EPISODE 20
This is sneaky and clever of Soda. Of course there's going to be a smartass like me being like "Why is Red Puncher Oh Red's robot when Green is the boxer?" Soda tries to explain it to you by having an injured Shouhei train Goro to use the robot and make it make a little more sense. Not only that, but Goro gets trained by the tough old dude who trained Shouhei in the first place, which is basically saying he's as good, if not better than Shouhei. You won this round, Soda...just barely.
That kid from episode 16, Mikio, pops up again here. I guess he's intended to be a sort of throwback to a kid like Taro in Goranger or Masaru from Battle Fever J, but it highlights a problem of Ohranger -- at least Taro and Masaru were related to one of the regulars. Why is Ohranger so afraid to have our heroes have any sort of connection to the outside world? We hardly see any of their relatives, friends, love interests -- anything! Sugimura doesn't like to get too personally involved with his heroes, and doesn't give them much of a life outside of their heroic duties, so I'm thinking about this in terms of being a Soda fan. In a Soda show, Mikio WOULD be related to a regular; in episodes like the one with Genius Kuroda, one of our heroes would have idolized him as a scientist and be given that personal connection; that cop and his kid from episode 3 would have been a family friend, not recently-met randos. Those are just a few examples, you get the idea. The Ohranger don't make meaningful connections with anyone outside of the job -- they don't even really bond or get involved and help with a personal problem with the many kid guest stars, they just save them and move on.
So it is nice to have a guest like Iwajima, Shouhei's boxing trainer. We're given some info about what Shouhei was like pre-UAOH -- that he represents the old Rocky Balboa "it doesn't matter how hard you hit, it's how hard you can GET hit and keep moving forward" school of thought.
You haven't even been able to count on Yamaoka to bail you out with some cool action these past couple of episodes, because it's clear that he doesn't like mecha shit. (I don't blame him; the ground fights are always going to be cooler and deserve the focus he gives them.) The coolest thing he's ever done with mecha fights is when he'll film parts of them outdoors, and he doesn't do that here with these episodes.
Familiar Face of Sentai Past: Yuuzo Hayakawa, aka Jetman's Jiiya. Maybe not an important get to YOU, but he was so damn likable in Jetman and awesome here as the hard-as-nails trainer who hates everyone.
EPISODE 21
Soda, Soda, Soda...*sigh* This one stinks. Sad thing? It's a funny idea. Yuuji, the young brash one of the team, wants a new mecha to call his own, so he jumps at the chance to use a mecha that ends up being a goofy and useless piece of junk. But...couldn't the show have come up with something better than Kendama Robo? Having a giant mecha that uses a kendama is not just silly, but dangerous! Those things are weapons! In fact, Yuuji nearly kills a group of people by not being able to do kendama moves, dropping the giant ball in their vicinity! (I like the idea of this city, known for their wood creations, inventing a wooden robot, though.)
This episode kicks off with the widely mocked bit of Momo and Juri leading an aerobics exercise for Ohranger Robo and Red Puncher. It's an...interesting way to convey getting the robots back in peak performance mode, but it's just goofy. It's something I could picture working and being funny or whimsical in something like Bioman, but it just doesn't work here, especially with how goofy Oh Red gets in the cockpit. (It's the way Yokoyama goes on to act as characters like Red Racer or Mega Red.)
It's surprising to me that Masashi Gouda went on to be popular for a while after the show. I think the show lets him down the most with the tone changing and not knowing how to handle Yuuji -- despite being 25, the show often likes to paint him as the young and irresponsible one, but then some episodes like to treat him like the cool member. And then it's weird to keep in mind that Sugimura wanted Hideki Fujiwara to play Yuuji, when Fujiwara has that real smart-ass attitude about him and always looks 15.
Familiar Face of Sentai Past: Takeshi Kuwabara, aka Liveman's narrator and Dairanger's Guhan.
EPISODE 22
The plot of this episode reminds me of something you'd see in a Goggle Five or Dynaman, so in a way it's a throwback -- but it also looks to be a saving-some-money episode. Goro goes on the run protecting a kid who's targeted for a piece of Red Puncher-related technology he has, and they mostly undergo stock footage attacks -- the same effort they put in the chases of the first and third episodes just isn't here. (But there are still some cool action scenes courtesy of Yamaoka -- that overhead shot on the bridge and Oh Red's battle on the hill, for example.)
I mostly remember this episode as the one where the computer gives Goro a Waterworld-style back tattoo and where Gaoranger VS Super Sentai gets their clip of Miyauchi going "GO!" Just a pretty plain episode, that introduces the Ohranger Robo/Red Puncher combo without much necessity or fanfare.
Familiar Face of Sentai Past: Shouhei Shibata, aka Dairanger's Akomaru.
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