This week things heat up for ole Akibared.  General Pain heads into Jetman territory and whips up a sinister foe…CutieChara Dimension!  A send up of popular chain store idols, she’s Red’s number one weakness!  Can the team balance themselves against this fearsome new foe with Red getting the vapors everytime she speaks?! Most likely, but we’re here for the action!  Click the jump for a full review of Akibaranger S2E6!

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After General Pain has a run in with a poorly dressed mascot character, the rangers start their day with yet another shocker from Luna…she’s found someone who’d be perfect as the fourth Akibaranger!  Hakase is dumbfounded at first, but it makes sense given that eventually most sentai add a member or two…or several.  She suggests Choco-tan, a popular new idol hocking chocolate bars on TV and singing around Akihabara.  The team is sold on the concept but on the way they run into a strangely dressed woman turning children into vegetables and textbooks.  Meet the new face of evil.

 

That’s right, General Pain took out his frustration on poorly dressed cosplayers and made the ultimate Jetman inspired mascot character…the all-mighty CutieChara Dimension.  However, Nobuo seems strangely susceptible to her particular style of combat…that is, to pamper him into second entendre hell and leave him all wet noodle, while totally trouncing AkibaYellow and Blue.  She’s got them on the ropes when…what’s that?  A masked hero on the horizon!  It’s…

Strangely enough it’s Choco-tan.  Dressed to impress might I add.  The foreshadowing of another member being added to the team has either just been confirmed or totally denied by this Rainbow Brite meets Tuxedo Mask’s entrance…but she kicks some serious tail either way.  Choco-tan might really be ranger material after all…thought Nobuo’s weakness prevents them from finding out (you’ll have to see for yourself exactly how).  Back at the base, he finally comes clean to the team about his awful secret.

Something we can all relate to of course.  The lovely ladies with the shiny skin have some kind of mystique, and a very young Nobuo learned some lessons about the effects of hormones upon seeing Colon, an android companion of Choujuu Sentai Liveman.

 

Of course this totally explains his fixation on Aoi-tan, and his inability to mix it up with CutieChara Dimension!  General Pain even goes to far as to add a special feature to CutieChara to ensure her success.  It’s a clever little fix to a long-time sentai flag…gotta watch to find out!

This episode, honestly, is one of the weaker so far in terms of blowing minds or creating heavy drama in the show’s subplot.  It does, however, serve to shine a little light on the motivations and true depth of General Pain’s sentai knowledge.  He also learns in this episode that the Delusional World has been affecting reality, which prompts him to go back to a project he says he had abandoned at one time…looks kinda familiar.  Kinda…Hurricanger-y.

After all is said and done this episode was entertaining as filler, and it may have dropped a few hints about upcoming developments.  The first half of the series so far has been a joy to watch though and while I wouldn’t consider this episode bad in any way it is a little “slower”, a little more one-note (similar to how the Powerful Rangers episode felt).  The two episode arc-plots seem to suit the show the best so let’s hope they return to that.

Come on along next week as we get another guest spot from another great Super Sentai series, Hurricanger!  It looks like General Pain plays a much bigger part in the upcoming episode, and this will tie in nicely with the trailer that came out last week for the new Hurricanger: 10 Years After movie!  Remember to hit up the forums, hope you who were there had fun at ACEN, and have a good week!