Bros for life.
Because of what happened in the previous episode, Master Kaku is disappointed with the Dairangers for not believing their comrade. Because of the rampage of Key Jester's dolls, the Dairangers end up returning to their secret base and finally learned the origins of the Gorma tribe.
This episode showed us why Master Kaku is considered to be one of the best mentors in the Super Sentai franchise. Aside that he doesn't spoon feed his warriors with the lessons they need to learn, he also wants them to see improve as heroes in their own way. That is why I was not surprised when we learned that Master Kaku is aware that the dolls are related to Gorma and just wait and see how the Dairangers will react to this, which leads us to the events that happened in the previous episode. Seeing Kaku give the Dairangers a lecture on how over confident they are made me realize that the Dairangers are not strong enough to beat Gorma.
The Dairangers pointed out why from all the people around the world, why them? Much to my surprise, I kinda agree with Ryou with this one. Why them? What's the reason why an errand boy of some Chinese restaurant, some serious dude, an aspiring boxer, a beautician and some Chinese chick ended up becoming Dairangers? Though Master Kaku didn't answer Ryou's question, I guess the answer for this one is reserved in the later part of the episode. What happens next is something that I didn't expect to hear, Master Kaku just let do what they want next. In short, it is up to them if they want to continue to be part of the team.
But because of the rampage of Key Jester's dolls, the Dairangers end up back to their base and the first thing we saw are Daigo and Master Kaku meditating. This scene made me like Daigo more, during the time the team is likely to disband; he is the first person who showed interest to stay in the team. He knows his duties; he knows that they are the only ones who can save the kids from Key Jester. As expected, Master Kaku asked them to sit and meditate with them. After a few minutes of seeing Kaku convince the other four to meditate, we finally see them meditate.
The meditation scene felt like it came straight out of Hikari Sentai Maskman less the pyramid. It didn't help that they need to channel their Qi to enter a meditative state, the same way how the Maskmen need to channel their Aura Power to enter a meditative state. Because of this, their souls were transported to mainland China, to be more specific, to the ruins of the Daos civilization, a civilization destroyed by Gorma.
This brief history lesson on how Gorma destroyed the Daos civilization added more background to Gorma and their power as a group. In addition, we also learned that opposite to the Dairangers' Qi Power is Gorma's Yo Power. But the main highlight of this history lesson is how the rebels ended up destroying themselves at the end. It's a good lesson about teamwork for the Dairangers considering the events that happened in the previous episode. Another thing that was revealed in this scene is that there are other four Mythical Beasts that helped humans fight Gorma. If the opening theme is an indication, we already know the names of these Mythical Beasts.
After seeing the future on what will happen to the world once Gorma takes control of it, our heroes realized how naive they are and finally, learned the value of teamwork. With that, it is time to end the rampage of Key Jester's dolls. Is it me, or I find really entertaining watching the Dairangers failing to catch a single doll? Seriously, it feels like their strength is not enough to chase a couple of dolls for crying out loud! But thanks to Daigo's instincts of jumping to a door created by one of the dolls, he finally meets Key Jester and fights him.
While he is busy fighting Key Jester, the rest of the Dairangers are fighting some foot soldiers. As expected, the fights for both scenes are really well made. But what really stunned me is not the fight scenes but RyuseiOh. RyuseiOh has this kind of magic every time he enters a scene. Is it because of the puppetry of the machine or is it because it makes Ryuu Ranger 10 times more badass as he is on top of the dragon's freakin' head? The reason for this is to look for Daigo and yes, this method did what is supposed to in the first place. They were able to find Daigo and the other Dairangers arrived in the scene on time.
For the first time, we saw the individual weapons of the Dairangers and I say, I am really impressed with the weapon action in this episode. Aside that their weapons fit well to the Chinese martial arts theme of the series, it made fights in this series a bit more interesting. But what really stand out is the not weapons in action but Shishi Ranger's use of his Qi to create illusions that fooled Key Jester! It's so good that it made me like Shishi Ranger more as a fighter. As of this writing, Shishi Ranger is currently my favorite Dairanger and this scene cements him in my list of favorite non-Red heroes.
Much to my surprise, the Key Jester didn't use the Enlargement Bomb and that's a good thing, especially if this episode only has at least 2-4 minutes left in its run time. At the end, the souls of the kids are back to the kids and that the Dairangers learned the value of teamwork. But before ending this review, I can't help but notice that all the rampaging dolls are back inside Key Jester's workshop. Oh well, the show runs for 19 minutes and 58 seconds, it's understandable if they skip details such as the one with the dolls.