Choudenshi Bioman 17 – The Tale of Jiro Urashima

Badass? Badass.

In search for Utopia and Taro Urashima's legendary treasure, Doctor Man orders Monster and Juo to look for Taro Urashima's descendant... who happens to be a kid who ran away from home named Jiro. Can Shiro aka Red One and his team stop Gear's plan to find Utopia?

For an episode that feels like it is advertised as an episode focused on Monster and his hijinks, this is one great Shiro focus episode. The episode started with a brief background about the tale of Taro Urashima, we also learned that tale has a deeper meaning when it comes to the search for Utopia. But I don't care about it because I am having fun just watching Monster and Juo have fun! I love their closeness, which makes these two vastly different from the other Beastnoids and enemy commanders. Their friendship is one of the reasons why I seriously love episodes that feature Monster and Juo.

Now that I am done talking about Monster and Juo's friendship, it's time to talk about the plot of the episode. One thing that I hate about this episode is the kid. He thinks that his mom doesn't care for him. Just like every kid who thinks that his parents doesn't care about him, he obviously runs away and ended up meeting Shiro in the process because he stole Shiro's snack. Instead of handing this kid over to the cops, he just gives the kid a good advice and just let him eat his snack. This gave me a better impression on Shiro that he is more than just the serious leader of the team; he can be quite a cool guy sometimes.

The reason why Jiro ended up getting mixed into all of this is because he is a descendant of Taro Urashima. I am not sure at first why Gear needs Taro's descendant but his kidnapping showed us more of Shiro's personality, that aside from being a cool guy, he is willing to run through enemy gun fire just to save a kid. What I like about those scenes is that it showed us how badass this guy is. I mean, enemy fighter jets are shooting him but he still continues to speed up his bike just to chase Monster and co. But at the end, he didn't manage to save the kid but that will not stop Shiro to find them!

Back to Monster and co., we learned the reason why they needed a descendant of Taro Urashima; it is all thanks to Doctor Man's machine, which has the ability to dig into someone's deepest subconscious, revealing details about his/her ancestors. I don't know what crackpot science where he learned that stuff but what the heck, the show claims that he is the greatest scientist that ever lived and the plan worked, I can just ignore what crackpot science he learned that sort of thing.

Thanks to crackpot science, we finally learned that Taro Urashima's treasure is somewhere buried near the ocean but as for the Biomen, all they have are bits of clues about the areas where the treasure can be possibly located. So yeah, their current plan right now is to wait for the enemy to make its first move so that they can follow where it is going. The plan worked and saw more of Shiro being a total badass. Shiro's scenes in this part of the episode are seriously fantastic, it showed the kid that even though people will not trust him or care for him, at least there is somewhere out there who is willing to lend him a hand once he is in trouble, and that guy is no other than Shiro Go aka Red One.

Aside from that moment of badassery, Monster and Juo continues to be comedic even in battle. Their comedy relied more on them getting exploded by the good guys, which is basically the traditional slapstick comedy. To be honest, it's kinda funny at first but after watching Juo getting hit by another Bio Election finisher, I once again remembered one thing that I hate about this show, why the heck the Beastnoids can't die on a freakin' team finisher?!

Finally, the giant battle in this episode is quite creative compared to the previous episode, which is basically throwing some punches and do the finisher afterwards. But to cut them some slack, that episode featured a freakin' timed explosive that will blow up Japan if they fail to stop it! More on the creative part of the battle in this episode, what I like about it is how they incorporate the animal elements in Turtle Kans' fight style. It's one nice touch and makes the fight interesting even though it lasted for only a few minutes. At the end, they were able to save Jiro but never got the chance to get the treasure. Guess it's better of that way.