Kota watches with the excited audience as Oren, now as Armored Rider Bravo, manhandles both Ryoji and Hideyasu. Oren slaps Ryoji’s butt and tosses him in the air before forcing him to de-henshin. Having run away to hide, Hideyasu tries to sneak up on Oren, but instead gets thrown into the water to de-henshin as well.
Oren happily takes their Lockseeds as the crowd cheers him on. He de-henshins and bows for the crowd. But Kota asks what he thinks he’s doing fighting and defeating Beat Riders for fun. For entertainment of course!
DJ Sagara reports on Bravo having gone on to defeat four more teams since beating the nut Riders and now has a ton of Lockseeds. Oren gives a message to all the fans saying he’s here to show them what real entertainment and fighting is like.
Kota and Mai are at Drupers watching the broadcast. Mai seems smitten with Oren’s awesomeness as a baker and a fighter, but Kota wakes her up to the reality that he is their enemy. Bando suggests Oren just can’t stand the kids having fun after he had trained for a long time to get recognition.
Kaito listens to their conversation in the next room and says to shut someone like Oren up, you must be stronger and defeat him. Which is exactly what he intends to do after receiving the challenge this morning. He says he’ll gladly take care of Oren so Kota won’t have to. He can just sit and watch the big boys handle it.
Meanwhile in a Yggdrasill boardroom, Sid is briefing Takatora on Oren’s background. Takatora doesn’t think it’s a good idea for a man with such combat experience to be in possession of a Driver. Sid says who gets the Drivers is never completely under his control.
Suddenly, DJ Sagara pops up on the big screen to join the meeting. He says unexpected circumstances always come up, just like Takatora losing the watermelon Lockseed. So he shouldn’t be grilling Sid so much for allowing the Driver to fall in Oren’s hands.
Takatora wants them to get the Driver back from Oren, but Sagara says he welcomes this development. It makes his broadcasts more exciting. Takatora reminds Sagara that his little joke of a show is to gather info and manipulate what is presented to the public.
Sid adds that Professor Ryoma is pleased with all the valuable data that has been collected since Oren’s started his campaign. Ryoma, speaking from a dark lab above the boardroom, agrees and says this is still within the set parameters of the project. They should just wait and see for now.
Across town, Kaito and Oren are already mid-battle. Or, more like Oren is easily taking care of Kaito as well as the three Inves he’s summoned. Oren unleashes a Durian Squash on Kaito forcing him to de-henshin.
Oren tosses Kaito his Lockseed back and says he sees a lot of potential in him. He advises Kaito to keep training and they’ll meet again.
Team Gaim’s at their stage, performing. The audience is more interested in talking about Bravo and Baron and wonders if Gaim will get challenged next.
Right on cue, Oren arrives and removes Gaim’s music card. Mai gushes.
But the love is short-lived when Oren asks why no one put a stop to their horrible dancing before they even started. Oren wants only the best arts and culture to thrive. Mitch-tachi try to defend their right to dance, but that only makes Oren quickly henshin.
Kota rushes onto the stage and both he and Mitch henshin as well.
The crowd cheers as the fight commences. Kota tries to reason with Oren that people will be happier with his cakes that he’s worked so hard for than with this nonsense. But Oren tells them to shut up and decides to summon a whole buttload of Inves, using all the Lockseeds he’s acquired so far.
The Inves, of course, go out of control, leaving their digital ring to start attacking the people, even Oren.
Mitch tosses the watermelon Lockseed over for Kota to use. He unlocks it and a HUGE watermelon pops out of the dimensional zipper. The others are worried about its size, but Kota attaches it to his Driver anyway, saying a man’s gotta have guts.
Mai and Mitch pray as the watermelon slams down onto Kota.
Oren laughs, but the huge watermelon starts spinning through the plaza, killing every Inves in its path. The watermelon reaches Oren and spins to send him flying.
Kota pops out of the top of the watermelon and says he can definitely use this.
Oren grabs a steel pillar and slices the watermelon into six pieces. But the slices quickly come back together and Kota initiates Armor (Yoroi) Mode.
Kota easily knocks Oren to the side. But suddenly, one of the Inves gobbles up all the Lockseeds on stage and embiggens. It runs off. Kota summons his motorcycle for Mitch to ride and follow as he rolls back into Big Ball (Odama) Mode after the Inves.
When they catch up, Mitch manages to slow the Inves down and Kota goes back into Armor Mode to unleash a Watermelon Squash to finish it off.
Kota and Mitch fist bump as Oren comes running toward them, out of breath. They are ready to fight when Oren’s alarm goes off. He de-henshins and realizes it’s time to go bake some pie crusts.
They better not forget this, Oren says, he’ll defeat them someday. He clumsily runs off.
DJ Sagara announces Gaim is now officially and solely in first place. And Team Gaim decides to celebrate.
Mai arrives at the Garage with a cake from Charmant. Kota is not very excited about a Charmant cake.
Episode Thoughts
Now as much as I am enjoying Gaim so far, they are making some interesting tonal decisions. Right now, it’s not affecting how fun the show is. But first it was Hideyasu going from being a sneaky, smooth operator to the Don-san-like comic relief that specializes in slapstick and sight gags. And now it’s turning Mr. Dangerous into a big goofball. Of course he was always flamboyant and stuff, but after gleefully fighting all episode long, we end the episode with him bumbling about over pie crusts. Hmm…
Elsewhere, that celebration scene at the end was too horrifyingly similar to the party scenes at the end of most Power Rangers Megaforce episodes. Eeek. Of course, it makes more sense here since they are celebrating being #1 for the first time. But ewe, the less similarities with Megaforce the better. lol
Anyway, the Yggdrasill developments were nice. At the very least, they gave DJ Sagara a purpose other than being an annoying color commentator.
These last two episodes though have felt like they are returning to that two-episode-a-MOTW format. Even if there isn’t any MOTW, I hope they continue with the single episodes instead and continue the serialized structure of the series instead of the close-ended two-parters.
I was a bit surprised at some of the sillier bits in the episode after the last, though I did like the way they did Watermelon arms to make it look like he’s inside of it piloting it like a big battle armor.
Yeah, they do include some silly bits at the most random times. It hasn’t taken too much away from the overall feel of the episode so far. I hope they can keep that balance though. =]
So the writers thought that having a transvestite who acts gay would be funny? well doing that and making him French is funny.
Huh is it me or was Kaito being a stalker listening on Kouta and Mai’s conversation? And why would Mai be smitten with a transvestite? I really need to watch Thai show I’ve only been watching Kamen rider ooo den-o decade fourze and wizard
Why read the recap is as fun as watching it on TV? Wah, you really such a good writer. And the pics is also so much helpful.
Thank you! 😊