Akibaranger Season 2 Episode 9 Review: The Little Mecha That Could (Spolier Warning)

For this episode of Akibaranger we get another genius plan from the Grand Shogun as he drags our heroes into his delusional world. Tsuu is much stronger now and has many things awaiting our heroes (Sorry for the images I couldn't find any so I had to get them myself).

I know this is an unofficial series, but Tsuu is personally becoming a really good villain. His love for villains is strong and he does have a lot of knowledge of Sentai. The plan to take the Akibarangers to his delusions was pure genius because he has a lot of control. He even made the heroes have delusions on some Sentai tropes like the swimsuit, wedding, and race episodes. He did this by making fake scripts and having the Sentai die hards make up these delusions. Tsuu had Nobuo think of the swimsuit episode because well he's like that, give him some credit he's twenty-nine well thirty I would guess if I'm going by time aspects and hasn't got any love. Then he used Moegi's rotteness to think of the wedding by teasing her with a possible Hanto and Hirmo shipping ( I just got the chills from typing that). Then the final one was a race which I was confused by at first, but Tsuu plotted this perfectly.

The reason why he had the race at the end was for timing purposes. The race was part of a fake Bioman script of episode 46.5. This is because during this time it would have been winter and this means chaos for a Sentai. Actually the other two moments were for this also as Tsuu had the three go through the Sentai calandar. Swimsuit episode being in the summer, the wedding episode is in Autumn, and now they got to winter because of the race. So with winter in check a Sentai is at it's weakest at this moment because it connects to the marketing for the show. The companies can then give the team new power ups or mecha so that it will explode for toy sales. So even if the team got help from their mecha the Itashar it cannot win against the giant mecha kaiju because of this. Then things even get worse for our heroes.

It continues to get worse when Tsuu now has Malshina under his control. She is nothing, but a fighter now. Also with Winter still in effect the team can barely even fight back. She even pops up randomly and attacks the team. Malshina even has the same powers as Wolzard as Tsuu used the Cursed Reincarnation spell from Magiranger. Also now their outrageous powers don't even work in this world as Tsuu changes them to become villain powers! Doing this summons Long, Yami no Yabia, and Vancuria. Now they didn't get much of a fight with this sadly, but they do become a weapon for Malshina. It's a pretty crappy looking weapon as I can tell it's a one use only, at least the idea of villain commanders was interesting. I still think they could have used them a little more.

I love Tsuu's plan as it not only tricks the team as they are basically on rail tracks, but the amount of tropes they cover. They cover the three arch type episodes of a Sentai series, the winter marketing, and they even involve the Mecha tropes as well. The amount of referencing as well sky rocketed as they even reference a suit designer, to be more exact it was Izabuchi Yukata as he did a lot of mecha designs for Sentai. Also the giant mecha Kaiju is the same as the ones from Bioman. As I said before it's not only a genius plan, but it also brings humor and some very well brought up references.

For the humor aspect this episode did much better than some other episodes since they had followed what the show established already. I will say I am still not a fan of Luna's selfishness humor and she even made a stepping stone pun (*insert sarcastic laugh here*). Also I will Moegi's tick for this week was odd, but I will let that go because it's probably something I don't know about. What went right though was with the delusions, first the Shinkenger one was funny because the Kokoro actually came out and set up a summer design in the background. The team then stripped their clothes and were in swimsuits and this affected reality as well as the guys in the cafe were in speedos (I just got another chill). Then the wedding scene had good humor because of Nobuo's silly face and being forced to try and kiss one of the girls and then finishes it with some good old slapstick with a cake to the face. Oh then the guys in the cafe tried to kiss the two girls then which was funny seeing the aftermath then as the guys had marks and scratches on their faces. I will say Luna's actress did break out a smile when she was supposed to be disgusted. The race was so tiny then and it was funny to see it go by so fast there were even a tiny drink stand.

Now how did the Akibarangers save themselves this time? Well Hakase got them another robot as it got destroyed in the previous battle. So now this fits with the flag for victory as the new mecha always wins it's reveal fight! So here comes Itashar Boy a tiny version of the past mecha also it reference the Boy mechs from the franchise like my favorite Tetra Boy from Jetman. I loved the sight humor in this moment because we see a tiny robot punch and throw around a giant mecha Kaiju around. He even caught the monster's blade and flipped him! Then to top it off the team threw the mech at the beast and thus killing it and I cannot forget about Tsuu's reaction to this as well, priceless.

I will say this episode still didn't reveal much as of yet and we are getting to episode ten now. So far still nothing on the old man in the hospital and now all of a sudden Hakase as the Scorpion tattoo from last season again. I have a feeling that episode ten will have a lot of stuff to go through or will they save it up for eleven. Oh well at least I am still having a fun time with the series so far.

Overall this was a great episode. Tsuu had another great plan for our heroes as he them in his hands for most of the time. I even like he knew how poor the heroes were which was a weakness. Still the flag for victory will always come back for the heroes. The humor was mostly well done with nice sight gags and how it was delivered. Then the references this episode went to and how they brought the tropes up, this was easily the biggest trope moment for Akibaranger in general. I would give this episode an A.

Next Time: The alpaca again?