This episode in a nutshell.
Jake asks Noah to recalibrate his Snake Axe, only to discover that it is too heavy for him. Because of this, he started to get insecure that he is not strong enough to be a hero. Can Noah believe in himself and learn that it takes more than just muscle to carry an axe?
Much to my surprise, I didn't expect that they were able to turn a GoseiBlack focused episode into a Blue Ranger focused episode. To those who haven't watched Goseiger, in the original show, Agri aka GoseiBlack is having a hard time understanding the serious GoseiBlue. In the case of this episode, it is about Noah's insecurities and they were able to do a good job to show us the best friend relationship between Jake and Noah. So what's the moral of this episode? It is to believe in yourself that you can do it.
Since the uses footage coming from the same Goseiger episode, the plot of this episode obviously has something to do with viruses. Instead of focusing on social commentary about how parents want their kids to be smart, they just went straight to the moral dilemma part of the said Goseiger episode. Said moral dilemma is if they have the guts to hurt the humans who were transformed into the show's foot soldiers. The American counterpart was able to handle it well thanks to the new footage made for this episode.
The new footage made the plot of the original Japanese show into something that is completely different. The new scenes are really well made. They were not over the top when it comes to action and tries as much as possible to be close to the Japanese footage. As seen in some scenes, they try as much as possible to hide some scenery seen in the Japanese footage and made it look like it is rolled in a single footage. The only time they screwed up with this one is during the giant fight. Instead of refilming a new enlargement footage scene, they just used the one from Goseiger, making one scene a bit inconsistent. But hey, this is Power Rangers; inconsistent footage is one of the main problems of this 20 year old show!
More on these new American footage, the new footage made it look like that this is an episode focused on Noah while originally; it is about Agri trying to understand Hyde's really serious nature. Since it is also focused on how heavy Jake's axe is, they were able to insert some gags about it in the new battle footage. The new battle footage also showed us Noah not being confident with his skills as he let Jake take the lead while he will do his best to support him.
As for the other three Rangers, the best part about the new footage is how they were able to quarantine the victims so that the virus will not spread. I think this is the only weak part about the new footage. It didn't help that the voice acting in this part felt a bit weak, like they are not that worried about the victims. Ignoring the bad voice acting and the weak action, the plan in trying to quarantine the victims is really great. They didn't just round them in some place, they weaken them by letting them wear out while they are the heroes are evading their attacks. It's simple and it's quite brilliant.
Back to Jake and Noah, their final fight with the MOTW is great. The new fight footage is really well made and that the transition from American to Japanese footage is also done quite nicely. Because Jake is injured, Noah has no choice but to use Jake's Snake Axe to defeat the MOTW alone. The way how they turned a scene about how awesome Hyde is into a scene about Noah finally learning how to believe in himself is really well done. But the best part is what happens after, after they defeated the MOTW, Noah is the one who freed them from the huge quarantine block the three Rangers made with Jake's axe. It shows how much he grew as a person in just a short period of time.
Another thing worth praising in this episode is the debut of the Sea Brothers Megazord set. Aside from the laziness of not editing the "Seaick Brother" card text and the "Seaick Gosei Great" card text, this Megazord debut justified the character development Noah had. One of my problems with Goseiger is how they rush the mecha introductions. I am okay with weekly mecha introductions but the problem with Goseiger is that the mecha is introduced in a wrong episode.
In the case of the episode in which this episode is based upon, instead of seeing the debut of the Landick GoseiGreat, we have the debut of the Seaick GoseiGreat and this episode is supposed to be an Agri focused episode! As for what I can say about this pirate looking Megazord, you can just check my review of the original Goseiger episode here. Anyway, the episode ends and we learned that Noah finally calibrated Jake's axe and it is lighter than before thanks to titanium alloy! The only problem I have with it is where the heck Noah got the titanium alloy?
