Kamen Rider Die watches Tokumei Sentai Go-Busters
 

Hi, there. I’m Kamen Rider Die, and this is KAMEN RIDER DIE WATCHES TOKUMEI SENTAI GO-BUSTERS.

…which is so weird!

Not the Watch thread thing; that’s second nature to me by now. I did a rewatch of Double (and a watch of Fuuto PI) at the beginning of the year, and finally sat down to get through the incredibly strange Outsiders series of one-shot disconnected narratives last month. (There’s also an entire archive of older Kamen Rider shows – most of Heisei and the first three Reiwa shows – at my website, if you’re interested.) Coming into August and watching a new show while chatting about with you all on the TokuNation boards… yeah, that’s a nice thing that I’m pretty used to.

But: Sentai.

I’ve never watched an entire Sentai season before. Scattered episodes, sure – the first few DonBros before life got in the way, the occasional Kamen Rider crossover thing, April Fool’s gags, and one-offs with friends. But I’ve never sat down and watched a complete Sentai show from beginning to end. I honestly don’t know if I’m going to like it, or what to expect.

With the conclusion of my first Phase of doing these threads, where I worked through every Heisei and Reiwa Rider to get to the present, I knew I wanted to make the second Phase a mix of rewatching shows that I never wrote-up, and trying to find new toku experiences to share with all of you. And top of that list was finally watching a Sentai series.

When I was getting into Rider more seriously, it was Go-Busters that first got my interest on the Sentai side, so I knew that whenever I finally carved out time to dive into Sentai, it was going to be Go-Busters. A lot of it, honestly, was the show’s pedigree: Kobayashi’s next toku show after OOO, and OOO was my favorite Rider series for a good long while. (It’s Geats, now. Probably forever.) Her deft touch on character development and incredibly addictive long-form plotting made me intensely curious about how she’d level up after OOO. Combine that with what looked to be a reasonable-sized cast of characters (a far cry from Kyurangers’ University of Sentai-sized cast of costumed space heroes) and I thought it’d be a good one for dipping my toe in, considering my historic ambivalence towards Sentai.

I just… I never really got on with the vibes of Sentai. It always felt a little too simple, or too cheerful. Rider shows could be goofy and dumb, but they usually had a strong current of tension running through them that made me feel less like a grown man watching a TV show designed to sell toys to Japanese children. With Sentai, it felt like a show you’d only watch as an adult if you were babysitting a kid.

Which I know is wrong. I know it! There’s very little daylight between Rider and Sentai – this isn’t the difference between Matt Reeves’ The Batman and something like Batwheels. (Although, I didn’t watch Batwheels, so maybe that show’s also an incredibly dark exploration of how a lack of connection between the populace of an urban area allows the worst groups to profit off of that isolation to pursue their own agendas? LMK!) But in isolation, I must’ve been missing the context that would help me find in Sentai what I loved in Rider: great characters, strong messages, compelling drama, tense stakes, and probably at least one goddamn puppet that I’d grow to tolerate.

So that’s why we’re here. I’m going to try and give a Sentai show a fair shake by meeting it where it lives, and being open to its specific approach to toku storytelling. Hopefully I’ll find in it what you all have found before me, but if not? At least I’ll finally feel like I know what I’m talking about when it comes to Sentai.

Since this thread is going to be my first time watching Tokumei Sentai Go-Busters, I thought I’d sketch out a couple three things to keep in mind for anyone participating in this thread:

PLEASE DON’T POST ANY SPOILERS ABOUT THIS SHOW. Like I said, this one’s all new for me, and I’d prefer to experience it episode by episode with as little foreknowledge as possible. Please try and keep any discussion to the current episode, or anything prior. (And don’t use spoiler tags! I see the posts without the tags, and it can absolutely ruin stuff for me.) Thanks!

I DON’T REALLY CARE IF YOU TALK ABOUT OTHER SENTAI SHOWS. I may or may not watch other Sentai shows in the future (probably DonBros, someday), so it won’t really bother me if you want to make comparisons to Ninninger or whatever. Just remember that I a) won’t get the reference, and b) probably won’t care if you try and explain it to me. I’m currently here for Go-Busters and only Go-Busters!

I MAY TALK ABOUT RIDER SHOWS, BUT ALSO MAYBE NOT. I’ve never done a non-Rider thread before, so I have no clue how much I’m going to try and explain things in Rider terms when it comes to deconstructing story beats or characters. Maybe a lot! Maybe never! It’s real uncharted territory. Just letting you know that if you’re worried I might ruin something from Revice for you, there is maybe a small chance of that happening.

