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I will be discussing: What is the cost of being a hero? Of not being a hero? Would you be willing to pay like Haruka did?
This is Super Sentai Sanctuary 010: “Cliché. But I Like It.”
CREDITS
Avataro Sentai Donbrothers 10 The Rainbow the Oni Saw – May 08, 2022
Writer: Toshiki Inoue
Director: Ryuta Tasaki
SOURCE: https://powerrangers.fandom.com/wiki/Don_10:_The_Oni_Saw_the_Rainbow
Writer Tracker – Toshiki Inoue (10; 1-10)
Director Tracker – Ryuta Tasaki (3; 1-2, 9-10); Shojiro Nakazawa (2; 3-4); Katsuya Watanabe (2; 5-6); Hiroyuki Kato (2; 7-8)
SYNOPSIS
Haruka is delighted with the fact that she got enough Kibi-Points to leave the Donbrothers and regain her career as a manga artist, but she feels uneasy when her former companions face another Hitotsuki, accompanied by Marina Maeda, a photographer with a similar past as hers who became the new Oni Sister.
NEGATIVE
-This is almost filler
-Why does everyone else have the Robotaro change? Shouldn’t we have seen that happen?
-Marina was supposes to be the Manga Stalker! I didn’t catch that until making these notes. Is that the show’s failing or mine? She was clearly the new Oni Sister, so I knew she wasn’t the stalker, but Haruka didn’t know
POSITIVE
-The creepy stalker tone they gave to Marina before the twist was revealed.
-I like the vibe of Marina as Oni Sister ana the glimpse at the alternate team
-The Team Robotaro change wi wild. I dig it.
DIRECTION
-Kaito’s surprise at Haruka trading in her points to leave Donbrothers
-There was a cool transition with the Gokaiger or pirate Hitotsuki going off into a door in the sky. The door slammed and AR cubes cascaded from it, that cut to rain coming down as Haruka walked into the cafe
-Oni Robotaro is DOPE!
WRITING
-Haruka is such a person. She gets to have an ugly side and I love it. Her sourness makes he positive turns all the more meaningful.
-This Beastial subplot with the Cerebrans has me interested
GENERAL NOTES
-The Beastial detectives fake teeth are hilarious and cool all at the same time
REFLECTIONS
-Everything has a cost. That is an inescapable truth. What is the cost of being a hero? What is the cost of not being a hero? Can you bear to pay that cost? Haruka struggles with this and so do you.
NEXT EPISODE
– Don 11: As Sick As a Dog
SCORE
Episode 9: 9/10
It was so good, I couldn’t even take proper notes!
This is the kind of introspective stuff I like in my stories! Haruka is a neat character. She’s a bit prickly, but she doesn’t have the heart to let someone else suffer in her place. She’s becoming a true hero. That’s everything I want. The Team Robotaro change was a lot of fun and the Oni Robotaro suit looks amazing. Steak, sizzle and spice, this episode had everything.
CREATOR SPOTLIGHT
This episode I will focus on how Inoue and Tasaki did a great job playing with this old idea and making it feel new.
Let’s talk about “tropes” and “clichés” real quick.
Trope
Several times I have erroneously claimed a trope was a fresh take on something in a genre and lamented that it had come to mean a stale convention of the genre which has fallen from grace after shining so brightly, so long ago. I was wrong. A trope is a feature, not a bug. It seems literary and film tropes have indeed developed over time, but that doesn’t mean they have all become or all are clichés.
Etymology, if you are interested
1530s, from Latin tropus “a figure of speech,” from Greek tropos “a turn, direction, course, way; manner, fashion,” in rhetoric, “turn or figure of speech,” related to trope “a turning” and trepein “to turn,” from PIE root *trep- “to turn.” Technically, in rhetoric, “a figure of speech which consists in the use of a word or phrase in a sense other than that which is proper to it” [OED], “as when we call a stupid fellow an ass, or a shrewd man a fox” [Century Dictionary].
Cliché
A cliché is a phrase or idea that is played out. Haruka sort of laughs to herself about Marina’s love of rainbows because of course a photographer, one who captures light, would love rainbows, which are made of light. It’s too perfect. The concept being played with here is a trope as well. I can’t pin down the genre, but Dickens used this glimpse of an alternate life in A Christmas Carol to bing Scrooge to a newfound appreciation for his lot in life and a new attitude. Something like this happens in It’s a Wonderful Life. Both are Christmas stories and the film is based off a radio play. I can’t think of other examples, but A Christmas Carol has been homaged in much media to tell the same story. This episode avoids being a cliché by altering the structure while using the same basic idea. I will argue that something is cliché when it uses tropes and adds nothing to them. It isn’t enough to have the elements assembled, they need to be put together with craft and style to work. I think Inoue does that here. Tasaki sure helps with the sensational action.
Etymology, if you are interested
1825, “electrotype, stereotype,” from French cliché, a technical word in printer’s jargon for “stereotype block,” noun use of past participle of clicher “to click” (18c.), supposedly echoic of the sound of a mold striking metal (compare native click).
Originally, a cast obtained by letting a matrix fall face downward upon a surface of molten metal on the point of cooling, called in English type-foundries ‘dabbing.’ [OED]
Figurative extension to “trite phrase, worn-out expression” is first attested 1888, via the notion of the metal plate from which a print or design could be reproduced endlessly without variety, paralleling the sense evolution of stereotype. But this sense was not common in English until the 1920s, when it was identified as a French idiom. Related: Cliched (1928).
SOURCES
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clich%C3%A9
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trope_(cinema)
INFO
Avataro Sentai Donbrothers is a Japanese television series. It is the 46th in Toei’s Super Sentai series. Its Momotarō-themed Kikai Sentai Zenkaiger The show succeeded Kamen Rider Revice line-up Super Hero Time to Avataro Sentai Donbrothers in premiered March 6, 2022, on TV Asahi.
SOURCE – https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avataro_Sentai_Donbrothers
The series theme is based on the legend of Momotarō and Virtual Reality. Because of this, many of the show’s graphics are styled to resemble traditional Japanese watercolor brush paintings, and the series makes more extensive uses of CGI than past productions.
SOURCE – https://powerrangers.fandom.com/wiki/Avataro_Sentai_Donbrothers
Official Site – https://www.toei.co.jp/tv/donbrothers/story/1228312_3246.html
Check out THIS SCRIPT for a comic book inspired by Super Sentai and other Tokusatsu heroes.
MJ Muñoz 