Operation Overdrive #24 – 25 & Boukenger #34 – 35 Mini Reviews (SPOILERS)

Life must be pretty interesting for the creative team of Power Rangers Operation Overdrive.

The first half of the year is spent carefully adapting the previous year’s Super Sentai show into a new Power Rangers instalment, trying to hit that balance of footage and progressing character development in the scripts whilst also making the characters distinct from their points of inspiration. The second half appears to be based around throwing these ideas out of the window and basically importing the Japanese stories wholesale, regardless of how awkward a fit they are.

Episodes #24 – 25 represent some severe character development for Mack and Ronny, only I couldn’t actually tell you why. In the case of Ronny, I can half see where they were coming from – I think it’s lazy but I understand why her story suddenly took such an abrupt and unrealistic detour and why the issue of her apparent royalty will never be mentioned again.

For Mack…well, Mister tallforadwarf warned of this and I can see that the issue was foreshadowed in a round about way and that the repercussions were actually significant for Mack’s character but I just don’t understand what the reason for it all was.

Points out of ten however for actor James Maclurcan who really did give it his all.

Boukenger on the other hand effortlessly managed to cruise through its storyline whilst accruing only minor negative points. Episode #34 wasn’t really very interesting – surprising, considering it was Natsuki’s ‘origin story’ – but I think that’s because the ‘big secret’ wasn’t half as big as suspected nor was it something that really mattered. 「菜月は菜月」, as the lady herself might say.

Episode #35, I won’t contest, was mostly rescued by Suenaga Haruka and Yamasaki Mami playing dress up…which sounds like a fic prompt in and of itself.

Perhaps there’s life for strawberrybeat after all?

Go-on #38 Review (SPOILERS etc.)

Some might say that watching an episode of Go-onger twice is tantamount to torture. Others might even remark that watching the episode once let alone twice was an act of self-abuse, and whilst I might normally be tempted to agree I thought I should watch episode #38 again to clarify my thoughts on the show.

I originally watched this episode at an ungodly hour of the morning, propped up by hotel pillows. I soon discovered that viewed as just another show in the Sunday morning kids’ TV block makes for a really different experience from actively going out and downloading it with the express intention of watching it.

I’m not really a huge fan of this show, mostly because I think I was expecting Liveman something more but as cheap, throwaway entertainment, I genuinely do believe it can be quite fun. The problems only arise when certain elements of English language fandom attempt to elevate this to a level of comparative depth with earlier installments in the franchise that it simply does not possess.

"Smashing! You're an animal. You're a tiger. Be a tiger, baby! You're great! You're Grrrrrr-eat! You're Tony, be corn flakes, baby, be frosted. Now be a lemur, baby! You're a ring-tailed lemur."

Episode #38 of Go-onger deals with a shower themed villain dispatching the male members of the cast by the art of female ejaculation spraying them with water containing some magic freezing propensity. Finding out that it’s hard to be a woman in a man’s man’s man’s world, Saki, Miu and Bearrv set about readdressing the balance with comical ’sisters are doing it for themselves’ results.

The episode trundles along nicely, never threatening to engage the mind too much whilst at the same time rolling out all the old anime tropes that have long since crossed over into modern day sentai; hence the male cast find themselves disguised as female models in a shop display and for some of them, this is actually an improvement. Hant in particular could have a promising career ahead of him dressing up in sailor fuku for regular youtube clips, I’m sure.

In the end, ‘girl power’, with the aid of giant robots, saves the day and everyone goes home to talk about how awesome Saki and Miu are.

I could have explained that in a fic without having to introduce a villain, you know.

Just sayin’.

Another of my famous collection of artistic sentai screengrabs...

All in all, #38 is an entirely inoffensive episode…which is disappointing if you are genuinely looking for something with character development and a story. If not then you’re good to go but if it is something with a little more depth you’re looking for then I really do recommend turning on your TV half-an-hour earlier and trying to catch an episode of Battle Spirits – it won’t wow you and it is pretty much Digimon-lite but it’s surprising how very different the dynamic of the show is despite being aimed at the same audience.

G3プリンセス

I had every intention of picking up the G3 Princess special CD packge from HMV, I really did. Despite the fact that it was over 4000 yen, I really was going to buy it…

But there was a little voice at the back of my mind that kept reminding me how awful the character songs have been in recent sentai shows…

And then I saw the G3 Princess photo-mook in a shop in Nakano Broadway for 1300 yen or so…and I completely caved. I think this was the right choice. (^_^)

上野

Ueno Toy Shop Display