Flashman Episode 49

Sara is aboard Kaura's ship; she has her guard up, while being uncertain why it is he's taken her hostage again. Kaura's sprawled out in a chair, looking like absolute shit -- bloodied, dark eyes, not long for the world. Sara asks what his intentions are, but he never replies to her. He only switches on a gizmo that beams her down to an abandoned and dilapidated home. He then takes his ship towards its final destination -- to make a kamikaze attack on the Lab. He's clinging to his life just for one more chance to take out Keflen, burning with hatred and a crazed look in his eyes. While Neferu tries to guard Keflen in anticipation of this attack, she didn't need to worry -- Kaura's ship is repelled by a deflector beam from the Lab, sending his ship crashing into a mountain. Kaura dies in an exploding hell.

Look at the tough son of a bitch. He had that epic showdown with Red Flash, getting stabbed in the chest. He was still on his feet after that, it was the strike from Gardess that turned him immobile. But Kaura goes out on his own terms. He just flips off the Reaper and keeps on his road of revenge. I bring this up to not only highlight Kaura's awesomeness, but to also point out that I don't think Red Flash alone kills Kaura. There's no question that was a critical blow he got in, and Kaura's usually listed as one of Red's kills, but the way Kaura reacts to the sucker punch by Gardess was more pained than that final stab by Red. Just sayin'. Red Flash is still a badass, but Kaura hangs in there.

Anyway, back to Sara, who recognizes the remaining parts of the rundown house as being the house she saw in the time slip. Outside of the house are random toys, a stroller, a carriage that's all been filthied by time. She enters one of the still barely standing rooms and looks around, quickly realizing this is an old, left behind residence of the Tokimuras. She finds a dirt-covered framed photo of Professor Tokimura and Setsuko with a baby. She wipes away some of the dirt to get a better look at the kid, wondering which one of the Flashman it could be when...she sees the baby wearing a necklace with an amber jewel on it. She recognizes the amber as what she has on the strap of her Prism Flash as a decoration, which she realizes the Flash aliens must have found amongst the wreckage of her capsule and had placed on her Prism Flash as a keepsake of her origins.

Now, I'm gonna be honest real quick -- I would have preferred for the show to find a better way of having her figure out that's it's her in the picture. If you're going to pretend like she's had this jewel on Prism Flash the entire series, it better have been there for at least the past ten episodes. Not that you can get many good looks that close up, but I'll usually try as the final episodes approach, and it doesn't look like it's there. I guess it's a small enough thing to be like "Well, maybe it was there and you just can't see it," and maybe I'm just being nitpicky, but...Flashman has been pretty good about attention to detail all along, so this is mostly disappointing in the fact that it slept on the job in this area.

Having the answer at long last, Sara's in tears -- of happiness, of sorrow. Holding the photo, she returns outside and addresses the sky. "Kaura...you kept your word." Not QUITE a thank you, but pretty damn close, which is pretty shocking from a hero, and since Kaura's the author of so much of their pain. But I like this overlapping of grey area. Kaura honored his end of the agreement when he didn't have to, helping one of the heroes. Sara's happy and grateful to this villain. And I think this is why he kidnapped Sara to play the Synthesizer in the first place -- he knew how close they all were to the Tokimuras, and that was the best chance any of them had in finding their family, so he chose Sara so at least the Tokimuras' mystery could be solved. And none of this takes away from Kaura -- he doesn't seem like some redeemable guy that could be a bangai hero. He's still a villain, a hateful person, but he DOES have a sense of honor and a code. That's how Hirohisa Soda likes to depict a lot of his villains, and that makes them more interesting to me than the ones who are written to be out-and-out evil assholes or wavering, more-good-than-bad types you predict will end up joining the heroes by the end.

But, of course, since this is Flashman and it doesn't let our heroes feel happy for too long, Sara's soon hit by a painful wave of the Anti-Flash, collapsing within the barely-standing old Tokimura home. The other Flashman are overcome with pain, too -- severe headaches, difficulty breathing -- while Magu sees that their vitals are all dangerously low, noting that they're down to four days.

