Fiveman Episodes 45-48

 

EPISODE 45

I know it was unresolved, but did we really need to bring Gunther back? Was anyone clamoring for a resolution to this? We last saw him transformed into stone and beamed into space or something. And here his stone form is just plopped into the middle of battle and he breaks free and...what? It makes no sense. Did anybody even remember him by this point? I think the show hopes you forget how lame he was or that you missed his episodes, because they really want you to believe he's more important than he is.

And, look, I know 20 minutes isn't a lot of time to tell a story, so some shortcuts are taken for the sake of expediency. But the Fiveman look real bad that they're all basically taken down by Shubarie's monster in no time at all. Jetman goes on to rip off this plot for Toranza's last episode -- there he's going around and turning the Jetman into plaques. Here, Shubarie is trapping the Fiveman in stone monuments to present to Meadow. But Jetman spaces apart Toranza's hunting down each Jetman and trapping them; it takes time and there's some plausibility to it. Here, Shubarie challenges the Fiveman to a fight and instantly traps four of them in stone. He takes Gaku back to the Vulgyre where he, too, is soon trapped in stone. OWARI, show. Sorry, chikyuu. Fiveman are losers.

And the day is saved by...Gunther. He's on board the Vulgyre, takes the Gaku-Rock and flees, before being cornered and basically chucking the rock as far as he can with best wishes. This whole scene with Gunther saving the Gaku-Rock is just filmed so unbelievably stupidly, there had to be a better way of depicting all of this. Also? Fuck Gunther! He sucks! Who cares about him? Make this Arthur breaking in to save the day and we'd be talking. We'd actually care about Arthur facing the odds. 

The Gaku-Rock ends up in that little area where Garoa's been saving up energy and the day is saved by...the Vulgyre, one of its energy penises pissing on the Gaku-Rock and dissolving the rock, freeing Gaku. Gaku then discovers what none of the Zone have in presumably centuries of their living aboard the Vulgyre -- that the Vulgyre isn't a ship, but a giant beast. I know Soda likes his twists with his head villains, but this is something that he's only started to hint at for the past few episodes and is kind of a big "So what?" A neat idea, in my opinion, but underwhelming as presented by this show.

 

EPISODE 46

Fiveman's clung to its villains for so long, they have to rush them off. This episode sees the end of Doldora, Zaza and Billion -- Doldora and Billion being the show's two best villains, IMO.

We learn early in the episode that Meadow is just an illusion created by the Vulgyre to manipulate the Zone officers. It's a case of the Zone getting in their own way and ruining their own plans again, because Vulgyre kept the charade for the conquering of 999 planets and couldn't wait for just ONE more before revealing this and possibly alienating his troops?

Doldora has a meltdown that she's been serving a monster all along. Soda's trying to squeeze together Ahames's final moments of desperation and Igam's disgust at working for Lethal Dogler here, but it doesn't work as well as either of those. Nishi's performance is at least good, until Doldora is combined with Zaza and becomes a monster of the week, an unceremonious end for both characters.

The start of the episode is kind of cool, with Gaku stuck aboard the Vulgyre (I keep wanting to type "Fangire") and facing Billion. There's a nice tension to it, like "How the hell's Gaku going to get out of this one?" And the show blows it by having Gunther stumble into the scene and ward off an attack...and they all just kind of fall out of the Vulgyre. Saywhat? Lazy, lazy writing. Heaven forbid the show have a little tension. It might make things too exciting.

Students at the rebuilt school are shown to have grown Shidon flowers to impress Gaku. When the Vulgyre flies over them, Meadow/Vulgyre FLIPS THE FUCK OUT and crashes; it then sends the Doldora monster out to destroy the Shidon flowers, with one student guarding the last one and being pursued. Remember episode 15, when Garoa grew a Shidon flower to coax Gaku out to a fight? In this episode, just flying over a few Shidon flowers causes Meadow/Vulgyre immense pain, but Garoa had one, and Meadow was able to turn it into a monster? Plot hole! I'm sure people pretend like maybe that was a fake flower, but...c'mon, now.

And despite the bad guys being obsessed with the Shidon flower, the Hoshikawas don't realize its importance until their dad gets a message through to them in two episodes. I thought these guys were teachers.

The show, for some reason, overestimates how much we care about Gunther. He takes a fatal hit for Gaku and dies after telling them where their parents are. Gunther...is kind of an asshole. He was saved by the Hoshikawa parents and repaid them by stranding them where they were when he stole the Star Carrier from them, just because he thought the mecha was cool and he has a tiny peepee and needs to overcompensate. He was a pain in the ass in his debut episode when he was challenging everyone to a fight to prove how big his space balls weren't. This character means nothing; it's the show wanting to get in a heroic sacrifice without having to sacrifice anyone who matters -- and it doesn't work. It also makes you realize how this show has a curious lack of meaningful guest or recurring characters that they have to rely on fucking Gunther for the emotional sacrifice. Really, think of it. The show was too afraid to even have romantic interests -- that episode with Yellow Flash barely addressed the idea, but imagine how much more interesting it would have been if she DID have a romantic connection with Gaku and returned for an episode? Oh, well. It's way too late to fix this show.

The action is the best part of this episode, with the Doldora monster attacking four of the Fiveman and having a couple of them strung up on wires, while Five Red has a final sword fight with Billion, which is immortalized in Gaoranger VS Super Sentai. (Sadly, that montage cuts out the coolest part of the fight -- Billion using the underhanded tactic of covering Five Red with his cape and going for the fatal blow, only to discover that Five Red changed into the Five Tector while hidden.)

This is the only one of the final episodes I kind of like.

 

EPISODE 47

Now it's time for Shubarie and the Gingaman to bite it.

The episode is all about a countdown to the Vulgyre shedding its skin and becoming its true, bestial self. At the exact moment, it needs an enormous energy created by the ultimate death. (It's supposedly the same thing that Vulgyre consumes upon destroying worlds, but...ah, who cares.) Garoa and Shubarie take this to mean the Fiveman's deaths and challenges them to a duel, continuing their little rivalry that nobody cares about.

Shubarie chains himself to Five Red in a final death match. It's a little hard to care, because it's a little too close to the final fight with Billion. Gaku had that rivalry with Garoa that kind of went nowhere, and then he was supposed to have the Classic Niibori Rivalry with Billion because he was a swordsman and then Shubarie comes along and is supposed to be another rival and....ah, who cares. I like how, before fighting Shubarie, Five Red manages to cut off one of Garoa's horns for no good reason. It reminds me of Zack Snyder's Justice League when Superman lasers off on of Steppenwolf's horns. Steppenwolf in that movie is kind of a pathetic loser, but Garoa makes him look like a competent pro.

