Most of the first half of this episode takes place in a church with the Gokaigers injured from their previous encounter with Basco. Marvelous is soon questioned about what he would do with the Greatest Treasure. For some reason, I hadn’t realized that this hadn’t been explained up until now. I loved that Luka tried to put a price on the treasure, a trait from her that we haven’t seen in quite a while. I also liked the cinematography and music of this scene, especially the close ups of each of the Gokaigers walking over to Marvelous.
I will note that I really liked the shot below. To me, it seems really life-like compared to the usual Sentai CGI. I don’t know if a model of the Gokai Galleon is being used, but it still looks cool.
The Gokaigers (minus Marvelous) face the ‘DroneGokaigers’, who mimic their poses. Don denies that his pose looks like ‘he’s wiping his hands on his pants after peeing’, to which Luka responds with ‘You do’ and Gai questions him with ‘That’s done unconsciously’. I really loved this little exchange since it references a staple of Super Sentai, which is the posing. I also loved it because it was just funny to see Don’s reaction to ‘himself’.
I thought that the DroneGokaigers were really underused in this episode. As soon they faced the real Gokaigers, they seemed to be beaten quite easily. I felt that the unmorphed fighting from Joe and Ahim in these scenes weren’t up to the usual Gokaiger standards. Ahim’s actress didn’t seem to be putting any effort into kicks and punches, which disappointed me slightly.
I enjoyed the final fight between Basco and Marvelous since it felt more impressive compared to previous battles. The use of ‘wire-fu’ and explosions helped with this. ‘Wire-fu’ and explosions are seen as a bad thing because of the excessive use of them in the SPD-Jungle Fury years, but when used at the right times and saved for battles like this, the combination works really well.
I’m not sure what I think about Basco’s green blood. While the colour is good since it shows that Basco is obviously an alien, but it just didn’t look convincing and it looked just like a dab of face paint. From quite early on, I always thought that Basco was actually on the Gokaigers’ side but was on a secret mission of some kind and I’m glad that this wasn’t the case. I much preferred this outcome where Basco stayed true to his character.
GRADE
I give this episode a 5/5 because it was an excellent way to end Basco’s story.
If this episode is adapted into Power Rangers, the Basco vs Gokai Red fight could stay, but the fight involving MagiRed, GoseiRed, DekaRed, DenjiRed and GingaRed would either have to be cut or reshot due to the involvement of DenjiRed.
