I've been watching more Avataro Sentai Donbrothers, and as of like five minutes ago I just finished Episode 32. The plot of the show has been ramping up A Lot in the past few episodes, and there's been so much going on that I feel absolutely COMPELLED to write another post here to dump out my thoughts safely behind a spoiler tag. If maybe just to get it out of my system.
Spoilers and story talk below:
So, there were 3 distinct plot lines this episode:
1. The Show's Best Recurring Monster-Of-The-Week Guy Makes A (Final?) Return
So, usually the (people who transform into the) monsters of the week in this show are completely silly throwaway characters who get introduced in 30 seconds and then usually have their fight resolved in an absolute minimum amount of time necessary so the show can juggle its other plot lines instead. Like a shogi player who transforms into a monster because he wants to get better at the game, or a middle manager who transforms because he wants his employees to work harder, or something like that.
Today's Guy of the Week is someone who is a recurring character for some reason, a guy who originally showed up because he really, really wanted to be a ninja irl. And then who showed up in a second episode because he really wants to be a wizard, and now shows up here as a cowboy this time.
I'm pretty sure he's just here because he is just hands-down the silliest and dumbest guy that could possibly be in any given episode? And you know what? Yeah, that's great. He steals every scene he's in.
But he still doesn't manage to completely dominate this episode because...
2. Somehow this episode is the Metal Gear Solid 2 of Donbrothers?
This episode, "Duel, Part 2," for some reason decides to completely mirror and repeat the events of "Duel, Part 1." Tarou, the main hero, gets challenged to a duel, but instead of being challenged by his main rival/star crossed lover he gets challenged by his rival's two companions instead. Most of this episode purposefully rivals the earlier duel episode, even down to having the same monster of the week show up. (See above)
This weird MGS2-esque parallelism doesn't actually go anywhere too crazy this episode, (compared to some other things) but it is a distinctly weird touch and may be foreshadowing for some really weird/meta stuff that may show up later in this children's tv show.
Though now that I think about it, there's a lot of parallels/mirrors that show up in this show? Miho and Natsumi, yellow ranger and her copycat/rival, and so on. If I had a nickel for every time someone in this show had a weird parallel in this show, I'd have.... a few!
3. Tarou and his boyfriend/rival got even gayer
I'm not going to try to argue that this show could replace actual works of queer art from the subculture but I will say that by the standards that even I have, the main rivals in this show are Gay As Hell. I was hesitant to call them Snake/Ocelot levels of gay but now that I've seen the twists of this episode I can say yeah, it's absolutely there.
There's only one force that can bring a man back from the dead and have him emulate the style of the man who killed him: these men are in love

