Ohranger Episodes 3-5

 

EPISODE 3

An episode that works thanks once again to some cool action -- it's mostly just Goro and a kid who's targeted by Baranoia on the run for an entire episode. The villain plan doesn't make the most sense to me -- this kid once found a fragment of a stone tablet that led to the discovery of all of the Choriki abilities, so the Baranoia want to scan his memories for the information on this one fragment he found. I like that they want to dig into the origin of the Ohranger's powers, but what can you get from this kid's fuzzy memory of one fragment?! Capture Miura and put HIM into the monster's contraption! You'll get way more info. And don't tell me Miura's too guarded to be captured, because they go on to capture him in just a few episodes.

Just a tweak in the writing would have made this work, like if the UAOH had let the kid hang around the area as they found more fragments and put the whole tablet together. Because it's not like it's a bad villain plan, there's reason to it. We've seen this scenario done stupider in other Sentais, like that Sunvulcan (or is it Goggle V?) that's trying to transform a modern day person into their ancient ancestor in order to somehow get a piece of info from the ancestor's memory...! What malarkey.

But we're just at episode three, and we already have a kid episode. Sugimura must have really been tortured, holding it in and doing two kid-free episodes.

Familiar Face of Sentai Past: Shirou Izumi, aka Yuuma/Change Pegasus and Burai/Dragon Ranger, in a flashback scene as the kid's deceased dad, who has a nice speech explaining the kid's fascination with geology.

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EPISODE 4

This one has a cool premise of the monster letting loose little parasites that transform people into Machine Beasts. There are a lot of cool fight scenes with fiery surroundings. My problem is just these two things:

1) I don't feel like the people who were transformed into machines should so easily be turned back. The cop dad who gets turned into the monster turns back and forth between his normal self and the machine, and it doesn't really work for me. Even if similar stuff has happened in toku since the beginning, the description of this parasite that transforms flesh into metal makes it sound like it should be kinda permanent, don't you think?

I don't see the Baranoia going for this plan, anyway. They're meant to think they're superior to humans. They think they're gods. So why would they want to turn the beings they think so little of into something like them?

2) We follow this cop dad and his kid and...the kid makes you want to poke out your eardrums like Kakihara at the end of Ichi the Killer so you're deaf to his whining. He's one of those kid actors who just screeches all of his lines, no matter what he's saying. He's not an annoying character, but the actor makes him annoying -- so you don't really care about him OR his dad. The dad has a kind of broad, comedic vibe to his performance, so a scene with him trying to shoot himself to stop his monstrous rampage doesn't play as seriously as intended.

If you can look past these things...you're a more forgiving person than I.

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EPISODE 5

Talk about a villain plan that makes no sense. This is the first episode to not be written by Sugimura, but by Toshiki Inoue. The memo must have been handed down "This is a Sugimura show, so don't forget to include kids." It's atypical of an Inoue script to be so kid-heavy, but this one has TWO.

I feel like this episode is just thrown in here because of a possible similarity to the previous episode. It makes no sense to me that Bara Cactus coughs up some gold glitter on people and...makes them eat machinery to take on whatever function said machine had? EHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH?! Seems to me like this script might have been a "they get turned into robots/machines," but it was altered after the last episode. So instead of people being turned into robots, a kid eats a computer and ends up as smart as a computer. Yeah, I don't think Inoue's one you turn to for sci-fi. (We at least get one cool Cronenbergian scenario of a kid eating a gun and getting a gun hand.) Inoue's more about human drama.

The story's focused on a bullied kid and his falling out with his older brother, and it's meant to mirror the Machine Beasts of the week, Bara Cactus and his brother. The ending scene with the wounded Bara Cactus returning to the Baranoia base to find his kid brother strung up and tortured to death -- only to then be executed by Bacchushund himself -- is a surprisingly grisly shock, and a typically Inoue way to end the episode. My problem is...there's no reason for us to believe that these two have developed feelings. Bacchushund is disgusted that the one seems to feel love for his brother. We don't know anything about the Machine Beast process to be like "Ah! They're capable of evolving" or whatever. Why are they cactus themed?! Does Baranoia create cybernetic monsters, turning living things into robots? I don't think so, that goes against their M.O. But why else are they called Machine BEASTS? So, there's no real reason to give a crap about these two, and it's not a good parallel to just have the cactus see the brother protect his one brother and develop feelings from that. It's not HORRIBLE, and you can just chalk this up to being an episode that comes too early in a show's run -- therefore it's not so smooth. But...it doesn't work for me. Save machines-who-feel for a more important storyline.

Also, an earlier Sentai would have given Yuuji a reason to care about these kids so much; he'd probably have had -- and lost -- a sibling. But then that reminds me of the Turboranger Inoue wrote where Shunsuke feels obligated to help the Fire and Ice Bouma brothers because he's traumatized by losing his brother. Maybe Inoue didn't want to repeat himself exactly (unlike a certain other Sentai writer who's going to be showing up on Ohranger soon). Here, we're just told Yuuji's an only child who envies siblings.

And while the last two episodes had Yamaoka style to help save them, this episode's action director is Kazuo Niibori. Niibori's an amazing suit actor, but his record as action director has always been a little spotty for me. He's no Yamaoka, but he at least tries to keep Yamaoka's pace in this episode. Still, the difference is felt.