Tag: Goto

Animini: Samurai Flamenco – Final Episode – Naked Samurai Flamenco!

Steam Salutations .. and this time the steam is from a little bit of an unexpected ending! For a moment there my face went red as we concluded Samurai Flamenco. Last episode I was super hopeful.. the week before that I felt utter despair. I felt episode 18 was the perfect ending to a show.. and in a way it was.. but the ending in episode 22 is a lot more satisfying. Though also a bit less perfect. Goodbye Samurai Flamenco.. let’s review you one last time!

The Summary

The episode begins with an origin story for Goto, which is not a good sign considering he just had a gun pointed at him and the trigger being pulled.  We see how he got his Girlfriends phone and slowly lost his mind trying to offer himself solace.  One message in particular highlighted the last message she truely sent him. In retrospect it is kind of weird that so many years have passed and no one notices how old of a flip phone he was using..and the fact that a telephone survived for that lone.. but oh well. The shot misses and we see Hajii reveal his real plan. He wants to transform Samurai Flamenco into a Dark Hero, by seeing his best friend kill his rival. Causing him trauma he can not forget.  So that means Goto has to kill Hajii to make this happen.. Hajii angers him by deleting all of Goto’s girlfriends messages including the final message she sent him.  This causes the poor man to properly lose his marbles and he swears to kill the young boy and then Masayoshi steps in.

Hajii tries to force him into his Samurai Flamenco costume but Masayoshi refuses.. he instead gets naked! Saying the two have to find love together and he will fight Hajii as Masayoshi not as Samurai Flamenco!  During their scuffle Goto gets the keys to his handcuffs and the gun and he wants to kill Hajii but Masayoshi stands in his way.. trying to talk him out of this. He does this by….proposing to Goto, still very naked. Goto calls Masayoshi stupid.. but doesn’t turn down the proposal, and the two call each other Baka and Aho for about 4 minutes or so.  Masayoshi realises he truly loves Goto and can not allow him to be corrupted and the end their standoff. Goto lowers the run. Masayoshi goes to Goto but what happens then is blocked by Mari who pops into the screen and beats Hajii up! Goto and Masyoshi talk and we see the criminal boy get kicked in the balls by Mari. A timeskip later and we see everyone being happy again. A sentai museum is opening and the flamengers are all there, Mari and Moe and Mizuki are having concerts again and Masayoshi visits Hajii in jail.. saying he wants to see him change. When he exits Goto is waiting for him and the two walk to the museum together.. Goto has a new phone and when someone litters, Masayoshi transforms into Samurai Flamenco once more.. chasing the litterer leaving a smiling Goto behind

The Positives

So apparently there is a manga that is set after this where Goto and Masayoshi live together, there is also a card game that shows their wedding. I am not sure if it is canon but my does that make this twist ending delightful. Those two would make a great couple.. and it does give Goto some peace of mind. That smile he has at the end.. that is great! And YAY Hajii was real! Thank Arceus for that.. I would have cried if he wasn’t.. Goto and Masayoshi becoming an item at the end was not what I had expected for an ending.. but last week I already expected an ending I would not expect.. and BOY did that deliver.  This really might be one of my favourite endings of a show.  Which admittedly also might seem so amazing because I was kind  expecting a trainwreck. But the ending is just so sweet and adorable.. and it is kind of neat that the final battle had to be fought as Masayoshi not as Samurai Flamenco it really was a nice turn that was properly set up.

The epilogue also delivered on the satisfaction. The opening to the museum works great as a visual callback , the walk of Goto and Masayoshi is super cute and a little bit loaded.. you want them to spill the beans and see if we can find out what happened to the proposal but it wisely never does. Even if Bromance.. with the B potentially between brackets  is not for you, you can take the ending anyway you like. They could just be palls! The extended universe makes them more.. but it is totally up to you if that counts yay or nay! Smart! We see everyone happy, and that whole World President stuff is also conveniently dropped which makes it a lot more airy and digestible.. it keeps Masayoshi as an innocent young man who hasn’t changed all that much yet realised something very important in his life. While he hasn’t changed he has become a much more complete man and that is enough.. that is what makes this show great in the end.  I still think episode 18 would have been a good enough place to end as Samurai Flamenco.. yet episode 22 is a much better place to end as Masayoshi.. and I like that there is a difference.

