7 Thoughts About Uchuu Sentai Kyuuranger Episode 18: "Emergency Dispatch! Space Heroes!"

And just like that, we're caught up!  My apologies for getting behind, particularly since this episode is actually pretty awesome if you're a long-time Sentai nerd like me.

1.) If you were wondering how the team was doing in their quest to find the final globe necessary to provide the map to the legendary ship, the Argo, well...

Somehow Madaako snuck onto the ship and stole the globe that's been helping them find the other globes before the episode started.  It's not a bad idea; neither Scorpio or Madaako had any idea how to find the Carina globe, so it makes sense to just steal the ones they do have the location of.  The problem is...just how did she sneak onto the ship in the first place?

2.) And this answers the question I've had since basically the beginning of Kyuuranger: "If a massive space mafia took over the universe, where are the rest of the Super Sentai??"  

The answer: In a completely different universe.  This answer kinda bummed me out, because while it perfectly explains things, I'm willing to bet no one's going to bother to remember that this team exists in another universe from the other forty teams when they do Super Hero Taisen or the Zyuohger crossover at the end of the year.  Still, for what it is it's succinct and it lended a sense of urgency to the story this week.

3.) Driving home the point of just how dire the situation with Jark Matter is--along with offering a nice lesson to the actual audience of this show that police are awesome--none of the Kyuuranger even know what a cop is, to the point that they don't understand the words policeman or police.  It doesn't seem to exist in their vocabulary.   No wonder Jark Matter was able to just steamroll over everyone--five people from five different planets can communicate with Japanese people perfectly but when the words "police" come up in any sense, suddenly their translator microbes stop working.

4.)  Because the Sentai writers thought they'd give the fanfiction writers/doujin artists something to think about.

5.) Since Dekaranger was my first Sentai ever, this scene made me feel really old.  If you've never seen the show, Ban was an idiot hothead just like Lucky, but suddenly he's a "pro" working for a galactic version of his old team who's looking out for his "kouhai".  It feels weird until you realize that Dekaranger was over ten years ago (nearly fifteen, actually!)--it would actually be weirder if he weren't all collected and not screaming everywhere.  

6.) "Tokusou Sentai Dekaranger" is still one of my favorite Sentai themes of all time (and easily my favorite since the 2000's era began), so getting to hear PSYCHIC LOVER go "One! Emergency!" one more time brought a huge, goofy grin to my face.

Also, it looks like Madaako is permanently done.  Sure she could come back but if there's a bodypart left of her, it's now locked in another dimension.   Shame--I was really holding on to the hope that she would stick around until the end of the series.

7.) Next Week: The team travels to another (!) alien planet in search of the final globe that unlocks the map to the Argo.  This time it looks like more of a tribe of forest-dwelling aliens, and they run into Scorpio again.

I have to imagine they're going to drag out the battle with Scorpio and the discovery of the Argo to no less than episode 20, if not 25.   Having said that, I also imagine that if and when Scorpio goes down it'll be time to introduce the big villains--a proper glimpse at the boss for sure, but much more importantly some proper group of generals that can actually offer the team a threat of some sort, because outside of Scorpio right now ther'es literally no one  left to challenge them.

Also, props to the writing team for being bold with the settings this year.  The team has gone to several alien planets and another universe and we're not even at episode 20 yet!  Things probably won't really kick into narrative high gear until the mid-30's so this is pretty impressive.