Choudenshi Bioman 18 – Shingo & The Psychic Girl

More mecha battles? More mecha battles.

Because of a girl's psychic abilities, Shingo learned a future Mecha Giant attack and that he and his team were able to prevent it from fulfilling its mission to find a rare kind of metal. With that in mind, Gear now wants the kid so that they can succeed with their plan!

There are a lot of things that I like about this episode. First is the fact that there are two mecha battles in this episode, second is the psychic kid and third, it's an episode focused on Shingo aka Green Two. First is the mecha battle, one thing I notice in most 80's Super Sentai shows is that the mecha battles only last for at least 3 minutes and it's quite rare for them to have a mecha battle that will last for at least 5-6 minutes. In this episode, they featured two mecha battles, something that is not common back then.

The first mecha battle introduced us to Terracotta Kans, which is obviously based on those Chinese Terracotta warriors. The first fight between the Bio Robo and the Terracotta Kans is really good that I am smiling the entire time while watching it. What's amazing about this fight is that the two machines are quite even when it comes to skill and power. Granted that the Bio Robo has the advantage thanks to his Bio Shield, but it turns out that it's not very effective when it comes to defending the enemy's attacks. Thankfully, they were able to survive this battle thanks to the assistance of a psychic girl that Shingo met earlier.

The psychic girl is quite an interesting character in a sense that no one believed her except for Shingo. Because of this, she ends up helping the team with her powers making me care more the character and her fate after the episode. What made her more interesting is the fact that she is not your standard psychic, her psychic powers comes from a gem that she is wearing, which is quite unique in my opinion. What made me like this kid more is the way how she expressed herself when it comes to her powers. She only thinks that she is just praying hard that's why her powers appeared. It's a nice innocent outlook of having that kind of power since most people who are psychics in TV think of their powers as something dangerous.

Before she is kidnapped by Farrah in this episode, she tells Shingo that he might die later. What I like about this prediction is that it's quite vague if Shingo will die or not or when it will happen. But before we find the answer about Shingo's supposed death, the girl is then kidnapped by Farrah who tried to kidnap her by wearing a disguise but nope, the kid's psychic powers find out that she's one of the bad guys.

Since this is a Shingo focused episode, Shingo tries to rescue to girl! Even though we didn't see him fight some Mecha Clones in human form, we at least saw that the girl's prediction came true thanks to Farrah! That scene briefly made us forget that Shingo is Green Two thanks to how the explosion scene was shot. We only see a large puff of smoke, the same puff smoke that the girl saw in her prediction. And since we briefly forgot that Shingo is Green Two, his return after he fooled everyone is really great. Oh, and his teammates arrived just in time for the final fight!

The final fight scene in this episode is really good and that we see more of Green Two's skills. As expected, they defeated the Beastnoid again and it's time for the mecha battle! The final mecha battle is just as good as the first one and showed us that they can do one great mecha battle less than 4 minutes. This final mecha battle made me realize that even though older Super Sentai mecha didn't have any visual upgrades or an additional robot, they can still manage to kick ass even if the show reached the 18th episode mark, the time when most new Super Sentai shows introduce a new robot.

At the end, the girl lost her psychic powers thanks to what Farrah did earlier when she removed the gem and throw it away. But I guess it's for the better, she will not anymore dream of monsters attacking people or someone dying because of some explosion. That kid needs to see something that will uplift her spirits and not something that will make her go crazy in a very young age.