Hikari Sentai Maskman 14 – Searching for the Blue Sky

Akira hears some underground screams, causing him to discover that there are people living underground as he meets siblings Mirai and Yuri. Much to his surprise, they grew up living underground and never saw the blue sky even once. Can they escape underground and see the beauty of the world from above?

 14 episodes in and this is the first time they explored the Underground Empire Tube properly. If there is one thing that bothered me about Tube is why call them an empire if the only residents in that empire are the main villain casts and some foot soldiers? This episode answered it, as it turns out; there are actually citizens in this empire that are not monsters or foot soldiers! They are part of the empire's working class, people who were kidnapped by Tube in an early age and are forced to work for the empire by growing mushrooms for the Angramon. Since they are growing mushrooms, I guess this is also their food in the empire.

So how did Akira end up seeing this state of the empire? Simple, he ended up in peeping in some cut, causing him to be transported to Tube after he reported his teammates about hearing underground screams. Since this is an Akira focused episode, it is no surprise that it will feature a lot of great out of suit fights. Even if you pause the scene and watch this episode frame by frame, you can barely see any stunt doubles doing the stunts for the actor. With that in mind, I salute Akira's actor for doing his own stunts.

After meeting the kids and see the state of the empire, he can't himself but to help them. But before talking about it, I think I should talk first about the working class members of the empire. What's scary about it is that they started working for the empire when they are still kids till they die. The sad part is that they are doing this for 50 years, even before Emperor Zeba took throne as the emperor. This made me wonder, how did Zeba ended up becoming the emperor even though the throne of the empire is meant to the Igam clan?

The biggest surprise is not Akira's reaction about it being heartless, but it is coming from Prince Igam who saw this project for the first time. Even though he is a member of the royal family, he is not aware of what is happening to the empire he is serving. His reaction made me realize that the empire is quite big that even Igam himself might not be aware about other stuff related to the empire. Also, his reaction about Emperor Zeba being quite heartless is kinda priceless.

This thing about the empire about Zeba and the working class made me realize that this is one of the rare Super Sentai shows that did world building. Take note, there is nothing bad in world building, just as long as you still remember the elements you introduced, which you will later expand. In the case of Maskman, it's too early to judge on how they did their world building. But based on this episode and the episodes before it, they are doing a fine job in world building. Hopefully, they can maintain it in later episodes.

After seeing some more great fight scenes courtesy of Akira being awesome as always, the kids, to be more specific, Mirai is trying to convince the other working class citizens to leave the empire with them. The reaction of the citizens is something I already expected; they are persecuted by their masters and have no guts to escape from them. The sad part about it is that their parents, who are supposed to support them don't want to escape with their kids! If I consider Tube's resources from the previous episodes, they can easily find them and kill them. It didn't help that they are wearing slave clothes.

With that in mind, the kids just left with Akira, leaving their parents behind. It's kinda cruel for the kids just to leave their parents in that state, but what the heck, they want to see a world found above their dark world. As for the other Maskmen, after Kenta failed in looking for Akira via the Masky Drill, Commander Sugata ordered them to look for Akira in the place where he last appeared. What's interesting is that he is doing some string game thing with his fingers. For some reason, it is glowing, kinda like the string in the ending sequence. I am not sure how this will pan out in this episode, but this is worth mentioning because of the ending sequence reference.

Back to Akira, their exit in the underground world is now destroyed thanks to Oyobu and friends. Now that they have no means of escape, Akira has no choice but to fight them, that is until his teammates arrived just in time. Just like Akira, they arrived the same way like he did. After seeing a couple more of those great out of suit action scenes, Takeru finally figured out what Commander Sugata is trying to say about the light and him playing with the strings. After throwing the string to Akira and applying his Aura Power in it as Blue Mask, the string transformed into a rope ladder that they used to escape the underground world.

Now that they are out of this world, for once, the kids saw the blue sky. The scene is really well done; you can feel that the kids are shocked to see that a beautiful world exists. After the rest of the team leaves, Tube followed them. Akira's in-suit fights in this episode are well done but what stole the scene is the Spin Cruiser. I mean seriously, the way Takeru drove this vehicle is so awesome that you can even call it crazy at times!

After defeating the MOTW who is basically responsible in transporting humans who peeped in the crevice of one rock to the underground empire, it is time for the giant fight. The giant fight in this episode is interesting. It's interesting in a sense that that the Great Five didn't start with punching the MOTW, but using the Gyro Cutter as a weapon, something the machine rarely does. After doing some slashes with the Gyro Cutter, they finally finished the MOTW with the finishing move.

The episode ends and the first thing that comes to my mind is what happened to the people they met underground that is not the kids? Will the Maskmen just ignore them? As it turns out, they also saved them from the darkness and brought them to the world of light. Now that they are out in our world, what's next for them? I mean seriously, they just left the underground empire and basically, most of them are not aware who the real world works. This is the only part of this episode that disappoints me, there's no "proper" closure about Tube's working class citizens. Granted the kids are happy, what's next? Seriously, what's next after they saw our beautiful world?