The Negatives

For me, Masayoshi did not have to go naked. The scene would have worked just as well in his boxers or even his underwear.  Metaphorically naked would have worked as well. It would not have weirded Hajii out as much maybe.. but I am not sure if him being weirded out mattered that much. Was it just so Goto got to see him naked? Am I missing something here?! To be fair I do not get weirded out or shocked from a naked person because I don’t really believe in that Taboo. A naked person doesn’t go much for me let alone a drawn one.. and we don’t even get to see anything.. it’s more like the Austin Powers implied Naked that is cleverly covered up in each shot. Somewhere I get it.. as it is pure Masayoshi.. no hiding behind anything.. but again underwear would have been enough.

That stupid random adoption scene from ther last episode has no impact here, we do see the Flamengers, but mostly it’s just Lady Axe calling Pink a sow other than that they are just impressed with the Museum.. also Black’s Grandpa is fine which is nice but I can not help that because of that random episode this felt like the least conclusive and satisying endings.. the rest got all closed up nicely but there was a bit of unfinished buisness left.  Like I said last week the parents of Haji indeed helped him fake his death as it turns out which makes sense enough.. but Kono only NOW finds out they are kind of worried about what he has been doing with this?! The boy has been dead for a year you know.  It seems kind of weird that his parents would not have any idea. Where does he store his explosives, can they never hear any phone calls he makes, how does he learn to infiltrate an apartment.  You can do a lot in a year but making the parents completely oblivious makes them horrible people in my eyes. Just allow him to do this or something because they are just as crazy obsessed with him as he is with Masayoshi or something. Now it is kinda hokey?!

The Score

I can rest at ease now and leave this series with a huge smile on my face. The twist ending was lovably weird but also quite in line with the show! A bromance moving into a romance….. which is how I take that ending is a great way to break up the stale trope of the hero being alone. Not only do we get closure, Goto get’s closure.. and while his behaviour in episode 20 still kind of disgusts me he has suffered enough. The fact that he doesn’t completely let go.. shows he is crazy enough to be with Masayoshi as well and the fact that almost all other people except for Goto have been using smartphones did kind make the scene better.. but still it kind of feels like someone is playing on their Iphone 10 next to someone with an iPhone 4…Mari, as shallow as she is would be bound to notice!

It’s a great final episode that has a few logic leaps that make the pay off not AS strong as it could have been.. but it’s one of those ending.. where you do not care about that. Is it perfect no!  Have I seen shows with stronger endings.. I most certainly did… yet I have said this before.. I do distinguish BEST and favourite. If someone asks me for the best anime I have ever seen, I would struggle to find an answer and probably end up with Spirited Away or one of the Ghibli movies.. if they ask for my favourite I say Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann.  From what I have heard Cowboy Bebop has one of the best endings in anime.. though tragic, (I have yet to see it myself)  but my favourite ending… it might very well be this one! So this end gets one heck of a subjective Star Fruit! Thank you for existing Samurai Flamenco! And Moe.. my sweet summer flower, I am glad you are okay!

Animini: Samurai Flamenco – Episode 21 – Teaching Love

Noooooooooo Moe-chaaaaan! Please be safe! Stupid Hajii deserves to die for what he did to you my sweet blue spring flower!  He even scared me out of my Steampunk outfit because I am so worried about you! .. Where last week I nearly dropped the show.. two episodes before the end of the show, which shows up how messed up it was,  this week I absolutely am blown away…but if they make Masayoshi the actual villain here.. this entire review is null and void! In  fact.. if they go the stupid route.. this might be the first post I will ever delete.

The Summary

Episode 21 begins at Masayoshi’s hotel, we see him contemplate killing himself so that Hajii stops. He now seems a bit more certain that the boy is not in his brain.. but if there is no one for him to torment his friends are safe. He calls Mari and  warns her about Hajii. Mari does not seem worried but asks about Goto and if they have made up again.. this  does not happen. Too worried about her love interest and not happy about him missing his friend she misses the time to drink her coffee and they have to go on stage. Mizuki and Moe collapse.. their eyes totally white.. big foam on their lips.. my heart drops and I am about to chuck my laptop out of the window.. No one hurts my Moe! Luckily the pair seems to have survived.. their stomachs get pumped and now we have to wait and see.. and no it isn’t resolved this episode so I am not sure of my darlings fate! While Masayoshi watches the news report about the attack on MMM in relative silence.. he gets a call from the hospital. Joji is finally awake and he wishes to talk to Masayoshi.

