Kyoryuger Episode 18 Review: Everybody Wants Kung Fu Fighting

Continuing on after the last episode, Daigo deals with being removed from the team, but he cannot hold back as Tessai tells him to follow him into the Dusk Forest. Meanwhile the Debos army is becoming even more stronger will our heroes be able to face the Debos now?

I really want to talk about Tessai aka Kyoryu Grey as his character had a big thing that surprised me. This man is a complete hard head who knows how the way of battle works. The reason why he knows this is because of his weakness that cost him the lives of his people. I am actually surprised we heard this little bit on this guy since Ramirez didn't really have any type of back story. We did get traits from Ramirez though which was nice, but I would like to know his story like Grey had. Now it wasn't a whole scene we got for his past which is another thing I liked. It was brought up through dialogue which I think works better than showing a scene at some points. It gives a person the ability to comprehend information, but at times showing a scene with no dialogue can have the same effect as he have to guess what happened. Either way his story even though brief was nicely done and this episode also shows that Grey is more caring that we would think.

Tessai is surely doing a lot for the man he kicked out of the team and he was mostly doing this because he does see true strength in Daigo and he wanted to get him to use it. It was very risky for Tessai to do this because who knew how King would have taken this as he did really act differently than he usually does. It makes me think more and more that Tessai is a foil for King. They seem like complete opposites, but they share something that made them strong. Tessai got strong because he accepted his fear after it happened to him which was losing the people he cared for. Then he became hard headed and distant in someways so that he wouldn't have to worry about compassion. With King we learn his fear is the same as he did meet many different people in his life. I will go into this more when I talk about Daigo. Overall though Kyoryu Grey left a big impression on me and he may have not gotten a fight, but his character left a big bruise on me.

Now onto King as this was the first time we get any real development for the guy. Every other moment in the series was King helping the others and thus becoming a part of the team. King though finally faces his fears and becomes stronger after this. As I said before his fear was losing others like Tessai's fear and this really reminds me of another character. A man who travels around the world, makes friends with these people, and has a fear for losing them...... I got nothing all I got is the Tatoba theme in my head. Now this isn't a really a bad thing that King has a huge similarity to Eiji from OOO since it was treated a little differently as when Eiji realized this fear he accepted the powers of the medals inside of him. With here I felt like it was weaker which I will get to in the next section. It's still nice though that we get more from our leader though as things do look better for him.

Daigo discovers his fear by entering the Dusk Forest and facing his fears head on. First was the monster he lost to and then it appeared to be Grey then. He actually fails the first time, but he gets unexpected help from a fisherman who clearly wasn't Tessai. The fisherman tells him that being reckless isn't good and fear is needed for someone to know. This gets King to realize that he does have a fear and that gets him to overcome the forest. I will have to say though like Eiji this really wasn't much because I already guessed that was his fear. King met a lot of people in his life and I bet there are many he consider to be close friends, no one would want to lose those friends. Now he does only mention his team which makes sense since he is the leader of a Sentai. Then the overall effect dies out quickly because King still acts like King in battle and really all of this just acted like some sort of power-up cause now Daigo is on top of everyone again. I was kinda hoping that there would have been a balance now, but nope the King as to stay at the top.

Then to be more honest here there was a character moment for Ucchi in this episode and this was short, but still better than King's. Ucchi had the team go look for Daigo and he would fight the Debos by himself if they strike. Ucchi only wants Daigo to be the leader as he thinks he is not suited to be a leader. He already grew a lot of compassion towards Daigo and seeing him in pain hurts him a lot. So he wants his King to be uplifting like he once was before. I really like this moment because it shows that Ucchi has grown as a character and not as a samurai. His last lord just wanted him to be stronger, but through the way of the samurai. Here King helped him realize his true strength which was being himself. So Ucchi doesn't want to be at the top if it means over throwing his past lord so he will stay as a retainer. Also he got some more good points when he was holding his anger towards Dogold because he knows Dogold wants to use him for a body still.

Another thing I wasn't a fan of was how the Debos is being treated. They are becoming stronger and yet there still isn't a lot to showcase that. I mean the arc monster got a power-up, but he only uses it in the final battle and it's useless now so yea kinda useless overall. He didn't even use it against Ucchi as he uses his old move to knock him out. Then the only other villains we saw in this episode was Chaos giving the power up and Dogold trying to get Ucchi's body back. I am happy that they are getting stronger, but the overall feel is weak because I don't really see it yet. I mean if everyone is getting stronger what about Candy can she finally fight now? I mean this whole arc would have been a great moment for the big villains to fight the individual team members and having them get a win for once. We don't get that though as Dogold seems to be the only villain worth keeping the camera on.

Onto the big fight and they use the theme song again and yes this is a nice time to be using it, but as I said before the impact is not as strong. When it came up and I wasn't being excited as it's just a song to me now. I mean Go-busters at least saved their original theme song for good moments and guess what I felt some excitement when it came up at the point of the climax. The overall fight though was weak because it was King stealing the spotlight, Ucchi fighting Dogold, and the everyone else fought the grunts. I will say I did like seeing King destroy meteors with his Armed On weapon though. Then the new power-up for the monster was used which was the same attack with purple flames and then it gets destroyed after one use! There was another part I did like which was with Ucchi and Dogold as they both use Lightning Afterglow on each other and as I said before lightning effects are always cool. This time we have a clash between lightning so yea it's awesome as it overwhelms the whole screen!

Then onto the mecha fight where we get to see Bunpachy become an equip for Kyoryujin. The formation makes Kyoryujin Kung Fu and it had a really good introduction. The fight was more CGI effect heavy, but it was used very well though. In the beginning of this fight it actually had the bottom view of the fight as it was pretty fast. You still see things very well though as you see the connections between the attacks from both sides. It was really cool and different from most of the mech fights in the series. Then we got to the special effects, but damn Kyoryujin looked amazing. You could tell it wasn't the suit anymore, but it looked great still. I know it's not as good as a high budget movie, but how it was used still looked somewhat realistic. The mech had a bold look to it and mixing it with the live action shots really helped the look of it as well. Also the new weapon is really good it's a chain and ball, but along with Ankydon it's a powerful form. You got a far range weapon that can do big damage and the hammer which is good for close range and leaves a hard hit as well. It's a pure brute power form and what would you expect from a Kung Fu form.

Overall it's a good episode, but it could have been greater if somethings had more polishing. The first big fight could have been better if they at least a different song like they easily could have Red's character song for this moment. The feeling of King facing his fears just felt like him getting a power-up more than anything since he uses Tessai's move. There are good things in this episode though, even though King's development isn't much, it's something at the least. Ucchi had some really shining moments in this episode and Tessai had more than I was thinking he would have. I would give this episode a B+ like I did with the last one since things are still good, but it needed a little extra to get the "A" ranking.

Next Time: "What you talking about Ucchi?"