TEAMWORK MAKES THE DREAM WORK. Sentai is all about teamwork, right? I feel like that’s a thing that even a novice dummy like me can say with (unearned) confidence. Well, these threads are the same thing, but with maybe less color-coding to them. I like getting to share my thoughts and opinions on toku here, but I love getting to read your thoughts and opinions on toku. No one has to post if they don’t want to, but my favorite threads are the ones where people experience this show alongside me, or use this thread to reminisce. I’m never more grateful than when you all feel like sharing.

As always, I genuinely can’t remember if that’s all of the important stuff, despite writing some version of this maybe 20 times by now. I think it is? If not, I’ll be sure to mention it in the thread after suffering brief but harsh consequences for my oversight.

If you’re wondering what order this thread is going to go with regard to various off-shoots and follow-ups, please enjoy this By Release Date viewing list that Androzani84 was kind enough to put together -slash- if there’s any problems with this list let me know:

1-9
Super Hero Taisen
10-23
The Movie
24-27
vs Beet Buster vs J
28-46
vs Gokaiger
47-50
Returns
Super Hero Taisen Z
Kyoryuger vs

I’ll be using the NonActionableFansubs version of the main series (based off of Over-Time?), and whatever random subs I could find for the other stuff. (Mostly TV-Nihon?) This thread will get updated with new episodes daily, except for Wednesdays, or if there’s something going on and I just can’t find the time that day. (I’ll always let you know ahead of time!) Hopefully it’ll be a fun late-summer/early-autumn for us to tap into the Sentai zeitgeist of 2012. I look forward to teaming up with you all on this project!

Now let’s watch Tokumei Sentai Go-Busters!

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/sen...busterssig.png

TOKUMEI SENTAI GO-BUSTERS MISSION 1 - “SPECIAL-OPS SENTAI, ASSEMBLE!”

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/sen...busters01a.png

Ha ha, five minutes after saying that Sentai shows just never seem to have serious stakes, and here’s the first 40 seconds of Go-Busters, with an army of giant robots incinerating an entire district. I love it! I love getting this stuff so wrong!

(Genuinely not sure if that scene is Hiromu dreaming of what could happen, or remembering what did happen 13 years ago. I assume it’s meant to be ambiguous? There’s no time stamp beyond the next scene happening in the modern day, so… I figure they’ll nail that down in a future episode!)

I thought this was a fairly solid first episode of a toku show, if not a perfect one. It moves a little quickly, condensing what feels like incredibly important dramatic arcs into a single scene, as well as just powering through the introductions of literally a dozen characters. It’s overstuffed, is my feeling as a Kamen Rider fan.

It helps that the superheroic action is both a focal point and incredibly fun, though. The Blue and Yellow Go-Busters have what amounts to an episode-length fight scene against Enter and the Vagras, across multiple sets and at increasingly complex scales, while the eventual reveal of the Red Buster feels appropriately grandiose and epic. (Not sure I’d like to be in the building that he launches a convenience store-sized car off of, but I guess we all have to make sacrifices for the public good.) There’s a steadily rising tension, complete with an actual onscreen ticking clock before our Megaroid shows up to introduce me to the concept of giant robot fights. It’s just a robust, intense action story, and that’s a fun way to lead an audience in on this thing.

Because the characters are a bit of mixed bag for me in this one, sadly?

Blue and Yellow – Ryuji and Yoko – came off the best, and it’s down almost entirely to their easy camaraderie and unflappable competence. They’re just here to work, and it sort of made this thing click as far as a Spy Kids-esque toku story. They don’t mug or joke, leaving that instead to the Buddyroids; the Go-Busters just excel at their missions, and that’s sort of all you want to know to start with. They’re good at what they do, and they work well together. It’s not a lot to hang your hat on – there’s literally nothing that springs to mind as far as a cool catchphrase or idiosyncratic beat, beyond Yoko eating some candy – but it makes the concept and world feel like the spotlight, and I wonder if that’s a major difference for Sentai? How the premise needs to feel bigger than the characters?

It certainly showed in Hiromu’s arc, at least for me. We’re told via other characters that he lets himself be coddled too much by his sister, who appears to have raised him, and then the first non-flashback scene we see with her he’s saying that he has to protect other families by becoming a Go-Buster and she's going to have to be okay with that. The scene works okay-ish (Hiromu kind of never finds a note for his performance beyond Earnest And Sort Of Awkward, which feels less like a character choice and more like a young actor who is overmatched by the demands of the scene) but it feels like a major motivation for a guy we barely know just got checked off before the beginning of the third act of the first episode. I’m sure we’ll see more of this relationship, but it already feels like this episode squandered a few weeks worth of subplots in about two minutes.

