There's always some blatant product placement in Tokusatsu, right? Somehow, fictional heroes like Superman and Santa Claus become endorsers of real products. Santa Claus The Movie was an endorser of McDonald's. Super Sentai and Kamen Rider are also endorsers of McDonald's. Toku is no exemption to that rule. I thought about Exceedraft episode 14 had the episode where the Super Famicom was the craze. It also involved one father's quest to get the Super Famicom (and go to absurd lengths like in Jingle All the Way) while making up a lie he was abroad when he wasn't. It really had the letter from a boy who wanted a Super Famicom because, boo hoo, he was the only one in the class who didn't have one. Peer pressure again?
The plot of the episode though involved an old friend of Kosaku named Tome. Tome wanted to get his son, Toshio, the Super Famicom and it was a promise. The great absurd lengths were to try and get some money from the villain of the week, Ryo Takahashi, who was involved in drug smuggling while running a legal front in grain trading. It really does show about making promises you can't keep. In this case, the father actually does steal a floppy disk by accident (back before the USB eventually took its place and the save icon was made in its honor) that contained important data.
I do find the ending a bit awkward. So Tome turns himself in. The letter that the son wrote was found by their substitute commander (who appears in episodes 11-18) when their commander was in Paris. The letter was a request for a Super Famicom. Ai gets a Super Famicom with the game Knight Gundam which is blatant product placement. Tome does get a day or two before he hands himself over to serve his sentence. Like every guest character - they tend to be forgotten or never mentioned. Though, I almost felt it was also a broken Aesop when Ai handed over a Super Famicom to Tome to give to his son. IMHO, it would be better if the son would understand that his father is more important than the Super Famicom which became obsolete so fast. Kids who thought they were cool when they had it just end up crying when a cooler console appears. I mean, who can remember how the Nintendo 64 came out and had to contend against the first Playstation?
The episode also reminds me of how I wanted a Super NES (the American equivalent) back then because of peer pressure. I got mad about not having one. Though we ended up getting the first Playstation in the late 1990s then it affected my grades in high school due to too much playing. I wonder if not having a Super NES was a good thing or not. Later on, I would be able to play some Super NES games (but it was on a PS2 fan emulator called SNES Station). Though, I remembered my biggest fuzz was about Super Mario World and I got only the fake version (which I'd NEVER play again) produced by the Hummer Team, believing it was a legit port until I found out it had too many bugs and learned the term "piracy" in school. The episode did finally make me feel regret why I even whined over not having a Super NES back then.
Comments
Post a Comment