It seems like a bit of a truism to say that SF has changed significantly since the beginning of the show. While it’s true that the show has upped the ante in a number of ways since the main duo defenestrated a gorilla, the change in the core of the show has been a little more delayed and tougher to identify. Before the obvious change, and even immediately after, the show was weird in a quirky kind of realistic downbeat humor. Then things got serious with King Torture, but now that that’s past, the show doesn’t seem to be going back to that kind of small-things approach. Instead, we got Red Axe in full costume and a helicopter tapping Masayoshi to lead a fight against alien spore warriors apparently created by a combination of alien spores and Sketch Turner.

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This show seems to be getting returns on everything. Way back in episode 4 when Mari was introduced, it seemed like her too-aggressive side was ultimately going to be used for comical purposes, and would ultimately end up being the umpteenth example of the stereotypical angry, overaggressive girl. That characterization choice, while irritating at the time, yielded huge dividends this week, as King Torture took only a few minutes to shred Mari’s heroic resolve to pieces.

It was a scene every bit as creepy as the picture implies

In an episode where Goto was driving a jeep off a cliff into a missile, KT was swapping his hand for a chainsaw, and Masayoshi humbled up a bit after understanding how much he needed people’s support (though that element could have been played for better development if they had really tried), what I really can’t get over is how much I like that scene with Moe and the pliers. Because of how deep-cutting KT’s words and actions were to Mari, and because of the quiet strength supposedly shallow Moe showed while her finger was getting the steam press. One of the nice things about scenes like this is that they can reveal hidden depths to characters you didn’t think had them. More so than any other part of the continuation (including Masayoshi’s unmasking), I want to hear the next conversation those two have.

King Torture’s organization is a really big enigma at this point. It’s got the Sunred comically incompetent villains, but it’s also got a definite second gear that puts it on a creepily effective streak, and that was full-up on display this episode.

According to the man at the top, that was all part of a deliberate ploy. I’d like it less if this were all part of some elaborate plan and not changing gears to fit the situation at hand, but if it is a 100% intentional strategy, then it’s a surprisingly astute one. There’s been plenty of good exploration in other works of what happens when the heroes (or really anyone) win repeatedly and overwhelmingly over a long period of time.*

Whether the initial winning streak was a deliberate one, it was really interesting to see the protagonists react. Mari got a weird combination of angry and bored, tempting fate with an in-your-face challenge to K.T., an acto fo poking the iron maiden that probably made her kidnap target alpha. Masayoshi lost a lot of his initial “I don’t care if it’s just one kid” determination and let his small-time celebrity go to his head. I like him quite a bit less now because of what I saw this week, but I kinda think I’m supposed to. Time will tell whether that move was a good idea or not; it’s harder to stay engaged with a story this sidewindery without a likeable cast of characters. Gotou does kind of take care of that, since he’s still the level-headed smart guy he’s always been. By all accounts, he and the professor were the only ones who saw that the big twist might happen, and I totally emphasize with him flaming Masayoshi’s video streams at this point.

At this point, just the fact that the heroes are in the state they’re in proves K.T. had a point in his monologues. We always knew Mari wasn’t in it purely for the people, but the extent to which Masayoshi soured up, even over an extended period of time, shows that it’s difficult to have motivated heroes without credible villains. And since their battles are looking increasingly like ones that’ll start posting body counts again, the show may start to really deconstruct the hero fantasy in an entirely different way from how I initially expected.

*Including a certain Brandon Sanderson novel that should have been on shelves a month ago. One of the big things I like about A-list manga and anime (as opposed to A-list novels and games) is that they do a great job of keeping their releases to a regular schedule. Granted, from a creative perspective, you do trade away some valuable fine-tuning that way and raise the risk of burnout. But I find that a lot of that is often offset in the quality of the finished product by the increased focus a hard deadline brings. This is one of those issues where each side brings pluses and minuses, and it kinda comes down to what flavor of creation you’d rather have.

Eschewing my usual order for this week for the obvious reasons, plus the fact that I’m a day late getting to everything that came out since Monday.

Samurai Flamenco is the Allen Iverson of the Fall season; every subplot you can dredge up is interesting as hell. For starters, King Torture is going to be a thing. Which means that Goto and the Flamencos are an, albeit not entirely textbook, hero team. It’s a dynamic made more juicy by the fact that Mari didn’t really react to King Torture’s proclamation until he acknowledged Samurai Flamenco as the main character of the show. Meanwhile, her finisher remains blunt trauma to the groin even with triceratops-cauldron hybrids.*

On the production side, there’s plenty more to sink your teeth into. Takahiro Omori is still a badass who pulled off a longer version of Escaflowne’s prologue, except in 2013 where that stuff is approximately 20 times as commercially painful. This is far from the biggest right turn a show written by Hideyuki Kurata has ever taken, but the “coolest show by him” crown is very much in a rough and tumble title defense at the moment. The show is still hiding OST at this point; the scene where SF showed up on the bus had another brand-new track. And just how little animation can they get away with? This episode utilized still frames like it was the late-80s.

I’m a huge fan of both Dai-Guard and Astro Fighter Sunred, but I didn’t think you could mix their formulae like that and have it work. It’s working right now, though. The fact that they’ve already gone through at least 8 monster of the week battles after an episode and change does make me wonder whether this arc is going to last for 13 episodes or just 3. The pacing suggests to me that this King Torture business will either be over or escalating wildly when it hits the halfway break in late December.

*Oh, a further fun subplot alert: If it wasn’t enough that Stroheim’s VA showed up last week, now ACDC is getting in on the action. I have to wonder if this show is eventually going to tap the entire vocal cast of Battle Tendency.

This is only the second episode of the year to which my immediate reaction was to go back and watch the whole damn thing over again. While the last four minutes of it will understandably get the most attention, that was by no means the only part of the episode that wowed. There was so much stuff happening this episode, well beyond the typical level of “everyone doing their own thing” that characterized the episodes introducing the Flamenco Girls. Looking back on the episode a second time, it’s actually pretty clear that most elements of this episode were there to bring the first, more realistic portion of the series to a close while still keeping some compelling elements simmering. Because while the choreography of the fight scene in the final minutes was delightfully down to earth,* that doesn’t change the fact that it was against a man who had animorphed into a mechanical gorilla with a guillotine in its chest.

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Insofar as this show appears to be attempting to dial up the zany each week, this episode’s chase scene/gadget showcase definitely qualified as an upgrade in that department. For one thing, chase scenes are just intrinsically great ways of continually feeding tension, and the stakes (Masayoshi’s identity against 10 million yen) were plenty high. For another, there’s something intrinsically fun about watching a guy casually dodge bodies while talking on the phone.

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