REVIEW: Zyuohger 15
This week's episode left me asking myself multiple times, "Is this disappointing?" I've finally concluded that the episode (and the show itself so far) has left me complacent. However, this episode has quite a few good moments, including some Leo-Tusk bonding, a conclusion to the Dethgaliens' Team Leader auditions, and some lingering terrifying implications of leaving defenseless people trapped in a house with Uncle Mori.
It is a lazy, rainy day at Atelier Mori, until Tusk and Leo open the episode with bickering: Tusk is angry with Leo because he hung up laundry outside on a rainy day. He makes a potentially foreshadowing claim that Leo doesn’t pay enough attention: a quality that will prove important against their Monster of the Week, Team Leader candidate Hunthelder.
After last week’s episode, I was excited to see the more competent of the two Team Leader candidates try their hand at attacking the Zyuohgers. And for most of the episode, I was not disappointed: Hunthelder plays the Zyuohgers like a fiddle, and the fighting pair of Tusk and Leo have to think hard to play back.
This episode did a good job at keeping me guessing. By quickly dispatching Sela and Yamato, the remaining trio have lost the two members who could most easily locate the sniping Hunthelder. After Tusk’s first failure (leading to Amu’s demise), I was unsure of how he and Leo could actually succeed against him. But then again, the Zyuohgers are pretty good at the whole power-of-teamwork thing when they’ve hit a critical point. Tusk was the highlight of the episode: his earnestness and love for his friends feels so honest. However, this was also a decent episode for Leo, even though he has had a disproportionate amount of features lately. When is, you know, the leader, going to have a spotlight episode? (Given the trailer for next week, thankfully soon.)
But the best part of the episode was the fridge horror. Fridge horror, if you haven’t wasted thousands of hours on TV Tropes like I have, means that you watch something and don’t realize its horrifying implications until the episode is over. The Zyuohgers turning into dolls is creepy in itself, even if they did turn into cute plushies. But they still have full awareness of their situation…at the same time, they have no way to do anything about something terrible – like say, Uncle Mori wanting to cut off Doll Yamato’s legs because he thought they were too short. Tusk’s terrified response to this was pretty convincing. But Doll Yamato’s response? Not as terrifying as it should have been. You shouldn’t be thinking about why Tusk called your body weird, you should be internally screaming! I’ll probably wake up in the middle of the night tonight after having nightmares about what Uncle Mori could have potentially done to all those innocent strangers trapped in his house. The cow costume somehow makes him an even more convincing potential serial killer.
I wouldn’t call this episode disappointing, although I am disappointed that Hunthelder did not become a Team Leader. But maybe this is for the best. While an amazing distance fighter, he was a one-trick pony who fell in what even Master Ginis called an anti-climactic end. However, I will miss Hunterhelder's Stacherang: the amazing moustache boomerang with the even better/awful name. Currently the best drama in the show is happening between the Dethgaliens, but a new Team Leader would definitely give some much-needed variety. If anything, I hope Naria fights more – the more we see of her, the more interesting she becomes. Both submissive to Ginis and terrifying to his underlings, she wields massive power and potential.
While this has been touched on in a prior episode, we receive verbal confirmation from Kubar that Azald is immortal. At this point, there is no way that the Zyuohgers would be able to defeat Azald, let alone Ginis. The spotlight (and the most growth) in the past couple episode has involved Ginis and the Dethgaliens, but I expect a break from that next week now that both Team Leader candidates have been killed off. I really hope that this means the focus shifts to Yamato and the gang, because I am craving some character development beyond the current pattern of disagreements resolved through teamwork. While a nice, simple model of storytelling, even serials like Super Sentai have to drift from this story to keep the grand narrative going.
