Zone Fighter Episode 17 – GO! Faitaa Kinkyuuhasshin

aka GO! ファイター緊急発進 aka Go! Fighter Emergency Take off! aka Go! Fighter, Scramble

1973
Written by Satoshi Kurumi
Directed by Jun Fukuda

Dancing with the Stars under the stars

Today we have a very special episode of Zone Fighter, because the star of our show isn’t the Zone Family, but their crap. Yes, the focus is on Smokey the spaceship and Mighty Liner the flying car. I guess the Garoga forgot about the other Zone Family spaceship, the Pandora Capsule. But you know about it because you read the Zone Fighter Splash Page, where all that stuff is listed!

Garoga laugh because they’re in space in a Garoga Spaceship that is now sucking up the Zone Family spaceship Smokey into their own larger ship and flying away. That’s actually a cool power, but instead of dismantling Smokey or lacing it with lots of bombs that will explode whenever a Zone person gets in it, they just move the ship to somewhere else.

Hotaru is awake at night looking out the window and Akira talks to her…

Wait a minute, Akira and Hotaru share the same room, and even have bunk beds????? WTF???? In a prior episode Akira was sleeping in the room where the phone was, which is near the living room. AKira is like a hot potato they move from room to room I guess. No one likes Akira.

Anyway, they both had the same dream about Smokey, which just goes to show how lame you are when you dream about your spaceship, in a world where you use your spaceship every day, making it not unique, so it’s like dreaming about your mom’s minivan.

They fly up to where Smokey is parked…and it’s gone! But an outline of Smokey remains, which is weird. At first I thought it was one of their other craft cloaked, but it doesn’t match either one, only Smokey. Maybe it is a decoy put in place to not trip alarms. It’s too hard to figure out without subtitles, I guess this will always be a mystery until someone comments below 8 years later after subtitled DVDs have been out for years like I’m some sort of idiot for not knowing.

Hotaru and Akira know the Garoga are behind it, and go home to activate the tracking beacon of Smokey and find where the Garoga hid it, which turns out to be near the Tanzawa woods.

The Garoga just land their Big Ship in the middle of a city and use a flamethrower device that pops out of a manhole to lay waste to the center of the city. Tens of thousands of people would be killed if this wasn’t a model city. Buildings explode and Garoga laugh. This is the kind of evil crap the Garoga should be doing all the freaking time to harass the Zone Family! And it’s awesome, how many times do you see aliens attack a city and kill lots of people in other kids shows? Okay, lots of them, but it’s still cool.

Akira and Hotaru run into a woman named Yuri who says she’ll help them find Smokey. Of course she’s a Garoga, and ends up capturing them because they are dumb. But at least the Garoga are using fake skin to hide their webbed hands now, it only took them 17 episodes to figure that out. Yuri drops Hotaru and Akira in the Minus Fourth Dimension, where all their powers are useless, thanks to the Minus Fourth Math. Which is like some really difficult math. I hear it involves factoring.

The Garoga just laugh at them, which is funny. The Garoga are having a blast this episode, stealing stuff and wantonly murdering, it’s cool.

Meanwhile, no one at home noticed that Akira or Hotaru were missing in the morning, and Hikaru went to go drive his racecar as usual in the morning with Takeru Jou. He also didn’t notice the huge GAROGA INVASION OF A MAJOR CITY!!!!!!! Didn’t he turn on the radio in his race car? Or see the Japanese police in the streets ensuring the masses of whatever city he is in that there are no Garoga currently rampaging?

Finally by evening they noticed something is wrong, but only because Akira and Hotaru left a note.

Hikaru goes looking for them and runs into Yuri, who sends him into the same trap. But Hikaru sees it and jumps aside, capturing her instead! Zone Fighter forces her to take him where his family is held, but it’s also in the minus fourth dimension, so Zone Fighter’s gun doesn’t work when he tries to shoot the Garoga.

Some Garoga goons choke Zone Fighter while the Red Garoga has grabbed the keys to the Mighty Liner. Zone’s gonna die when lightning strikes and a booming voice calls out. Zone Fighter jumps over Hotaru and Akira and creates a force field around them all, while the rest of the area is flattened thanks to Zone Great, aka Grandpa Zone aka Raita Sakimori. Zone Great is the only awesome Zone.

Grandpa has saved the three Zones and then Zone Fighter realizes that the Garoga can still steal the Mighty Liner, and we quickcut to the Garoga on the way there now, Yuri and the Red Garoga. The two villains manage to steal Mighty Liner and fly away, which works until Zone Fighter controls Mighty Liner by remote control and overrides their commands, forcing it to land in front of him.

Zone shoots off Red Garoga’s antennas, and takes his car back. Then he goes in search of Smokey. And finds it on the remote mountain range of a desolate moon.

The Garoga send a monster to attack Zone Fighter – Balgaras! Balgaras starts out looking like one of those Daruma dolls, flying around all curled up and squeaking. Squeaking villains don’t command much respect, and soon Balgaras pops open like a Poppel and reveals his true form. Balgaras is a pretty good Godzilla knockoff with skin like an armadillos (and suckers down his sides), and big hands. He still does a rolling ball attack – and will switch back and forth between ball form and normal. Balgaras also spits gas at Zone Fighter.

Zone blasts off pieces of Balagras, but he just reforms again!

They fight and fight now that the theme is playing.

Zone Fighter just shoots Balagras a lot until his tongue falls off and sparks fly out of four parts of his body. He falls backwards, dead. Then things get crazy weird, as a giant cross then is erected right where Balgaras fell, complete with animated halo. Was Balgaras some sort of weird fundamentalist sect that involved building self-burying and self-gravestoning into his DNA? Because that’s some good planning ahead, though if you were to die on the toilet you’d suddenly have a gravestone in your toilet and that would kill your house’s resale value for your loved ones after they realize you didn’t have life insurance. Why don’t you care about your loved ones, you monster?

Zone Fighter grabs Smokey and takes him home, as in he stays giant and picks up the spaceship and carries it hope while flying by himself in space. As opposed to piloting it home, or sending it home by remote control while he pilots the Mighty Liner home. Which means he also leaves the Mighty Liner in space, but we know that has a remote control, so that will be brought back to Earth eventually.

The Garoga massacre was awesome, as was the complete lack of repercussions by the Zone Family. As long as no one they care about is in danger, the Garoga are free to terrorize the planet. Perhaps the Garoga should just conquer a few continents and set up factories to make weapons to eventually invade Japan and take out the Zones. Or just come up with dumb plans in space every week. Your call, Garoga!

Rated 5/10 (intro swirls, space car car, The Garoga have a meteor signage in this episode, force field, escaping car)

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