Recap

The Rainbow Line hits a roadblock on its way to the next station, so it’s up to the ToQgers to go up ahead and figure out what’s wrong. However, Right ends up separated from the rest of the team.

Aqua’s Thoughts

Really, ToQger? Is this going to be your thing now? Take cool premises and make them as lame as humanly possible? Seriously, this episode did show the immense potential of the show’s country-trotting premiere. An entire village starving due to one monster’s never-ending gluttony would have made for a great adventure, yet once again, ToQger does everything in its power to make this premise as lame as possible. As a Right focus episode, this one only affirmed what everyone already knew about the guy: he’s a spotlight-hogging, manically optimistic goody-two-shoes. While eating the refugees’ last meal and his comments afterwards did reveal something that could be vaguely defined as a character flaw, the resulting fall-out was so sugar-coated — with as absolute low point Right’s proposal to imagine food — it instantly compensated for the slight hints of maturity this conflict might have revealed.

Aside from that, writing that defies all the basics of good storytelling keeps rearing its ugly head. Right is apparently good at fishing and gathering food? How come we’ve never heard of that before? And why couldn’t you show Right finding the blue train when he was actually looking for food, rather than in a flashback at the end of the episode? Does this show even want its audience to be invested? Luckily, some bits of good writing managed to escape and sneak into the episode. Right’s sadistic ‘torture’ of the monster of the week was the best bit of ToQger since the tunnel joke in episode 2 and a huge step forward for the character. I’d love to see Right’s ‘dark side’ back some day, but for some reason I have the feeling this is never going to happen.

Calling it character development would be a bridge too far, but Right’s final showdown with Cookie Monster Bucket Shadow did make for a cool fight and the show’s very first somewhat functional application of its silly colour-switching gimmick. I’d have loved to see Raito beating up the guy using all five colours, but I get the distinct feeling that idea might be reserved for a later episode. Anyways, the action was more than decent and even the robot upgrade was so incredibly stupid it kind of worked. The toy plastic cars made have looked completely ridiculous in the scene at the beginning — no thanks to the toy models being seriously lacking in detail — but as a weapon, they certainly do work. Sadly enough, it is yet another train that simply attaches to the ToQ-Oh’s arm. With next week’s upgrade not even remotely resembling actual fists, ToQger‘s toys keep disappointing. As does the entire show, really, but I’m pretty sure I don’t need to mention that anymore.

Random Observations

• Seeing the ToQgers drive is kind of funny, because half of the cast probably isn’t even old enough to drive.
• Jin Hiramaki’s acting remains one of the best things about this show. Gotta love how he almost throws himself over the train bench when the Rainbow Liner comes to a sudden standstill.
• I’d find Kagura snuggling up to Mio after every robot battle cuter if they had any more chemistry than a rock and the ground it is lying on.