Hikari Sentai Maskman 10 – Igam VS Takeru

Also, student and master.

To reclaim the honor of his family, Igam challenges Takeru to a duel to death. Takeru accepts this challenge as Takeru thinks that it is time to finish his rivalry with Igam once and for all. At the end, who will win in this death match? Takeru or Igam?

This episode is seriously amazing. Aside that this episode brought up one plot point about Igam's problem with Takeru since his sister fell in love with him; we also saw that in the ranks of Tube, there is at least someone who has some honor left. In this case, Igam is willing to risk his life by fighting Takeru in a special ring called Death Ring. Guess I don't need to explain what the heck this ring is since the name speaks for itself. As for Takeru, he accepted his challenge because he sees the sincerity of finishing this struggle once and for all.

But before they enter the ring, it begins with one epic aerial battle. Though this ended quickly thanks to Takeru hitting Igam's Angramon Fighter, causing it crash and land on a nearby beach. To be honest, it feels rather convenient that Igam's fighter jet landed on a nearby beach, like he is setting this up from the very beginning. But what the heck, it made the second round of their duel more epic.

Round two is just Red Mask vs. Igam; the fight choreography in this scene is really fantastic. The sword play is intense that I love every second of it. My only problem with it is that it is too short. While this is all happening, the other Maskmen are worried about Takeru but Commander Sugata continues to stay calm. Seeing Sugata calm made me realize that just like Akira, there is a reason why he chose Takeru to become a Maskman. His face clearly tells us that he has faith that Takeru can make it, that he can beat Igam in this fight.

Now comes the moment that I have been waiting for, Igam finally activating the Death Ring. The activation scene is seriously badass; it has the amazing lightning effect that gives the impression that this is serious business. As for the Death Ring itself, it looks like a chicken cage that I used to see while growing up. Since this is the Death Ring we are talking about, it has electricity in it! This is when the "death" aspect in the Death Ring comes in as Igam and Takeru begins their fight in that ring, seriously exhausted.

While Takeru is being beaten up by Igam, he remembers his first meeting with Commander Sugata that we saw briefly earlier in this episode. Their first meeting happens after Takeru saved a baby before a train destroys the crib that the baby is in. After doing this feat, he meets a strange man who fights him for some reason. The fight between Takeru and that man is really amazing; the distant shots with minimal lighting added the mystery behind the man that is fighting Takeru.

For the first time, Takeru experienced fear as he fights a stranger that attacked him all of a sudden. It makes sense since you are just there, walking home when all of a sudden, someone attacks you for no reason. The lesson in this scene is that even though he feels fear, Takeru didn't give up; he continues to fight the strange man until he revealed at the end that his name is Sugata and he was chosen by him to become Red Mask thanks to his attitude. After this scene, it made me wonder how he selected Kenta, Haruka and Momoko to become Maskmen if his methods of choosing one can be as random as that one.

After remembering his first meeting with Sugata, Takeru continues to fight Igam to the death. When the battle gets more intense as every minute pass by, it was interrupted because of one Underground Beast sent by Baraba. Though this creature served as a method to prolong Igam's life for later episodes, it's kinda disappointing that he appears all of a sudden just to interrupt one epic duel. To make it more disappointing, we learned that even Igam's comrades, less Fumin are not confident that Igam can defeat Red Mask at the end! A stark contrast to Sugata's firm faith that Takeru can beat Igam at the end.

After Takeru showed his disappointment as he thought that Igam is the one who called the creature, he transforms into Red Mask to fight it along with his teammates. They beat the monster, the giant battle came in next, which is still fun to watch and defeat it. Though it is fun to watch, the giant battle becomes too repetitive in this show. Granted they have some variations with the move sets but it is not enough to make the giant fight interesting.

At the end, Igam is disappointed with the outcome of his duel with Red Mask because some MOTW ruined it. Back in the base, Sugata send a message to Takeru without saying anything. The scene sums up the relationship between the two, the two are so close that they can say what they want to say to each other without saying a single word! Whatever that message Sugata send to Takeru without saying a thing, I guess it has something to do with him doing a great job in his duel with Igam.