Samurai Flamenco Part 2 picks up the series with Masayoshi now leading his very own team, the Flamengers. After their encounter with King Torture of From Beyond, Mineral Miracle Muse a.k.a. the Flamenco Girls have all but disbanded, but it seems the crazy invaders known as From Beyond aren’t the biggest threat after all when all heroes are declared outlaw vigilantes by the government.
Part one pulled a bit of a bait and switch when the series went from being a bit bland and reality based and flipped on its head with full-blown Sentai antics and monster-of-the-week scenarios. Part two pushes this even further, introducing a maniacal Prime Minister, alien evolution and a meeting with the galaxy itself. Honestly, it all starts to feel like a bit much this time around, and the more grounded and realistic moments of personal drama feel jarringly out of place. They’re there as an effort to introduce some personal human moments among an increasingly ridiculous plot, such as finally learning the truth about Goto’s long-distance girlfriend, but the series is just so schizophrenic in it’s pacing and twists that I started to get over it. After fights with world-consuming aliens and a super-powered Prime Minister, using what effectively amounts to a domestic terrorist messing with Hazama as the series’ final villain is a real anti-climax.
It feels a bit like they tried to cram every idea they came up with into 22 episodes, and as a result after a promising first half Samurai Flamenco becomes a bit of a victim of it’s own alternately increasingly bizarre and monotonously dull highs and lows. As a faster-paced, stripped back 13 episodes I feel like they might’ve had more success with this premise if they’d reined it in a bit. After building up to a promising premise with the sentai team at the end of part one, the second half of the series doesn’t quite total the sum of its parts.
It’s not all bad, there are some genuinely entertaining moments and it was still worth seeing this through to it’s conclusion. I don’t even know how to condense the overarching plot because so much insane shit happens along the way that I feel like I’ve already spoiled too much. If you enjoyed part one you’ll get something out of this. I’m just not entirely sure what that something is.
