Recap: Still depleted from his encounter with Maddd(dddd) Torin, Tessai considers passing his powers on to his present-day descendant. Coincidentally, this descendant is revealed to be the author of Amy’s favourite shoujo manga, Love Touch

Zigg‘s Thoughts: Wonderful. Simply wonderful. Kyoryuger decides to try and see where it can go with no budget, no plot and pretty much no remit except to fill time, and comes up with a divine comedy gem that had me constantly chuckling throughout the runtime. Shallow it may be, but it’s also superbly entertaining and that’s what counts.

In all seriousness though, this shows just how far you can go on almost nothing when you’ve got good writing and good acting on your side. Goofball comedy is way, way harder than it looks and its only pulled off here through some excellent performances that stay totally within character while pushing for maximum laughs. The scene in the restaurant might be the best in the whole episode – it’s a great contrast between Shinya giving us some exposition and Tessai’s furious outrage at even the most minor of things. Torin’s revelation that he too is a fan is a priceless double-take moment and the entire thing has a pleasingly screwball comedy vibe to it.

The other great moment in this episode is of course the revelation that the Love Touch superfan who’s caused the problem in the first place is Luckiero. This s doubly funny because not only is a great spin on a relatively standard fish-out-of-waterp lot for Amy, it’s also a really funny payoff to a joke that’s run through almost the whole series so far. As time has gone by Luckiero has become less and less villainous and more and more sympathetic, so much so that seeing him here in a pure comedy role is not jarring at all – it’s what he’s been doing for a while after all (such as the laser tag episode). Given how incredibly likable he’s become, I do hope some fate other than death by explosion awaits him at the end of the series.

The downside of this gleeful silliness is that the actual nuts and bolts of what makes a toku episode toku suffer a bit here, particularly since the wallet appears to have been pinched very, very tight here. The team make hay with the idea of a beautiful paramonster but in the end it’s ultimately disappointing that we don’t get a custom baddie. Make up and effects are lacking – are they just sticking gaffer tape on the suits? – and the ending robot battle is sort of dreary and by the numbers. Still, we’re having so much fun elsewhere it can be tough to notice.

Random Observations

• Haven’t even had a chance to mention Tessai Christ.
• The greenscreening and body doubling works very well for the most part, but when the two of them are outside it does become very obvious.
• I do like that Luckiero doesn’t show up at the end and just leaves the watering can. There’s something charming about watching Aigaron delicately pour.
• There was some debate between Aqua and I over Luckiero’s gender. From the start we’ve called him male, and I’m going to stick with that, mostly because he uses the boyish pronoun ‘biku’ to describe himself. Also it jsut makes him likig shoujo manga that much funnier.