I mean, let's be real. A lot of well-regarded Sentai are pretty bad for the first like, 15-20 episodes. Especially in the 80s/90s. Even my favorite series -- Jetman and Kakuranger -- don't really take off till the late teens.

Enjoyment of sentai can be a long term, cumulative kinda thing. Sometimes you're gonna spend a lot of time watching a bunch of crap, but by the end the payoff is usually worth the investment.

I don't really feel Kakuranger was that bad for it's first 10 episodes. They all feature our protagonists being raging, immature jackasses except Tsuruhime, who is being a nagging bitch, and Jiraiya, who can't speak Japanese. That helps set up the entire season as we get to see them grow into a real team, both in and out of the suit. Them maturing and learning is part of why I really loved it, and it wouldn't have had much of an impact if we never saw them acting like arguing children early on.

While the early episodes of Kakuranger aren't perfect (It features the problem way too many Sentai have of having characters act irritated by each other out of suit, but in perfect sync in suit, leading to a jarring divide), I didn't feel it started off as weakly as Jetman or Megaranger.

Aside: Thank god they dropped the narrator. It took like, 30 episodes, but my god, I loved it the moment he was gone.

Don't get me wrong -- I love every second of Kakuranger, otherwise it wouldn't be my second favorite series. I'm just not sure the show is actually good, or appeals to audiences who are not specifically me, until later on. :lol

I guess I could be in the same camp, and I'll admit that it did take Kakuranger a bit to catch it's groove.
I just felt that, when you get to the arcs where you see the growth in the characters (Particularly their personal trials), you can really see how far they've come thanks to the starting episodes.

Then again, I am just looking back on the early episodes in bits and pieces, and trying to completely wipe away stupid moments (Like when Seikai (Or Saizou...They kinda just blur together...) couldn't stop eating. And the narrator :lol)

Given how much of a sucker I am for japan and Kakurangers early episodes are a non stop social commentary on japan from the 90s, I would consider them to be good in every sense of the word.

That's totally true. But for a Western viewer just starting the show in the 2010s, Kakuranger's social critique won't necessarily be apparent without a) having lived in Japan at the time, b) having an education in the culture of 90s Japan, or c) watching the series to its conclusion.

But getting past Kakuranger, which may not have been the best example, and getting to my bigger point...

A lot of good sentai shows, especially "classic" ones from the 80s/90s, start out pretty bad, so it's best not to give up after the first handful of episodes (if you can tolerate it).

This is something I had to learn by abandoning a bunch of series before the 20 episode mark, then picking them back up later, only to realize I tapped out right before they got good. :lol

Which is neither the show nor the creators fault since it was never intended to be viewed by foreigners who dont posess the knowledge about it. Which for a japanese viewer was pretty standard knowledge :lol

I'm assuming the vast majority of posters on this board are foreigners who don't possess an in-depth knowledge of the culture of Japan at the turn of the century. :lol

So while those early episodes might not be objectively bad (hell, I thought they were great, probably because I did have some knowledge of Japan in the 90s), it's probably hard for a lot of uneducated westerners to understand why they're good (or perhaps that they even are good at all) until much later in the show.

Well you posed the question if the episodes where "actually good" ot if it just seemed that way to you. And the answer is yes. They are good. They are a clever social commentary on japans then current social issues. Just because its hard to understand for a western audience why they are good doesnt mean that they are not "actually good".

Well, the flip side is that the idea of something being objectively good isn't actually possible. Multiple tastes exist, so even among Japanese kids watching the series, they might not have found the episodes to be good in their minds for differing reasons. Perhaps they felt the social commentary was heavy handed or they didn't enjoy it at all.