By Despite the Devil Stone being destroyed, Jango manages to salvage a small fragment of it and works on turning it into a weapon against the Space Police. Shura recoils in horror when he finds Jango still working on it, but the latter gives him a device to nullify the waves from the stone. Katori takes off in the Fire Jet and starts feeling dizzy. He’s woken from his daydream by Kenta, who asks what’s wrong. Katori shrugs it off and they start walking home. Kenta then notices that a popular new commercial jingle is playing on store displays. The jingle sends Katori into another daydream where he’s fighting Shura. Despite insisting to Kenta that he’s fine, Katori soon collapses. Elsewhere, Guard Star experiences similar hallucinations and ends up blocking traffic. At the Amano Peace Labs, Hiroshi is busy working on a new vehicle when Kenta informs him that Katori is sick. In bed, Katori explains that he’s been spacing out since morning and has no idea why. Hiroshi decides to examine his body but Katori suddenly senses the Baron team launching. Ace Baron starts seeing hallucinations as well but is snapped out of it when Haruka contacts him. He wakes up to find himself sitting on the ocean floor and Haruka tells him that he’s showing the same symptoms as Katori.
Guard Wing wobbles his way back to the lab as Hiroshi examines Katori’s body and notes a sharp decrease in energy levels. Hiroshi has no idea how to restore the Space Police’s energy, but Haruka suggests that he at least come up with a temporary solution. Katori starts having another hallucination and Hiroshi has Haruka scan all wave lengths. He discovers an unusual energy wave that’s interfering with the Space Police’s wave patterns. The wave turns out to be broadcasted by the TV commercial that Kenta saw earlier and Hiroshi traces its source to a nearby location. They set out to work on a cure but Katori takes off with the rest of the Space Police sans Guard Wing to investigate the source. Hiroshi protests that their energy levels are very low but Katori retorts that they’ll all die if they don’t do something. Hiroshi relents and tells them to buy time until he can send backup with Guard Wing. The Space Police reach the broadcasting source to find Shura, who bombards them with Devil Stone waves and drains their energy even more. Fighbird tries to resist the hallucinations but Shura increases the intensity of the waves and throws beam cannon fire into the mix. Guard Wing arrives and fires an energy recharging beam at Fighbird, allowing him to power through the illusions and destroy the broadcasting station. After the battle, Hiroshi explains that he managed to create a temporary charger by removing the heat from solar energy. He also managed to create chips that block the energy waves, rendering the Space Police safe from any future attempts. Hiroshi collapses after getting accidentally hit by Kenta’s upgraded Anti-Teshita gun, Flame Shot, but reveals that he’s only dizzy because he hasn’t eaten all day.
This is a really interesting episode. It brings back the Devil Stone subplot that was thought to be concluded in the previous episode and uses a plot point as a clever excuse to recycle scenes from previous episodes without being a full on clip show. Par for the course, Jango goes about deploying the Devil Stone waves with all the silliness of a cartoon mad scientist. Not only did he go to all the trouble of setting up a fake commercial (with a jingle so catchy it was included in the show’s soundtrack releases), but he also made the monster of the week a giant mechanical noodle cup. Better still, we’re also teased with upcoming elements like the new Flame Shot and the mystery vehicle that Hiroshi was working on. Since we’re past the halfway mark, we can expect that Katori will be upgrading to a new robot soon.
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