Animal Sentai JuO’ger #05

Rasta-gorilla
Reach out to his wounded heart
JuO MuscleSuit

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What happened in this episode?

The episode begins with… a giant fight?! While on their usual Cube hunt, the team spots a large swarm of enemy flying vessels led by the monster of the week, and they engage immediately in their Mecha. Yes, both sides make a passing joke about the earliness. Since there’s no giant monster involved, it’s a short one-sided fight, but the monster escapes to the ground. They give chase… and proceed to miss the monster sticking head-first in the ground right within their vicinity because their tails aren’t reacting to it. What they do find – and initially mistake for the monster – is a gorilla Ju-Man named “Larri”. …Get it? “Rilla”? Also a syllable swap of “ri” and “ra” in Japanese? LAUGH, DAMN YOU!

Azald, pissed at his underling for failing before even starting, decides to go down himself. Kubar laughs at his team for their brainlessness – which, to be fair, is pretty spot-on from what we’ve seen so far – but Genis looks forward to “something interesting”.

Back at Larri’s hut, the Ju-Mans exchange experiences a bit. The team’s Ju-Mans show Larri their Champion Symbols and even try to see what he would have for a human face. But since the studio has no cameos prepared, it doesn’t work, to which Larri speculates that the Cubes probably can’t be used by just anybody. He also recounts his circumstances: He’s actually a Ju-Man scholar observing humans, and got stuck in human land when the Link Cube lost one of its components. But he’s a pretty optimistic chum and the encounter is enjoyed by all – until he realizes that Yamato is a real human. He doesn’t just lose the mood upon hearing it; he flips out, throws stuff at Yamato, and runs away with a big “Nooooo!” In English! Or… Spanish? I don’t know; he’s a gorilla in Rastafarian attire who uses English “You”s and “Me”s, but also peppers his speech with Spanish. I feel like the writer was just told to “make him foreign” and decided the elements with a world map and a dart. And then added English because “Shit, not all kids know Spanish.”

Leo and Sera catch up to Larri, and he resumes his account: After being locked out of Ju-Land, he figured he might as well personally integrate into human land. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out as he hoped, as people frame-skip away from him wherever he went. Things ended in him getting shot in the arm by a policeman – and so did his passion and interest. He’s so wounded by the experience that assurances from his fellow Ju-Man about Yamato’s amiability don’t get through to him.

Having been retold all of this at home, Yamato is understandably sad for Larri. Even Leo, the resident goofball, feels unsettled by the thought that things could have turned out differently for them if they had met someone other than Yamato. Tusk understands why humans reacted to Larri that way: Because they also felt similarly wary towards Yamato when they first met him. Sera adds that it’s more or less an instinctive reaction towards a foreign being. Amu offers a plan to help Larri get used to Yamato. And that plan is: Volunteer to help out with Larri’s daily chores, and shuffle Yamato into the work innocuously. Not a bad plan by any means, but it doesn’t work. At first, Larri runs away, but he eventually snaps, telling his kin to stop pushing the human onto him or he’s done with them too.

A while later, Larri, now calmed down, sees Yamato alone, “talking” to a deer about how to befriend him. Now a bit more trusting but still cautious, Larri makes the approach. Yamato remarks a parallel between the two of them as scholars who enjoy their work of observing each other’s species, and why he feels so strongly about helping Larri overcome his trauma that turned what was once joy into pain. As with his approach to Tusk in #02, his earnestness starts to reach Larri.

But the moment is interrupted by Azald’s arrival, felt by the Ju-Mans as usual but far more intensely. He gets intercepted by the Ju-Man team members… whom he just tells to wait until the next game to start fighting. They transform and attack anyway; to say Azald “shrugged off their attacks” would be an understatement, since he didn’t even have to move from the spot – and even then, he’s still telling them to stay off. Only after Yamato joins the fray does he pull out his weapon, after which things proceed to go even worse for the team. Meanwhile, Larri is watching from the sidelines, surprised that a human can use a Champion Symbol, and subsequently makes another speculation that the Cubes can bestow “Ju-Man Power” on to a human.

Yamato gets badly injured in the fight, which finally prompts Larri to overcome his fear. He picks up the Cube, puts it in Yamato’s hand, and calls out to it for a way to help. The Cube responds, transferring his Ju-Man power and healing Yamato. The two cement their new friendship… only to have Azald ruin the moment again. This time, though, Debut Clause kicks in and things turn completely around – Yamato pulls up the front mask of his helmet upwards, revealing a built-in TOTALLY NEW gorilla face, and a huge muscle suit to go with it. Azald literally can’t get a hit in, and is pretty much a punching bag beyond this point. There isn’t even a need for a special finisher; Yamato just finishes him off with a raw, solid uppercut to the cubic jaw. Genis stops Naria from going down and handing in a Continue, to his officers’ surprise.

With the fight over, the team regroups, happy about the victory. But Larri is nowhere to be found… and the episode just ends here abruptly.

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What did I feel about this episode?

Much as I make fun of Larri’s design concepts – partly because I can’t resist the urge to riff, and partly because most of the time Toei writes a “foreign” character is hilariously unsubtle – I get his pathos. And it’s nice to see Yamato’s “I want to help people within my reach” creed put to work again instead of mere lip-service; in fact, I was expecting it to be mentioned again in this episode (and relevantly so, if they did), but to follow it through with action is certainly a much more substantial approach. The scene where he looks Larri in the eyes and holds his hands just exudes gentleness and earnestness.

The weekly monster was pretty much a joke in this episode and intentionally so, but it’s just a postponement and not a problem. We got Azald instead anyway, and he put up a serious fight that warrants a power-up, before as well as after. Oh, and just to put it out there: He’s not out of the game yet – you know it, I know it, Genis knows it, everyone does.

The power-up, while looking silly at first, is pretty cool in action, helped by fact that it also felt earned. Sure, there’ll always be room in Super Sentai for power-ups that are built, found or given, but a bit of narrative context that elevates them from being “just another toy” is always welcome – even moreso when that context involves character development. Also: Judging by the helmet designs, the others will quite likely get alternate modes soon, so that’s something to look forward to, especially if it means more character episodes as least as good as this.

One thing I noticed upon closer inspection of the episode is that Larri’s experience is rather comparable to an (unlucky) immigrant’s. It’s all simplified, obviously, but the essential gist is there. He’s stuck in a foreign land he used to work in, unable to return to his; his drastic differences from the natives deprived him of a smooth integration; he even got into trouble with the police because of those differences, from which he developed a fear of the natives as a whole; and it took someone who’s willing to genuinely reach out to overcome his trauma. He’s not the only character relevant to the topic either; most of the Ju-Man characters in the episode have to say one thing or another. When Leo, the designated un-serious character, is remarking the potential dangers, I find it hard to shrug off as a mere coincidence. With this angle in mind, the blatant “foreignness” of his design does come into perspective, somewhat. Of course I can’t say if this was intentional or not, but if it was, this is a surprisingly open-minded move in a children’s show. This might mean something by the end or it might not, but I enjoy looking a bit thoroughly like this when an occasion presents itself.

A meaty episode with character development, legitimately tense fight and a cool power-up – awesome. A (possible) positive message – welcomed. Story leading into the next episode and not done yet – hyped.

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How different a movie would The Shining have been if Mario was the lead character?

They’d probably have to rename it The Roleplaying, for starters.

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