Masayoshi and him have a heart to heart and the Mentor tells his pupil he saw the boy just before he got hit by the truck..He said to him “Give Samurai Flamenco my regards”. Thank you show! At least you have given him a distraction. Jojii tells Masayoshi to find out about love as it is the only way to defeat this foe. However Masayoshi being obsessed with being a hero has never known or experienced love.. or so he thinks. He doesn’t understand what love is. Here I am a bit afraid that Jojii wanted to speak to Masayoshi and say he saw him.. and that if he finds love in his heart he can stop doing terrible things.. but I really hope it is my over imaginative mind. Masayoshi talks to his agent who gives him a nice speech about love and gives us their cutest interaction yet.. I finally like her as a character a bit.. then she goes back to Tsundere all over Kono again and the admiration drops a bit again. Meanwhile Goto loses his phone at work.. he  finds a new one on the spot where his old one would be and gets a text from his girlfriend.. which turns out to be Hajii. Goto gets captured..which makes me afraid it is Masayoshi beating him.. because a young kid might not be able to do it.. although  there is a taser. The two talk about Hajii wanting to evolve Samurai Flamenco.. he pulls out a gun on Goto.. tells him he will see him tomorrow aims .. and pulls the trigger. The screen goes black in a huge cliffhanger.

The Positives

These positives only apply if Masayoshi doesn’t turn out to be the bad guy.. but I really like it how this episode actually steers away from that idea!  I don’t mind AS much if Masayoshi imagined the entire thing and the show ends with the guy from the first episode having knocked his lights out or something… but making him the bad guy would kill the show for me.  So I do like that at least it SEEMS like Red Axe saw the guy as well.. it at least seems like Goto is captured by an actual guy and it seems unlikely that Masayoshi would steal Goto’s phone.. then replace it.. use the spelling of his probably dead girlfriend , then imagine himself being called with Goto’s phone to be baited for a final showdown.. that seems a bit much!  So if we judge it as an actual chain of events.. like I said last episode! I do like the Joker vibes.. from Haijii, I do like that I am super eager to find out what happend at the cliffhanger and I am more than eager to explore more!  i even like the idea that Masayoshi must learn to love to break that Super Hero cycle.. or a rivalry would never end.. that feels like a clever take on the genre. I like how they went with a concept where everyone is at danger.. so no matter who your favourite character in the show is.. you have stakes in this last episode. I must see that my Moe is safe.. and some might have to see if Goto survived. Others might have to check what the super angry Mari will do.

I weirdly kinda like that they left the door open to that stupid shitty ending that I really do not want to see. Goto never says “I should have believed him”  , Jojii never confirms he saw Haji just that he  saw who was standing behind him. It leaves options open.. but the same goes for Hajii being rule.. one might wonder how an 11 year old or however old he is survived by himself out there.. but right after his funeral his parents went missing, perhaps he killed them and took their money, perhaps they support his crazy goal someway somehow.. and went along with it out of their blind love. If Masayoshi is the one that poisoned Moe and Mizumi and pushed Kanede under a truck the show will be ruined for me.. because I feel it goes completely against the spirit of the show.. but at least I have a stake in this final episode. Kind of like seeing your favourite V-Tuber play russian roulette or something and if they fail.. they delete their channel. You will not like it if it goes bad.. but you sure have to be there to see that it doesn’t. I really want to watch this final episode badly!

The Negatives

I really felt nervous this episode and that is a super good thing, so my negatives are mostly hypothetical.. and I will not include those, but yes this was an amazing episode. I felt super engaged and excited so there is very little for me to complain about. However there was one scene that did not make ANY sense to me. At one point Lady Axe in the hospital waiting room asks if Green considered her offer to adopt him.. which he declines, Blue then gets upset and asks why he isn’t getting adopted and the answer he gets is.. You are too dumb.
Meanwhile Lady-Axe yells some petty things against Pink who suddenly holds a pair of divorce papers in her face. What the heck is up with that scene. If Masayoshi isn’t imagining what happens in the other room there.. this is just a really stupid scene. So either this is a very poor written scene or a sign on the wall that I will get a bad ending.. so it’s a negative alright.

