I'm with you there, man. They can be pretty creative with other terms, why not the mecha names? I get that it's become somewhat of a trope of modern sentai, but COME ON!

Considering "-jin" hadn't been used in some time I was pretty pleased with it. Don't see a problem there. Now the 4 Oh's that followed in Kyoryuger (Pteraiden, Spino Dai, Plezu, and Gigant Bragi) were all very uninspired.

I suppose at some point, retailers want a toy to sell and you just have to copyright ANYTHING...

Doesn't the 'Oh' at the end of the names translate to 'king'?

I think that's what they mean by it when they use it.

Yes indeed. All these kings though, must be running out of countries by now.

I'm hoping this is the year the mech stuff doesn't just look like a dude in a box, on a sound stage. I mean Go-Busters was one of the first times the mech stuff really had noticeable improvements beyond novelties but all the good work Go-Busters did was removed by Kyoryuger and its mecha which looked as plastic as the toys did.

Whatever you think of the Kyoryuger mecha aside, the show and Go-Busters are visually similar on the giant scale. Go-Busters was at its best in the first few episodes, but it eventually had to level out to something that was easier and quicker to produce - though that was still above and beyond what Sentai had done in the past. Go-Busters saw a long time Red suit actor become the action director, and he's continued in that position with Kyoryuger and hopefully will with Tokkyuger. I think a lot of the visual difference is thanks to how he frames. The giant fights in Kyoryuger aren't always great, but there is a definite sense of scale and placement of the miniatures to give the set that atmosphere of being a real city.

I'm hopeful this years robot will look good, I mean its a train robot it's kinda hard to screw up 5 rectangular cubes that combine but I not sure we'll get the same complexity and engineering we got with gobusteroh if only because of the low toy sales gobuster got. With 5 separate trains they have a lot of too work with to give nice clean looking and distinct limbs but i'm weary we'll get something with a more complicated combination then victory robo.

(am I right in thinking that gobuster got bad sales, that wasn't just a rumor was it?)

It was no rumor.

During the retailer's conference last year, where the Kyoryuger pictures first came from, Bandai's president went so far as to say the toyline failed because the show was too dark. To me that just sounds like they're trying to place the blame on the show rather than their own toyline.