Hikari Sentai Maskman 25 – Akira's True Love

This is badass.

Akira continues his martial arts and to put this into application, he joins a martial arts competition wherein the competitors must fight until they are exhausted. To make things interesting, the girls discovered that he is hiding some letter coming from a girl! To make it more interesting, Tube is involved with the competition.

The plot about Akira's supposed girlfriend is the weakest part of the episode and the girls wanting to discover her identity kinda ruined the mood of the entire episode. For me, the mood of the episode is Akira wanting to make his mother proud by continuing his practice of martial arts. Speaking of martial arts, the fight scenes in the episode are really great. All of Akira's fights are really well done. While taking screencaps, I pause making me notice that Akira's actor did most of the stunts. Most because I am pretty sure that there are parts that Akira has a stunt double doing the complicated work for him.

The big reveal that he is doing this to make his mother proud is really great. It properly sums up Akira's character for me. He is the youngest member of the team and that he has a lot to prove to us audience. This is one of those episodes that showed us that Akira is one great character and I can't wait to see more of Akira in action in later episodes. As for the rest of the episode such as the in-suit fight and the giant fight, it's kinda okay. They maintained the quality of the fights from the previous episodes.

Lastly, aside from Akira being awesome, the other thing worth mentioning about this episode is that the girls feel like they are bit out of character. To be specific, Haruka is not that tomboyish and the one who started the shipping thing with Akira and his mysterious girlfriend. Oh, and for some reason, the Maskmen wear swimsuits in this episode just to reach the place where Akira is fighting the bad guy even though they have other means to reach the island without swimming.