But that’s a minor criticism, even if I’m saying that the emotional core of the Red Buster’s story felt like it was shortchanged. Because I sort of don’t care, for better or worse – this episode was a blast to watch, and as solid a premiere in the field of action as any Rider show I’ve seen. If this show is just watching competent spy heroes going on thrilling adventures against differently-scaled adversaries, I will consider this show a winner.

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/sen...busters01b.png

IT’S TIME FOR BUSTER Blue!

Hey, how about a little space at the end to highlight a single Go-Buster character that popped for me? And we’re starting with: Ryuji!

It’s not a lot that he did in this one specifically that I could call out, but I liked his energy in the few maskless scenes he got. He’s never bossy, and he’s always just this side of flippant. Him and Yoko feel like a team that probably could’ve taken out the Shovelroid eventually, Hiromu just sped up the process. Ryuji’s just a solid dude that doesn’t need to be showy, and that was something that kept catching my eye. I like him!

If there was a "Serious to Silly" scale for Sentai, with 1 Jetman or the early 80s shows and 10 being Carranger or Akibaranger, Go-Busters is like a 5. As someone who has a really hard time getting into Sentai because it can be too silly, I found this show pretty enjoyable. It can be very silly, but it's a kind of silly that I enjoy, as opposed to Kyoryuger, which I dropped around ten episodes in because I found it insufferable. If this resembles any of Kobayashi's Rider work, I'd say the closest analogue is probably Den-O, and not just because of a similar use of mascot characters.

I've watched a lot of tokusatsu since I got into the genre back in '09 and there are certain things that I've taken from them and incorporated into other parts of my life. There's probably none that I've embraced as consistently and wholeheartedly, though, as Go-Buster's "Let's Verb-ing."

Yeah, the Hiromu And His Sister stuff was so Den-O that I almost couldn't believe it. (I mean, they switched the characteristics around, so at least there's that!)

It was sort of interesting to me that all of the Wacky stuff I equate with Sentai... that was pretty much all just the side characters in this one? The Buddyroids are all Star Wars droid types, where they exist to fret and mug and need reassurance, but the Go-Busters are all fairly straight-ahead action heroes. Definitely had me enjoying the Busters more than I'd've thought!

Die, how does it feel to see Kamen Rider Quiz as a red ranger? :lolol
Fun fact time.

Arisa Komiya who played Yoko/Yellow Buster went on to garner success as a voice actress in Love Live.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXpPoZFwKmE
She also guest-starred in Ghost and Zero-One and had a voice role as one of the baddies in Super Sentai Star Wars, I mean, Kyuranger.

Ryoma Baba who played Ryuji/Blue Buster went on to play a metal hero by the name of Estevan for the direct-to-video Space Sheriff Sharivan movie back in the 2010s.

Oh man, I didn't even notice! It's at least fitting that my least favorite Mirai Rider is my current least favorite Buster, though.

And thanks for the trivia!

So yeah, Go-Busters. One of the Sentai I saved for the last 10 I watch as part of playing catch-up (started in 2018 with Lupinranger vs Patranger, and then started watching the past 41 seasons as they took my fancy, or as the subs became readily available).

Honestly, I don’t quite see what the hype was. As I mentioned back when I reviewed the VS movie with Gokaiger, its second to last on my full list (only its immediate predecessor is lower, and that’s purely for the reason Go-Busters isn’t aiming for some rather shallow nostalgia, and I find the characters here slightly more likeable*). It probably has something to do with Ryuki being fresh on my mind, and probably something to do with how I didn’t like the show’s aesthetic (it just looks boring. Even Gokaiger’s had character).

And speaking of characters, I found Enter to be the best of the day one characters. By contrast, I didn’t like Yoko or Messiah at all (the former because she came off as too bratty, the latter because of his utter lack of a discernible personality), and everyone else I found bland.

*Another reason is that the show pulls a Hibiki in the second half, which briefly made me more invested.

My recollection of the hype at the time was that it tried a number of different things uncommon at the time for Super Sentai after the anniversary show that was Gokaiger.
For starters, diorama scenes weren't shot inside a studio but were actually filmed outside, making use of natural lighting. Then there was the whole not using reusable henshin footage as much and going Kamen Rider with it for the majority of the show. The costume department dropped the tights for the year, going with a techwear-ish faux leather combat suit you would expect from a non-sentai show.Overall, the tone, was comparatively grounded than its predecessors, or that seemed to be the intent I think. And let's not forget the little nod to MMPR. :lolol
But yeah, the way it was presented was quite different and I guess that was what clicked for those who wanted something experimental for a lack of better words after an anniversary show that went all-out at the time.
Personally, the faux sibling relationship these three had was fun to watch as well looking back.

