Who will protect the peace of the Western Shopping District? We’ll find out.
What They Say:
“Crushing and Burning”
The group is really getting into their role as Shoprangers, the vice principal on the other hand is not. She wants them to quit, but the group has other plans.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
And so, we get the sentai show. Expect the silly dialog and lame “fighting.” That just forms a backdrop for the deeper drama within the episode, as we get to see a little of the relationship between Mahiru Sakai and the Vice Principal, Naoko Takakura. While it was claimed that the two wrote the song together, Nao, as Mahiru always called her, tells Wakana that it was really all her mother. Wakana sought the Vice Principal’s advice as she continues to get through her mental blocks to finishing the song her mother wrote. Interestingly, Takakura herself has been reminiscing about Mahiru, both their high school days, and Mahiru’s final days, as she visited her old schoolmate in those final weeks. Takakura does give Wakana some good advice, basically remembering what Mahiru told her about having the song in your heart.
The rest of the episode returns to focus on the Westshoprangers, both the expected confrontation between Konatsu and the Vice Principal, once she discovers what the choir group is up to (thanks to the usual stuck up mean girls from the choral club). She can’t do anything about it, however, as she approved their job, signing the forms.
The (anti)climax of the episode is Wien running down a thief who tries to make off with some of Konatsu’s things, only to be cornered by the rangers and sung into submission. Yes, they overcome him with the power of a sentai show song.
No, really.
That doesn’t do much to help the focus problem the show continues to have. While the story lines each have their own appeal and interest, having three different threads running at once gets to be a little tedious, as the show veers back and forth between competing stories it wants to tell. It would help if it told them well, but there is a lack of depth that leaves everything feeling rather shallow and somehow incomplete.
The post-ED scene confirms my suspicions that the Chairman and the Principal intend to replace the school with something else. Those men were not using surveying equipment for nothing.
In Summary:
We get to see Wien the Hero in action, as well as some more to the past relationship of the Vice Principal with Wakana’s mother Mahiru. The only problem is that this show does not feel like it is spending enough time with each individual subplot, and thus it feels rather shallow and incomplete.
Grade: B-
Streamed by: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Apple iMac with 4GB RAM, Mac OS 10.6 Snow Leopard