The big "twist" is that the Vulgyre was hoping for Shubarie's death -- since Shubarie has done so much of the Vulgyre's dirty deeds and murdering, and he has so much blood on his hands, his life is the "ultimate death energy" it wants to use to transform. It would have been nice if any of this was set up, but so much of these final episodes is just rushed and "Oh, shit, we need to start the new show!" And it had to be really motivating for people like Soda to know at this point that Suzuki intended to wipe out the staff in favor for new blood with Jetman.

At least Arthur gets to help pilot the Super Five Robo with the others.

 

EPISODE 48

Ho-hum. You go from a show that had an outstanding premiere to this really rushed finale. Everyone just couldn't wait to get out of this show, viewers included.

We spend way too much time on a mecha battle with Vulgyre, who ends up really trashing and dismantling the mecha. The Hoshikawas briefly get through to their parents, who tell them of the secret weapon: the Shidon flowers, which they should have already guessed. It's Soda desperately wanting to give the episode some symbolic meaning -- the flowers surviving that attack in the first episode, here bringing about the demise of the attacker -- but that plothole from 15 casts a shadow over it.

The Fiveman raid the Vulgyre with the Shidon flower, encountering the tomb of the real Meadow, who was a regular woman who the Vulgyre loved and she accidentally fell to her death fleeing it in fright. The Vulgyre holds her tomb, her body preserved, using a holographic projection of her image to fool the Zone officers. This has a kind of fairy-tale quality to it and could have made for a better twist if any of it had been hinted at. It just seemed to me like the show was always afraid to have Meadow be the true villain -- they always depicted her so prettily. The Fiveman free Meadow's soul and it assists in destroying Vulgyre -- again, something that would mean more if there had been any hint or build-up to it. I think I would have preferred if Vulgyre had been a creature that loved Meadow and she thought it was ridiculous and wanted to harm it and imprisoned IT by transforming it into a ship and using it.

And, now...Garoa's worst moment, of many worst moments.  Things are a-explodin' in the Vulgyre, and he is beating at Meadow's coffin in a panic and then falls into it. We last see him trapped in the coffin, banging at it, trying to get out, as he dies in the explosion once Vulgyre is defeated by eating some Super Five Robo attack. I don't get what the hell they were trying to do with this character. It plays so damn goofily, the circle of making Garoa seem like a buffoon is completed. I don't know if...Garoa is supposed to be so devoted to Meadow, that it's supposed to be kind of touching that he's so shocked that he tries to open her coffin, and it's meant to be some kind of sad twist of fate that he ends up dooming himself with his devotion or...? 

I'm thinking of Kiros' end in Maskman. He's already had a mortal wound by being stabbed by a sword. But then he gets REALLY screwed when an icicle stabs him. Kiros was the love-to-hate-him character, a real pain in Red Mask's side since they loved the same woman. His death was meant to make him seem a little pathetic -- not only was the sword that stabbed him a treasure from his collection, but the icicle was a result of Takeru finally breaking Mio free from her ice prison, which had been Kiros' goal in that episode. It was a freak accident and you're kind of like "Damn! Did Kiros deserve that?" I can't tell if it's a similar thing with Garoa, and Ishikawa's performance has just gotten so bad that it plays so stupidly or if they really think that little of the character. "How's our big, bad ass general die?" "He falls into a coffin and gets locked in it and panics!"

I don't even think Garoa cared about Meadow that much, he just cared about being captain. So...whatever, show. I have no fucking idea why this character turned out like this. I can't think of another toku where the serious general villain becomes such a fucking ding-dong. Maybe he's the best representative for this show. Started off strong, but what the fuck happened?

The final scene is the only one that comes close to having some heart and emotion, but Fiveman bungles it. (Of course.) The Sibling Teachers, who don't seem like siblings and haven't done much teaching, bid farewell to a group of their students, so that they can travel to space and find their parents. The nice moment is the students singing a school song for the team, as the team tries to muster up some emotions for these students they barely know, because they're new characters introduced just a couple of episodes ago. The problem is... The school has just been rebuilt...they're free of Zone. And the show STILL doesn't want to make their teacher heroes teachers! The fight's over and they're immediately abandoning their students!

What...was...the point of making them teachers? Takeyuki Suzuki claims he thought the target audience wouldn't care about teacher-student relations. Well, if that was the case, why not shoot that idea down when it was suggested in the boardroom? Why let it make it to production, as a selling point of what makes the show different? At least Tsuburaya admits with Ultraman 80 that they ditched the school setting because it was too expensive. You could have pretended they were teaching off-screen and nobody would notice. As it is, it'd be like Dekaranger being like "Yeah, they're a cop Sentai! But the precinct is destroyed and we follow the characters in their off-hours."

The show also doesn't have the sense to show a scene of the Hoshikawas reuniting. It could have been a quick little thing after the ED credits, Gaku hugging his dad, Fumiya and Remi hugging their mom, everyone joyous, laughing, crying...but, nope. Stay cold and heartless, and barely doing the bare minimum, right through to the end, Fiveman.

Wrap-Up 

Fiveman took me the longest to cover of any show I've covered here; I'd watch it on and off and hit patches where I just really didn't want to watch it. A 20-minute show with only 48 episodes should have been a breeze to get through. I don't know if it's because, since Sentai's my favorite of the toku franchises, I hold it to a higher standard than the other franchises (and I hold Hirohisa Soda to a higher standard than most other toku writers) or if it's because Fiveman had such a great premiere and really didn't need to turn out the way it did that it's so maddening to watch. It had the ingredients...

It's clear that, more than running on fumes, they just wanted to coast with this show. It was Suzuki's tenth consecutive show as producer; Soda had been main writer for the past eight but writing for the franchise since its start. Suzuki prided himself on aiming higher with his shows, making them appeal to a general audience and not just kids. When he thought Bioman got too serious, he intended for Changeman to be more lighthearted, but the subject matter of that show again took it to mature places. When he thought Changeman got too heavy, he wanted Flashman to be lighter, but the subject matter again took that show down darker paths. So he stayed on that dramatic path for Maskman, Liveman and Turboranger, wanting to appeal to youths more than just kids. In the late '80s, toku faced some criticisms from parent groups and censors and it effected a lot of the productions. With 1990, you had Winspector, which weren't allowed to have weapons, just rescue tools, and avoided having "scary" monsters. So I think Suzuki went into Fiveman wanting it to be more for the kids than he made his previous shows, and he and the writers fought their natural inclinations to dive deeper into the material. So we end up with a half-hearted production.

