7 Thoughts About Kyuuranger Episode 10: "The Little Giant, Big Star!"

The eleventh Kyuuranger arrives! 

1.)  The biggest problem I have with this episode is that there's so much about it that expressly goes against the stuff that was just set up last week.   The whole "there are only nine Kyurangers" was enough, but that's thrown out the window now that Kotaro has a Kyu Blaster--if there can be only nine, what's the point of having a tenth Blaster?   Well, maybe they just keep spares.

But then: nevermind being "chosen" by a Kyu Globe, Xiao said that there are "Skill Globes" and "Change Globes".  No matter how many times Kotaro tries with all these Skill Globes, none of them were going to let him transform regardless.   You'd think someone would've told him that instead of watching him try Globe after Globe and look like a goof.   I mean, for Draco Commander to happen the spirit of that constellation itself had to come down and grant Xiao his powers, and that's just not going to happen every episode.

2.) ....Nevermind, I'm an idiot. 

More seriously, last week I was so sure that there was no way the eleventh Kyuranger would appear the same way the tenth did, since they went out of their way to make that seem like such a special event.  (They basically used the Dragon Balls to give Xiao a wish!)   But this week took on a much more comedic element in terms of how Kotaro attained his powers: the ghost of Big Bear, the former Commander of the Resistance, has somehow become the representative of the constellation Ursa Major, and can grant its power to whomever he chooses.   Most of the episode he spends just possessing Lucky and Kotaro and turning their hair blue, and it's only when he realizes the team is actually doing their best that he finally bestows the power of the Ursa constellations upon Kotaro.

It feels a lot less like an asspull than last week's did, and though I don't think the newly confirmed twelfth Kyuranger will do things the same way, I'm not against all the constellations having their own mind and unique voice and being capable of granting their power to whomever they please.

3.) This is one of those episodes where the bad guy could have easily won if he hadn't been so incompetent.    The villain of the week, Mothma, kicks things off by tricking the Kyuuranger and losing a battle with our heroes--as his mecha explodes, it infects the Kyuranger's mecha which carry the infection back onto their ship, the Orion.   When that happens, the Orion is controlled by Mothma and ordered to fly itself into the sun, and Lucky and Kotaro have roughly fifteen minutes to save the team before they all get fried.

With that in mind, it would have made the most sense to simply hide until the ship goes boom, but instead Lucky and Kotaro find him several times over the course of the episode--bragging about how he's "taken care of" the team, wandering around looking to get food, etc...   Sure, Lucky's reality-warping levels of luck would have found him eventually...but at least he could've tried to win you know?

4.)  Let's check in on the rest of the team!  They're in fairly dire straits, after all.  Now because "their communicators broke down" and Lucky couldn't explain that their ship was infected by a member of Jark Matter, and because the Kyuuranger are run about as well as your local McDonald's on their best day, the team is left to their own devices to discover exactly why they're running the risk of becoming crispy fried.  So following the brilliant mind of their leader Detective Xiao Longbao, they come up with the idea that there's a traitor onboard the ship, and they need to figure out who it was. 

This leads to a faux locked-room mystery where the team uses the KyuRoulette to discover what teammate betrayed them.  Of course, only one person could've been chosen: Xiao himself.  Who promptly pronounces himself the culprit, and gets tied up by the rest of the team.  I'd get mad at this whole segment for proving the team to be a bunch of imbeciles, but honestly I was laughing too hard at "Oh!  Then I'M the culprit!" to be upset.   Plus all this stuff lines up later.

5.)  I'd been wondering since his first appearance why the commander of the team was such a goofball.  But this episode finally spelled it out for me: Xiao wasn't ready to do the job to begin with.  Jark Matter's reign hasn't been that long--and in that time, a Rebellion sprung up that Big Bear was originally in charge of while Xiao was, at best, just a soldier who joined the fight against Jark Matter fairly early on.  He was young, idealistic, and impulsive--that's why he joined the Rebellion, it's why he was so eager to fight, and it's why he disobeyed orders so frequently. It's not as if there's been several years to pass for him to grow out of that--Big Bear probably hasn't even been dead a year, and Xiao was obviously still very traumatized by the event when he explained it to the team last episode. 

Honestly, we don't even know how old Xiao even is.  He's from an entirely different race of people--he could be the same age as the rest of the team, or even younger!   He had leadership thrust upon him, and he's been making things work as best he can ever since.  And while I absolutely think Lucky didn't know what he was talking about defending him, it can't be argued that he has successfully assembled the Kyuranger from across the universe, and since his powers have stabilized he's a powerful ally in the fight against Jark Matter.  

All fair points to the show--I just need the stuff you do in your series to make sense, and if it doesn't give me a reason why, and they've done that here.

6.) I was certain that they'd go all Kibaranger/Justin in Power Rangers Turbo and make the power of Ursa Minor turn Kotaro into a hero the same height as everyone else but...they didn't.  Our Skyblue member of the team is a little kid, even in his transformation.  It kind of drives home the ridiculousness of a child rushing into battle, but I suppose realistically if you were at war with a force so strong it conquered the universe you wouldn't care where your teammates came from if they could handle themselves in a fight.  I would love to know who the stunt actor is for this, though--they're clearly a foot shorter than Lucky.

7.) Next Week: Lucky's luck has finally...run out?  Or maybe it needs a recharge?  It sounds weird but, I really want to see how Lucky performs when he's not warping reality with his good fortune.  Judging from the look of things, though...it looks like he's going to have a rough episode.