Up to Kyoryuger for sure. Ryusoulger probably not so much in terms of financial success. Heck, the show's first impressions were they are so desperate to boost sales they just made Kyoryugers dinosaur knights and sprinkled elements of Zyuranger and Gingaman.

I hate to pull rank on you, but as someone who just watched one (1) entire Sentai series, let me assure you that every Sentai show except Go-Busters is about three things and three things only:

1. Dinosaurs
2. Trains
3. Dancing

I hope we can still be friends after I just exposed your lack of Sentai knowledge to the world.

TOKUMEI SENTAI GO-BUSTERS - THREAD WRAP-UP

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And that’s it for “Kamen Rider Die watches Tokumei Sentai Go-Busters”!

Thanks so much to everyone who popped in to chat about this one. I enjoyed trying out a Sentai series, even if I have to confess that it didn’t get its hooks into me as a franchise. I liked Go-Busters, but it wasn’t the same all-encompassing thrill I get out of any given Kamen Rider show. Enjoyable action-adventure plots and some very funny conceptual episodes, but I didn’t feel like it got weird enough or changed shape enough for me to feel like Sentai was the missing piece of my toku fandom.

All of that is another way of saying that while I’ll probably watch other Sentai shows in my life, I don’t know if I feel like it does them or me any favors to write about them. I never really felt like I dug into this show in a way that illuminated its depths or enunciated its strengths, and I don’t honestly know if that’s my failings as an amateur critic or merely a general disengagement with the vibe. Watching something like (name at random) King-Ohger is probably better off for me to relax with some month in the future, rather than make the focal point of a seasonal writing project. I don’t know. We’ll see.

In the meantime, I’m off for the next couple months, with a planned return in January for “Kamen Rider Die rewatches Kamen Rider OOO”, my second Kobayashi show in a twelve-month window. Looking forward to that one, even if my experience with W has me fearing that I’ll come away liking it less than the rose-colored compound eyes of my memory have kept it over the past few years. Again, we’ll see!

As always, this thread remains yours to add to if you feel like. You were my Buddies on this project for the last few months, and I couldn’t’ve done it without you. The Special Buster was always our friendship!

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That is maybe the worst possible name you could've picked at random for the point you're trying to make there! I hope the day comes where you'll get to realize that irony for yourself.

No rush though. I was already glad enough just to see you giving Go-Busters a shot.

People in fandoms for big franchises like this like to make a lot of noise about "correct" points of entry, but really, I think the most important thing in that situation is just to understand that each show or movie or whatever is ultimately just that one unique show or movie or whatever. Go-Busters is probably more "normal" than it's often made out to be, for what it's worth, but in my mind, the real question isn't whether you feel you might enjoy more Super Sentai now; it's just whether or not you enjoyed Go-Busters. Anything else can and will come after that.

"Whatever sounds interesting to you probably will be" is my stock advice when people ask for recommendations on stuff, so I'm happy you just went for a season that had a vibe that appealed from a distance. I'm even more happy you actually did enjoy yourself throughout.

I'm also happy I was actually there for it, for the first time in a bit! As I've already mentioned, I don't feel much more confident in my ability to discuss this show than you apparently do, but hopefully I had something to add somewhere in there that was at least a little interesting. I'm not sure if I'll actually be around for all of OOO or not, but then, if you somehow manage to start convincing yourself that show is any less great than you remember -- when it's obviously greater -- I might feel obligated to step in. :p

Either way, thanks for another couple months of talking about toku, Die! It was fun!

Ha ha, I know, I know. King-Ohger genuinely looks like my speed for a series, and one I could probably crack into as a writing project, but I'm okay just enjoying it as a viewer at my own pace. The point I was trying to make was more about how future Interesting Sentais are going to be enjoyed in private; definitely wasn't making any judgments about shows I haven't seen yet!

Yeah, I don't... I don't want to make Go-Busters a referendum on Sentai for me or anything. It's a show, not a litmus test, and that's okay.

But at the same time, I feel like a first series -- like it or not -- sort of has to at least spark something in you, or maybe the franchise isn't for you. Ex-Aid blew my mind, and every single Rider show afterward had something that affected me deeply. With Go-Busters, it was nice to watch, and I liked it, but it didn't spark anything in me.

And yet I'm here talking about watching other shows, so, hell, maybe it at least tilled a field in my brain where other Sentai shows can now be planted. We'll see etc etc

I guess I can't talk then, considering King-Ohger is also a show I ended up enjoying as a viewer at my own pace. It's just... there were a lot of times that year I found myself thinking "man, I really wish I was writing about this."

Again, for what it's worth, I fell completely in love with Go-Busters after I got done with it, but of all the things it gave me in life, "a strong desire to watch more Super Sentai" is explicitly *not* part of that. It took a couple other shows a bit later down the line to gradually coax me into making the full Super Hero Time experience required weekly viewing for me. It's yet another thing I'm not sure I can articulate properly, but I don't think a "fan" is something you can really like, set out to become, so much as it is the eventual retrospective result of finding one thing you like, and then another, and then another, and so on. There are plenty of different paths that can take, so I definitely don't think I rate the importance of The First One as highly as a lot of people, because there can be an infinite number of The Next Ones.

And I mean, for you and Super Sentai specifically? When Donbrothers is definitely on that path somewhere? You might just find that spark before you know it!

Random note to end on, but I’m guessing that this thread won’t really be revisited, given that of the show’s 13-strong regulars, one’s dead (Nick), one’s winding down his activities due to health reasons (Gorisaki), one’s torpedoed his reputation through cheating on his wife (Usada), one’s hit it big (Nakamura) and ones serving jail time for sexual assault (Kuroki). So in other words, while the reainder could return if there’s an opening to do so (so far, only Escape has reappeared, in a Kyuranger movie, where she wasn’t even the most focused on of a group of returning villains), a reunion is unlikely. At most, the 4 mains have expressed interest in voicing their counterparts in a hypothetical Japanese dub of Power Rangers Beast Morphers (personally, while I think the main three would fit their counterparts decently well enough, the thought of Hiroya Matsumoto’s baritone coming out of the unassuming guy playing his counterpart would be… interesting)

Hehehe

I wonder why Ryusoulger's sales were so mild though. Looking from the perspective of the target demographic who may not have even heard of Kyoryuger before, it's the kind of thing they should totally have wanted to get their hands on from first sight. The dinosaurs, the knights, the universal ports, the Ryusoul gimmick, the cool sword, the various power-ups, like man, it's honestly surprising to me that all those things undersold.

Go-Onger, Ninninjer, Kiramager and Donbrothers have all of those!

Coming up OOO.... Well, I guess I do have some opinions on maybe Ankh or something.

I'm glad you enjoyed Gobusters anyway, even if you didn't enjoy it in the same way you enjoy Rider. It's my 11th favorite Heisei Sentai out of 29 that I've watched so far and I hope that, despite all the cast problems Androzani just mentioned, maybe Gobusters can still get a minimalistic 20th anniversary special with at least the main cast who are willing and able to return.

Sad news, in a lot of different ways, but I never count on follow-up content. I understand that a major series for me as a fan is maybe 16 months of work for an actor that may have a multi-decade career ahead of them, and the ability/desire to reunite is not guaranteed. Still, neat when it happens to even a limited degree -- I cannot tell you how excited I am to see Emu and Poppy sell me on Japanese insurance every week during Gavv.

If they do, hopefully they finally let Yoko wear pants in the winter! That poor girl!