Let’s Watch Wednesdays Week 4 Mahou Sentai Magiranger 10-12

Stream of consciousness impressions, so they probably won't make a whole lot of sense.

10:

That Eriko chick was completely obnoxious and the episode itself was more or less a bust, but the characters are starting to feel more like a family. The cactus/insect monster was pretty neatly creepy, but I feel sorry for the suit actor in the costume that had to do a header down that hill. I find myself wondering if Nai and Mea (Mare?) will actually serve a purpose. The splitting into two characters thing just seems pointless from a story perspective. Also, Makito, don't listen to your siblings. That isn't courage, it's being a chump.

This episode seemed pretty pointless, overall, but this moment was awesome:



11:

It seems like when I ask a question about sentai, it's answered in the next episode. Case in point: Nai and Mare actually do something this episode that probably would have been less likely to be completed as Vancuria. I know the bad guys aren't supposed to win, but geez Wolzard walks away from destroying the Magirangers a lot. Sometimes the characters in this series seem awfully clueless, but it's nice to see Tsubasa use his brain to discern the unlikely problem with Houka. The vampire song wasn't too bad and the mockery of MagiPink was entertaining as she and Makito are neck and neck for my least favorite characters so far. Bah! Tsubasa does the mental heavy lifting for the episode and Houka 'earns' the new spell by not feeling sorry for herself. The seeing smells and hearing colors effect makes me wonder if they weren't doing a lot of drugs in the writer's room for this series. I realize we're still getting to know the characters, but the whole series seems like filler episodes so far. I look forward to it picking up as folks have suggested.


12:

Wolzard. Seriously, what's up with this guy? Playing both ends against the middle, he's one of the few truly interesting characters so far. Ah! An explanation of the Vancuria split. Another question answered! I was afraid that we were going to get another pointless ingredient selection montage, but thankfully we were spared that. Tsubasa and Urara (only somewhat, in MagiBlue's case) using their brains this episode. I begin to harbor hope things will improve! I didn't expect them to go for a magical crucifixion of Vancuria but other than that little surprise, her defeat was fairly anticlimactic. New spell! Tsubasa finally earns something by not being as dimwitted as the rest of his family!

I was optimistic when I started the series, but this is becoming a bit of a tough slog. Still, I managed to suffer through Kuuga so I imagine I can make it until the end of Magiranger as well.

10 wasn't as bad as I expected, it wasn't good per se, but it wasn't untolerable either, I liked that all of the siblings were worried about Makito.

11 was the vampire episode, didn't like it very much, and no amounts of Houka being Houka will fix that, but I loved Tsubasa getting more attention, still not sure what I think about him, can't look at him without thinking of Jin and that clouds my judgement.

12, I really liked the explanation for Nai and Mare existance, Wolzard was interesting as usual and the fight against Vancuria was pretty awesome.


Another average set of episodes...

I am continuing to like what I'm watching so far the two thing i like about this weeks episodes is instead of just focusing on one character at a time to develop they work on either one sibling and the family as a whole or is a one on one combo like brother and sister or brother and brother or sister and sister. the other this i like how this story is going this and how the villains are more 3 dimensional

Episode 10 de gozarimasu desu yo

Ugh.

Sadly, episode 10 is not the worst episode of MagiRanger, but my god that episode makes Mikoto look like a terrible older brother and a really bad ranger too. In fact, this is also the episode when I realized he cannot actor for crap. The Nai and Mea song is awesome though.

Of course, episodes 13-15 is where I almost stopped watching the show initially due to how bad they were.

Episodes 11 and 12 de gozarimasu desu-chin-tachi

This was weird, as I actually remember the Mystice Force version of this two-parter fairly well. I'm not sure which I like more: the MF version was about Vida, who I loved, and Chip, who was awful. The Magiranger version, on the other hand, is mostly Tsubasa, who is hands down the best member of the team, and Houka, who is also awful. I guess it's basically a toss-up. At least I actually could watch these without fastforwarding.

I do like how Urara knew something was wrong with Houka when the latter was being selfless and competent.

Wow, an entire episode went by with no reference to their dead mother. Maybe we're starting to move away from... *trailer for episode 13*

Never mind.

Nia and Mea are far superior to anything Mystic Force did.

Damn. I had a whole review for these episodes that got lost. Alas...

EPISODE 10
Meh. This could have been worse. Makito sucks (why in the hell would you go after that cruel bitch?), but at least the humor landed a couple of times.

EPISODES 11/12
These were a marked step up from anything else the show has offered (that didn't involve Wolzard). The whole point of the episode seemed to be to turn Houka into a tolerable character. It worked for the episode, but we'll see if it works going forward.

Like others have said, I like how this show pairs up 2 characters in each non-arc episode. This 2-parter is the first time the show has used that structure successfully, which is a good indicator that the writers are figuring the show out.

I'm not encouraged hearing that the next few episodes are a return to awful form, but episodes 11 & 12 were enough to keep me here at least until Branken is dispatched -- when, by all accounts, the show gets good.