Recap

Despite their best efforts, the Kyoryugers are unable to prevent Deboss’s resurrection! The world will be destroyed in 50 hours, but even worse, Luckiero is fired!

Zigg’s Thoughts

Well, it finally happened – Kyoryuger produced a straight-up bad episode. It’s a shame too, because this is a point where the show really needs to bring its A-game to the table and ramp towards a suitably epic climax. Instead, it seems that the lack of gravitas that has made the show such a joy throughout most of the run is finally catching up and bringing its problems with it.

Which isn’t to say this episode is disastrous of course. It’s completely competent, but it’s unfulfilling and appears to very rapidly mess with a bunch of the plot beats we’ve taken for granted over time. Take the existence of the mysterious black and white cloaked figures, who are revealed to be pretty much alternate versions of Aigaron and Candelia. This doesn’t make sense on multiple levels. If Aigaron and Candelia are so incompetent that these other two monsters have been needed all along, why has Chaos even tolerated those two’s continued presence? Why don’t these two look like actual Debo monsters? The last minute plot swerve, the cheap and rubbish looking costumes, it all smacks of a last minute script rewrite, which would be worrying if true.

It’s not like these top-tier monsters are at all threatening, and while they do beat Daigo in battle, their supposed super-evil plan is still foiled ridiculously easily (though they win anyway in a tiresome crutch used in many Sentai shows). Then Chaos-Deboss shows up, looks absolutely rubbish and proceeds to stomp the Kyoryugers into the ground. I’ll admit his complete no-sell, even after we’ve had the rolecall and the theme music powerup, is pretty amusing, but they don’t play it nearly as much for laughs as they should, and the entire giant robot sequence is tired padding. It’s difficult to pick out exactly why this episode feels such a chore, but there’s a palpable lack of spark. Without the super goofy and fun presentation, an uncomfortable truth comes to light somewhat – Kyoryuger has kind of a bad plot and only passable characters. Left exposed like this, it makes for a pretty boring episode.

There’s hope though, mostly to be found in the intriguing closing sequence where Chaos ‘fires’ Luckiero because his services are no longer required. While this seems kind of an odd thing to do it sets up the long-teased and tantalising prospect of the Deboss generals defecting en masse to the side of the angels, especially now with Endolf, Dogold and Black and White guys there’s enough force left on the side of evil to make it a decent matchup. There’s also of course the tease of Daigo’s dad having betrayed the team, though that seems to me to be such an obvious fake-out that I’ll need to see the next episode to confirm how legitimately they want me to take it. It’d be a cool, unexpected swerve if it turns out to be true, and it’d certainly inject some life into a climax that feels dangerously close to falling flat at this rate.

Random Observations

• One very Kyoryuger thing – the use of a giant clock called THE CLOCK OF DARKNESS to count down to an apocalypse.
• Love the fact Luckiero is still worried about his Love Touch fandom. Someone defictionalize it already!
• Deboss is spelt ‘Deboth’ on the record, continuing a long-standing tradition of inconsistent official romanisation in Sentai.
• They really missed a trick here by not making the ‘new’ Sorrow and Joy monsters twisted versions of Aigaron and Candelia, thus setting up a battle royale pitting our favourites against the (more) evil versions of themselves.
• Dancing heroes of the week – it’s a strong selection, but how can you not give it to the wedding?