The Red Ranger Becomes an Adventurer in Another World

Episode 10

Episode 10 of The Red Ranger Becomes an Adventurer in Another World gives us a truly titanic battle between two tokusatsu heroes plus a special offering on the side.

The battle between Togo and Azir is the figurative and literal main event this week and it delivers. Having a Kamen Rider face-off against a Super Sentai team is usually reserved for movie specials and one-off crossovers, so I'm excited to see it represented here. The conflict is a bit lacking in the more technical martial arts component - one of the main draws in the live-action tokusatsu series this is drawing from - which is a bit of a disappointment. Any time Azir and Togo trade punches it's just okay, not great. But the use of giant super attacks and powerful artifacts look terrific and have a lot of creativity behind them. I particularly enjoyed Azir summoning a cloud of spinning pyramids and throwing them at the team only for them to get blasted away by a team-up laser blast. That is precisely the sort of chaotic novelty that makes these series a joy to watch.

We also got a fair smattering of background and character growth this week. Azir's backstory is interesting enough, the kind of over-the-top tragic melodrama that attempts to make world domination seem weirdly noble from a certain twisted angle. I also really enjoyed the gang having to endure the high volume of all the shouted attacks on the sidelines, with Lowji covering Teltina's ears so she wouldn't have to endure it, a funny bit. And lastly, we got a touch of the origin story for the Kizuna Five back in the real world, and I found this pretty engaging. The notion of big bond energy being rare enough that their gear couldn't be feasibly mass-produced is a smart world-building detail to explain why they don't have more than a few Sentai team members at a time.

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