REVIEW: Zyuohger 12
After the last two great, dramatic episodes, this week's return to the regular Monster of the Week format felt a bit disappointing. What was even more disappointing was the Zyuohgers' choice to return to their old, useless search tactics: creating flyers to hand out to strangers. After ten episodes of them doing this for the missing Champion’s Symbol, I sure hope that this doesn’t mean they will spend the next ten episodes aimlessly passing around posters of the renegade bird Zyuman.
What made this shift back to the episodic even more obvious was Tusk’s response to Yamato’s bright flyer idea, which was basically, “Yeah sure, we can search for the bird furry…but first, I want to go to the library and read books about humans because we have how many episodes left?” The best part of this opening scene was Sela and Leo comparing their drawings, and how comically talented Sela is compared to Leo.
Tusk’s desire to read leads him to a very unwelcoming bookstore, and after a wacky mishap he begins to work for the cranky owner. Tusk points out to the owner that tossing out every visitor is a bad business plan, but the owner doesn’t care. He doesn’t believe that anyone cares about books anymore, which makes one wonder why he opened a bookstore in the first place.
But Tusk cares about books just as much as the owner, and tries to engage some neighborhood kids by reading aloud a very cute story about an elephant with a small nose. Much like the unequipped elephant in the story, Tusk is helped by his animal friends, who are dressed in overwhelmingly adorable kigurumi to remind me once again that I am watching a show for Japanese children.
But trouble has come, in the form of our Monster of the Week, Hatena. Even after watching the episode twice, I have yet to figure out what his schtick is. Is the Dethgalien really just his evil hat and the rest of him is a puppet? What I do know is that his power is the English major’s greatest fear beyond not finding gainful employment: the ability to steal a culture’s language from them, leaving them unable to communicate beyond using charades. And most people are really bad at charades, including the Zyuohgers.
There’s a plot hole in the charades part of the episode as well (if the Zyuohgers have lost their language, how do they know to imitate the kanji that form the word “hat”?) but once again, maybe I’m missing something here. It is a good spotlight episode for Team Parent Tusk, who kicks Linguist’s Nightmare’s ass and teaches a grumpy old man that kids totally love books!
We get to see Zyuoh Wild King in action once again, although I doubt its formation was actually necessary. It was an interesting change of pace to see one of the zords taken over by Hatena, but unfortunately that part didn’t last very long. Zyouh Wild vs. Zyuoh King would have been a more entertaining display than Overpowered Zord vs. Floating Evil Hat.
Next week’s preview shows some similar fluffy fare, but with the potential for Yamato to experience some romance. Maybe this will answer the question as to why he doesn’t seem to have human friends or ever work as an actual scientist.
