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.
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