The First Foe Returns
First Aired: November 20th, 2021.
Directed by: Kiyotaka Taguchi.
Screenplay by: Toshizo Nemoto.
Captain Tatsumi is promoted to Lead Commander of GUTS-Select Asia! While Kengo and crew plan a surprise celebration, the other members all experience incredibly good luck as well?! What a perfect day... or so they think until the monster Golba appears. Can the team safely pull off their surprise celebration?
Tropes
- All Just a Dream: Turns out every good thing that happened in this episode was just a dream/hallucination caused by an unknown psychic attack.
- Breather Episode: In contrast to the plot and action-packed previous episode, this one presents a far more wacky and silly adventure involving GUTS Select.
- The Bus Came Back: Golba returns after being destroyed in the first episode with a second individual named Golba II.
- Flashback: The episode opens with Kengo having a flashback dream to a moment where Trigger Dark and Carmeara defeated a Segmeger.
- Foreshadowing: There are hints to the fact that everything is a delusion/dream.
- The episode opens with Carmeara standing alongside Trigger Dark... Who's supposed to not be able to exist at the time due to its Hyper Key and the Black Sparklens being confiscated after Ignis was arrested by GUTS Select.
- Later on, Carmeara is shown through Hudram's point of view to have the delusion of bringing back Trigger Dark through Kengo and ranting about it to herself, which doesn't make sense given the above event.
- After the Nursedessei is hit by Golba's beam, Ignis' treasure map suddenly turns into a worthless paper and he's shown to be utterly confused, as if snapped from a trance.
- Finally, Akito claims that the light had chosen him and he modified his Sparklens to transform... Only for him to immediately fail when he actually tries to do so, making him realize something is off.
- At the end of the episode, we see a mysterious man in black with Power Glows on his eyes and chest walk off.
- Gratuitous English: Tesshin speaks a lot of these when reacting to the situations around him.
- Hidden Disdain Reveal: Of sorts, while not "disdain" outright, this episode hints that Hudram is starting to grow tired of Carmeara's obsession with Trigger and now aims to become the leader of the Dark Giants.
- Might as Well Not Be in Prison at All: Ignis casually walks around the Nursedessei despite being arrested, even getting to comment on the situation as Yuna slowly uncovers the delusions and daydreaming in the episode.
- Not So Above It All: The normally calm Tatsumi starts showing many un-calm emotions, such as freaking out, laughing and losing his composure at the escalating situations. Especially when he finds out that he wasn't actually promoted and the "orders" of his superiors were actually his results of a physical test telling him he had a bad liver.
- Rank Up: Presumably as a result of his work in defeating Metsu-Orochi, Tatsumi is promoted to Lead Commander of GUTS-Select Asia. Too bad it's all just a dream.
- Took a Level in Badass: The second Golba is a lot tougher now, giving Trigger a far harder time than their duel on Mars, Kengo himself points out that Golba is stronger.
- Villainous Breakdown: Carmeara starts going through an even worse case of this as she now is fully convinced that she can bring back Trigger Dark through Kengo in some way. Though that turns out to be part of Hudram's dream of becoming the leader of the Dark Giants, she is veering close to that territory already.
