Remember Beast Soldier The Zukonda? You know, the one Kaura brought, who pulled an arm and leg off of Flash King. The one who was shrunk and tossed into the sea by Yellow Flash and was eaten by a fish. I bet you forgot all about him. Well, Hirohisa Soda didn't! I noted in my Turboranger coverage the way Soda showed signs of burnout by leaving a few too many loose threads, but that's not the case with Flashman.
This episode sees the ghost of Zukonda returning to terrorize a small village with the help of Ley Garus, who he'll merge with and cause more mayhem. Unlucky for the bad guys, Bun just happens to be palling around with a vacationing family who he helped when their car broke down. It's another nice surrogate family episode, as Bun gets to taste a summer vacation and all of the food and fun activities it entails. And because of the premise, it goes all out in being a summer ghost story, with a lot of funky directorial choices by Takao Nagaishi, who's really experimenting with filming techniques. (One thing he's fond of in this episode is using colored camera gels, mostly blues and greens.)
So, the episode is a lot of crazy occurrences and action, and keeps up a mildly creepy atmosphere. (It's a light sort of carnival "scary," it's not going for actual horror.) With most of the episode's entire focus going to Bun, it feels like the episode acts as not only a summer vacation for Bun, but a vacation for the rest of the Flashman actors in real life, as well. Things look bad until Bun just happens to realize that Ghost Zukonda remains terrified of fish, so Bun wielding a dead fish as a weapon ends up saving the day, which plays better and funnier than it sounds.
For the sake of a mecha fight, Keflen comes along and makes Ghost Zukonda take physical shape. But what's cool about this forced mecha fight, for a change, is that they use Flash King and successfully defeat Zukonda, so it's a nice bit of revenge. Also, this whole episode was led by Kaura, with Keflen pretty pissed that one of his creations -- Garus -- was being used to just be possessed by Kaura's dead buddy. So, this might be the first indication that Keflen and Kaura are going to end up butting heads.
The episode achieves what it wants to accomplish, but it's not quite a favorite of mine. I would have either liked the others to be worked more into the episode or for us to care more about the family Bun's hanging out with; we're just dropped into the scenario in the middle of it, told of Bun's meeting them in a voiceover by the little kid of the family noting it in his journal. (The boy is played by the kid who plays Lil' Bias in the final two episodes of Liveman. It's not his first toku appearance, either, but after Lil' Bias, I just see him as evile, even when he's playing a nice, regular kid like this.) Maybe it would have helped to see Bun come to their aid and gain their friendship.
While not the most exciting episode ever, and kind of a strain on the eyes with that dark camera filter, it was pretty impressive everything they managed to pack into this episode.
ReplyDeleteYou had a surrogate family plot which helped Bun get humanity the others got (not that he desperately needed humanity. It was just his turn), you had a followup from an old villain, you had a convenience for the robo fight that also tied together setting up villain conflict, all in less than 20 minutes. None of it really felt forced at all too.
As to your point about wishing there were more of the others, I always liked how the 80s show were so willing to split up the team and really do a deep dive into focusing on individual characters. The modern shows seem too scared about not giving enough screen time per episode to each member, even if they never talk. This approach seems to get me more attached to the individual characters than the modern approach where they're all in most of every episode but don't do anything substantial does.
I get your point about the modern shows. It's really noticeable sometimes how hard they try to fit EVERYone into what's going on. (One of my pet peeves is one there's a reaction to something and they basically split one sentence amongst the entire team in order to just give them all a piece of dialogue. It's awkward.)
DeleteI think Battle Fever's interesting in the way it will really just focus on one hero and leave the others waiting in the wings until the action hits, but the best shows tend to focus on one character, but still have the others have enough of a presence that the ensemble and the spirit of Super Sentai -- the importance of teamwork -- is justified.