Wanting to do a lighter, more kid-friendly show wasn't the problem. The problem was they didn't want to commit to that; it's not the style of Suzuki or Soda or directors like Nagaishi. Their hearts were not into it, and I feel like they mostly used it as an excuse to coast and to shut up censors and parent groups. The proof is in the very concept of them being grade school teachers, only to instantly do away with that. Now add to this that Hirohisa Soda has said he was running on empty by Fiveman and wasn't a fan of the them being teachers. The show is at odds with itself, nobody wanting to commit either way. It doesn't have much life, much heart, much FUN.

I've kept saying the show lacks whimsy, which is what you need if you want something to appeal to youngsters and not have it be totally hollow. Two of my favorite Ultraman shows are Ace and 80. I also like Taro and Cosmos, and all of these shows are accused of being too kid-friendly or having too much goofy filler. But they all have a helluva lot of heart and whimsy. They tap into something that makes you feel nostalgic, makes you think of a timeless folk tale. Some episodes ARE damn goofy, but you can't hate them, because they're filled with so much heart, they're coming from a warm place. Some are just the requisite Lesson-Learnin'™ episodes. There's a difference between going for a timeless fable feel or teaching a lesson and "Eh, the monster this week turns people into dancing marshmallows because this is all stupid and it's for kids and kids don't give a shit." You can picture Fiveman, as a show about grade school teachers, being filled with episodes with plenty of morals and Lesson-Learnin'™, but it doesn't even do that!

I always thought the Dynaman -- scientists who dealt with kids at the Yumeno Invention Center -- often felt like teachers to those kids. Old time Toei producer Shoji Abe worked on Dynaman, and he was always conscious (a little too conscious) of keeping things kid-friendly, so there's a lot of lighthearted episodes in Dynaman. Suzuki and Soda wanting to push things in a different way coupled with things like the reduced run time lent Dynaman a kind of experimental feel after a while; it plays around with its tone, it plays around as it tries to navigate what it is, what it can accomplish in its shorter run time, giving it a sense of fun. The cast all has a great rapport, the action is FAST, FAST, FAST and fiery, it's a bang-for-your-buck thrill ride, where even episodes with a dopey monster or corny lesson will still have something to entertain you with.

There have been shows that have been generic or kid-friendly, and what the writing might lack, the casting will make up for. Ulraman Taro's one of the goofiest shows, but lead Saburo Shinoda is so full of energy and so likable that he holds it all together. Gaoranger's not the strongest show in terms of story, but that cast seems to all like each other and gel. They look like they're having a blast, and they make it enjoyable enough that you want to keep following them...

The Hoshikawa cast isn't up to the job. Not only are they underwritten, seeming like lost guests in their own show, but nobody really seems to enjoy being in the show. Toshiya Fuji isn't a bad actor, and he's likable enough but not exactly super charismatic. Red's the star of the show; a good Red can do a lot of the heavy-lifting if the rest of the cast isn't up to it. A GREAT Red can lift his castmates up and make them all look good. Fuji came from the theater, but he has talked about how it took him a while to get used to what he calls the "exaggerated" acting of toku. So I think he can come across a little awkward, and he doesn't have the strong presence to bolster the side of the heroes. (I also think he was probably disappointed by how the show turned out.) I remember someone who attended a fan event saying that Fuji remarked that he wished he was in a more popular Sentai show -- well, you can put some blame on yourself, Fuji! You could have made more effort!

Kei Shindachiya TRIES as Ken but is never given a lot. I still feel the bigger problem is that Ken and Fumiya are pretty interchangeable; the show doesn't care to differentiate them, so they're just there, and both performers seem lost. Kazumi Miyata is a good actress, a little too good for this show. Keiko Hayase has that Miyauchi Factor, a performer who's just lively and dynamic and talented and made for toku. But we know the heroines aren't going to be the top priority. (The heroes aren't even the top priority in this show, man.) If Fuji had been more invested, been a more charismatic actor, had more enthusiasm, he could have filled some of the emptiness left by the other cast members or whipped everyone into shape. Think of someone who goes above and beyond the requirements, whose dedication unifies the cast, like a Keiichi Wada, Yuuji Kishi or Yasuhisa Furuhara type... You needed that strong center to create a sense of unity and bonding. The Hoshikawas, being the first sibling team, ESPECIALLY needed that. They don't feel like family. AT ALL. (Fuji and Miyata at least look like they could be related.) I tried to think of a Sentai cast that seemed to have less chemistry...Goseiger's the one that jumped out. But even with Goseiger, you had Yasuhiro Takeuchi's performance as Gosei Red influencing Yuudai Chiba to improve and take control of that show; Alata became the strong center the show needed and the series improved for it. 

People like to trash Turboranger, but it does so much better than Fiveman. High school heroes were supposed to be a new take, and the show makes more use of that setting, and the younger cast gives the show a different, youthful energy. It pulls off the fairy tale whimsy. It has the strong lead in Kenta Satou, whose enthusiasm bonded most of the cast. The villains were depicted in a dark, horror-like way, and they had a dark fantasy vibe, especially the Nagare Bouma. The show had its own themes and identity.

"Generic as hell" was my response to someone asking me about Fiveman at HJU in '05 when I had first finished the show. But being generic isn't the problem -- being so lifeless and joyless is. It never aims for more than the bare minimum and, even then, frequently falls short of its puny goal. Just such a disappointing "so what" way to end Soda's run, a run that included classic shows and innovations to the franchise, raising the bar for the franchise. It didn't have to turn out this way.

To end this on a brighter note, some of the nice stills from the ED credits, proving that the show's staff WAS capable of emotion, heart and even artistry, the actors capable of joy, but they all chose to abandon that.

 

Fiveman Episodes 41-44

 

EPISODE 41

I'd like to like this episode, but it's done in a really half-hearted way.

Focusing on Kazumi wanting a little more out of life and getting the Hoshikawas to realize how much they practically take advantage of her because of the mother's responsibility falling on her as the eldest is a great idea. Having her opening herself to the idea of love and being taken advantage of by the monster of the week in disguise is a great idea. Miyata, of course, is giving the performance her all: she's sweet and sympathetic, and she gets you to feel her hurt. But it's like someone stepped in and went "Whoa! This is Fiveman! We can't have drama or emotional depth! What are you thinking? Cut some of that stuff!"