There is also a lot of bad animation in this episode. Drawings that seem over-simplistic. Mostly around the hospital time. As long as a single character is in shot or two of them are in close up it is fine.. but if there are two or more full bodies it really shows in the animation. While I do not care for animation particularly this one feels so incidental and “not part of the same episode” as the rest that it REALLY took me out of the scene. When you look at the MMM concert you see a lot of love went into those shots. The shot from Mari laying there on the floor foaming from the mouth .. still haunts me.. and that scene in the ending with Hajii in Masyoshi’s apartment was done nice as well .. I truly felt the wind around that place. So it really felt as if the hospital bit did not matter.  I am also kind of upset that Masayoshi did not visit Moe and Mizumi.. they helped him out on numerous occasions. The lackluster animation kind of carries over in the scene with Masayoshi being thought about love from his agent.. but not as bad.  I don’t mind an episode with bad animation that much I guess.. I mind more when it’s fluctuating. It feels as if some parts lack love.

The Score 

I adored this episode.. like it really is on Star Fruit level for me.. I was super invested, super entertained and besides that one throw away scene I really love what happened here.  It was really good! Yet because the previous episode was SO bad .. I can’t fully enjoy it until I have seen the last episode! I will most likely not be able to wait a week before I watch this…. but never had a show been this high stakes going into the final episodes and it’s weirdly fantastical. I will either laugh or cry when it’s over.. maybe even both. 

Knowing this show the final episode will be yet another surprise for me.. so the two endings I suspect to happen will probably not even come to pass .. but  it has been a wild ride.. I am left with one big leap.. it is a scary one.. it can ruin a show I hold very dear..or it can make it even sweeter. This episode gave me hope again! Lots of it!  Yet the show has also run its course it’s time for this to end.. but as a ramp up to the finale this is one of the best episodes a girl can wish for!

Animini: Samurai Flamenco – Episode 20 – Boy From the Past

Joyous Salutations , my dear Island Guests, we have entered Steampunk Month on Paradise.. however just because our palm trees have turned into metal and our pool is now heated by coal and steam vents.. doesn’t mean we will stop with providing you our weekly anime! The Animini shall continue.. however I will immediately admit.. that with this first episode within anime Month.. I am not that pleased. I am not that pleased at all. Where I liked the set up of the villain last week, I think it’s current execution is not something I particularly enjoy.

The Summary

The episode picks up where the last when finished. Masayoshi is greeted by a young boy named Hajii and that explosion we saw last time.. it turns out it was Masayoshi’s apartment. I did not realise it because.. I haven’t really paid much attention to the outside of his apartment building if it even has been shown before. I do try to pay attention to this show so I do feel that explosion at the end of the episode missed a bit of impact. I wanted to see Masayoshi react a bit more.  The two have a mexican stand off and the boy tells Masayoshi a tiny bit of his background story before vanishing. He tells Masayoshi he plans to cause misery to Samurai Flamenco. Masayoshi is being taken to a hotel to spend the night where he orders a curry. Hajii calls hims room  and tells him he poisoned the curry and will soon treat Masayoshi to a colourful chain of events. Plus offering a lot more backstory. He was the young boy that was part of the group of ruffians.. I even described him there I think.. Apparently he found the word Flamenco to be really funny.. and he decided to be his rival.. long story short he wants to be his complete opposite.. so no justifications he just is pure evil! To offer Samurai Flamenco the best possible foe he can have.

Because of the phone hint Hajii gave Masayoshi the model deduces his first target is the Flamengers.. and this indeed is true.  Blue gets his cardboard cutout of Red Axe being torn. Blacks Grandpa gets pushed over, Green gets his book  cut to shreds and given to his little sister, Pink gets her hair cut off. and Red Axe gets hit by a truck and put in the hospital. We also see someone get pushed off a stair and ..kind of hurt their ankle I guess.  While I do like the power display here.. something feels off in how these are scaled and follow each other up.   Masayoshi goes to the police but no one believes a highschool boy can do this.  There is no trace of a bomb in Masayoshi’s apartment, no poison in the curry, and the boy is said to have died from a disease over a year ago.  Even Goto won’t believe his friend and the two get in a huge fight.. causing Goto to break all ties with Masayoshi and throw him out.. because he found it unfair that Masayoshi called him out for being a hypocrite. Masayoshi sits on a riverbank and waits for Haiji to  call who shows up on an island in the river. When Masayoshi swims to him to proof he is real and not a figment of his overworked mind.. he finds no one there.. we see Masayoshi lay there wondering if this villain is hin his head.

