And the legacy of badass sunset duels.
Tento Raiger is now Mutou Mushiten, a Beast Fist practitioner whose special ability is to use moves coming from past Super Sentai enemy commanders! With that in mind, how can they stop him? Also, can the Akibarangers find General Pain at the end of this episode?
Now that General Pain can enter the Delusion World freely, it adds up the difficulty of the situation our heroes are in. What made it more interesting is that he can now interfere every time Malsheena tries to pull a death flag, ensuring his victory over our heroes. This is when Mutou Mushiten comes in; he is like the ultimate Super Sentai enemy commander as he has all the abilities of past Super Sentai commanders! What's more is that according to Nobuo, his moves are the real deal and not just some imitation made by a fan!
Seeing him in action proves how powerful he is as he easily trashed the Akibarangers with his moves. But because of Malsheena wants to defeat Akibarangers all by herself, she decided to interfere in the battle, causing Mutou Mushiten to lose interest. Because of his actions, General Pain decides to let Mutou Mushiten do what he wants and because Mushiten hates Malsheena, General Pain decides to preserve her in a block of ice similar to what happened to Princess Ial in Maskman. Speaking of which, I just love that most of Mutou Mushiten's moves are based on 80's Super Sentai shows. I mean, Gokaiger barely did any blatant references to 80's Super Sentai shows aside from the tribute episodes!
Because of Mushiten's power, they return to the real world and thanks to a lead found by Luna in the Delusion World, they continue their search to look for General Pain in the real world. This then lead us to some spa and now, their mission is to remove his towel to confirm that the man described by one of their earlier inquiries is General Pain. Their methods to force "General Pain" to remove his towel in the face and get some info from him is really fantastic. Their efforts on trying to get the info they want are really interesting, only to fail at the end... less Yuko of course.
Now that they were able to confirm that he is indeed evil, they decide to confront him, only to find out that he is veteran suit actor Yoshinori Okamoto aka O-BITOH in some of the credits! What I like about this scene is Luna's reactions, I just love that she has no freakin' clue on who he is and compared to those clueless Luna scenes in the previous episodes, I am not annoyed by it, instead I am enjoying it! This is when I realized something; Luna is becoming one interesting character after I understand her gimmick. She is an idol wannabe whose only knowledge about Super Sentai is very limited and is clueless about it for most of the time. I really like this gimmick; it's the complete opposite of the older Akibarangers!
Now that we meet O-BITOH, we learned that he was hired by General Pain to do some motion capture for him. Now it makes sense why Mutou Mushiten's moves are authentic! Guess that is likely the case of the commanders not suit acted by Okamoto then. I mean, General Pain is so nerdy that I can expect that he will do the same thing with the other Super Sentai villain commander suit actors just to make Mutou Mushiten one perfect enemy commander.
Speaking of which, we also learned one thing, Okamoto's love of losing beautifully. This is when I realize something, even if most kids will just ignore a certain enemy commander's death, the ones inside the suit put a lot of effort just to make the death of the enemy commander really memorable, and with that, my respect for the men inside the suits skyrocketed. What they are doing is what you call dedication and I just love how proud Okamoto is with his battle scars. Now that the Akibarangers understand Okamoto's love of losing beautifully, it served as their clue on how they can defeat Mutou Mushiten.
When they returned in the Delusion World, our heroes decided to perform what they learned from Okamoto. What better way to setup a perfect villain death is by having one cool sunset background and have Nobuo play the Niibori Red! Now that Mushiten is fired up thanks to the setup, it's time for the duel between these two and boy, it was amazing. So amazing that I was expecting that it will end up with Nobuo defeating Mushiten with his own hands, but nope, they need to use the new Penultimate Bazooka!
The formation of the Penultimate Bazooka is better compared to the formation of the Penultimate Cannon. What made it awesome compared to the Penultimate Cannon when it comes to the combination is that this formation feature the official heroes ceiling! As for the actual weapon, it looks really interesting for a team cannon finisher and is something that I already expected after seeing the Dairen Bomber for the first time. I mean, they can use other weapons representing Dairanger! The hand design just give away that the team will have new team bazooka when I first saw it.
At the end, they defeated Mushiten and for once, there are no changes that happened in the real world! Oh, and the Akibarangers now have a new lead to General Pain's whereabouts. Meanwhile in some hospital, we are once again given a glance of the guy confined inside the hospital. The only clue we have is that he is one weak person and that he is watching Boukenger. Now the mystery of this strange guy is becoming more interesting.
