Hikari Sentai Maskman 22 – A Tense Aura Storm!

A meditating robot. Nuff said.

The Maskmen survive the explosion caused by the attacks of the Kimen Dogler and Galaxy Robo thanks to the Galaxy Robo's alternate mode, the Land Galaxy. With this new form, our heroes speed up their search for Great Five! Problem is that Kimen Dogler's upper half is now controlling Great Five!

The new Land Galaxy form properly explains why the heck Galaxy Robo has tit guns. It makes perfect sense; those are the exhaust pipes for Land Galaxy's fumes! But it's not a good excuse on why the heck Galaxy Robo has tit guns, I mean; you can place those exhaust pipes somewhere else! Even though I hated Galaxy Robo's design, I immediately fell in love with Land Galaxy's overall design. It's a nice looking trailer that can move well in rough terrains. I will talk about its transformation sequence into Galaxy Robo once I reached that point of the episode.

Since they are being attacked Kimen Dogler's head, we have a short chase scene before it merged with Great Five. Our heroes tried to fight it, only for Land Galaxy to try and avoid it as much as possible. This scene made me notice one thing, even though our heroes can now control the Galaxy Robo, it can still make its own decisions, and in this case, it doesn't want to attack Great Five right now.

Thinking that they are not strong enough to control the Galaxy Robo, they were able to accidentally figure out how they can properly control the Galaxy Robo. Like what I stated in my review of the previous episode, Aura Power played an important role in the activation of the Galaxy Robo and this episode expanded that idea. For them to have better control of the robot and unleash its full potential, it needs a dose of Aura Power. This episode kinda confirmed the meaning behind the robotic Buddha painting in the show. From what I have picked up, the picture symbolizes that human nature of robots that some machines have their own feelings. In this case, the robot we are talking about is the Galaxy Robo.

Anyway, it's time to apply some Aura Power to the Galaxy Robo but before that, they need to transform the Land Galaxy into the Galaxy Robo. The transformation sequence looks really great; the flipping of trailer's front part to form the robot's body looks really well done. Even though I have some problems with the use of the toy model in some shots of the transformation sequence, I can just ignore it since this is made during the 80's and their technology is kinda limited to what they can show onscreen.

The robot meditation scene is the best scene in this episode. Aside from the fact that we have a meditating robot, what I like about this scene is how it was shot. The rain made the scene really intense, the lightning added the difficulty and the fact that the director gave us show shots of the environment around the Galaxy Robo to give us the impression that they are meditating in a really bad and intense weather. As for the guys who are meditating inside the machine, I just love the details they put in the front glass of the Galaxy Robo. We see mud and some heavy rain hitting the glass while the Maskmen are meditating.

The meditation scene is also one of Takeru's fine moments and showed us how much he grew as a hero. If you still remembered the show's earlier episodes, Takeru is the last Maskman to gain access in his Aura Power. In this episode, he is the Maskman who encouraged them to concentrate their Aura so that they can unleash Galaxy Robo's full potential. And finally, they did, they were able to unlock Galaxy Robo's full potential thanks to Aura Power and it is now time to finish this battle.

The fight scene in this episode looks really great and properly highlights the fact that the Galaxy Robo is more of a puncher rather than a weapons user. Heck, the only weapon it used in this episode is its guns! Galaxy Robo's method of freeing Great Five is kinda rushed and feels like the effort they put to build up this scene went down to the drain. Now that they are done with their problem with Great Five, it's time to finish the battle.

Unlike Great Five, the execution of Galaxy Robo's finisher comes in two parts. The first part is transforming the robot into a trailer and let run into a track of Aura. At first, I thought the finisher is basically ramming the trailer into the opponent and I am okay with that since I find ramming finishers really cool, but then it transformed back into the Galaxy Robo. This is when part two comes in, after the trailer form is done with its spurt, it transforms back into its robot mode, and does one backflip arm chop finisher! I was left speechless after watching it. This is probably one of the coolest Super Sentai robot finishers I have ever seen! It didn't help that it ended with Galaxy Robo closing his large hands together, something that most martial artists do after a fight.

Even though it feels like there is no emotional pay-off with Great Five's rescue, the scene that comes after Galaxy Robo defeating the Kimen Dogler make up for it. What I like about this scene is Galaxy Robo holding Great Five's hand like it's the first time the two met. I find the scene emotional because even though I can't hear these robots talk, it gave me an impression that Galaxy Robo is telling Great Five that he is not anymore alone in this fight. It's one touching scene and I can't wait to see these two robots together in action. At the end, it seems that Dr. Yamagata's dream came true, he made a robot with feelings and I can feel it.