Power Rangers Samurai, Episode 17 – Broken Dreams

As the Rangers practice, Jayden remembers Decker’s ultimatum and can’t concentrate. Meanwhile, Mia is going to cook dinner so she’s going out shopping.

On the Sanzu, Xandred scolds Dayu for failing to finish off Decker. OO-AH-OO! Dayu says ever since she chose to embrace the darkness, she’s only experienced sorrow. “Forget your pathetic past,” Xandred says as he takes her harmonium and smashes it on the floor.

Dayu cracks through above ground and sees a bum (sorry) playing a guitar for money. She wants to take his “musical essence” to repair her harmonium. Mia drops her shopping bag and morphs. But OO-AH-OO! Octoroo sends Rinosnorus to put everyone to sleep. The other Rangers arrive to take him on.

Dayu runs off with the guitar bum and Mia follows her. Jayden tells Emily to go help.
Antonio arrives to help the guys, but he gets put to sleep too.

Rhinosnorus says he has to go catch Dayu before eating everyone up. He jumps into a portal on top of Antonio and pops back up in the forest as Mia and Dayu are fighting.

Rhinosnorus hurls Mia and Dayu down the hill, leaving both unconscious and in the dream world. Mentor Jii Yeah Him Again informs Jayden about Rhinosnorus and how once he eats their dreams, the people can never wake up again… more bluntly, they die.

Mia’s dream is of setting a fancy table and being excited about feeding everyone her gourmet meal. But suddenly, there’s a dark cloud that engulfs the dream. She walks into it and sees Decker carrying a woman, both dressed as bride and groom.

Jayden says they have to go dream world. He uses symbol power to open a portal and Mike and Kevin jump in, leaving Jayden behind, exhausted.

Kevin and Mike land in Antonio’s dream world of Georges Seurat’s Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. Literally. They hear Antonio screaming about his golden moment and holding a trophy. Kevin tries to grab the trophy to get him to snap out of the dream, but here comes Bulk on a horse dressed as an old non-Power Ranger samurai warrior, vowing to protect the innocent.

But Rhinosnorus pops in and wants to eat Bulk and Spike. Kevin and Mike tackle him and morph, but Rhinosnorus takes them back to Japanese footage.

“MY BUTT!”

In the real world, Emily continues wandering the forest looking for Mia who has now followed Decker and the woman into a cabin. The woman is Dayu y’all! And it is their wedding night. They exchange presents.


Dayu gives Decker a sword… UURRAAAMMAASSAAA. Decker, meanwhile, gives Dayu a guitar.

After doing what newly married couples do on their wedding night, Dayu awakens to the cabin up in flames. She and Decker somehow end up outside, him in her arms.

“Please… someone hear my call!!”

Akumaro A shadowed thing appears and offers to help Decker for a price. Dayu must give up her humanity for an eternity in the netherworld.

She accepts the offer. Akumaro tells her to move away from him and he waves his hands. Decker will live, but will have to live cursed as half-human/half-Nighlok with no memory of her. Akumaro disappears and Decker gets up and turns into his Nighlok form before disappearing as well.

Along with her guitar, Dayu too turns into her Nighlok form. Mia is enlightened.

Kevin and Mike draw Rhinosnorus out of dream world and they destroy his sleeping gas mist blower causing all the sleepy heads to wake up. Rhinosnorus retreats back dream world.

Antonio wakes up and helps Jayden up.
OO-AH-OO… Octoroo sees Jayden. He’s exhausted, so this is the perfect time to hit him while he’s done. Octoroo sends some moogers and Antonio proposes the two of them fight “the baddies” like they did in the backyard when they were kids. They finish them off with the zords.

Mia wakes up and looks over to Dayu. “You had no right to spy on me,” Dayu says. But Mia is sympathetic towards her and asks if it is too late for her to return to her human form.

Dayu draws her sword. “I don’t need your pity.” Dayu is about to strike, but Emily saves Mia and she leaves.

“To think I wanted to help you!”

Antonio sits Jayden down, but a garage door opens and out walks Decker.

It’s time for that glorious duel!

Episode Thoughts
Well, as much ribbing as Samurai deserves, it is nice to have the show back. Mostly so we have something specific to nitpick about.

But actually, the episode was good. Relatively speaking, as always. But there was a lot of good story. We finally get the Dayu/Decker reveal, even though it was pretty predictable (even without Shinkenger knowledge).

The living Seurat painting was pretty cool, but everything that happened around it… not so much. They kind of wasted some nice potential with Mia and Dayu, but Emily got the total shaft this episode.

It was a little all over the place, like they had so much material to use but no idea how to put it all together. And considering…

How Much Better Was Sentai Than Power Rangers?
Corresponding Shinkenger Episode: Act 25 – The Dream World

The Shinkenger episode was just as packed, Samurai actually deviated from the script, though only in order. They used pretty much all the material from the Shinkenger episode, but rearranged scenes to the point that instead of building up to a huge cliffhanger, they let the air out of the tires by yanking you around.

The Shinkenger built up nicely to three cliffhangers; Takeru and Juzo, Ryunosuke and Chiaki versus the monster of the week, and Mako and Kotoha against Dayuu. Samurai instead capped the episode with the impending duel, but the build up just wasn’t there like it was in the Sentai.

There was plenty of original NZ footage though, which is always nice. It was mainly because the Shinkenger footage had too many locals and the Shinkengers spent a lot of time unhenshined. But we should take what we can get when it comes to freshly filmed scenes.

Storywise, it is understandable why PR completely changed both Dayu and Decker’s backstories. Shinkenger‘s episode revealed Dayuu’s tragic love story, but Samurai actually made a little more sense, though predictable, in its explanation of why Dayu (and Decker) became Nighloks. Still, Shinkenger had more emotional depth as has been the case.

One interesting thing though was Samurai putting in a literal second’s worth of the original Dayuu in flames footage. Kind of random, especially since it wasn’t a guitar that turned into the thing American Dayu strums, but her actual lover. The man himself. More twisted and dark, which of course why it was changed.




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