Monday 12 November 2012

Kyoryuu Sentai Zyuranger 38 – The Quick Costume Changing Princess Mei

Everybody goes kung-fu fighting!

A mysterious lady wearing sunglasses is raising a Dora Monster by having the monster suck out the life force of its victim and leaves a special mark once the deed is done. Our heroes are keenly searching for the lady and as it turns out, Lami is the mysterious lady wearing sunglasses! To make things worse, the Dora Monster later identified as the DoraSilkys trapped the male Zyurangers inside a cocoon while Mei can't transform because it sealed her Dino Buckler! Can Mei stop Lami?


This episode is seriously fantastic, aside from the good use of distant shots to cover up the stunt doubles, the close up shots of the fights in this episode are really impressive that it made me ignore the fact that Lami's stunt double is tanned. But this is not the main highlight in this episode; the main highlight is how Mei manages to fight Lami without transforming into Ptera Ranger, by using different disguises. To those who are new to Sentai, having an episode involving the pink hero having quick costume changes is something ridiculous but it is not ridiculous if you consider the plot of this episode.

It didn't became ridiculous since for starters, Lami is aware that Mei the only active Zyuranger less Burai and considering her current situation, she can't transform so she is confident that Mei will not attack her while she is busy raising the DoraSilkys. But Mei did something Lami didn't expect, she wore a disguise to hide her presence and did a surprise attack on Lami with the form of flyers and a clown costume to taunt Lami before doing a costume change to a masked warrior. This is when she showed her resolve that even if she can't transform, she will still fight.


Here comes the fun part of this costume changing thing, Lami decides to disguise herself into someone else and this time, as a police officer so that she can run away from Mei! As it turns out, Mei followed her and she is now in the guise of some kung-fu girl! This is when this episode becomes seriously fun, from an episode that is about the DoraSilkys sucking out the life force of its victims, it became an episode on how can they out cosplay each other! I mean, after this police officer costume failed, she went with an old lady costume and when it failed, she went with the gentleman costume. As for Mei, she went to a school girl costume, a nun costume, a clown costume, a kung-fu girl costume and a bride costume all in just 2-5 minutes in one scene! It's seriously fun that I forgot the existence of the DoraSilkys!

Speaking of which, we are reminded that it existed because it grew into a humanoid size and attacked Mei who earlier planned to crush the DoraSilkys with her own hands. Since the episode went to a lot of costume changing, why not let the boys do some costume changing as well, which they did! After they escaped from the cocoon made by the DoraSilkys, the first thing they did in this episode is to wear monk outfits to fool Lami and save Mei! I am not sure what is running on their minds when they decided to do it but because they made such a fine entrance, I can ignore the detail that they just wore monk outfits to fool Lami.


After this, our heroes transformed and Geki removed the silk thread that wrapped Mei's Dino Buckler by using his Ranger Sword. Now that our heroes can fight the DoraSilkys, Bandora decided to enlarge it after the Zyurangers transformed. I am not surprised with this move since the episode has like 3-5 minutes remaining on its running time. The giant battle in this episode is just fine I guess since the Zyurangers are inside a cocoon and Dragon Caesar saved them by drilling it. The team formed the Sovereign DaiZyuJin and defeats the DoraSilkys and that's about it.

The only thing that I can note during the giant fight is that we didn't see Burai or his Dragon Ranger form; we only heard the sound of the Zyusouken's usual music to summon the Dragon Caesar. I guess the writers are starting to experiment how they can continue with Zyuranger once Burai dies at the near end of the series, which is expected even if you have read the spoilers for the series since Burai's death or survival from it is one of the possible story arcs for this series.


While this is all happening, the kids who were attacked by the DoraSilkys are now revolting against the Zyurangers! All I can say is that this is one of the rare instances that Bandora's plan on fighting the Zyurangers didn't make much sense to me. It made less sense when the DoraSilkys' ability of controlling kids is activated during the giant battle! I mean, so what if the kids are against the Zyurangers? Do they have the necessary equipment to fight DaiZyuJin or even just one of the Guardian Beast?

But thanks to Sovereign DaiZyuJin, the spell of the DoraSilkys disappeared and everything is back to normal. As for the two kids who like each other that we saw in this episode, the boy who bullied the girl he likes because of the DoraSilkys apologized by giving her 5 Guardian Beast plushies, something that existed back and I want one, especially the ZyuMammoth, Triceratops and Tyrannozaurus!


Sadly, you can't combine these toys to form a plushie version of DaiZyuJin. That would be neat if those plushies can do that! So yeah, even though the episode is all about Mei being awesome and why we shouldn't mess around with her, I still find it funny that the episode ended with a subtle toy ad for new Zyuranger plushies... and I am fine with it.

P.S. Did I just posted all pictures of the Zyuranger Guardian Beast plushies that I found in this episode?