Fiveman Episodes 37-40

 

EPISODE 37

A pretty decent episode, with a lot of action, a tense pace, Gaku pulling out a crazy suicide attack, and something for Ken to do.

Because of the escalating battle since Shubarie arrived -- and NOT because of Bandai's wishes -- Gaku develops the Five Tector. Ken, the team tough guy, is the one wearing the armor in its final tests in battle against the others, but it malfunctions and Ken flips out. Ken doesn't see the worth in having new armor, arguing it's their own, natural physical strength they need to rely on. (Which is logical coming from the Phys. Ed. teacher.) After relentless attacks, Ken caves and uses the Five Tector, but to support his side of the argument, it's not just the fancy new tech that wins the day, but Ken's courage and the strategy he comes up with to win.

Ahhhhhhhhh, isn't it nice the way they get the Five Tector -- arguably the first power-up in the franchise -- for actual story reasons and not toy reasons? (They didn't sell the Five Tector for kids or as action figures.) Gosh, remember when it wasn't the toys driving these shows?

 

EPISODE 38

Too much Fumiya! I'm not kidding when I say he's the only Fiveman to appear in this episode until the B-Part. Did everyone else have the day off? Were they trying to repay Kobayashi for his lost Rider role? (This episode should be all the evidence you need that he couldn't hold his own show. And, no, I'm not hard on Kobayashi because of his Tweets slamming new Sentai. I think everyone's bothered by his Tweet because he hit too close to home for them. I'm hard on Kobayashi because of his performance as Fumiya.)

This episode's meant to be one of those amusing seeing-the-villain-actors-sans-makeup ordeals, and it's supposed to be twice as amusing since they're posing as the Sibling Teachers. If they hadn't posed as the Sibling Teachers, they might have been a little more successful with their plan, but they just couldn't resist dirtying their opponents' image. It's just plain hubris that brings them down.

I like how the episode ends with the REAL Sibling Teachers teaching at that small school and the narrator is like "The Hoshikawas enjoyed teaching once again." He might as well have just said "Hey, remember when these guys were teachers way back, when the show seemed a little promising? *sigh*" 

The Zone do more teaching in this episode than the Hoshikawas have done the entire show!

 

EPISODE 39

There are, appropriately, five things for which Fiveman is famous for.

1) Being so bad it nearly killed the franchise.
2) Toys selling so badly that they cluttered the toy shelves. (Fiveman merch, up until about a few years ago, was the only pre-Zyu Sentai stuff you could find for under $100.)
3) Having one of the lowest rated episodes of the franchise.
4) The damn puppets.
5) Miki Mizuno was in an episode.

People love this episode. "It's Inoue's audition for Jetman!" It's not a bad episode; I like Billion, so it's nice to focus on him. But Emperor Inoue has no clothes, man -- he totally rips off of the superior episode 33 of Maskman, which was written by Kunio Fujii. In that one, Changeman's Tokie Shibata plays Eri, a woman who's attacked by a monster that Kiros shows up and kills. Feeling he saved her, she falls in love with him, and he misleads her into attacking the Maskman by claiming they're the bad guys. When placed in danger by an attack of Kiros', he finally admits that he never saved her, he just wanted to test his strength on the monster who happened to be attacking her.

Here, the alien woman Sora comes to assist Billion, having fallen in love with him after he saved her from a monster attack. Billion misleads her into thinking the Fiveman are the invaders of Earth, and she attacks them. Taking a fatal blow from Billion in the middle of a wild attack, he finally admits that he had no intention of saving her, he just felt the call of battle and killed the monster who happened to attack her.

The difference is mainly in execution. Fiveman has a section where Sora and Billion cosplay as humans and go on a date set to a Eikichi Yazawa tune that seems to appeal to people since it plays like a DORAMA. It's a soapy little montage, but doesn't mean much because we barely know Sora and we have no idea of Billion's feelings. That's my main complaint about the Fiveman take, is that it tap dances around if Billion actually felt anything for her -- he doesn't seem to. He's a dick and doesn't blink an eye when asking her to sacrifice her humanity, but at the end of the episode he throws a flower into the sea in her memory, with the narrator commenting on "the flower has died for love." Shunsaku Kudo certainly doesn't play it like he felt ANYTHING for her, so this attempt of Inoue's at trying to give Billion another shade or making him seem more complex doesn't work. In Maskman, Kiros just kind of revels in being an asshole after the reveal, which might seem more "simplistic," but adds to the love-to-hate-him quality of the character.

 

EPISODE 40

The coolest Gaku ever is in this show is in the opening credits -- that shot of him practicing kendo in the snow. So it's nice that someone was like "Hey, let's pick up on that" by having Gaku teaching a group of kids kendo. And it's another nice addition that someone was like "Hey, let's make it a Billion episode, too" since he's the swordsman and a logical rival for Red. And it's extremely nice that someone was like "Let's make it a cursed sword episode," but tweaking it a bit by having the sword actually be the episode's monster of the week, which is neat.

It's sad that this is the kind of episode that should have fallen earlier in the series, and you would forgive some of its genericness, but this show has stumbled so badly you're like "That type of barebones episode at 40? It's better than Space Clown, so I won't complain!"

I think they should have killed Billion off here, though. This is probably that big battle he yearned for, he gets a cool new form, plus he turned giant -- he shouldn't have come back from that.