comes across as pretty damn violent if you imagine the way it would look without this technique. The sped-up filming takes something away, making it seem just odd.

It's still a damn good battle, though, because it is just so brutal. Especially once Red cuts through and breaks Kaura's whip (Kaura's having trouble since his arm is injured), and Kaura then turns it into a spear that he can begin to match Red in the battle. Red takes a helluva beating, with the metallic interior parts of the Flash Suits starting to poke through. Kaura's still suffering from the wound Gardess gave him earlier. Eventually, Red Flash finds himself on the ground, with Kaura stabbing into his abomen when Red then gets the fatal hit in, stabbing Kaura in the chest with the Prism Sei-ken. It's a battle out of a samurai movie, from the staging, to the opponents complimenting each other's skill, down to the part with Kaura's headgear breaking, sending his hair loose like some mad Mifune character. Nakata really throws himself into this battle -- he's a freaking monster in this scene.

Red Flash turns his attention to helping the others, as Gardan makes his way to the fallen Kaura to shield him. Unfortunately for him, the Lab appears, Keflen playing the Synthesizer and causing pain for Gardan, as Keflen transforms him back into the Deus Beast Soldier. Keflen makes a grand speech here, telling Kaura of the cruelty needed to survive in this universe. He claims that Kaura played right into his hands, killing Deus, and now Keflen can once and for all be rid of those in his way and become the supreme being he wishes to be.

"What do you think you can do, Earthling? That's right, Keflen. You're one of those Earthlings you despise." This certainly takes a lot out of Keflen's sails. He reacts to this news like Kaura just revealed he plays with dolls -- it's an embarrassing, painful and shameful thought. And this ends up being the wrong move on Kaura's part, because it pisses Keflen off so bad that he finishes the job of transforming Gardan/Gardess back under his control! Gardess strikes Kaura harshly with his bow, sending the already mortally wounded hunter to the ground. Sara's come to and joined the group, who are relieved to see she's safe. After the five defeat Gardess, they return to the fallen Kaura, who's dying by the seaside. All of their answers die with this man. Sara makes her way over to him, crying, begging him to tell them who the Tokimura is, so at least ONE of them can say they found their parents. Kaura comes to, saying he won't die so easily -- he won't die until Keflen's dead. He calls for his ship and is transported aboard, taking Sara along with him once again. What is Kaura's purpose? It's something that ends up playing a part in why I think Kaura's such a good character, one of the franchise's most memorable villains and my favorite Super Sentai villain.

6 DAYS REMAINING
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There's something BTS-y about this episode that I'd like to mention. Something that bugs me. I've seen Flashman so many times that I knew something was off the very first time I watched the DVDs. On my video tapes -- taped from the original broadcast in 1987 -- that final fight with Kaura and the final scene of the episode were all naturally lit by the setting sun. On the original broadcast, right after the battle with Kaura, when the team turns their attention to dealing with Zoros and Gardess, it is 100% blue sky daylight! That always struck me as funny, going from a sunset duel to daylight to the sunset again for that final scene. But it didn't ever bother me, because they chose to use the stage Mother Nature gave 'em for those important, character scenes.

But on the DVD, they put an orange, sunset-imitating filter over EVERYTHING. From the battle with Kaura until the end of the episode, they went back and bogusly "corrected" this, George Lucas "Special" Edition style, and I REALLY don't care for that. Present the damn show the way it originally was. I hate when things are unnecessarily altered. And what's worse is that this filter, once put over the fight scene that had the natural lighting, makes it come across as bogus and takes something away from it. Modern tokus that are too cheap and lazy will often try to rip off these great scenes Yamaoka filmed by just putting a filter over the screen or having a digital sunset, and that's lame. And that Yamaoka preferred to do this the legitimate way is one of the reasons his work has stood out over time. So to make it look like it's as digitally bogus as a new show just sucks.

Neferu Disguise Watch: Disguising herself as a corpse in the previous episode in order to get the upper hand over her enemies.