The Positives

I do really like how Hajii is set up as the Joker..  he is evil just because he can and he wants to be the opposite of Samurai Flamenco.. being evil just for evil sake is great. I also love the mind game that is being played here.. if that is the route they are going for..  Samurai Flamenco has very much dependent on all his allies, so the way to fight him.. is indeed by taking his friends away from him.. making him seem like a madman.. It will also reduce his chances to be world president.. which I already found dumb.. so I am all for that.  Overall Masayoshi’s struggles in this episode have been done really well.  I have so much empathy for him.. from simple things as wasting a perfectly good curry due to a tease.. to slowly losing his sanity.

I also like the fact that Moe did not get killed in this episode.. for some reason I had the feeling that she might be killed off and that would have completely ruined the show for me.  While I do not like this episode .. they at least managed to keep it salvagable for me.. but given that I mention this as a positive might give you an idea for what is about to come next.  To linger in the positives for a little while longer, I do like the idea that this young kid is just to smart for Masayoshi.. if he is not a figment of his imagination and faked his own death.. and is just playing the man I do think that is a really REALLY cool villain concept and probably something that I would see myself as .. as a villain as well.. that would be how I’d work as well. However I do not think the villain works here.. It works along with Masayoshi but not with the show, not with the universe.. not after that episode I should have kept as my final episode. I do love the concept .. but it’s like a concept car.. they all look really cool but if you look a bit closer it makes no sense at all! Still it does look super cool on a photo so that is still a positive.

The Negatives

I am sorry .. I have a LOT of negatives with this episode! I kind of hated it! Not in terms of flow .. but I just found it to have zero credibility and consistency. Let’s immediately drop in with the scene that utterly ruined this episode for me and that is Masayoshi’s fight with Goto. Goto believes Masayoshi is just overworked and is imagining this guy. Masayoshi tells him he is a hypocrite.. because he wants to cling on the illusion that his girlfriend is still alive and will come back.. but he doesn’t believe Masayoshi saw a real guy. That is hypocritical indeed.. and it would have been a super powerful scene.. had it made any sense..  but let’s look at this closer. Goto saw a guy transform into a Guillotine Gorilla while standing next to Masayoshi… he used a pink  Hummer to dislodge a Missile made by a man who turned himself into a giant puppet. He has been saved by his favourite Sentai and he has seen an all American Hero turn into an alien. Had he had a telescope.. he could even see his friends IMPRINT on the moon.There in my mind is just NO way that .. a young boy .. flying under the radar is THAT unbelievable to him.. that it results in a friendship ending fight.

Then there is the attacks on the Flamengers.. which are all super petty and silly. It makes Hajii feel more like Butters from Southpark playing Professor Chaos.. ripping a cardboard sign and a book and cutting of someone’s hair.. tipping a grandpa.  Then Joji is hit by a truck?! That just feels super inconsistent.. at least build up in gravitas over a bit of time if you do that.. but no everyone was hit almost at the same time..And they are HIT at the same TIME.. same day within minutes of each other.  Yet the police and GOTO!!! Explain this as.. You guys go t some weirdo fans that will do weird shit. NO!  Had it happened over days.. I could have seen them going that route but there is no way you can make Masayoshi the boy that cried wolf like this. It doesn’t fit into the world building at all..  the entire world wants this guy to be president for Arceus sake.. Even if I would belief Masayoshi himself is turning into a villian so much things would not make sense. The Flamengers fought monsters.. they are highly trained.. yet Red Axe can’t jump away from a vehicle.. Black doesn’t notice an intruder.. while his father is walking on soft soil.. Pink doesn’t chase the guy that cuts her hair and just screams?! They are basically meant to be like Masayoshi so this passive behaviour also is weird. The next two episode better offer me one Distortion World of an explanation because right now this feels SOOO badly written.