First problem is that the disguised monster is played by a terrible actor. Not only is he a terrible actor, but his idea of "cool guy" is about 15 years outdated. Not only that, but he's a skeletal twerp wearing an ugly brown Steve Harvey-sized suit the entire time. Not only THAT, but his appearances are constantly accompanied by the playing of that goofy and obnoxious Southern All Stars song. Not only THAT, but the Zone are so bad at their jobs that they basically give up on their own subterfuge, which was working, because -- I don't know, the episode needed to wrap up, I guess. 

The episode *wants* to be sort of serious about Kazumi being deceived by this monster, but it's already a little goofy with the way the guest character acts and then it winds up becoming a girls-with-guns schlockfest. What was wrong with playing everything straight? And then, even though it's 40 episodes in, part of the Zone's plan is to have Kazumi spill family secrets, so they can learn weaknesses of their opponents. Wow, talk about waiting until the last minute. Doldora didn't think to do this before!? I thought she was supposed to be smart.

One of the things learned, unfortunately, is that Gaku is afraid of ghosts. Gaku gets the Garoa treatment here, meant to look foolish. Fuji's performance is so odd when they're faced with old monsters suits painted white (I mean ghosts). It's filmed in such a way that you expect it to be an act on Gaku's part, to fool Zone back or something. Nope! Gaku apparently IS afraid of ghosts, which doesn't sound very scientific to me. (Remember when he was the science teacher? The show doesn't. Remember when they were ALL teachers? The show doesn't.)

 

EPISODE 42

This episode starts out good enough -- it tricks you. It's Remi kicking ass in a kung-fu group she's teaching, and then Shubarie shows up and kicks everyone's ass in a (surprising for Fiveman) bloody way. It's like one of those '70s martial arts movies with the villain going to a dojo to kick everyone's ass in order to take over. And you're like "I wonder where this is going! I know Hayase and Uemura both trained in kung-fu, are we going to see a big bloody duel between the two!?! That would rock!"

Forget it, Jake. It's Fiveman. Of course the episode devolves into the Gingaman yoinking Fiveman's powers; Shubarie's plan, which is somehow supposed to please a very pissed off Meadow, is supposed to be the Hoshikawas being killed by the Fiveman. But the episode is more about smearing the Fiveman's name? Eh? It's like Soda forgot the point in the middle of writing the script. One of Remi's young students has unwavering faith in Five Yellow, her idol, and it turns the fight around! This scenario could have worked if the kid actor wasn't so abrasively loud. You're like "Why couldn't Shubarie have kicked her ass while he was at it and shut her up?"

 

EPISODE 43

This episode fucking sucks. It's something out of a lazier, more low rent show like Byclosser. I think you're supposed to dismiss it as a dumb Dongoros plan, but the show's used that excuse too many times at this point. So it's not getting let off this time. Even as the "goofy one before the endgame begins" it's just horrid.

The plan is to show couch potatoes non-stop footage of Zone from Fiveman reruns to recruit them as Zoneheads. The dummies again get in the way of their own plan -- if they had just aired the stuff, the couch potatoes would have just sat there and watched it. By turning TVs into cheap costumes of guys in cheap dresses with a TV on their head talking in a sexy anime voice, they creep out the couch potatoes and ruin their own plan.

And if things weren't bad enough, it's a Fumiya episode. So you got him yelling all of his lines through a wince, along with a kid screeching for help, along with the anime-voice TV not shutting up as it chases him. And all for the important message of putting down the remote and getting outside to play some baseball. (Fiveman telling you to stop watching Fiveman...maybe that IS a good message. Took 40 episodes too long to deliver it, though.)

EPISODE 44

Fiveman begins its endgame. I remember these final episodes being kinda boring and I didn't remember this episode at all...

The school the Hoshikawas taught at in the first episode has been rebuilt. They're on their way to the re-opening celebration, but get intercepted by Garoa, who's made his own mecha. That's right, while working as the custodian, he found funky areas of the Vulgyre ship and mysterious energies that he put into a Gorurin to absorb vehicles and mechanical items to create himself a mecha. He does all right for himself, destroying the Super Five Robo, trying to destroy the Magma Base, and then turning his attention to the school when he intercepts an email for the Sibling Teachers.

And I think Garoa should have been killed off in this episode. The point of humiliating a character like him is in order to have him crawl out of the pit and redeem himself; his secretly preparing a mecha and all of the damage it causes does that. When he gets too cocky and tries to attack the school, that should have ended with the Fiveman taking him down for good. (I like their sneak attack of luring him close and having Arthur pop in so they can blow up the mecha's cockpit with Earth Cannon.) We have four episodes left and there's still Billion, Doldora, Zaza, Dongoros, Shubarie, Meadow and the Vulgyre (spoiler alert) to deal with -- he could have easily been written out at this point. His little rivalry with Shubarie isn't important and goes nowhere. They've totally given up on his rivalry with Gaku. Just kill him off! Have him save some face! But the show's not done humiliating him yet...they want the audience AND Garoa to suffer for some reason.
 

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.

Fiveman Episodes 33-36

 

EPISODE 33

Garoa goofs when he tries to create his own spliced monster, with the monster being mostly useless as it bickers with itself until it accidentally discovers it can perform an attack which causes harsh winds, overturning anything in its path. Thanks to Arthur cleaning out some old junk, Gaku rediscovers his old menko cards and decides the best way to fight this monster is...to get it hooked on menko. (You see, the monster boasts that it can overturn anything, but Gaku challenges that it can't easily overturn the cards in a serious, high-stakes game of menko!)

Yeah...

It sounds bad, and it is -- but I CAN picture the scenario working...in a show with more heart and whimsy. Like, I can easily see this working in a Showa Ultraman show. Just a fun, little, lighthearted summer adventure where the broken monster gets caught up playing menko with a bunch of kids at a festival or something. It would tie into nostalgic feelings of childhood fun and games; it would be a little party. It would have the right vibe and music to pluck the heartstrings. (Ultraman Taro did an episode about a monster ruining a mochi-making celebration that was heartfelt and whimsical, for crying out loud!) So you could have had Gaku taking part in some festival with kids, and he decides to distract the monster with their game of menko that the monster gets obsessed with until he cheats. And you can have a nice message for the kids about cheating, but...no, Fiveman's lazy. If not for Arthur's random spring cleaning, Gaku would still be blowing around Japan from the monster's attack TO THIS DAY. I thought these guys were supposed to be smart.

Anyway, I know this episode is Garoa's final failure before Shubarie takes back over, but what's with how weird he looks here? The make-up's different, and his costume looks like the low quality one they use for the live shows at Korakuen. And it's extra pathetic the way the episode ends on a freeze frame of him being hauled off by Shubarie's Black Gorurin shrieking for help. Somebody on the staff really hated this character, methinks.

