EPISODE 15
An episode that's considered a classic even amongst non-Ohranger fans. It's Inoue, but this is probably a script that people expected from someone like Takaku. As with episode 5, Inoue writes Bacchushund as being much more vicious than he's ever depicted. It's a cool idea to have all of the disregarded Baranoia creations -- weak warriors, warriors who started to feel emotion -- come together to give birth to a robot who seeks revenge against Bacchushund. (Since Inoue wrote Episode 5, you can wonder if maybe the experience with the Cactus brothers developing feelings is something that led to Bacchushund's scrapping so many robots he deems unworthy.)
Inoue chooses again to focus on Yuuji, who's the first to take notice that the Machine Beast isn't against them as usual, in time getting the robot to trust and befriend him. And it's done in a way that sidesteps the predictable developments -- you expect the Baranoia to gain control over Bara Revenger and have him attack people and frame him, but their hold over him doesn't take. Yuuji decides to take him down before he CAN become a threat and preserve the robot's honor. (It's a good thing Miura's absent from this episode, because there's no way he'd allow Yuuji to use Choriki energy from his Storage Crystal in order to save Bara Revenger.)
This could have also easily been a scenario in which Bara Revenger gets a human form, and it's a gravure idol -- and it becomes a love story, which would have been too predictable. (Although, with the way Yuuji begins this episode jealously observing couples...maybe Inoue's saying it IS a love story?)
This episode marks the directorial debut of SFX director Hiroshi Butsuda. He's been with the franchise since Changeman, taking over as chief SFX director with Fiveman. He remains Toei's tokusatsu SFX director, but he did move over to regular directing. I think he can do good, stylish work, and here his best moments are the way Bacchushund's debut arrival on Earth is filmed, but -- most especially -- the episode's final scene. The wounded Bara Revenger completely crumbles down and becomes nothing but junk -- dying by the dog he took a liking to.
Maybe I'm reading too much into this next bit, but I don't care. While Bara Revenger avoids attacking people, his first real emotional connection comes with that dog that hangs around Yuuji. The dog plays a big role here, witnessing the robot's end. And I just got to thinking about how the main Baranoia are, for some strange reason, named after dogs:
Bacchushund -- dachshund
Hysterrier -- terrier
Bulldont -- bulldog
Malteua -- maltese and chihuahua
This episode makes me think...dogs = man's best friend. Maybe the show is saying that modern man's best friend is technology/machines, and the Baranoia being named after dog breeds is meant to be ironic since, duh, they're NOT man's best friends. And here it's come back full circle with this robot, Bara Revenger, who is taking on human ideas and qualities, obtaining some humanity and...makes friends with man's best friend.
EPISODE 16
From a good episode to a turkey. Why, Soda? WHY?!?! I might have griped about some Ohranger episodes, but this is the first one that I think is just a real disposable, stinker, waste of time. The thin story barely hangs together and seems like it was written about two seconds prior to the cameras rolling. It has nothing to do with anything! It's like some forgotten idea for Bycrosser or something.
The Machine Beast of the week makes no sense. He's a clock/piano hybrid who plays music that causes illusions or some such shit. This, in turn, causes a kid to be plucked from the year 2200 and land in present day 1995 -- I mean 1999! -- because he has some kind of powerful jeweled necklace that he just happened to steal from his dad that day. That's about it. This relates to nothing. I mean, there's brief talk about the Baranoia getting this kid's doohickey so they can go in the past and kill Ohranger's ancestors, but even before you can paint an image of that TV-PG version of Terminator, it's quickly discarded in favor of focusing on this kid making friends with another kid. Pointless. There's not even any cool action to save this episode! That tells me they were just thinking about the next episode -- a big two-parter -- and cranked this one out without thought or care.
I believe this episode is the first time we see Shouhei's henshin sequence. We've seen Goro's full sequence several times and Yuuji's only a couple. (And it's not even the entire thing they do for Goro.) I don't think they ever do one for the heroines. It's just weird to me, because it's not like it's a complicated piece of film -- the actors' heads on a digital grid. But for some reason they just didn't want to do 'em.
Strangest of all? This episode inexplicably involves a kid -- Mikio -- who inexplicably goes on to appear in more episodes. *epic shrug*