The Score

Despite me hating how this episode is written there are a few things going for it that keep it from getting the lowest score in my system. This might still be salvaged..I can see Masayoshi distracting the Flamengers.. to cause the atttack to happen.. if he really is the villain himself.. but then .. Joji makes no sense as he never answered.. So that route is out of the window for me.. I must hope Hajii is at least real.. and he is just tormenting Masayoshi but even if that happens.. everyone else here got the serious short and off the stick. I might be able to justify Goto’s action because he loves his girlfriend so much.. but I still kind of find it bad writing when you know that your friend saved earth from the aliens ..and you fought alongside him twice.. to prevent the end of Japan..that this whole girlfriend thing outweighs that. It doesn’t feel right we always seen Goto as a realist so to weigh this.. THIS heavy.. Eeh..

If you are simply out here to see Masayoshi’s adventures .. this is a good one.. if you are like me and think also from the mindset of the other characters.. this episode made SO little sense to me.. it kind of felt to me as if the show said.. “well this all isn’t relevant anymore lets toss it in the bin shall we” and I do hate this episode for it. For me this is the single most worst episode of the show so far. It doesn’t ruin the show for me but I do feel as if this was  very very bad day for the writers. Sometimes a cool concept should just stay a cool concept.. I would have loved this as fan fiction.. but I hate that it’s part of offical Canon.

Animini: Samurai Flamenco – Episode 19 – The Quiet Life

Konichi-holy-doodoo! I did not expect this episode of Samurai Flamenco to go as dark as it did my dear Island guests.. I mean Digimon bummed me out.. but beaver-dam I did not see this one coming. I expected a nice slice of life episode with maybe some elements of boredom.. but this… eeek! Unlike Digimon I did end up enjoying myself more.. though I still feel the series should have ended after last weeks episode.. I mean I did get closure for that thing I wanted closure about earlier.. I just did not expect that closure to be sledgehammered in.

The Summary

This episode starts with a 6 month time skip after the defeat of Alien Flamenco and Masayoshi’s  encounter with the Will of The Universe. Like the latter said the universe has returned to normal.. or did it? The world is so peaceful that we are moving into some advanced negotiations for a joined “world” government. The one that enjoys the most votes to be it’s president is Masaysoshi himself.. even  though he does not seem interested in the job .. Everyone else wants him to be the president of the world due to his heroic antics.  While he is still training his combat skills, we see him discuss “settling down” with the rest of the cast. His agent and Mari in particular. With no more enemies to fight, the idea is brought up that Masayoshi should find a girlfriend, his agent should date Kono and Mari even suggest Masayoshi to date his agent himself. He doesn’t know what to do.. and he doesn’t want to be world leader so he goes to his best friend Goto. He sees on the calendar of the cop that it’s soon to be date night .. he finally goes to see his girlfriend.. whom he is in a long term relationship with.  Curious Mari and Masayoshi plan to chase him to see if they can help.

This leads them to travel to Goto’s home town.. they lose track of him because they can not board the same train, but since Mari lived in his closet for a while during her great depression she snooped around and found his home address and remembered it. So she moves to the Goto family residence. Here they talk to Goto’s mother in the hope of figuring out where Goto went. Telling her he is on a date. The mother looks shocked and tells a story that Goto had a girlfriend only once in his life.. one day she disappeared while waiting for the bus.  The bus was found empty with no driver.. evidence showed a single passenger had boarded the bus, leaving only an umbrella with a Takoyaki Tako strap behind. Goto’s girlfriend disappeared many years ago.. and he was never able to let it go. But who has been sending him these text messages then? Could it be some kind of trap?! Mari and Masayoshi go to find out.. Mari .. who feels a bit  lovescorned, snatches his phone crossing the street when a bus blocks Goto’s path to find out who is responsible.. it turns out Goto had been pretending to be his own girlfriend all along.. unable to let her go.. he just imagined what she would text him back.  Mari gets bummed out and invites the girls to stay with her at the inn she is staying at while Masayoshi wanders the streets.. bummed out he could not be there for his friend.  A young boy shakes his head.. when suddenly an explosion goes off behind him.. This young boy.. seems to be A new enemy!