 

EPISODE 34

Shubarie takes over as the new-old captain and his first order of business is to send a monster to can humans so he can have a celebratory feast with the rest of Zone, calling humans the best delicacy. It's...pretty gross and twisted, and the cartoonish depiction of all of this doesn't detract from that. (I can see modern Twitter whining about all of the euphemisms you can make out of Dongoros' eagerness to be the one to eat Kazumi. I can also see modern Twitter whining about the way the shark monster targets women, with Remi luring him out by wearing a skirt she keeps lifting up. Ew, so inappropriate for a kids show!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

The demoted Garoa is reduced to cleaning the toilets of the ship. I know we've all thought about our Super Sentai villains using the bathroom, and here's Fiveman giving you a peek into that side of their lives. I guess that's one contribution it makes to the franchise.

 

EPISODE 35

You've gotta give Kunio Fujii credit for trying to turn in an emotional episode focused on what the loss of parents means in terms of responsibilities for the oldest child. It's dealing with the core theme of the series; it has a nice guest star in Yoko Nakamura. It has a pretty filming location in the field it's mostly set...it's almost there, but it just doesn't completely soar for me.

Logically, this episode needed to come earlier in the series as an emotional stumbling block the Hoshikawas needed to overcome -- Gaku's guilt that he's spent more time with their parents than his siblings have, and how he's reluctant to talk about them, secluding himself in an area that makes him think of them. But I wouldn't be surprised if Fujii held on to the idea, saving it for when the cast has more of a bond and...they don't. They don't feel any closer than they did at the start of the series. The five continuing to have no connection is what sinks this episode. Fucking Zone feel closer than they do. Guest star Yoko Nakamura feels closer to Gaku than any of his siblings do, and she's a new character we've never seen before and will never see again. The kid Hoshikawas tug at the heartstrings more, and they ain't the greatest kid actors...

I'm not saying this is a bad episode; I have a couple of nitpicks*, but overall, it's a great idea for an episode. And Fiveman's been lacking in episodes of substance and quality, so this is still a reprieve. But it could have been a truly great, stand-out episode -- one of the franchise's best -- if it made the right emotional connections. The best part of the episode is when the siblings are thinking back to all that Gaku's done for them, my favorite being when he's the one at parents' day at school for Fumiya and Remi to draw -- it's pretty sad. (Although there's a part of me that would have liked the wacky image of it being Arthur in the classroom that day! That would have been cheesy, though, and lacked the punch of seeing kid Gaku there.)

*My main nitpick is the way the siblings just sit at the base, watching Five Red being beaten, after he failed to show up and help the four of them in the earlier fight. He tried to be there! He arrived too late! But to just be petty and watch him being beat up, that doesn't feel like sibling behavior to me. You expect something like that from Bouken Black or an asshole Inoue character. Remember when Ken pretended to be Five Red to spare his brother from a deadly battle? Letting Five Red get beat up just because he was late to the scene doesn't seem like that Ken.

 

EPISODE 36

Freaky Fiveday!

A body swap episode between Fumiya and Remi that's meant to highlight the singular intuition of twins but doesn't have any of the fun that body swap stories usually entails. We get a couple of comments that Remi finds Fumiya's body too heavy to move easily in and Fumiya finding Remi's body to not have the strength he's used to and a couple of moments where Ken freaks out how close and touchy-feely and effeminate Fumiya acts since it's Remi because, LOL, Ken ain't one of those homersexuals. (So he's OK if Remi gets close and touchy-feely? Is he House Hoshikawa or House Lannister? Sometimes I think the writers and actors forget these characters are siblings and are just treating them like any other Sentai team.)

One of the fun things about a body swap episode is seeing how well the performers act like one another. Ryouhei Kobayashi acts nothing like Keiko Hayase; he instead just holds his hands in a way that seems like an old lady. Hayase doesn't quite imitate Kobayashi, which would have been easy to do with his one-note delivery of everything, but she DOES try to act cool and masculine and gives the better performance. 

Fiveman Episodes 29-32

 

EPISODE 29

This episode gets a pass because it's mostly all action and it does a good job of keeping a tense pace. You could call it nitpicking, questioning how Garoa has (off-screen) managed finally to locate the Fiveman's base or that the base can suddenly (off-screen) transform and do stuff, but with this show it really smacks of pulling stuff from thin air. Like...the base could do this all this time and the Hoshikawas just sat on it, waiting for the appropriate time its toy is scheduled for release? It feels like you might have skipped an episode.

My main complaint of the episode is...at one point, Arthur's guarding the base, and Five Red goes to bail him out, leaving the others in the background to deal with the mecha fight. We get Gaku fending off most of the Zone regulars while saving the base, launching Arthur off in the Star Carrier and preparing to control the base's transformation. The base is important to the Hoshikawas since their parents created and built it and it's what saved their lives and brought them to Earth, so I just think more of the siblings should have been involved in protecting the base instead of just letting Gaku hog all the glory. It's neat to see each bad guy invade and be fought off, so they could have written it so that, say, Remi was in an area, and SHE had to fight off Zaza's attempt to invade. 

I like scenarios of heroes fighting back an invading force or when the heroes are storming the villain base as the invading force themselves and have to fight their way through. That should have been the centerpiece of the episode and not just boring mecha stuff where the big threat is a monster that shoots fucking bubbles. Also I should mention: Dongoros' abacus gun is pretty funny.

Still...not a bad attempt, Fiveman. You get a C-.

 

EPISODE 30

It would be a great challenge to try and type up a summary of this episode that doesn't sound stupid. It's easy to say "Oh, it's just a mindless one for the kids," but that's giving this lazy script too easy of an out.

It can be boiled down like this: the latest monster has a ball attack that overwhelms the Fiveman. Despite this episode's revealing that Ken is the Maestro of Dodgeball, he takes a barrage of attacks from the monster. The day is saved by the Fiveman observing kids playing dodgeball, as they try to come up with something that will beat Ken, their coach, the supposed Maestro of Dodgeball. They do, and it inspires the Fiveman's new weapon and attack, the Five Ball. Why does this show insist on having the heroes look dumb like this? The Maestro of Dodgeball acts like he's never played the game when the kids are pwning him. The Fiveman learn their new attack from the kids...! I thought they were teachers, why are they the ones being schooled so much?

The Fiveman getting a ball finisher is meant to be a nice throwback, but doesn't help this show's case of "super generic, everyone's out of ideas, we're on fumes here" vibe of the show. The Five Ball is the perfect symbolism of this show taking a step back, when the franchise had been evolving forward by this point.