Oh, man, I really like the show's aesthetic. I love the semi-tactical look for the Busters, and I like how the team aspect plays out through different layers of bureaucracy -- it's like the whole Getting Gigantic In A Zord thing, but at an organizational level. The Go-Busters as a concept can enlarge to take on any threat. That's very fun to me!

Scramble, 4 2 3 1 Let's Go!

It's Mission 1, but sometimes it feels like Mission 2, right? Nakamura is introduced as the new member, so Gorisaki and Usada can deliver exposition to the viewer through her, without sounding unnecessary. There's so much information dropped here that I would've preferred to get it in smaller doses. When the Megazord signal appears, Nakamura does her job so easily that it doesn't feel like she's a new member at all. Some dialogue is pretty humorous though, like Yoko and Usada mocking Hiromu as a "siscon". Yoko's habit of pouting really sells it!

Hiromu's been distant for 13 years due to not wanting his sis to worry, so it makes sense that Ryuji and Yoko would have a closer bond at the start with Yoko having the "Ryu-chan" nickname, while feeling that Hiromu doesn't take the job seriously. More on Yoko later, but I think we can totally see that Hiromu is also serious and willing to take responsibility, to the point that he probably overcompensates for his tardiness in formally joining the team. He's in a position where Gobusters needs him to save the world and his sis needs him to not risk his life, so it's pretty difficult for him.

You mentioned that Gobusters' lesser number of members is one of the factors that appealed to you, but I'd argue that the number is similar, except that the rest of the characters are support. A lot of Sentai have convenient ways of summoning their gear and piloting mecha, but Gobusters don't just put their faith in each other, they also have a bond (Kizuna, like in the ED theme) with their Buddyroids and the 3 computer guys. Everybody has an important job to do and I think it's a surprisingly tactical approach to a Sentai show, similar to GoGo V.

Kyoryuger Episode 10 was around the time of Kyoryu Gold's awesome debut, which renewed my interest since he started as a pretty serious character. But yeah, this show was pretty insufferable. Well, at least I was able to finish it, unlike ToQGer.

I recall you didn't like Mondo's hat. What's your opinion on Hiromu's fashion sense, by comparison?

Where do you even find all that time though? Over 41 seasons in 6 years is pretty ridiculous. I started in 2008 and I'm still catching up.

I generally like it, but I don't like the overly monochrome base or the lack of white accents on the suits. The collars should've been white, at least. A Sentai just doesn't pop without white.

I wouldn't know about the hype, since I wasn't on any forums back then, but this totally makes sense to me. Like Androzani, I was also exasperated from Gokaiger's shallow nostalgia. Following that, Gobusters had a strong sense of identity, clear premise and intriguing characters. And yet, it shook up the formula in a way that felt fresh and unpredictable. I'll admit that I didn't get it immediately, but it grew on me and now I'd probably call it the best show Kobayashi has written.

Exactly! The unbreakable bond between the Gobusters and the Buddyroids are the heart of this show and I wouldn't care about it half as much without that. While you describe it as a sibling relationship, I personally think the Buddyroids are more like parents, especially to Hiromu and Yoko.

Yeah, it... I absolutely see why the show wanted to have an outsider come into the organization to facilitate some crucial exposition, but it's crazy to me that she's, like the fourth most important plot in the episode. She needs to be our POV, and it instead feels like a minor detail that's haphazardly tossed into the mix. I would've greatly preferred her to either have been excluded (her introduction allows a couple minor lines of dialogue that could've been prompted by anyone) or made the focal point. As is, not a great use of the trope!

(And I really don't like Hiromu's haircut.)

It must have been before that. The straw that broke the camel's back for me was the KyoryuGray episode, where the crux of the plot was "Daigo, you aren't worthy to be KyoryuRed because you're so perfect you have no possible room to improve... oh wait, you just got even more perfect! Truly, the sun must raise and set out of your ass!"

It was about 50% that and 50% just being unable to tolerate the sound effects any longer.

TOKUMEI SENTAI GO-BUSTERS MISSION 2 - “A PROMISE MADE 13 YEARS AGO”

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/sen...busters02a.png

Bickering siblings! I love it.

