[Zabitan]

We start off with Ryan thinking about the time his dad taught him origami which leads to a scene where he, and his friends are riding on horseback through the woods talking about how great it is to get out of the city for a bit while Jeb gives snarky commentary about the horses’ breath.

Eventually they see a seemingly abandoned building, and dismount to investigate.

Kaitlin takes out her camera, and sees that it’s a prison with a single scraggly faced middle aged looking white guy as a prisoner, and a mysterious “S” symbol on the wall.

The Troopers then decide to investigate further.



Meanwhile Ziktor watches the Troopers sneaking around what he claims is his reactor parts facility, and decides to transform into Grimlord.

In the Virtual Dungeon he talks to an unnamed spiky red female mutant who Metal Heroes wiki has dubbed Scarlet Seductress who is apparently Grimlord’s advisor.

She tells Grimlord to distract Ryan, and destroy him.



When Ryan, and his friends get to the building three random security guards show up without saying anything, and transform into Skugs, and the Troopers fight them off while Jeb runs off.

JB kicks a Skug while Ryan punches, and kicks one, and Kaitlin flips over another.

Then Ryan, and JB flip over their Skugs while Kaitlin punches, and kicks hers.

Then Ryan kicks, and flips over his again, and then all three kicks their skugs into each other defeating them.



At the Virtual Dungeon Grimlord requests another diversion, and Scarlet Seductress suggests drawing them into the Battle Grid.

First we go to the Lab where an alarm I jokingly refer to as a Dragonzord light goes off, and then the Professor says Battle Grid alert Prepare for Battle Grid mode.



Then we see Ryan, Kaitlin, and JB’s faces over a black background that turns into seizure lights, and then we see the Battle Grid suits form onto them.

Ryan has these armor like pieces, Kaitlin has these weird little cubes that I jokingly refer to as popcorn pieces, and JB has what looks like glass shards.

I’ll admit I like them because of how unique everyone’s transformation is.



Then some more glass shard looking things appear and turn the black background into a portal that looks like a cheesy 90’s screen saver, and the Troopers fly through it while we see them from behind as a group, then individually from the side, then as a group from the front, and finally from behind again.

I will say while the CGI for the Battle Grid portal is very cheesy, and 90’s I do like the flying effects for the Troopers.



I’ll take this moment to actually talk about the Battle Grid itself.

It’s basically just this small glowing room with all these curtains with weird glowing lights underneath that I’m guessing is supposed to be the “sky” here, the ground is all rocky, and there’s these weird rock formations, and these weird barren trees, and there’s fog on the ground.

On one hand I have to say that I like it because it looks how I imagine virtual reality or some other dimension would look like if I physically went there, and in some episodes it’s the only time the Troopers actually appear in Virtual Reality but in some episodes it’s the only time we see some Troopers appear in VR Trooper mode even if they don’t transform into the full armor.

But on the other hand not only will I admit it’s cheesy I also have to admit as much as I like the Battle Grid suits themselves I have to wonder how much all the stuff for the Battle Grid set actually cost since I can’t imagine any of it could be cheap.

It makes me wonder why they didn’t just make the Battle Grid suits but call it Hyper Tech mode or something, and use the money they would have used to make the set to either make suits for the full armor the stunt people could actually fight in, or an American suit for Grimlord before season 2, and some American suits for Decimator, and General Ivar, or anything really.



Anyway on to the actual fight itself they land in the Battle Grid. JB is on the left, Ryan is in the middle, and Kaitlin is on the right, and they all just stand around talking wondering what Grimlord is up to.

Then we see the Skugs rise up with their arms crossed like vampires, and then unfurling them to make karate poses.

The Troopers do this thing where JB goes V, Ryan goes R, and Kailtin goes Troopers like they’re a Super Sentai team which I actually kind of like.



Ryan jumps through the air while doing a sideways karate chop, and then he lands on this rock formation, and then starts punching, and kicking a Skug, and knocks it off, and then he does this summersault down to the ground, and then Ryan starts kicking, and punching more Skugs.

Then Kaitlin punches, and low kicks some other Skugs, and then there’s this awkward edit where it looks like a Skug is hitting Kaitlin but it’s really JB who got hit, and he gets thrown back, and Kaitlin runs up to help him back up, and then they jump, and JB does this mid air kick that knocks a Skug into two others.

A scene I might add you see in every Battle Grid fight.



Then we see JB, and Kaitlin fight off the skugs some more for about a second.

Ryan punches, and kicks some more Skugs before grabbing one by the neck, and kicking it.

Kaitlin does a mid air summersault, and punches, and kicks some more, and knocks one into some others.



Now all the Skugs are gone, and we see Ryan, and then Kaitlin, and JB join him, and Ryan figures they should find out what’s with the old building that spooks Grimlord

Then they all say VR Troopers, and go back to reality.

What’s weird though is that we hardly ever directly see the Troopers transform back out of Battle Grid, and return to reality it’s usually they say VR Troopers the screen goes white, and then it cuts to the next scene, and most of the time the screen doesn’t even go white it just cuts to the next scene.



Anyway we then go to the Underground Voice Daily where after a brief comedy bit where two people pet Jeb we see Ryan, and JB are researching the building, and find out it’s owned by the government, and that they used to build nuclear weapons.

Meanwhile Kaitlin is in the dark room trying to enhance the pictures she took, and there’s one bit I like where she briefly mentions the Battle Grid.

Then she shows the others her pictures, and they decide to the lab hoping the Professor has some equipment that can help.