Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger: Episode 9 Review

I noticed that the pre-credits scene focused on the Gokaigers trying to find this ‘floating island’ and they couldn’t find it on the radars. However, the next scene focused on the Zangyack who had just found it on their radars. Maybe the Zangyack’s radars are better than the Gokaiger’s?

Unlike the previous auxiliary mecha, the GaoLion is the original from Gaoranger. While it has a cool new look, this change of appearance isn’t explained. It’s not a big deal but it’s just something I thought about. I like that we’re introduced to GaoLion at the beginning of the episode instead of following a formula of the new mecha being introduced at the end of the episode.

This episode saw the debut of the Gokai-Turborangers and Gokai-Jetmen. I found it really cool to see the Jetmen flying with modern CGI as opposed to some of the questionable techniques used in the original season.

We are introduced to Kakeru Shishi, the original GaoRed, who treats Ahim’s leg injury. It quickly becomes obvious that this episode will be yet another Ahim/Doc focus. I’m not sure why the tribute episodes are focused on these two. Hopefully in the future this formula will be broken.

As expected, the Gaoranger transformation sequence with the combination of the original visuals and the instrumental opening theme was awesome. It even came complete with exploding Kanji! The fight sequence following was also awesome with each Gao-Gokaiger fighting in the style of their individual animal.

I’m not a fan of Gao-GokaiOh, possibly because the combination relies on the CGI to make it work and just the overall look of it. The whole mecha battle was strange with the foot soldiers randomly turning into motorbikes. The whole thing just confused me a little.

This would be another easy episode to adapt for Power Rangers because of Wild Force. While writing this I was thinking about SPD and RPM and how they would be handled with a Gokaiger adaptation. I couldn’t think of anything except for Gokaiger being set in the future which I wouldn’t really like

GRADE

I didn’t particularly enjoy this episode because I felt there wasn’t much plot. The whole episode felt very bland so I give this a 2/5