I can’t imagine a premise like this existing in larger Sentai casts. The idea of three survivors of one tragedy creating a found-family bond over 13 years… like, that just wouldn’t feel right if there were five or six of them. That’s just a support group, and its got a different metaphor attached to it. With these three kids and their three helper robots, it’s clearly a story about how families can fight, but they never stop drawing strength from each other.

It works to drastically reframe the previous episode’s Hiromu story from New Go-Buster Finally Answers The Call To Heroism into something more like Estranged Brother Returns To His Family. It’s a more nuanced and approachable version of all of the characters, especially Yoko and Hiromu. (Ryuji continues to be the best older brother imaginable, and this show never lets me forget it.) Hiromu’s dedication to his biological sister’s very reasonable fear that Hirmou will suffer the same fate as their parents if he decides to combat the Vagras now looks like an untenable rejection of his found family, and something that he’d eventually need to rectify. Similarly, Yoko’s petulant dismissal of Hiromu’s presence is less her being a bratty teenager, and more her spending 13 years wondering why her brother reneged on a fateful promise. There’s a deeper context to everyone with this episode, and it even made last episode work a little better for me in retrospect.

It for sure doesn’t hurt that the small-team spy ops stuff continues to be a highlight! The battle against the Burneroid (please don’t make me go back and check to see if that’s right) feels robust and strategic at the human scale, and then bombastic and ridiculous at the Zord scale. I don’t really love the CG versions of the Ace robot, but the beefy suits and model city stuff really clicked for me. Felt appropriately epic, and worthy of this team coming together for the first time.

The weirdest part of this episode for me, and the thing that’ll probably always feel a little slight to me, is the one-and-done of it all. Kamen Rider shows that ran with single-episode stories to kick off their runs (Ghost, Saber) were a rougher start for me, and ones that took me longer to warm up to. It honestly isn’t until the more complex two and three-parters that I would grow to love them. I… don’t feel like this show is going to do those types of multi-stage serials? It’s not hurting them now, for sure – I loved this one, and retroactively appreciated the last episode more, which I liked a lot to begin with – but I wonder if it’s going to make me feel like I’m getting less narrative that way. We’ll see!

For now, I can’t really think of anything that this episode did wrong for me in that one-off format. Enter is a cool mouthpiece for an unknowable villain (All the French! So neat!), the support staff strikes the right balance of Exposition and Warmth, the team really popped as we learned their weak points, and the backstory was succinct and meaningful. A+ episode for me.

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/sen...busters02b.png

IT’S TIME FOR BUSTER Red!

Honestly could’ve been any of them this time out, because no one character felt slighted, but I really came around on Red in this one. Hiromu’s guilt about choosing his biological family over his found family was a unique beat for a genre that tends to completely ignore that tension (mostly by making sure the characters have nothing but their found family; also they’re all orphans YAY I NEVER GET TIRED OF THAT), and I dug his little character flaws. The chicken thing comes back after Mission 1 and finally gets explained, while his brusque honesty continues to make things worse with Yoko. Solid episode for that guy, even if I still think he’s the weakest actor of the trio.

As someone who saw Super Sentai for quite a while, the timer was a really nice touch that made sense for Go-Busters to me especially with the covert ops element of the show. The closest one we had was in an episode or two in Megaranger, which I won't go into detail because I hope Die watches it in the future as I pray that he tolerates the film quality. :lolol
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzUubDuLugk


Fun fact.
This one I should've said last episode but didn't to give Komiya and Baba more of the spotlight. Hiromu's sister Rika Sakurada is played by Risa Yoshiki who had a guest role in Tokusou Sentai Dekaranger back in 2004, so 8 years prior to this show. She later came back to the series in this show and after the show went on to marry Masato Wada who played male lead Nobuo Akagi/Akiba Red in Hikounin Sentai Akibaranger. Wada is part of D-Boys, an acting troupe of Watanabe agency that is also home to many tokusatsu actors since 2005 starting with ex-member Yuichi Nakamura who played Kyosuke in Hibiki and Yuuto/Zeronos in Den-O.

Some buddyroid trivia.The names of buddyroids are a combination of their motif animal and a food (which, for this I'll go with the Asian formatting of Surname first). Also, this is a personal observation, but their surnames seem to be wordplay on Japanese surnames as well. Cheeda seems to resemble Shida, Gorisaki sounds similar to Horisaki, and Usada resembles Utada to me. But here are the motifs:

Cheeda Nick > Cheetah + Niku, as in the Japanese word for meat
Gorisaki Banana > Gorilla + Banana
Usada Lettuce > Usagi, the Japanese word for Rabbit + Lettuce

They are all voiced by known voice actors. Nick was voiced by the late Keiji Fujiwara who is most known for being Hiroshi, Shin-chan's dad, in Crayon Shinchan, the narrator of Sgt. Frog, Maes Hughes in Fullmetal Alchemist to name a few. He was also Tony Stark in the Japanese dub for the MCU movies until his unfortunate passing not too long ago.