Keflen's not allowed to feel joy for too long, either, as he makes grand speeches at the Lab before Neferu, talking of taking over Mess, continuing to experiment on lifeforms and become the universe's best. He's delivering this speech while on La Deus' platform -- he's celebrating. Just then...La Deus rebuilds himself and tears through the Lab, Keflen his target. Neferu guards him as Deus sends energy blasts from his hands (it might be a simple effect but one, when combined with the sound effects, I've always liked) and then just casually knocking over the pillars that decorate the Lab. Keflen knows his best defense is to begin a-playing on his Gene Synthesizer, which does slow La Deus down in pain. La Deus makes a final gambit -- echoing Kaura by telling Keflen "You think you're a threat to me? You're just an Earthling." Once again, Keflen doesn't like hearing this...

La Deus spills it all out. Keflen was an Earthling he kidnapped 300 years ago and experimented on by himself in order to have a new apprentice. Keflen begins to break down, looking like his mental state is cracking, but regains his senses, an anger and a hatred for La Deus -- maybe the truth? -- compelling him to keep playing. While Neferu shields him from La Deus, Keflen finally manages to transform La Deus into Deus Beast Soldier Deusula, sending him down to the Earth in Jin, Dai, Bun and Ruu's proximity. (They had been out looking for Sara, but temporarily set it aside once Jin noticed the Lab was near and seeming strange.) You gotta credit the show for this -- they certainly don't cheapen out on monster suits towards the end of the series. If you're going to have a crazy talented designer like Yutaka Izubuchi, you gotta let him do what he wants and put the money into realizing that design. And the monster suits all remain pretty high quality, IMO. And it's certainly important when you're making your head villain into a monster, to have a great design and make an effort in the suit making. Deusula's a perfect, monstrous version of the regular La Deus design. And, as you might imagine, he's not an easy opponent, Anti-Flash or not.

In this fight scene, there's a few shots here of the actors themselves in the Flashman suits. You can usually tell just by looking at the heroines, but a lot of times the actors have a more awkward body language than the smooth movements the trained suit actors we've spent the entire show watching have, and that's a giveaway. You can tell it's not Kazuo Niibori as Red. But they all do a great job in their fight with the Zoros, with Mount Fuji as a backdrop. (One of Yamaoka's favorite things to do.) And by the time they get to Deusula, they need the JAC because they're hit with a shit-ton of explosions. It's crazy! I counted the explosions in this scene -- there are 11 separate explosives rigged around the four Flashman for this attack. (It then subtly cuts to a different angle of the same shot, making it seem like an even higher number of explosions.)

Flashman is the last Sentai until Ohranger that Junji Yamaoka works on as action director full-time. He ends up going over to the Metal Heroes from Jiban through Blue Swat in between. He works on the first several episodes of Maskman, before leaving and being replaced by Michihiro Takeda, who stays with the franchise for most of the '90s and early '00s. It's long been rumored that Yamaoka was disappointed that less time was being devoted to the action scenes and that's why he quit. (Some like to say that censors were complaining, but I never really bought that. I think the Sentai shows at the time becoming more plot- and character-oriented took away the need for Yamaoka to have to fill time with his elaborate action scenes.) Whatever the reason, it feels like Yamaoka really wanted Flashman -- and maybe his tenure as action director -- to go out with a bang. Throughout the series, Flashman didn't have as many memorable action scenes as I thought Bioman or Changeman would often have. (Flashman has A LOT of characters to contend with.) So I really think Yamaoka steps up and makes up for it all by having some seriously great action scenes in these final episodes. That explosion, man...

