Recap: King returns to the island we found him on to retrieve some mementos of his father. While he’s away, the Deboss come up with a plan to pit the Kyoryugers against one another.

Dragonzigg’s Thoughts: A strong bounce back episode from Kyoryuger this week that returned to the fast paced silliness that we so loved about earlier episodes.  The ‘evil double’ plot is as old as time itself and is pretty much used at least once in every Sentai series yet it’s well re-positioned here as a way to try and divide the team up. We’re not talking deep, meaningful character development here, and it’s not like anybody’s darkest fears are being exposed. Instead it’s just a fast, funny and silly way to make our heroes a bit pissy with each other and then kiss and make up. Naturally the one who prompts them to do so is Daigo, who perhaps wanders a little bit too far into ‘the Red Ranger is the best and never does anything wrong’ territory here – it would have been nice to see a little bit of anger or resistance. Ryo Ryusei’s goofy charm sells it pretty well though and he’s helped by a nice performance from Syusuke Saito, who seems to relish the chance to cut loose and play a bitchier version of Ian for a scene or two.

Mostly though this episode serves as a setup for future events, although it disguises itself well enough that it doesn’t feel like the setup overwhelms the main story. Nevertheless there’s quite a bit to take in here. It’s been pretty obvious the Daigo’s father will eventually play some sort of role in this story, but Ian’s observation that his memento closely resembles the one the (disguised) Aigaron stole ties him further into the story. While these gems are almost certainly future sweet powerups, it’ll be interesting to see what role they play in the ongoing narrative.

The other major event is of course the awakening of Pteragodon by Chaos, and then his subsequent gifting of the Voltasaur to Dogold (who seems to be the most powerful and prominent of the boss monsters so far, and so will probably be the first to die). We sort of knew this was coming since we were teased at the end of last episode, but it’s still cool to see the villains carry out a plan and get away scot-free with it, and it raises the interesting possibility that with his mech under Deboss control the Sixth Ranger could start off evil. One thing which I thing could be very important is that, despite Torin’s proclamation that only a Kyoryuger can use Pteragodon’s full power, Dogold is still able to trigger the Beast Battery, albeit only to a Deboss symbol. Could he be connected to the Sixth Ranger somehow? Could he be the Sixth Ranger? It’s rare but monsters joining the team has happened before – Rouki/Zen-Aku from Gaoranger/Wild Force is one of the most notable examples. I’m probably looking way too much into it, but it’s fun to speculate at least.

And yes, there’s a farting robot and yes, I thought it was pretty funny. It’s a good reminder that despite all the plot dissection we do here this is primarily a stupid kids show and if you can’t roll with a silly gross joke now and again, you really won’t last long here. The joy of Sentai is the broadness – there’s room for the jokes and for the plot as well. This episode was a nice combination of the two, and an encouraging step forward for the show.

Random Observations

• It’s kind of wearisome that the one lady character’s concern has to be about how she looks.
• Pteragodon pretty clearly has a part of a robot head on his body, suggesting they’ll carry on the long standing tradition of the Sixth Ranger bringing his own mech.
• I know this is TV and therefore nobody has any peripheral vision, but Dogold and company are literally about ten metres away from King and fake Ian and not hiding at all!
• The fart joke is greatly aided by Over-Time’s decision to translate Torin’s line as ‘Bravely let one rip!’
• Some nice shots in this episode, especially the use of moving camera and slow-mo in the ranger on ranger fight.
• Another reason to suspect the possibility of an evil Sixth Ranger – both the previous dinosaur themed series had them in the form of Dragon Ranger/Green Ranger and Abare Killer/Drago Ranger.