Banana was voiced by Tessho Genda, a veteran most known for being Optimus Prime since G1, or Convoy for pre-Michael Bay movie era Japan, as well as Action Mask (Action Bastard in the English dub) of Crayon Shinchan (of course, do check his creds in Wikipedia or AnimeNewsNetwork to learn more.

Lettuce was voiced by Tatsuhisa Suzuki, who most toku fans will know as the Japanese voice of Kit Taylor in Kamen Rider Dragon Knight before this show. He was a rising star around this time and shot up to being a big name after, his other notable works being Ohma Tokito in Kengan Ashura on Netflix and Noctis in Final Fantasy XV. He is also the husband to LiSA, the singer who probably is most known for singing the themes to Sword Art Online, Fate/Zero (the anime penned by Gen Urobuchi aka the dude who wrote Gaim) and freakin' Demon Slayer.

One more. Tohru's actor Naoto Takahashi has also been in a few other toku shows as well. The first one being Gokaiger as a small guest role where he plays the pupil of a legacy ranger who guest stars. After this show he went on to be in another regular supporting cast role in Ultraman Orb, the 50th anniversary show.

I just started watching my first ever Sentai, after years of Kamen Rider, and y'all are ALREADY trying to set me up with other shows?! Let a cubist monstrosity get his footing before you start planning my future! Yeesh!

And thanks for the trivia!

You're welcome. :lolol

Today I learned that Gorisaki and Usada have last names.

Sadly, my view of the episode was pretty much the opposite. I still don’t really like Yoko that much, and my reaction to the weak point scene can be summed up as such.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=JWH9rTpr...dC-rsalEoysb6J

(Then again, I’ve never found Kobayashi to especially excel at comedy. She’s very hit or Miss on that front)

Also another gripe I have with the show is how every monster is going for the bad guy’s goal in exactly the same way (attack a tower), rather than somehing more appropriate to their motif. For a contrast, to keep with Sunred’s bringing up Megaranger, one episode would have a rose monster turning kids into tiny clones of itself, while another would have a moth monster releasing a pollen that’s utterly lethal.

Oh hey, Gobusters! The first ever Sentai show I watched in full all the way back in too-many-years ago! Still love the aesthetic of it, and my hazy memories of the story are also very solid.

S*** is it time for Buster!?

I had a feeling you weren't going to make your first Sentai thread Jetman or Donbrothers, Die, but I also didn't really expect you to follow up on the foreshadowing way back in like, probably the Ryuki thread(?) where you mentioned Go-Busters was probably going to be your first Sentai.

I'm glad you picked this one though!

Speaking from experience, I definitely think this is a great Sentai for Rider fans who aren't that interested in Sentai, because, believe it or not, that's more or less where I was at back when I first watched it.

I wasn't as apathetic as Die, but I had spent a whole year watching Gokaiger and having it not click that much for me, so the next show coming along and having that instant surface-level appeal of being basically The Cooler Sentai, with its sick tactical leather suits, radical real-robot style mecha action with tight cockpits full of instrument panels and switches, that smaller, more approachable cast, a Red who rides around on a bike like those bugmen guys I already like...

The show was definitely calling out to me to a pretty huge degree. I fell off it after a few episodes when it was new anyway, but when I finally got around to it in full around the time it was ending, it ended up being the show that, to this day -- even in a post-Saber world -- I still consider my favorite toku show period. Not only did it do a ton to entertain me with all those simple pleasures I just mentioned, but the stories it told and the characters it had have really stuck with me over the years. It's one of those shows like Kuuga where on top of simply having fun watching it, it's also something that's genuinely influenced my life in a positive way, and it's kind of hard to top that level of attachment, you know?

But of course, I'll have plenty more time to reminisce in the next two-ish months. For now, I'm just happy to see you already having your fun with those first two episodes, Die. I was actually half-prepared to make an argument about how the premiere is one of those ones you appreciate more in retrospect, but uh, turns out you already figured that out without me saying it! The way I see it is basically Kobayashi wanted to give you a broader, rounded look at the show in that first week and then dive more into the individual elements as she goes along, rather than building it all up slowly, which has the opposite risk of not hooking a viewer who might not realize there are going to be important elements in the show they might like that haven't shown up yet.