Ugh.

(I don't even want to point out one amusing moment from the episode, which is when they cut to the Five-kun puppets cheering on the mecha fight and the puppet Garoa cheers for the Fiveman, too, since it's Shubarie's plan and he hates that guy.)

 

EPISODE 31

Not a bad idea for an episode -- Zone creates an image of Midori Hoshikawa to fool the team, Remi taking the bait the most because she's been having dreams of finding her mother in trouble. It's a cruel plan on the part of the villains and has potential for drama. So it's a good serious episode for Keiko Hayase after she's been given some goofy ones, and she delivers a lot of cool fight scenes, too. The problem is in the execution...

The scenario is not presented in a dramatically satisfying way, like they're not committed to making it work. You get the impression they're like "Eh, everybody knows it's a fake-out, so let's not spend much time developing it." You can imagine how this scenario would go in a better show: Zone creates the scenario that Midori appears. Emotionally vulnerable Remi falls for it, but everyone else is skeptical. Remi puts her faith in Midori, putting herself in constant danger for her. In another show, Midori would probably be a monster in disguise or a robot or something, and through bonding with Remi and seeing her endanger herself to save her, would come around to being on Remi's side and sacrifice herself for her. Remi might not have reunited with her mom, but she touched another being, and felt a kinship with it, in a way feeling like she DID get to spend some time with her mom, so there's no real hard feelings.

Fiveman goes that it's a monster that creates projections based on old footage. The monster is a goofball who's obsessed with actress Misora Hibari for some reason. The Hoshikawas find their mother for a touching reunion that falls completely flat because *everybody knows this is a fake-out, so they don't want to commit*. Really, their reactions are so wooden that you expect that they'll reveal they knew it was all a ruse, when, no, they're taking it at face value and only later question if it could really be their mother. (One nice detail being that Gaku is observant and notes that she didn't look 20 years older as she should, since the Zone are basing this image off of old footage, mostly from their attack on Shidon in episode 1.)

The Fiveman at least realize from this episode -- by seeing footage of their mother NOT from Shidon -- that she made it off of Shidon and could still be alive out there. They know from the Gunther episodes that their dad is still out there. I don't think the show planned on having their parents live, but this isn't the type of show to go down such a dark road, so I don't fault it for that cop out..

So, the drama falls flat and the episode shoots in a lot of drab locations because nobody's trying.

 

EPISODE 32

Inoue returns with a sore-thumb, gimmicky, kinda schlocky episode. (I know, I know -- it's supposed to be a "fun" episode, but I think it's out of tune.)

I always thought Inoue wrote episode 41 of Maskman -- the one where Haruka and Momoko pretend to be under Kiros' spell and go on a robbing spree -- and NOT episode 42 -- the one about a bullied kid who eats a magic mushroom and gets strong -- and that the credits somehow got mixed up. Even if he didn't write that episode, here he's combining TWO past scripts of his (Flashman 38 and Turboranger 20). And, if my Maskman theory is correct, it could very likely be THREE scripts he's combining. Yeah, I don't think he was feeling Fiveman when it came time to write this one...

Inoue, who has said that Red is the "least interesting" one of a Sentai to write for, takes out his contempt for the Red Warrior by killing Gaku in a way that makes him and the team seem like easy-to-defeat chumps. This is no fake-out to fool a villain: Gaku DIES from his wounds here. Sure, you can chalk it up to Shubarie seeming cowardly by getting in these fatal blows only when he has the monster stop time to freeze Five Red in his tracks, but...it's a move that's a total knock-off of Wandala's "Time Stop" move in Flashman. The Flashman took plenty of hits from the Killer Saber when Wandala froze them like that, and even when they were all dying of the Anti-Flash, they still took those hits and kept fighting. Something about this just makes Five Red seem like a wimp. (We at least get a cool stunt of a stunned Five Red falling backwards from a cliff; I don't know how they did that stunt.)

When Gaku dies, and the others are panicking, Kazumi blurts out that she doesn't want to die like him and doesn't want the others to, either, so she wants to surrender to Zone. (With an upset Fumiya ready to beat her up while their recently deceased brother's body is cooling right next to them. Nice.) So she ends up pretending to surrender to Zone and become their slave, specifically becoming the slave of the time-manipulating monster so she can take advantage of him and have him reset time to the start of the fight which ended up killing Gaku.

It's hard to convey all of the emotional ups and downs in such a short run time, but Inoue really can't get away with this scenario as easily as he was able to do in other shows because it doesn't work with a team of siblings. Their brother dies, and they're all panicking and arguing. And Fumiya's ready to beat up his sister, and they immediately buy her turn against them -- and it just doesn't work. And there's gross implications of what Kazumi faces while a slave for Zone that you don't want to think of what our poor, sweet math teacher had to endure.

Nerdpick Alert! This episode also doesn't know about time travel rules. When Kazumi gets back to the point in time she wants, everybody somehow retains the knowledge of what happened in the rest of the episode. Gaku's like "I'm not dead!" Fumiya's like "So you faked all of that betrayal stuff, Kazumi?!" The monster reset time; they shouldn't know about this! Things should have played out in the same way! Now, if the monster had a contraption he used to alter time and Kazumi stole that and took it upon herself to go back? Then there's some leeway. "She's the instigator and in control, so she'll retain the knowledge of what happened and can be prepared for Shubarie's fatal attack -- and set up some safeguards in advance." But that ain't the case. You flunked this time, Inoue!

At least if they lost their memories of what happened after Gaku died, Kazumi could forget about her time as Zone's slave.

Fiveman Episodes 25-28

 

EPISODE 25

This episode's the pits. It's so bad, I always think of it when I think Fiveman. "Oh, no. The space clown one." See if this description doesn't just wow you:

An alien clown comes to Earth to convince the monster of the week -- his former circus act partner -- to return to the act.

How does one get the gig and come up with this? I know, let's bury the weak plot by making it a vacation episode! Oh, we can't film anywhere interesting, it's just a write-off? Well...look, it will all be over in 17 minutes and we can just forget about it, right? They can't all be winners. (Although some winners would be nice, Fiveman. Oops! All Losers should be Fiveman's tagline.)

The clown character has a design that would make Zoba and Gunther feel proud. It's atrocious, like he's part of a Dolly Parton-themed Ice Capades spectacular. The actor is so bad, they have to dub him. The Fiveman feel like a guest in this nobody's show, as 90% of the script is the guy running around going "Liogin! Liogin! Come back to the circus! Make the space kids happy again!" (Yes, his partner is lion-themed. That "gin" is part of his name wasn't a tip-off that he might be with Zone, I guess. Just a crazy coincidence.)

