All aboard, everybody, it’s time for this week’s review of Ressha Sentai ToQGer Station 36: ‘Dreaming of 100%!’ The theme of the episode is DREAMS!
In the time since our last adventure, Akira has been making himself real scarce and the ToQGers are starting to wonder what he’s been doing and if he could maybe use a hug. The Conductor says that he’s out looking for another Shadow Town and Ticket thinks he’s just fucking around.
The kids wonder if he’s working hard looking for Pleiades’ Shore and if they can help him.
As they arrive at the next stop, Amber Sky University, it causes Hikari to have a brain blast, making him remember this one time he was hot for teacher, I mean, he remembers this really influential teaching assistant they had for about two weeks. Yes, that’s what I meant.
They take off to go find her, hoping she remembers something about where Pleiades’ Shore is, hopefully proving that people outside of Shadow Towns can possibly remember Shadow Towns.
Kagura and Tokatti wind up with the short straw and are the ones that end up finding the monster of the week, Fountain Pen Shadow, whose ability is to give you a zero and make you a basic bitch.
Fountain Pen Shadow gives Tokatti’s glasses a zero (which is crap btw), breaking them, causing Tokatti to question his whole existence. Because if he’s not the glasses character, what good is he?
Hikari finds our dear Ms. Sakura in a classroom, only this Ms. Sakura isn’t the one he remembers, handing out all of those 100’s for your dreams. No, this one’s a playgirl who thinks she met Hikari on a group date she was too drunk to remember.
After Fountain Pen Shadow tries to start some shit, Hikari takes Ms. Sakura to a safe spot, where after meeting back up with the others, they all realize that she doesn’t remember a damn thing about anything.
Hikari stays behind with her while the others go to confront the Shadow.
During the fight, Tokatti, Kagura, and Mio earn zeros from the Shadow, which bums them out, causing them to be unable to continue fighting.
While all of this is happening, Hikari gives Ms. Sakura a little pep talk about how it’s cool if she doesn’t remember them or Pleiades’ Shore or whatever as long as she remembers her dream, because dreams are Important.
Right receives a zero now too, but he’s used to that kind of thing, no big whoop. Just as he is about to use the Hyper Ressha, Fountain Pen Shadow gives him the most heinous score of -100, deflating all of that ego.
Things are looking bleak for the ToQgers until Hikari finally decides to show up to save the day. He uses the Hyper Ressha to kick the crap out of the shadow and with no help from the others uses a Hyper 5-Connection Crash to take him down.
Yay, Right and the gang are back to their not-useless selves!
After the Shadow gets all big, Akira comes along to take care of business, however, this time, after Build Dai-Oh’s final strike, Fountain Pen Shadow got bigger? What?
ToQ Rainbow makes quick work of Fountain Pen Shadow and the station of Amber Sky University is back to business as usual.
Ms. Sakura remembers her dream and goes back to dressing for the job she wants to have.
The team resolves to make their dream come true.
Akira doesn’t know what the fuck is going on.
Final Review
We’re coming onto the final ten or so episodes of ToQGer and this episode shows it. It kinda sorta not really adds to the overarching plot of the story, and really just serves as just a Hikari-centric filler episode before the holiday and penultimate episodes begin.
I honestly don’t have a whole lot to say here. This episode is pretty fluffy. We get to examine people’s insecurities with school, looks, etc. without actually getting very deep with it.
I will say that the fight scene with Hikari and Fountain Pen Shadow and the scenes about Tokatti and his glasses, especially using the helmet train track gag were definitely the highlights of this episode. I like that they haven’t run that joke into the ground yet. Also, I don’t get what the hell was up with The Conductor this episode? He was acting so strange with the nose touching. I feel like it might be a reference to something that probably only Japanese people will understand.
So, to sum it up, this episode was good for a few chuckles without having to rely on adding to the general plot, which could be a good thing considering that the last episode was pretty plot centric.
I give this episode 3.5 dreams out of 5.
This is Amber/pan2dapan leaving the station!
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See you next time!