I'm kind of thinking out loud here though, so I'm not sure how much sense I'm making. It's just that after watching and writing about 45 different Sentai premieres, I've kind of come to appreciate what a tough balancing act those things can be. Even just the question of whether or not to have the robot in there right away has huge implications. You'll get more time for plot and character without the second fight scene, but in Go-Busters case, for example, you can't demonstrate what makes it Go-Busters without showing the fairly unique idea of having the mecha action happening alongside the ground-level stuff, as opposed to the typical Sentai formula where the robot is basically the encore performance after the main fight scene.

This is a thing I can maybe see myself getting tired of eventually, but what I like about this show so far is how the routine of it all helps reinforce that this is a special operations rescue force, not a team of superheroes. They're like first responders, and those people are generally doing the same thing again and again; the differences come in the details, not the broad strokes. This Mission is different from the last one not by dint of a wildly unique scheme by Enter, but by how the team's dynamic this time makes it easier to get all of them working in unison to save civilians while also defeating the Megazord.

(Also, Enter's ran this plan last time and it nearly worked! Why not run it again?)

It just looks cool, right? My favorite touch on the costumes is how subtle the animal motif is in the helmets. It's not some bold emblem, it's this little woven-in thing to the lines of the helmet. So cool.

Yeah, I think I talked about this in a previous response, but I'm a fan of how the organizational aspect becomes another scale for the action to expand to -- how instead of just Busters > Zord, there's the ticking clock and the simultaneous action to build in Busters > Zord > Go-Busters organization. The field team is one aspect of the storytelling, not the end result of it. It makes it all feel like it's one concept, rather than the normal division of Heroes and Cafe Owners or whatever. (It is honestly messing with my head that none of them currently also work at a cafe or restaurant or even bookstore. Isn't there a juice bar they can clock in at?!)

If you're digging that here, you'll probably have a good time when you get around to Ultraman in a year or two. That is very much the set up for most of those shows, too: investigate, evacuate, kaiju battle.

I sort of figured! I've seen one or two episodes of recent shows, plus Shin Ultraman, so I assumed that Go-Busters setup is closer to Ultraman than a normal Sentai show.

TOKUMEI SENTAI GO-BUSTERS MISSION 3 - “GT-02 ANIMAL, MOVE OUT!”

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/sen...busters03a.png

I just like this dynamic, man.

It’s not even the actors, really – I still think Hiromu’s actor is just adequate, and Yoko’s actor is clearly doing her best at a young age with a fairly stock attitude – but the core dynamic of the three Busters is such a compelling vehicle for drama that everything else in this episode just feels like window dressing to me. Yes, I am using the second paragraph of this write-up to tell you that this is going to be one where I sort of don’t touch on the villains, the action, or even most of the plot of the episode. All I really want to talk about are Ryuji, Hiromu, and Yoko.

It’s the way they each take their sibling role in the group and mix in things like new teammate difficulties, chain of command, abandonment, personal growth, and idiosyncratic personalities that makes it all such a terrific viewing experience for me. We’re in a story where Hiromu and Yoko are getting on each other’s nerves to the detriment of their effectiveness to the mission, so Ryuji concocts a reason for them to have to depend on each other or else. It’s a little bit Older Brother, and a little bit Pragmatic Workplace Intervention, and that specific energy is as powerful to me as any amount of Enetron.

I love how the story always balances the Mission with the Family, you know? Hiromu and Yoko’s story is as much about Hiromu forgetting that he’s on a team and trying to do it all himself (probably out of a sense of guilt?), as it is Hiromu forgetting that he went away and his little sister doesn’t need his protection anymore. The bickering siblings stuff from last time gets enhanced with a layer of special ops teambuilding, and it just makes every scene between these two pop for me.

The Vagras plot in this one is cute for what it is (I thought the Needleroid extracting Enetron from GT-02 by sticking a needle in its butt was as delightful and entertaining as GT-02 firing missiles that are bananas) but it’s seriously just a framework to explore some refreshing and immediately complex characters. Yoko and Hiromu’s arc is juicy in this one, running the gamut from funny insults to bitter confessions to heartwarming tough love. It’s an exceptionally solid episode of Go-Busters, and probably my favorite episode so far.

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/sen...busters03b.png

IT’S TIME FOR Enter!

I couldn’t quite figure out why I’ve found Enter to be such a charismatic and captivating villain so far. I mean, he’s just a theatrical and flamboyant mouthpiece for an all-powerful monarch, who smirks constantly, swans around, wears a gray scarf, and barely seems to exist on the same level as the…

Oh, right. He’s Woz.

