[笑うダイヤ] Warau Daiya
The Laughing Diamond
Writer: Kenichi Araki

You know what’s evil? Greed. You know what else is evil? Getting kicked in the John Thomas.

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Kaoru and Ako dress up to attend a high-society event held by Kyotaro, a high roller showcasing his prized possession, the Bloody Diamond. But, as they are soon to find out, whoever looks at the stone is overcome with hatred and greed, lashing out at anyone who is unfortunate enough to get in their way. Ako stops a security guard from trashing the place and she helps Kaoru throw out the giant diamond. Of course, it turns out to be a monster sent down by Vyram. Diamond Dimension attacks and shoots Ako with its beam, causing her to go mad and attack the rest of the team who arrive to help out.

Held up at base, Ako screams and yells while the team ponder on ways to release her from the spell. They head over to Kyotaro’s place to find out more about the diamond. He explains to them that there is a myth surrounding the stone, that whoever laid their gaze upon it would be destined to dark days to come. Of course, he doesn’t believe this story until Maria shows up and claims responsibility. Back at base, Kaoru has an idea to help Ako break the spell and sets out to buy 200 million yen worth of diamonds. Her hopes are that with her love for diamonds, seeing this much would snap her out of it. It starts to work but Kaoru gets impatient and gives Ako a good slap to speed up the process. I personally think she should have started with the slap, but that’s just me trying to save money. Anyway, Ako is freed from the spell and joins the team in defeating the Diamond Dimension.

Honestly, there isn’t much to this episode. It’s a bit of a throw-away plot used for filler. I wouldn’t say its a terrible episode but it doesn’t really do anything to move the story along. There isn’t even that much action to speak of in the episode, which is saying a lot since Jetman has been a very action-heavy show up until now. The greed plot line has been seen and done many times before so without much of a twist on the story line, it does little to stand out.

I’m also not quite sure it was necessarily greed that set most of them off. Due to the fact that the diamond and diamond monster were central to the plot, it seemed like greed was the main catalyst here. But, only Ako seemed to be effected by the site of wealth. Everyone else that stared into the diamond seemed to just generally go mad. Outside of a few comments about snotty rich people, there wasn’t much to drive this concept home and that’s where I think this episode fell short. If they had taken it to the extreme and shown people trying to hoard as much cash as they could, it would have made for a more interesting episode. Exaggeration can sometimes help with a mundane plot like this.

The suit design for the monster in this episode also felt very slapped together for some reason. With just a big diamond-shaped shell comprising of the head and torso with just arms, legs and a whole bunch of diamond necklaces around its neck (seriously, it kind of looked like the monster just got back from Mardi Gras), it didn’t look like a very threatening monster. Which is sad to say since up until now, most of the designs have been very unique and intricate with its detail, something you come to expect from a show done by Keita Amemiya. But, I guess they can’t all be winners.

 

But, of course, this is Super Sentai so we are bound to run into episodes like this. Very rarely do shows like this that run year-round and have multiple iterations stick to the main story line all the way through. You need a bit of padding just to see how the team works on a day-to-day basis. Which isn’t bad, I just wished that the episode was more entertaining to watch.