** Episode 2**
After a recap and the opening we find out that none of the Akibarangers were fighting, they were all in a collective “delusion” with help from their Moe Moe Z-Cune changers that broadcasts their thoughts to each other. In other words whenever they are fighting it’s in their heads. I really like this idea of the delusion as it can let them be really creative and has potential for really cool and funny story ideas.
Nobuo doesn’t see the point in fighting evil that isn’t real and runs off upset. He ends up in a car park where he sees Ban (DekaRed) in the back of a car. Back at the sentai café Yumeria is eating Dino Curry (from Abaranger) and her cat ears fall off revealing her natural voice which is a really deep almost demonic sounding voice. So we find out that she is acting while in her cosplay and is actually 23. Mitsuki then spots a Z-cune Aoi charm on Yumeria so they end up going to get Aoi merchandise together.
Meanwhile Nobuo catches up to Ban, Ban tells him how the sentai are counting on him and wants to be his partner. Well that was just a daydream in reality it’s not Ban but his actor Ryuji Sainei and is only in his Dekaranger uniform promoting the recent Japanese dub of Power Rangers SPD. Yep, they did in fact dub SPD for the 35th anniversary of sentai, they use to do regular Power Ranger dubs up to the end of Lightspeed Rescue.
On the street Yumeria and Mitsuki overhear two guys talking about an early release of the Aoi ‘s art collection and follow them down an alley. There is a woman offering the DVD with a bubble sheet that goes over the DVD and when pulled off is meant to make the picture naked. She gives one of the guys the DVD to peel off but he turns naked instead, don’t worry they get a big version of the sheet covering them. Turns out the woman is Malseena and the monster of the week’s power is the naked bubble sheet. Disappointingly they reuse the monster outfit from last episode.
Yumeria and Mitsuki enter the delusion but Nobuo won’t join in. They lose the fight because they don’t see the trigger for the monsters defeat. Meanwhile a mute DekaRed mimes to Nobuo to convince him to fight and ends up dropkicking him like Ban did to Houji (DekaBlue) in a Dekaranger episode to snap out of it. Nobuo decides to fight again thanks to this plan by Hakase.
Later in the episode they get their own mech, a car with a Z-Cune Aoi paintjob that transforms after putting in an Aoi CD. We don’t see the mech fighting because they are not deluded enough to have a cool robot fight yet. They also get a penultimate power to fight the monster of the week. There is also a good talking part over the ending about how Mitsuki got into karate
GRADE
While not as joke heavy as episode 1 it is still funny and it’s good to see Ryuji Sainei do a cameo. The whole episode is a good take on the usual sentai giving up plot. We find out more about Yumeria and Mitsuki but still leaving some mysteries which I hope are revealed later down the line. I didn’t like re-use of monster of the week’s costume and hope they use more new costumes. I like the penultimate powers and hope there are a few more of them. In later episodes I want to see their mech fighting and would like to see more sentai actors returning in a similar way. 4/5