Recap: With Ankydon under the Deboss’s control, Ramirez is slowly fading away. Meanwhile, Candelia decides a concert is the best way to boost her team.

Aquagaze‘s Thoughts: I am afraid Kyoryuger is getting to the point where its almost desperate kid appeal antics are starting to weigh on my worn soul. While my love for tokusatsu immediately implies that I do have a high tolerance for infantile shenanigans, I do not see why this should force me to abandon any and all desire for a coherent plot. Kyoryuger is very much a show for kids, so much should have been established by now, and because of that, it is also extremely weird. The problem is that being weird does not make you funny. It’s a problem with many, many Japanese shows that market themselves as comedies, the most noticeable and previously mentioned example of this being Nichijou. These shows all take a page out of the book of the traditional manzai comedy, which apparently claims that random absurd non-sequiturs are hilarious. Well, I don’t think they are.

Is it because the Japanese have a wholly different sense of humour that I do not understand due to lack of cultural context, or is it just that because are easily entertained? I don’t know, but pondering this over does not make Kyoryuger any funnier. Do not get me wrong, I am not retreating my previous statements about this show: It is still affectively enthusisatic and loaded with great action. The problem is just that the issue which had been plaguing the show since its inception is slowly starting to boil over. While the hilarity was initially very welcome, it already displayed some signs of reaching critical mass back then. Six episodes in, Kyoryuger is still incoherent, hyperactive and entirely void of common sense. It has crossed some sort of line, with my enjoyment of it deteriorating slightly as a result. My love for tokusatsu is rooted in the fact that it can easily combine genuinely funny situations with substantial plot and lovable characters. What we get here, however, is a hurricane of lunacy and jokes, most of which are more grating than actually funny. Candelia bursting out into song… why exactly? Powerups that make enemies fall in love with you? What’s the point in all that?

Kyoryuger is silly for the sake of being silly, in the same way bad parodies are bad parodies because they lampshade overused tropes or recycle jokes from other movies with an infantile twist. Everyone can do that. What makes you stand out is if you can make use of the absurdity as an untapped source of clever jokes. The actual funniest moments in this episode were, to me, Ramirez’s wonky acting, slipping Canadian accent and his obviously recycled costume that just had the Kyoryuger symbol slapped on it, three things that were quite obviously not intended to be jokes. What is even worse is that the jokes in Kyoryuger are not even bad or WTF-inducing enough to be so bad, they become good again. If anything, they are alienating. Unwelcoming. They tell me I’m too old for this stuff, something Shinkenger or Gokaiger, both great, funny shows that appealed to children without tossing their brains out of the window, never told me. It is not particularly a nice thing to be told.

Random Observations

• I don’t know if Ramirez’s little crush on Amy is supposed to be super adorable, or super creepy.
• I love how every single Kyoryuzin combination has its own silly name and intro sequence, even though half of them don’t make a lick of sense. Mucho macho!
• The award for most bizarre choice of weapon of the season goes to Luckyero and his/her/its violin.

Dragonzigg’s Thoughts: This episode comes very close to being good, but it doesn’t quite hang together when you step back and look at it for a second. Sentai plots are not tightly wound thrillers but we expect at least a modicum of decent storytelling and while it’s hardly a disaster, I don’t think this episode delivered what I was after.

For a start, while it’s ostensibly an Amy-centric episode, there’s really very little to reflect that. Character-centric episodes are meant to give us a chance to get more insight into that particular member of the team and explore their personality. It’s why such episodes are often themed around personal flaws or chunks of backstory, giving an easy, distinct chunk of plot for the given character to agonise over or struggle against. We don’t really get that here – we learn Amy is cute, kind and kicks ass, but that’s stuff we all knew from the moment we met her.  Her interactions with Ramirez are funny and sort of charming but we don’t learn anything about either character that we didn’t already know, and the dialogue is kind of clunky too.

Plot-wise we just have a few too many hoops to jump through to make it seem natural. Candelia’s singing sequence is pretty funny admittedly but it’s also transparently useless to the story. Yes, they mention some guff about it powering up the Debo monster but really it’s just filler and while I’ve got no issue with filler the fact that the attempt to connect it to the main narrative is so flimsy makes it a little hollow for me. Speaking of flimsy excuses, you really expect me to believe there’s a Beast Battery specifically for making villains fall in love with you? And hey, isn’t making people fall in love against their will exactly the kind of thing a villain would do? In fact, there’s been numerous monsters throughout the history of Super Sentai with that exact power! Just saying it seems a bit dissonant is all.

Having already said it doesn’t offer character development, I do enjoy the interplay between Ramirez and Amy in this episode. If you can get over the fact that a nearly fifty year old man is swooning over a girl too young to drive, Robert Baldwin’s terrible acting (I sort of suspect he’s wooden on purpose – it definitely adds to the ham factor) makes these moments enjoyable slices of stupidity. It’s cool to finally see Ramirez transform into Kyoryu Cyan, but that’s mitigated by the fact that he doesn’t really get in on the fight.  Sure, there’s his awesome spirit hammer, but I really wanted to see him get into the fray alongside the team and smack down some mooks – as it is he doesn’t even get to be in the role call or the team pose.  Ramirez does snag the episode’s two best moments though – his George Takei-worthy ‘Oh my’ and his amazing signoff to Amy “See you, powerful lady” which manages to be cute, funny and utterly stupid all at once.

Clearly, Ramirez’s departure sets a long term precendent for the show. It seems pretty obvious now that Kyoryuger is going to go all out and attempt ten rangers, and while Cyan jetting off means that they won’t all be permanent fixtures, I have to imagine that the back end of the series will feature the past Kyoryugers teaming up with their present counterparts for at least one ten-warrior rolecall – perhaps in a movie? There’s also the end of episode reveal that High Priest Chaos has Pteragodon’s Beast Battery, and it doesn’t take a genius to work out which Ranger battery #6 belongs to, especially since it’s all gold and everything.  This was the first time I felt Kyoryuger‘s lack of depth hurt the impact of an episode, but the action, humour and general spirit compensated for that, making for what was still a fun experience. Perhaps the first chink in the armour though.

Random Observations

• Candelia’s outfit features a gimp suit style mouth zipper. This is deeply disturbing.
• There’s a disappointing amount of terrible greenscreening used for the bike work this episode.
• You can tell it’s Amy’s focus episode because she gets to be in the middle of the pose and say the catchphrase
• Once again the morphing sequence clearly takes place in a completely different location. I don’t mind the use of stock footage, but why not just use a background (as indeed the first part of the sequence does) to make it less jarring?
• Considering he’s lived in Japan all his life, I’m convinced Baldwin’s terrible Japanese accent is put on, although I’d appreciate it if anybody who’s seen Chousei Kantai Sazer-X could confirm this. His Canadian accent is also much more obvious when he speaks English here.