If I had to come up with one positive thing to say about it, it's that the idea of Meadow shooting meteors out of her eyes is cool. That's about it.

Just a huge pile of who cares. I hate this episode. And it's not even Fiveman's worst! But it's down there. There's absolutely no coincidence that the next episode is the lowest rated of the series -- this episode was so goddamn bad that people fled the series.

 

EPISODE 26

Here we go. This is it, the infamous lowest rated episode. Garoa becomes a goofball. (And literally loses his balls.)

The premise of the villains having an Upside Down Day, where the grunts get to rule over the high-ranking officers, is an amusing idea, but just doesn't work. What villain is going to go for this? The whole thing is just an excuse to make Garoa look bad, since he's the focus here, when ALL of the Zone regulars should be being bossed around by the group of disgruntled Batslers. No, here even the others are mocking Garoa and taking delight in his humiliation.

It doesn't help that this is the second of the Vacation Location episodes, so the plot is ignored in favor of a boring nonstop chase which shows off said locations. (Boring because the motivation is to find gold for the monster of the week to eat. It also just makes the Fiveman look bad, always being a step behind.)

Not funny, not amusing, not the show-off spectacle they think it is...

Still not as bad as Space Clown, though.

 

EPISODE 27

I'll say it a hundredth time -- I'm a huge Nightmare on Elm Street maniac. I tend to enjoy the toku episodes that are obviously inspired by it or want to rip it off. And it's an Inoue episode! Holy shit, an Inoue take on Elm Street, that's gotta be crazy, right?!

It's a massive disappointment. They spare all expenses with the nightmare sequences (at least Remi's tries to have some action) and the Fiveman are saved by the kid of the week, a supposedly former student of Gaku's who he's helping capture insects for a summer project. The monster of the week is a praying mantis who shrinks in size, and the one amusing moment of the episode is when the kid captures it, recognizing something's off about it and starts prodding it with a stick, which is what breaks the monster's hold over the Fiveman's dreams. It's just a funnily edited scene, going between the kid's disgust with the critter and his tormenting it along with the monster's reaction. It's short, because Fiveman doesn't want you having TOO much fun.

Toshiya Fuji's deliveries are pretty strong in this episode; his pissed off reaction to the monster suggests Gaku should have had more disturbing, devastating nightmares than the one we're shown -- maybe something involving losing his parents or siblings.

Leave it to Fiveman to fuck up a Freddy plot. Even RX did a fun Elm Street episode. RfuckingX!

 

EPISODE 28

Bio Hunter Silva. Queen Ahames. Sir Kaura. Thief Knight Kiros. These were the Sixth Villains I grew up with. They're tough, they're cool, they're a major threat to our heroes, really messing them up. Then there were other awesome ones I saw later, like Salome, Banriki, Zenobia, Doctor Ashura, Yamimaru and Kirika... So maybe you can understand why I find Shubarie such a weak disappointment. (No, I'm not going to be typing "Chevalier.")

I love Flashman, and Green Flash is one of my favorite Greens, so I was excited when I first found out Kihachiro Uemura would be in this show. But Shubarie is so lame. I don't like his design -- it's like Uemura's being swallowed by the costume, and what's with that spray tan make-up? And I certainly don't like his gimmick -- he's basically a male idol who attacks by singing and gets all of the female characters to swoon over him. It's a monster-of-the-week gimmick, not something a strong, formidable Sixth Villain should be doing! Really, it's an anime character -- you know the ones who are supposed to be cool, but they're really lame dandies. The character is meant to be somewhat cool, a hero in his own head whose past victories for Zone led to a life of comfort and fame for him. But I find the character's overall pretty dorky, and I think Uemura is miscast and deserved better. (I've said in the past that I think Jun Yoshida would have fit the part better. I could also picture Ryousuke Kaizu in the role. But they deserve better than to play this dweeb, too.)

I've gotta give Uemura credit, though. Some performers would play this character pretty one-note, resting in that cheesy area of him being a showman, but Uemura does get in some moments of anger and where you feel like Shubarie CAN be a threat, that there's something more and something dangerous lurking behind the frivolous facade. But also? Uemura looks like he's having a blast. And I think he's the only one...

The show not nailing heart, the show failing at comedy, the heroes not having a good rapport or connecting with the material -- all that makes the entire hero side of the cast seem kind of miserable and like they'd rather be elsewhere. Zone has a couple of good actors and characters with potential, but they're barely used. There's not much excitement or sense of wonder or whimsy or FUN in this show. It's all encapsulated within a scene in this episode: to counterattack the singing attack of Shubarie and his Ant Capone-looking monster pal, the Hoshikawas decide to fight back by singing the Fiveman OP. Appropriately, music teacher Remi leads them. Too fourth-wall breaking? Eh, who cares, it's meant to be cute. But it's not. Look at the cast -- they all look like they want to shrivel up and die out of embarrassment. Whenever they cut to Fuji singing, he looks like he's getting dental work done. It's clumsy, awkward, dead on arrival -- without pulse, like so much of this show.

Shubarie is said to have been popular and there was a slight uptick in ratings when he appeared, which producers attribute to his character. Is it any wonder, when Uemura's the only one who seems to want to be in the show? Just as Shubarie's returned to bail Zone out of trouble, I guess Uemura's arrival bails Fiveman out.

I guess you could say they cast Uemura because it's a...*puts on sunglasses*...FLASHy role. *YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!*

Fiveman Episodes 21-24

 

EPISODE 21

I guess this is the kind of kid-centric episode you'd expect from a show about grade school teachers, but it still lacks something that other shows that have done a similar plot (our hero takes a beating to prove what courage is to some kids; kids proving their own bravery when in a crazy bad guy plot) have pulled off. (Momoko fighting Skull Dogler this ain't.)

Here, at episode 21, the show decides that the "Sibling Teachers" are kind of famous. Famous enough for three boys, failing at Phys. Ed., to email them (that's right, EMAIL THEM, in 1990!) asking for their help. Gym teacher Ken answers the call and, throughout the ordeal Zone dishes out this week, proves his point and improves his students. (But before you call him a good teacher, take note how he still refers to the kids by the nicknames their bullies give them -- especially calling the chubby one Konishiki*, ouch.) Their victory, Ken's struggle, this episode...it's just meaningless. These weren't students he knew but three randos, and he and the viewers will never see them again.

