Hikari Sentai Maskman 21 – Galaxy Robo, A Robot with Feelings

 Tit. Guns. Dang it, 80's.

After Great Five was buried underground thanks to Tube's plan in the previous episode, Commander Sugata has no choice but to revive the Galaxy Robo, a robot that is said to kill his best friend, Professor Yamagata. Opposing its revival is the professor's daughter, Yumi.

For the first time in the series, we have an episode focused on Commander Sugata and to top it all off, we now have a proper background about the origins of the Maskmen's gear and mecha. The flashback sequence showed us that the team was formed by some organization and revealed that Sugata designed the Great Five while his friend, Yamagata designed the Galaxy Robo. Considering how the scene felt like, it feels like that the organization involved in founding the Maskmen is a top secret organization who is preparing for a possible attack of some foreign invader. Hopefully, they can expand on that.

From the two robots, Sugata's Great Five was chosen and while the robot is being created, Yamagata is busy creating the Galaxy Robo because he feels like he must create this robot. What's interesting about it is that he claims that the robot has "feelings", which is something that intrigued me. Will it have an AI that can interact with the pilots or it's a sentient robot that can fight without someone controlling it? At the end, Yamagata died because of Galaxy Robo. The flashback of his death was really well made, it didn't help that we didn't know how the heck one giant robot killed a scientist. Was he squashed to death by the robot or was he killed by it by accident? The director never showed it, which added up the mystery of this robot's existence.

Sugata's scenes with Yumi is really great, their interactions felt like Yumi is partly blaming Sugata for his father's death while putting the major blame on the robot. Sugata defending her father's final work showed us that maybe; Yumi doesn't know his father that much, that his father can't create that kind of weapon whose objective is to simply kill. But their brief moment together was interrupted thanks to Tube who discovered Sugata's plan in reviving Galaxy Robo. The fight scene that comes after it feels pretty standard, so there is nothing much to talk about it.

Because of one powerful aura attack made by our heroes, it revived the sleeping Galaxy Robo and we finally this robot for the first time. To be honest, it feels like they can make Galaxy Robo's debut into two episodes but decided to make it into a single episode basing only to how Galaxy Robo's first appearance was shot. It feels like they can end the episode with a cliffhanger to give its debut more impact. After seeing Galaxy Robo for the first time, it made me realize that a single episode is enough for this robot's debut.

The Galaxy Robo is probably, one of the worst looking Super Sentai robots that I saw. It's worse in a sense that it doesn't look like the "killer robot" Yumi dubbed. It looks more like a robot created by some kid and decided to color the robot with a lot of colors that doesn't go well together. It didn't help that Galaxy Robo has two long guns attached in its chest, which I would like to call "tit guns". No seriously, that's how it looks like to me. The robot's appearance looks really ridiculous that I am not sure what's running on the professor's mind when he designed it!

After it fell down thanks to Tube's attacks, the Maskmen decided to go on board the robot after hearing the professor's voice coming out of it. It's the final voice recording of what happened hours before the professor's death. The revelation that lightning is the reason why the robot went berserk kinda makes sense. I mean, if the robot has feelings, then it is likely that it can feel emotion. The fact that it went berserk basically confirmed that it can display a variety of emotions and showed us that he is one sentient robot.

Aside from the revelation, they showed us an extended scene of the professor's death, which chronicles the last few moments of the professor. Just like the brief flashback earlier in the episode, the scene is really well made and quite emotional if I might add. Seeing your creation on rampage and not doing what you ask it to do made me realize that sometimes, adding feelings to a machine can render the machine useless because it will account its own feelings first before the feelings of its creator.

Because Tube continues its attack, the Maskmen decided that they will try controlling the robot. This is the part of the episode the really disappoints me. It really disappoints me because it feels like the build up they made about the Galaxy Robo being a robot with emotion was thrown out in the window and just showed us the Maskmen are capable to pilot a new robot. Granted, they keep on bringing up that the robot is doing what they want it to do, but the way it sounded felt like a bunch of scientists testing a new machine to see if it is working and not a group of people trying to befriend someone who has feelings.

As for the Galaxy Robo's weapons, it's the only thing about the robot that impressed me. Granted the robot looks ugly, but boy, the robot has one impressive line-up of weapons. Unlike the Great Five whose weapons can be found on the robot itself, Galaxy Robo's weapons only appear once they select what weapon to use. The weapon select screen looks great and for just a short period of time, it gave me an idea on how many weapons this robot has. Comparing Galaxy Robo's weapons with Great Five's weapons, you can say that the Galaxy Robo has a wide selection of weapons to choose from.

Before talking about the giant fight, let's first talk about those robot tit guns. Seeing those guns in action for the first time is kinda distracting and it didn't help that they did a close up shot of these guns in action! Hopefully, this is the last time the Super Sentai franchise will feature a robot with tit guns. More of its abilities, the Galaxy Robo is quite fast as it has the ability to dash but before they can arrive to Great Five's burial ground, the MOTW stopped them, which marks the start of the giant fight.

Aside from showcasing the robot's array of weapons, the scene showed us that compared to the Great Five, the Galaxy Robo has large hands that it can use to beat its opponents to a pulp and to be honest, I will not be surprised if later episodes will focus on the robot's hand to hand combat ability and not just its weapons. At the end, Galaxy Robo's first fight is far from over because after our heroes shoot one powerful bazooka attack in point blank range (!), both fighters end up feeling the impact of that strong explosion. Did the Maskmen defeated the MOTW or not? That's what we are about to find out in the next episode!