This, this is the face of a sleep paralysis demon, and I love it.
A Lighter and Softer Sentai series? Oh yes! But whether implicit or explicit, this series is unafraid to prove that it isn't all sunshine and rainbows...Starting Station: Let's Go on the Express Train
- For a more optimistic Sentai, the opening is surprisingly creepy, where it features children being abducted in the blink of an eye. A girl's mother turns away, but then a train (which the mother can't see) roars by, and all that's left of the girl is her doll.
- Ticket's line regarding why the five were selected to be ToQgers, forming one of the series' big mysteries. Imagine how it feels to be in their shoes and be told:Ticket: I was saying because you're all as good as dead!
Station 2: We Are Here
- Sabre Shadow's method of gathering darkness involves forcing people to hurt each other by dueling with actual weapons under the threat of the Kuros hurting them. Exactly how many times had it gone too far and someone got worse than hurt?
Station 3: Desperate Once Convinced
- Chain Shadow actually uses Nightmare Fuel as a means of gathering darkness by chaining people up and trapping them inside the coffin he drags around with him, invoking the Primal Fear of death.
- The way he manages to trap the children in the coffin is pretty creepy, too. He draws them in by singing his creepy song and playing on a piano, before looking right at them and dragging them in.
Station 5: Beyond the Vanishing Tracks
- The Monster of the Week this time is Bucket Shadow, who creates darkness by starvation. He does this by eating every last morsel of food in the town. Not even babies are safe, as he is clearly shown stealing the last of a family's milk. If not for the ToQgers, how many people would've died slowly and painfully of starvation? For that matter, did the town's infants make it through OK?
Station 7: Inconsolable, Unmotivatable
- Stamp Shadow's ability causes those he stamps to become completely apathetic, unwilling to do anything. Not too bad by itself, but he states that eventually, those affected become too apathetic to even breathe. Eep.
Station 8: Explosion on the Rainbow Line
- Bomb Shadow is Exactly What It Says on the Tin. And it infiltrates the Rainbow Line train, not only disabling its brakes, but also attaching a bomb to Tokacchi. If he falls over from the train's shaking, the bomb blows. And that is ignoring the threat of the train crashing. Those with a fear of train disasters will be shitting themselves all the way through this episode.
Station 10: Tokatti Dies at Midnight
- Type Shadow's ability causes whatever title he gives someone to come true. Sure enough, Tokacchi gets the episode's title, and when sunset arrives, he just... dies. He freezes up, drops his weapon, crumples to the ground and... that's it. Thankfully, his quick thinking offsets this, causing him to come back to life.
Station 19: Now Departing! Build-Dai-Oh
- The ToQgers running out of air in the buried train. They only just make it, and just before then, we have the pleasure of seeing Right's eyes roll back in his head before he blacks out along with everyone else. If Tokacchi and Akira had been just a minute slower...
Station 21: The Runaway Bride
- We get a body-swap episode this time. But Soap Shadow's abilities come with a caveat. If someone is in another's body for too long, then they'll die as a result of the body rejecting its new occupant, adding some rather uncomfortable stakes.
Station 22: Birth of the Empress
- Gritta eating Z. Until now, we've been kept in the dark about what Madame Noire plans to do, and then Gritta lunges for Z, who gets away. But then he's violently drawn back in and swallowed whole.
- If the above's not enough for you, the sight of Gritta's eyes turning red is more than slightly creepy.
Station 23: United Hand in Hand
- Z breaking out of a dying Gritta's body, killing her from the inside-out. It's quite a startling Jump Scare. Not only does it sound painful, but by the end, Gritta is just... gone. And in her place is a villain who bears a slight resemblence to Chakravartin.
Station 33: Decisive Karate Match
- The Shadow running around in this episode's town, Syringe Shadow, may well be the worst one yet. He basically puts the ToQgers on a time limit. Reach him and break his syringe before the poison-injecting bracelets he's stuck on everyone finish their work by sunset. Making matters worse is that it looks for a second as if the ToQgers have completely failed at first. And they would have if not for Hikari's planning. Syringe Shadow basically turns everything into a giant Deadly Game, with the consequences for failure being mass deaths... Remind us again. Wasn't this meant to be a lighthearted series?
Station 41: The Christmas Battle
- Z brutally killing Schwarz and Madame Noire after the latter manages to free Gritta from him. Worse is that the latter dies right in front of her daughter. Poor thing...
- And later on, Z starts violently erupting with darkness and turning his blade on Nero and Morc. It's official: Z has completely lost it.
Station 43: The Locked Door
- Hikari and Kagura get trapped inside a dollhouse by the MOTW. And his plan is to burn it, and them, on a bonfire. From their perspective, it's a marvel that the pair kept their cool the whole time.
- For a while, it looks like Right, Tokacchi, Mio and Akira were all too late to save Hikari and Kagura as the dollhouse burns to cinders. They got out OK, but for a second, Right was in despair, before switching gears to likely about to explode with rage. But then he starts emanating darkness...
Station 44: To Subarugahama
- That darkness coming from Right last episode? When he meets Z and transforms, he gets enveloped in a dark storm, which sounds incredibly painful, considering the screams he emits at this point. And when it clears, we see Right standing before Z in a pitch-black version of his Ranger gear, looking about ready to murder Z where he stands.