Couldn't they have come up with something a little more serious for the boys to conquer than a vault box? C'mon. Gym holds more horror than that. Climbing the rope -- *that's* some scary shit, man.

*In case you don't know, Konishiki is the name of a famous sumo wrassler.

 

 EPISODE 22

A half-baked episode that feels like two incomplete scripts stitched together. There's just something lacking here -- characters don't behave like people in this episode. It only gets a pass because Ryousuke Kaizu is the guest star. Picture it being, say, the guy who played Jiban, and we'd be in trouble here. But it's sad to waste Kaizu in such a way.

We're just dropped into a battle between the episode's villain, Queen Killer, and the Fiveman. Queen Killer's not with Zone, but wants to consume Earth's nature for her own needs, and wants to get to it before Zone destroys it. (If they still haven't by episode 22, Queen Killer, what does that tell you?) Billion recognizes her as a legitimate threat and makes clear he doesn't like her. I guess this is a good time to say that I like Billion; he hasn't been given much, but you easily get the character, his mindset, his past. He's a samurai who was probably a great warrior, but sold out and buries his guilt and shame and self-hatred by drinking, hoping for a good fight, probably hoping that that good fight is the one he dies in. 

Queen Killer is a masked costume, looking like something out of B-Fighter Kabuto, and it's a missed opportunity that she isn't a face role with some cool bit of casting, like Miyuki Nagato or Kana Fujieda. Voice actress Kazuko Yanaga is good, but I would have preferred a face role. Kazumi's offended by Queen Killer's disregard for nature and wounded. (She falls into a river. No, Inoue didn't write this episode -- although perhaps he should have.)

Red Mask happens to save Kazumi, and just happens to be developing some crystal with the power of the sun that our nature-eating monster soon takes an interest in. She destroys nature; he saves it! There's just a narrative lumpiness to this and nobody really behaves logically. Kazumi is saved by Red Mask; his enthusiasm about his project makes her think of her dad. No "Hi, strange lady I found in a river covered in blood. Um...what's your story?" "Hi, strange quack of a scientist who lives in the middle of nowhere. What the hell are you up to?" Just weird reactions and things like him physically carrying her back to bed which leads to a weird slap...

I think...I THINK...that maybe the show was going for some kind of meet-cute? Is Red Mask's character supposed to be a little kookier than he comes across? He ends up sacrificing his crystal to save the Fiveman and then splits off-screen, abandoning his lab and leaving Kazumi a note like "Hey, I'm going overseas to recreate the crystal and try to restore nature. Take care, you hear?" And Kazumi is like "When Zone is defeated, we can be reunited..." WHAT?! They're acting like he's an alien going off to save his world with his newly created invention or something, and the possibility of seeing him again is...well, impossible! He just cleans out his lab and leaves Japan... If you wanted to have them act like people, you would at least have some kind of goodbye scene set at the airport or something. This is just cheap, weird and uninvolving.

"But Shougo, these shows are made for toddlers whose brains aren't formed and they don't care about structured, sensical stories with logic!" That's not the point. The point is we know so many of the writers and staff on this show are capable of better because they've proven in the past they've done better. Don't let 'em off the hook!

I would like to highlight Kazumi's actress Kazuko Miyata again, though. She tries, man. She's often the only one going for real emotion. Here she gets in some good action, but since she's still recovering, Miyata makes Kazumi just seem so miserable looking -- she's sweating, she's bleeding. It's uncomfortable to watch!

 

EPISODE 23    

And now we arrive to the debut of the infamous Five-kun puppets. I always felt like people made a bigger deal about them than is necessary. Outside of this episode, they just provide commentary for certain moments in subsequent episodes, no different than the storyteller from Kakuranger. They didn't join the show as full time cast members -- they aren't Sentai's Cousin Oliver. It's not some stupid arc where the Fiveman are turned into puppets and they spend the next cour showing off crazy puppet action. No, it's this pretty reasonable episode and then harmless commentary stuff. They don't even last the entire show! I don't see why they caused a big deal...

Anyway, Fumiya is staging a puppet show for some kids, with some anti-Garoa commentary. Like any thin-skinned bully, this doesn't please Garoa, so Dongoros volunteers to act on his behalf. (See? This fluffy episode is a Dongoros plot, so nothing to get bent out of shape over.) He enlists a monster to take the form of the kaijuu puppet Fumiya's show used, claiming that dolls and puppets have souls, and so he basically uses the Fiveman puppets as voodoo dolls. If that's the case, the solution doesn't make much sense -- Fumiya realizes the monster can only harm him as Five Black, not Fumiya. Fumiya's still Five Black! Bah, whatever. It's still not the worst Fiveman's going to get. (Send help.)

The last scene is the stored Five-kun puppets springing to life and announcing their involvement with the show henceforth. I think maybe these things would have been a little easier to take if...say a kid was putting the box of puppets in that storage room. Unbeknownst to him, a shooting star passes through the night sky out the window, just as he's thinking to himself how much he wished the Five-kun puppets were real. And then... But that's a level of whimsy Fiveman doesn't have. As is, you're just left wondering what the hell's the purpose of them. It's like the producers thought there was potential for a spinoff or something -- you know when shows used to force a backdoor pilot into a show, and when you rewatch it with that knowledge you're like "Geez! They really thought they had something with THAT?! Lunatics."

 

EPISODE 24

Fiveman can't really do comedy well. It can't do drama well, either. Here's an episode that wants to begin comedically and end dramatically and Fiveman REALLY can't pull it off.

Zone wants to train some of the Batsler soldiers in the ninja arts; we follow the inept Batsura #339 as he tries and fails to make the cut. Along the way, Remi takes pity on him, and he decides to help the Fiveman stop this plan, falling in love with Remi before getting a dramatic death.

None of it works. First off, it's one of those plans that makes Zone look stupid, but they're dead serious about. (Have these Ninja Batslers transform into animals so they can infiltrate society.) Secondly, #339 is voiced by Hideyuki Umezu, aka Turboranger's Zuruten. So, he works for the goofy part, but when he's meant to side with Fiveman, you don't buy it and question his motives and expect a betrayal. (Umezu would have been a better replacement for Dongoros' voice instead of Katou, if you ask me.)

The worst part? When Remi takes pity on him and saves him, he asks her why. She says "Because a Batsler's life is the same as a human's." Tell that to the 3,424 Batslers you've killed so far in the show, Remi! (Geez, just after I compliment the show for avoiding something so cheesily predictable when Gaku saved Gunther, too.)

Fitting with the rest of this show, the Batslers are so non-descript that I'll forget what they even look like -- and even their name -- when I'm not watching the show.