After being hit with the beams of Prism Shooter, Deusula starts to go a little haywire, giving off electrical shocks and then...reverts back to La Deus! He gives another taunt to Keflen for underestimating his ability before turning his attention to the Flashman, who he thinks are audacious for even trying to fight him. He traps them in a darkened dimension and kicks the livin' Eiyuu Titan out of 'em. He's beating 'em so bad that maybe they wish they felt the effects of Anti-Flash instead. Meanwhile, the Tokimuras -- I'm assuming alerted by Magu -- are driving around in one of the professor's vehicle inventions, trying to raise Sara by radio transceiver. Still unconscious from the pain of the Anti-Flash, she comes to, hearing their calls. Heartbroken that she can't just wait for them and tell them all she just discovered, she just sets off a beacon on her Prism Flash letting them know her location. She leaves knowing she has to rejoin and help the others, which will prove to be a sadly unfortunate decision.

Yellow Flash manages to catch up with the others, getting in a hit at La Deus as she enters via the taketombo technique form of her Prism Baton. Glad to see she's safe and feeling energized that the team's all there, the Flashman get their second wind to fight. (Their pose causes a flash that briefly stuns La Deus, for crying out loud. They're pumped and ready to fight!) For being a big suit that can't walk and has stick arms, the production tries its damnedest to get La Deus to provide a visually interesting battle. Not only with the atmosphere of this dimension he's pulled them in, but they have him on wires, whipping him through the team, swinging his arms to get in hits.

La Deus is not only an amazing design, but voice-actor Unshou Ishizuka's performance as La Deus has always been a favorite of mine. He was pretty young at the time of the show (35), but really conveys this mysterious, knowledgeable monster who is older and experienced and has seen more of the universe than probably anyone, who is also just purely evil and self-serving. He did a lot in bringing La Deus to life and making him seem just so damn threatening, truly standing out as one of the best head villains in Sentai. In this episode he runs the gamut of just rotten-to-the-core glee as he reveals Keflen's past, to outright hatred of the Flashman, to the pained noises he makes as he's being transformed into a Beast Soldier. Ishizuka was a talent and the perfect man for the job. With a character like this, the choice of voice actor is very, very important. Another thing that helps Ishizuka's performance as La Deus is that he never became overly familiar in toku -- it was his first of only five toku appearances, the other roles being one-off guest monsters or, in the case of Zyuohger's Larry, a tiny, tiny, tiny part. So La Deus stands out even more in that respect, rather than if he had just been voiced by a super-familiar choice like Takeshi Watabe or someone like that.

Whenever the Flashman's in a pinch and all five aren't together, one of them -- usually Red -- will complain that they're unable to use the Rolling Vulcan and just blow their opponent away. Well, once Yellow Flash shows up, Red gets his dream and they haul out the Rolling Vulcan. They blast La Deus. Smoke clears and he just strolls through, laughing his ass off. Red Flash's other Rolling Vulcan-themed dream? Getting the chance to shoot the same asshole twice with it. It worked with Garus, and he's getting a chance again here. He orders another blast and it seems to succeed, La Deus erupting in a massive explosion. (It looks like blue ink is rigged with the explosion, which gives it a neat look that sets it apart from the ordinary monsters who die via being blown to oblivion by Rolling Vulcan. Yamaoka did a similar thing for Buuba's death explosion in Changeman.)

Here we cut to Keflen at the Lab, playing the synthesizer. He says something like "Fools. Did you forget you're dealing with me?" before he calls for Kragen. It seems like he's talking about the Flashman, but I think he's also talking about La Deus. Like...ha-ha, La Deus, you might have broke free from Keflen's work, but Keflen's just going to enlarge you as Deusula again, treating you like any other Beast Soldier. In the end, La Deus still ends up in Keflen's hands. He's bested by Keflen, the damn dirty Earthling.

The final scene has the Flashman again looking at the setting sun, dirtied and weak -- barely standing, they're propping each other up -- from the battle with Deusula, and more worried and uncertain than ever. We then see La Deus' enlarged mask, broken, but rising and moving on its own.

ONE DAY REMAINING