So I had to catch up on five episodes at once and they were all pretty interesting. The time of the text wall is at hand.
[HIDE]Episode 6:
- I like how the show is engaging with its setting and showing that the average person doesn't particularly like all this giant robot crap that's going on. It reminds me a bit of how Kuuga used its setting. The scene with the little kids toward the end of the episode feels very Arakawa to me.
- This show has some seriously amusing villains. I think watching them banter was probably my favorite thing about this episode. They've got the quality I really enjoyed in B-Fighter's first three villains, only the amusing traits are distributed between them a bit more evenly.
- I'm not sure how I feel about this show's element system. On the one hand, I'm glad there is one, so there's some way to predict which Sazer is effective and when. On the other hand, the Sazers basically having to cast Scan on enemies bugs me a little. It's much more video gamey than I like my tokusatsu to be.
- It's weird to me that we keep having episodes where Takuto's behavior backslides into childishness, someone calls him on it, he grows a little more mature... and then we do the whole thing over again with some other character beat.
- If Sazer Gordo can steer the Adol Eagle just as well with one hand... what's the other handle grip thing do?
- "Let's keep fighting, without people knowing." Takuto, you guys regularly field 40 meter Super Robots. I don't think this is going to happen.
Episode 7:
- I'm torn between really liking the Captain Shark stuff in this episode and feeling kind of annoyed that they fake-kill him as a way to establish it. It's screamingly obvious by the end of the episode that he's not dead. There's not even dramatic tension or situational irony because the characters don't even believe he's dead. I feel like I've been pointlessly jerked around a bit.
- Having to scan a villain named Aqual to find out her element is just friggin' goofy. WAIT GUYS I GOT IT SHE'S THUNDER
- Why the crap is Kane expositing things that are flagrantly obvious from the beginning of the episode?
- WOW I BET AQUAL KEEPS HER PROMISE FOREVER
- Takuto's actor playing his younger grandfather is srsly cheesy guys.
- I should've seen the stuff with the Cosmo Capsules letting you violate causality coming. It's a really obvious way to let you dodge the "no traveling back to the future" rule. It still kinda bugs me, though. Why didn't the three main characters from the future mention this sooner? They all have to know it happened.
- There's some nice acting from the guy who played Captain Shark in this episode. He perfectly sells the idea that he's a guy who has no idea how to use chopsticks. He uses his chopsticks wrong in exactly the right way, so to speak.
- "I'll have my son or my grandson fight as one of your comrades."
CAPTAIN SHARK: I dunno. What if he turns out to be a moron or something?
GRANDPA: Oh c'mon. I bet my grandson will be so much like me, he'll even look just like I do now!
CAPTAIN SHARK: Well, you're a genius, so I can't imagine you being completely wrong about that.
- OH MAN AQUAL LIED I CAN'T BELIEVE IT
- omg Takuto never cared about Captain Shark until he died omg omg Takuto you are such a poser I FOLLOWED CAPTAIN SHARK BEFORE IT WAS COOL
Episode 8:
- Do the people who write these episodes ever talk to each other? Remy was all CAPTAIN SHARK WILL LIVE FOREVEEER last episode and now she's watching his death tape and moping. It's a cute idea for an episode otherwise but it doesn't really make any sense in context.
- Yui, you are way the too old to think randomly jabbing a soldering iron into something constitutes any form of helping.
- I'm thinking either Takuto's dad or Takuto's grandma introduced some serious stupidity genes into this family's pool.
- The stupid gag with Ein and Zwein taking baths shouldn't crack me up so much and yet it does.
- The random alien weapons dealer really reminds me of Kabuto from B-Fighter.
- Not really digging the Keystone Kops stuff this episode is doing during the comedy chase. Maybe it's the music. It's not good comedy music.
- It's very nice of these enemies to stand still while the Sazers scan them. Just think of how long the fights would be if the monsters tried to conceal their weaknesses!
Episode 9:
- OH MAN. There's two things this episode could be referencing. Both are pretty awesome things for a tokusatsu to reference.
One is this famous old episode of Macross where Hikaru and Minmei get locked into the bowls of the Macross and stuck there after the ship transforms into is humanoid mode. It's a pretty game-changing episode of the series, IIRC, because it's when Hikaru realizes that Minmei has a completely horrible personality. I think this has a sequence involving Hikaru and Minmei escaping crushing walls that's quite similar to the trash compactor sequence here.
The other one is a pretty famous episode of Red Dwarf where Rimmer and Lister, who detest each other 99% of the time, get stuck somewhere and are freezing to death and can't escape, instead having to wait on other characters to come save them. During this brief period of lock-in, Rimmer and Lister come to a transcendent understanding of each other that, since Red Dwarf is an abject comedy, completely evaporates once they're no longer afraid of freezing to death.
There's a Japanese-dubbed episode of Red Dwarf included on the DVDs, so it seems quite likely to me (especially given the show's sense of humor) that Sazer X's creators might have been familiar with this episode. I need to go back and rewatch the episode to check, but I think the "There's nothing else to do, let's kill some time by talking" bit and some of the other bits may be directly from this episode.
- What a delightful episode! I suspect someone's got a face-turn a-brewing after this. The only other thing you could really do with what happened here was kill Blaird off tragically. I can't see a show as quirky as this one really going in that direction.
- You know, Sazer X has reminded me of something for awhile and I think it might be Macross 7, the wackiest and perhaps most creative of the Macross sequels. The two shows have really similar senses of humor and melodrama and even blend them in a similar way. They're also both shows that tend to get dismissed out of hand by people who've overheard negative things from other people who never bothered to watch the show but totally read complaints on some guy's website.
Episode 10:
- I want to call this episode "Forbidden Bromance."
- It's so awkward to meet your ex when you're out in public....
- I don't care much for this fight between Takuto and Blaird. When you let Takuto just grab hold of Blaird's sword like that, you lampshade the fact that it's not really metal, doesn't have a cutting edge, and is in fact just a big ol' prop. It kinda swings suspension of disbelief from the neck until dead, dead, dead.
- I dunno, Cyclead. I think you'd make stronger giant monsters out of species hadn't gone extinct already. (Just sayin'.)
- Oh man, the revelation with the Captain just being a machine is so Macross 7.
- This episode's kinda laying it on thick with the daddy issues. I wonder if this show was directly influenced by Macross 7? A lot of that show is also about Mylene's issues with her parents... which are not as sledgehammer-obvious or as daddy-oriented, but still pretty prominent.
- I like that Blaird's big character development breakthrough in this episode is realizing that, deep down, he doesn't really care about the Cosmo Capsule plot and it's time to stop pretending otherwise.
[/HIDE]
