Tuesday 13 November 2012

Chikyuu Sentai Fiveman 02 – Avenging Our Father! Avenging Our Mother!

Sibling power!

The Silver Imperial Army Zone finally aware of the existence of the Fiveman and that the older Fiveman, Gaku was the one who scarred Garoa. With that in mind, our heroes will finally take on their revenge against the group that killed their parents!


Compared to the previous episode, this episode finally gave us a proper introduction of the Sentai team along with their abilities and a better look on the siblings since all we know from the previous episode was that Arthur raised them and all of them are teachers. Their introduction to Zone is really fantastic since it established a lot of important key points of each character. What I really like are Yellow and Black talk about not meeting their parents because they are dead before they have a chance to meet them. I also noticed that the Fiveman's fight style is that it involves a lot of leaping and that the Five Blaster kinda looked like a pen and I like it since it adds up to the teacher theme in the series.

Because of they are unprepared of the Fiveman; they retreated back to their base and concluded that they can't easily conquer if they can't beat the Fiveman. Back to the Fiveman, they need to bid farewell to their students since the school that they are teaching was wrecked by Zone in the previous episode. The students having a hard time to bid farewell to their teachers reminded me of the time when some of us have a hard time to bid farewell to some of teachers after graduation.


Later, Arthur talked to them since he detected Zone's presence in the town's astronomy center. It turns out that Zone turned the center into their home base here on Earth. This is when I start to notice each Fiveman's personal trait, Gaku is the responsible older brother and Ken is the reckless one in the family since he can't control his emotions when he's near in Zone's current base. Because Gaku can't control his desire for revenge, he rushed into the base, only to get electrocuted by the barrier that protects the base. Because he is passionate about revenge, his other siblings joined him while Gaku and Arthur stayed.

During their infiltration of the base, I noticed that Remi can properly sense her surroundings since she is the first one to attack when the guard pointed a gun on their backs. Because the guard is down, Fumiya thought of a plan, this is when I noticed that Fumiya is the smart guy in the group and as seen in this episode, he is the linguist since much to my surprise, he knows some alien (!) language that was never thought in schools. As for Kazumi, it's hard to find what is special about this girl since during the time they are inside Zone's base, she didn't do anything special. She is just there, being the generic female character and all.


Fumiya's plan has something to do with his sisters being his hostage while Ken infiltrates the base. Fumiya disguises as the guard that they attacked and offer his sisters as gift to Garoa. It's a smart plan but what caused it to fail is Garoa outsmarting them since he doesn't want the girls, he just wants the total destruction of planet Earth. To make matters worse, Remi blew up their cover since she asked help from his twin brother! Her move is quite understandable since an army of foot soldiers want them, so yeah.

Here comes the fun part in this episode, since everybody knows that four of the Fiveman are inside the base, they decided to kill the four and all of a sudden and out of nowhere, Gaku is shooting the foot soldiers with a sub machine gun ala Rambo and saves his siblings! I am not sure how he got one but I can easily ignore it since that scene is so badass that I can just ignore logic and just stare in awe how awesome this scene is.


With the five siblings assembled, it is time for them to transform into the Fiveman! Their transformation device is really unique since at first, it looks like your average brace changer but after Gaku pulled the stick thing out of the brace, the device suddenly reminded me of the first Ultraman's transformation device and I really like it. Finally, after years of having brace changers, just for once, they have a changer that is something unique. The transformation sequence is nothing fancy, just the letter V flying in their chest to form their suit.

The second fight in this episode is really fantastic. What made it extra special is the "Final Brother Attack" finisher since the finisher displayed all their weapons in battle. One thing I notice is that their weapons are related or sort of related to the subject they teach, related since Blue's Twin Array kinda reminded me of those synchronized swimmers, sort of related since I don't know the relation between Pink's Cutie Circle attack with Math.


Our heroes beat the monster of the week and obviously, what's next is the giant battle! Zone's method of enlarging monsters is a bit peculiar, they summon a giant Michelin or Marshmallow Man machine (that's the impression I had back when I was a kid, deal with it) and absorbs the molecular structure of the monster and enlarges it! Seeing this scene again after all these years made me squeal like a little boy who is so excited of some cool new mecha or something. In addition, it is around this scene that I notice that Zone is quite similar to Maskman's Tube. I will get into it once I am done talking about the giant fight.

Our heroes head into the Magma Base to launch the Sky Alpha, Carrier Beta and Land Gamma machines. Aside that Red has the jet, while his siblings share either of the two vehicles, I can't help but notice that Red's shot inside his cockpit during the mecha combining scene felt like it is later used in Jetman. The combining sequence of the mecha is really fantastic that until now, I am still in awe while watching it. What made it really great is that the siblings are transported inside a single cockpit once the part of the mecha is docked in their respective areas.


Even if the combining sequence is really cool, I am disappointed with the Five Robo. For starters, the color combination looks really bad and second, the robot's overall appearance looks really plain. To make things worse, it doesn't have a set of weapons like its predecessors. I am not sure if the guns attached in its arms are functioning but I guess we might see it function in later episodes. The only special weapon it had is the Special Dimension Sword and the finishing move gave me chills since I remember seeing this scene growing up.

At the end, Zone settled in the coldest region of our planet and now, for the Zone and Tube comparison, for starters, both groups serve an Emperor or an Empress and they are composed by two chicks, two guys and a guy inside a suit who acts as the smart one. They have a commander that has problems with Red who acts as the group's de facto leader and lastly, the other three guys don't leave much impression during the show's first two episodes.


As for the Fiveman, they are staring at the sunset as they promise to continue on protecting our beloved planet. To sum it up, the second episode of the series gave us a better look on our heroes and their weaponry, a better look on the villains and some of their motivations and lastly, they were able to set up the motivation of our heroes, there are more important things to life than revenge for the deaths of their parents, the other important thing is to protect our planet from its invaders so that they will stop on invading other planets in the future.