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Fighbird Ep. 19: Legend of the Hidden Treasure

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Summary

Draias asks Jango why he keeps failing, and the latter blames Shura and Zol. Draias puts a stop to any further bickering, and Jango explains his latest plan: Steal a mysterious force guarded by an Incan tribe during their celebration festival. Meanwhile, Hiroshi, Katori, the kids and Thunder Baron arrive at South America to explore the Incan mountain. Thunder Baron stays behind while the rest go into the jungle. They run into a kid from a nearby Incan village. Kenta tries to greet him but Katori unintentionally scares him away. Hiroshi reminds everyone to respect the village customs or they’ll never make it out alive. Immediately they get all get caught in a net trap except for Katori, and are surrounded by Incan villagers wielding spears. The kid, Titicu, starts rummaging through Kenta’s stuff, but the village chief appears and chastises Titicu for trying to steal things. She orders the villagers to stand down and remarks that Katori has a kind face. However, she won’t allow them to leave the village during the festival because the divine force might corrupt them and has them locked up. Kenta asks Katori to bust them out of the cell but the latter says that they’d be disrespecting the village customs. Titicu appears and asks them to show him their flashlight, but Kenta demands that he let them out first. Hiroshi proposes instead for Titicu to explain the divine force to them. Titicu says that during the festival, the chief goes into the mountain and summons the light of God, which punishes evil people but brings happiness to good ones. The festival begins at night, but Draias and Jango arrive, grabbing the chief and demanding the divine light. When the chief refuses, Jango’s mechanical monster starts destroying the village. Katori quickly bends the bars and has everyone escape before the cell’s ceiling collapses. Jango has Zol hold the chief at gunpoint and lead them to the divine light. Titicu runs into Kenta and the rest and tells them to run away. Jango’s monster fires at them, but Thunder Baron arrives and knocks it down. The villagers think he’s a messenger of the gods and Titicu asks if Katori is friends with him.

The path inside the mountain splits in two and Jango orders the chief to tell them the correct path. When she refuses, Zol accidentally steps on a trapped tile that causes a pillar to fall on them. To the chief’s surprise however, Zol manages to stop the pillar and push it back up. Titicu leads the group to the entrance of the mountain while Thunder Baron fights the monster. The villagers watch in awe as he slams it to the ground with his Thunder Anchor. Draias however joins the fight and turns the tables. The group reaches the split path and Hiroshi steps on the same trapped panel. Katori pushes him out of the way of the pillar but they get separated from the kids and each group is forced to take a path and keep in touch through Wrister. Kenta and Titicu quarrel over the flashlight that the latter swiped from them before, but Haruka puts an end to it just as Zol finds them. Jango and the chief reach a giant door which he orders her to open. He states that he’ll share the divine light with her but the chief retorts that his greed is what displeases the gods. Zol however arrives with the kids in tow and forces her hand. The door opens into a large chamber with a crystal ball on an altar. The chief reveals that the divine light happens when moonlight enters through a hole in the ceiling and is spread by the crystal throughout the entire mountain. Jango is furious that he came all this way for nothing and Zol is about to kill the kids when Katori bursts through the wall and kicks Zol in the face. He knocks Zol into a glass pillar which gets smashed and the whole chamber begins to collapse. Jango and Zol escape while the chief herds the rest into a nearby boat. They ride the boat out of the mountain just as the divine light seeps outside. Katori quickly combines into Fighbird and sets the boat safely on the ground. He blasts Draias and the monster off of Thunder Baron and dodges their retaliation. A strong beam of light bursts from the mountain and blinds the monster, allowing Fighbird to finish it off while Draias escapes with Jango and Zol. Kenta discovers that the boat they escaped on is actually made of gold. The chief reveals that the altar inside is also made of gold. Kenta suggests that they dig up the remaining gold, but the chief retorts that if they do that greed will spread throughout the village and that the boat will be enough to rebuild it. As the grateful villagers see them off, Hiroshi laments that all they got out of this adventure was a piece of smoked rat, but Kenta decides to eat it anyway because it was a gift.

Commentary

Bad enough that Jango has failed Draias repeatedly but now he just led him on a wild goose chase involving what he thought was a lost Incan treasure. It was also pretty silly of him to make a mechanical monster shaped like an Incan statue if he wasn’t planning on tricking the villagers into thinking it was one of their gods. And while the chief’s message about living in peace by being unconcerned by wealth rings true, I don’t think that justifies tricking the villagers into thinking that a twice a century light and mirrors show is some kind of divine blessing. It’s a shame this episode didn’t do more with the Incan mythos but I suppose that can’t be helped when your cast includes androids who can shrug off death traps and smash through walls.

Overall Rating
3/5

Fighbird Info

Director:
Katsuyoshi Yatabe

Writer:
Yasushi Hirano

Mechanical Designer:
Kunio Okawara

Character Designer:
Hitoshi Ueda

Musical Composer:
Toshiyuki Watanabe

Format:
48 episodes

Airdates:
Japan 02.02.1991 – 02.01.1992

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