HUBB
ARDIAN
CASE FILE 06 :
THE FABRICATED INVITEE
The Londerz family is enjoying a luxurious meal of cheese, wine, and baguettes.
They must have tried out a 20th century depachika.
（(A "depachika" is an area in the basement of Japanese department stores that sell various dishes and confectioneries from many vendors,
even with multiple vendors selling the same kinds of items all competing to be the best.)
Lila and Gien are sitting down, while Dolnero is as always standing near the table with cigar in hand.
The Zenitt pouring wine into his glass for him at least gives him an aura of authority as family boss,
but the sight of him standing while the others sit adds to his character's melancholy pathos.
Meanwhile, the Timerangers are eating some Yukijirushi Snow Brand goods they must have gotten from their neighborhood budget supermarket.
Waiting for the discount stickers to be put on items in the deli corner just before the supermarket closes must be one of their principles as heroes.
(Actually, it's a principle for anyone in a pinch.)
Yukijirushi actually sold Super Sentai sausages until 2001, meaning that Domon is indirectly dissing his sponsor's products here,
but we don't have to worry about Domon being fired over this, reason being that Yukijirushi caused various problems in 2000 and 2001,
and from 2002 were no longer a sponsor, as Prima Ham was in charge of Super Sentai sausage from that point.
I recall when Yukijirushi, which had always been delicious and CRAZY CHILLED all year round, stopped appearing in our school lunch,
and the new milk had a nasty sweet aftertaste and was always lukewarm for some reason (not crazily chilled).
For that reason, Domon was able to appear in Gokaiger in 2011 despite his bad attitude here.
Yukijirushi is a representative company from my hometown (see our Yuru-chara Tappy to the right), so I for one still like and am proud of it...
The Timerangers get intel that the criminal Lila has defrosted this time is planning to steal a rare diamond aboard a yacht party.
It turns out that Tatsuya has a connection to the host through his family,
and the other 4 pressure him into using his status as the son of the Asami family as a way to get in.
Even Domon, who was kicked out of the Grappling Organization for "personal stuff" encourages Tatsuya to mix his private and professional life.
That's rich coming from you!
Tatsuya left home intending to throw away the Asami name, so naturally he's reluctant.
However, he ends up putting his personal stuff second, and reluctantly heads to the yacht party in order to catch the Londerz prisoner,
a responsibility he himself chose to bear.
They're all able to enter just by saying the Asami name, and the partygoers soon surround Tatsuya.
Even though he doesn't feel like he's acheived anything himself, he's valued just for being the son of the Asami CEO.
That contrast must conversely make Tatsuya feel like he himself is a nobody,
and one can imagine how being expected and pressured by others into playing the part of a wealthy heir leads him to self-rejection and pain.
Therefore, he left home so he could find and prove who he is both to himself and to the world.
Unfortunately he runs into his parents at the party, and Mr. Asami strictly criticizes his son, who he's seeing for the first time in about a month.
What his father says to him is exactly the issue that's been troubling Tatsuya since he was born.
It seems to me like by forcing a fixed identity onto Tatsuya, he's in his own way encouraging Tatsuya to take a position of his own,
and the conversation does help Tatsuya formulate his own position more clearly.
He leaves giving his business card to the other participants, stating that he is a member of Tomorrow Research, not the Asami family.
Well done, Mr. Asami. I think that his talent for personal development is fitting for the CEO of a large company,
but the statement must come from his own experience of encountering the limits of his own freedom.
Tatsuya is honest in recognizing that he himself hasn't done anything of worth, but there's no denying that some others,
such as Naoto Takizawa, will see him as naive for thinking in such a way.
Like Mr. Asami says, it's likely that Tatsuya will run into limits of his own freedom,
meaning that he even if he separates himself from his current environment and limitations, if he tries maintain his current convenient position,
he'll be returned to the environment that granted that position to him in the first place, trading his freedom in exchange for security,
and will have no choice but to live by the rules of the environment he wanted to run away from.
The weakness that leads one to make compromises is the limit of freedom.
In a position like Tatsuya's in which one is known by many people, even if one doesn't want to rely on others,
it will be harder to become truly independent of the help of others than one realizes.
In other words, Tatsuya's priveledged position has created a cage for him.
Mr. Asami also tried to throw away his environment and position in order to attain freedom, but noticed that he was caged by his circumstances
and that whatever he tried to throw away would come back to him, so accepted the limits to his freedom.
Tatsuya has the freedom to choose the way of life that he wants in order to prove his worth to himself,
but he ultimately can't escape the destiny he was born with, and will have to keep actively running away from it.
Even if he forges a new path for himself, he can't change that he was born into the Asami family...
This recalls Tatsuya's admonishment in Chapter 2 that "You can't change the future, but you can still change your tomorrow.
The one who decides what you'll do in the moment is you."
There are limits to what we can control, but we can at least choose our own actions.
Here we get to see the five in their best formal attire!
The screenwriter specifically mentioned that they made an effort to put a lot of cosplay opportunities in the story,
so getting to see the five main characters in various different outfits is one of the show's good points.
Sion sports a burgundy jacket and blue bowtie for the occasion.
On the right we see Sion joyfully blasting water onto Rouge in her human form.
Sion's hair color is unstable in this episode. The shade varies from scene to scene, but let's not let it bother us.
This time they actually succeed in freeze-compressing the enemy without much of a fight.
It's a rather irregular battle, with the hand-to-hand combat being pretty low-effort and the robot battle virtually non-existent,
with only Alpha formation being utilized.
On top of that, the exchange between Rouge, Time Yellow, and Time Red is weirdly full of innuendos,
so maybe this episode is a good example of one of Timeranger's more adult-oriented episodes... (!?)
The scene with the Time Jets appearing and combining is longer than usual though. That's really the only Sentai-esque thing about this episode.
We'll end our commentary this time with the sad sight of Rouge being freeze-compressed (via nice special effects!) without putting up much of a fight.
(Now that I think of it, there was actually a pair of diamonds, and one of the ones that Rouge stole she gave to Lila, meaning one of them was never recovered...)
SCORE:
I didn't have much to write this time, but this was a good episode, and we got to see Tatsuya's strong will and positivity clearly. I don't think anyone could dislike Tatsuya after watching this episode. His exchange with his father was also serious and thought provoking. We also got to see the good points of the other 4, so it's an episode that fans of any of the Timerangers can enjoy. However, the light robot battle and lack of necessity for Rouge to be a monster at all makes it rather weak from a tokusatsu viewpoint, so despite the interesting drama part, it gets 3 stars overall.