Monday 7 October 2013

Zyuden Sentai Kyoryuger 29 – Fighting For a Friend

Mini mecha? Mini mecha.

Torin is now dead but there is still hope for his revival after discovering that the stone King wears can help his revival. Can our heroes revive their mentor/friend? Did I mention that this episode features all nine Kyoryugers?


The first half of the episode is focused on Torin and his eventual revival. Even though it's quite obvious that he will be revived before the episode ends, his sort of farewell speech is really touching. It's touching because we know why he decided to ally with the citizens of planet Earth instead of destroying it. He is a being who sees the potential of our planet to do greater things. After his speech about his love for our planet, he dies... for now.

Meanwhile, the Spirit Rangers arrived just in time to save the day and transform the giant Torin back to his normal size. Seeing Tessai and Ramirez again out of suit is really great and I just love that the explained why Tessai suddenly has hair. As it turns out, he is wearing a bald wig when we first met the guy! I guess the series is just continuing the gimmick that all Kyoryugers have at least one goofy aspect in their personalities. After Ramirez retrieved the shrinking ball, Tessai used one of his illusion techniques to escape, giving them enough time to mourn on Torin's death.


Seeing the nine Kyoryugers together for the first time is one nice sight to see... in concept that is. Seeing all nine of them mourning over Torin is one emotional scene, we barely hear them talk and the silence and the close up on their faces shows us how sad these guys are after the death of their friend. And that my friends, is why nine Kyoryugers together is good in concept. The first execution for it is meant to evoke sadness, not joy, which is something I expected to see once they feature all nine together in one scene. I guess they are saving this later in the episode or if this will not happen, later in the series.

Now that Torin is dead, our heroes want to avenge him but King makes a fine point that this is not the kind of revenge that Torin wanted. Which makes sense, the man cherished us humans because of our best traits, and King here wants to commemorate it. As part of his respect to Torin, he placed his necklace on his body and thanks to one tear, the stone reacted, making them realize that there is a way to revive Torin. Even though the discovery part sounds cliché, at least Torin didn't revive after a single tear. It turns out that it takes more than a single tear to revive him.


To make things interesting, the villains arrived just in time to learn about it. The Spirit Rangers and Yayoi fight the bad guys while our heroes escape so that they can revive Torin inside the Spirit Base. The fight scene featuring the Spirit Rangers and Yayoi is really fantastic, the scene highlights their individual fight styles and to top it all off, they even have their own roll call! Back to the other Kyoryugers, Utchy ends up fighting Dogold and Endorf's Debo Monster so that his teammates can safely return to the Spirit Base.

As for how they revived Torin, they revived him by singing. I know it sounds cheesy but that's how they do it. But hey, at least the episode explained why by singing an ancient song can revive Torin! As for the explanation itself, it makes sense. It ties up to why the Kyoryugers need to dance before they pull the trigger and why there's a lot of music in this show. To put it simply, Kyoryuger is basically the first music-based Super Sentai team. Even though these guys don't have any music instruments as weapons, they fight with the power of music.


Torin is now revived and King finally figured out how to draw out KyoryuRed Carnival's full potential. King arrived just in time to save his teammates who are fighting Endorf and his men. He then fights Endorf as KyoryuRed Carnival and reveals the form's other ability, using three Beast Batteries; he can equip Gabutyra's arms, turning him into a mini version of the Kyoryuzin! Seeing KyoryuRed Carnival equipped with Kyoryuzin's arms is really great because he is basically a more agile version of the said robot. Because he is just a more agile version of the original robot, he is able to perform some moves that the Kyoryuzin can't do. Hopefully we can see more interesting KyoryuRed Carnival combinations later in the series.

Back to the rest of the team, the Spirit Rangers, Torin and Yayoi defeated their enemies. As for the other five, they manage to defeat the Debo Monster thanks to a special finisher that they created. The new finisher is really amazing, I just love the fact that the attack basically mixes up the individual powers of the five Kyoryugers into a series of slashes. Back to King, we also see KyoryuRed Samba Carnival's finisher and to be honest, I am not that impressed. Oh well, at least it did the job of defeating Endorf.


Speaking of Endorf, he didn't have the chance to grow in size thanks to Luckyuro being busy with his jigsaw puzzle that Dogold gave him. This is when Dogold comes in, now that Endorf is weak and that hatred is quite similar to rage, he grabs the opportunity to steal Endorf's body to become his new body. Dogold really hates this guy. But since he is a new general, I guess Endorf will play a much larger role later in the series.

At the end of the episode, Torin is thankful for having such friends in the form of the Kyoryugers. The episode ends featuring the Kyoryugers walking together with Torin. This is when the concept of seeing nine Kyoryugers together work just to evoke the feeling of joy and this is one rare sight to see, which I am not sure if we will see it again later in the series that is not a movie or the final story arc.