The Positives

I feel conflicted about this episode again.. because jeesz the truth about Goto’s girlfriend hit me hard! I always had expected her to be the final villain or something and I am pretty sure this new guy will find out and abuse Goto’s broken hard someway later on.. the building blocks are fairly set up for that.. but this?! I was surprised and I think it was a very strong choice to make. It balances out the sugarry , morale victories Masayoshi had lately! That  basically always involved him being such a great hero that the situation he would get himself in more or less resolved itself. We needed a taste of bitter.. but I did not expect it to leave me with this much of a bleeding heart.  I do think this is a great engine to keep Masayoshi , Mari and Goto involved together so as far as continuations go this is actually a quite briljant way to pull it off. Goto finally got his little moment, even showing why he became a cop and why he bites so much onto mysteries. All the events basically take place in the same day, where the sunshine is being used for when everything is perfectly fine. The peaceful world that Masayoshi is going to be president off.. but as they discover someone they love is in trouble we transition into dusk! Not everything is as bright as we would like to believe .. and when they realise Goto can not be helped right now.. we move into night!  Where a terror attack happens as well.. showing things have gone bad once more.. it is all quite beautifully done.

There are also some great character moments for basically everyone that was once relevant , we see where everyone is. Even the Flamengers. Even the pink ranger got accepted back into her home again.. but she has to deal with regret of never getting the love of her life. The other rangers all get a neat little reference to! Kono is bored with the news being so peaceful and our adorable , best dude, gadget guy has become super famous and successful for contributing to Samurai Flamenco’s success so much now becoming the most successful stationery producer, like now one ever was. The episodes manage to nail both the peace and conflict images very successfully and thus doesn’t leave as sour of a taste in my mouth as the Digimon episode! That being said there are some odd choices in this episode I can not really get behind.

The Negatives

While I really enjoy the episode overall, there are a few choices I do not really like. For one the whole “making Masayoshi world president while he doesn’t really want to” thing  I find very stupid and not an interesting conflict. I do get WHY he would get a majority of the votes,  as people would only vote for someone not of their country if it’s a symbol..  Yet at the same time we see Masayoshi is constantly being interviewed and he is very open about not being interested in becoming the President. So I do feel that whole plotpoint really isn’t going anywhere.  If the world is so peaceful.. Why would you make someone president against his will? He makes a fair point that he is not fit for the job.. as he isn’t all that political .. or smart enough to get that done..which again.. is a fair point. Kaname would make a better ruler that way and he would be a much better choice.

The second issue is that this new villain person is something I find very iffy! It’s a bit as if Masayoshi would be the Tony Stark from the Marvel Universe.. and this new guy is Spider-man is he felt inspired by Tony.. but to go in the wrong direction.. we get a little but seemingly very brainy .. kid as a  villain.  I do like the idea of a final villain that is grounded more into a harsh reality.. bringing the series back to the hero in Masayoshi and not in Samurai Flamenco.. but to make it a kid?! It feels like it’s a bit overshot.. like saying Rallo or Rollo or whatever the guys name was from Geass would be the actual final enemy.. or have Selmin Bradley be the ultimate bad guy in FullMetal Alchemist Brotherhood. The final thing that got me annoyed is that we do not see Moe react at all when Mari is feeling heartache that the cop she is pursuing dumped her for a figment of his imagination.. She is just supporting..  but she is clearly in love with Mari .. or she used to be at least.. why don’t we see any of that here? 

The Score

For what it is worth, I am happy they went this route for the “epilogue”   of the show, this first episode of the final four does show some very competent writing and offers an idea to close this show out on that is of substance enough to justify its existence.  Outstanding plot points are being resolved, and they are doing this in a bold and exciting way. I really loved this concept of Goto being super broken and his best friends being unable to see it!  He always seemed so composed.  Politeness and etiquette prevented Masayoshi to dig deeper… he wants to follow the rules after all and that fits him so well! It really is a great twist and a legit established conflict. So basically everything that would go into the episode synopsis is very amazing.

It is the rest though that still makes me wish that the show ended last episode. I do not find the idea of Masayoshi becoming world president to be even remotely in character, I do not think the new enemy is as strong as I would like him to be. I think it should have been someone more familiar to the cast.. like Kono wanting to create news, or maybe even Kaname becoming a terrorist because his student pushed him from the spotlight. Heck even Flamen Pink because she blames Masayoshi for ripping her and Kaname apart would have had more of an impact. This new guy now has to be established in three episodes and I feel like I can’t take him all that seriously.  Alien was not build up.. but he was strange.. otherworldly he did not need the build up. Same goes for From Beyond Flamenco.. but .. with a normal human… I feel like they will stumble in the end.  I really hope that Mari and Goto don’t end up together either..  because poor Moe! All in all an episode with a very sweet core but a rough exterior.. and I have just the fruit for that.