(Even his laptop is just Woz’z book turned sideways!)

Since no-one’s mentioned it yet, I’ll mention that the guy playing Enter was recently in the Gazer spin-off as Nemeru/Gazer Zero.

And for my own talk-up of Enter, he’s pretty much the only character so far that I jived with. In a cast of characters I found bland or bad (those technics are basically what Shibuya and Naria were in Ghost, if you ask me) he’s the sole character that stuck the landing. And by actual coincidence, he’s one of two characters from this show I’ve written fanfiction for. The coincidence part is because 98% of the cast were suggested by members on this forum, and he was no exception.

Ha ha, JEEZ. I don't think they're nearly that bad. They're helpful in ways that go beyond just showing up, shouting something like "HIROMU! METAROID!", and then exiting the scene. They're a bit more of a Greek chorus, here to help us understand what's motivating our heroes. I like them! Maybe I'll even learn/remember one of their names one day, even!

Proto Woz. :lolol

Woz was the Sentai homage in Zi-O, like Shinkenger in Decade.

You mean Decade was the rider homage in Shinkenger. :lolol

Sounds like you made it to Episode 18. Yeah, that was a rough one. Even getting Deai Masayuki as Kyoryu Grey wasn't enough to save it.

I love the part where Hiromu mentions that they have a promise to keep and Yoko is happy to hear that he remembered and can finally accept him as their equal. For a Sentai, the team morph (equivalent of henshin) is usually a big moment where the Rangers unite around a shared goal and I think the promise is a satisfying and dramatic way to bring the Gobusters together, since it's about something more personal than saving the world. Previously, Bluebuster and Yellowbuster took care of the Metaloid while Redbuster fought the Megazord, but this time they fight both enemies in sequence as a team and we can see how much more effective they are when they can draw power from each other and their Buddyroids.

Next year is the 13th anniversary, which is pretty appropriate.

Whoa, it's you! Haven't seen you here in like a year.

The mecha fight scenes are pretty essential to Gobusters anyway, since the Metaloid and Megazord always come as a package, instead of being a single enemy with means of enlargement, like we're accustomed to. I recall seeing a similar method used before in Goggle V and Dekaranger, but those mecha still required the MOTW to pilot them before they could be finished for good. Gobusters raises the stakes in a unique way by adding a time limit, whereupon the Megazord will spawn and fight independently even if the MOTW is still standing. That's a lot for a starting team of 3 (Sanbusters) to have to deal with every week.

I like that, sure, but I really appreciate that it's not just the start Now It's Personal motivation. Fighting to save their parents from the hyperspace clutches of the Vagras is the hopeful byproduct of keeping everyone else by doing their jobs. It's a personal facet of a wider motivation, and that works for me.

Hiromu and Yoko's dynamic was something that got me really invested in this show, so that aspect of this episode always sticks in my head above all else. Mind you, I've got plenty I could say about how Ryuuji factors into this team too, but, especially watching the show the first time, it was definitely the way the relationship between the younger two Busters played out that really impressed me early on with what a palpable sense of connection the show was able to create so quickly between these characters by leveraging that whole tragic backstory.

Ordinarily, when Die focuses on one particular thing in a post like that, I prefer to single out something else to hopefully like, enrich the discussion, I guess, but in this case, I, too can't really make myself steer too far off the subject of how layered and interesting I felt the main characters were right away.

I've been silently poking my head in frequently enough to notice this thread was going to be a thing, fortunately. I've been preoccupied with other things lately, but this was something I knew I didn't want to miss out on.

I didn't get around to mentioning on Mission 2, but I cannot tell you how grateful I am that the tragic backstory uniting the three Busters was revealed in the second episode. This isn't some Den-O-style thing where the mystery of That Fateful Day gets teased out on a (to me!) unconscionably long timeline, this is the show giving you the tools to better understand the characters right up front. I mean, it's Kobayashi, so there's going to be some hidden wrinkles somewhere down the line -- and I wouldn't want there not to be! -- but the basic information I need to appreciate this cast was dispensed with quickly and beautifully. It definitely helped!

(Also, boy, Kobayashi loves that brother/sister dynamic, huh?)

(Also also, I really loved how Ryuji steps back to let the kids sort their stuff out, rather than him forcing the issue. I probably mentioned it, but I really loved it.)

TOKUMEI SENTAI GO-BUSTERS MISSION 4 - “OF RESOLVE AND THE MISSION”

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/sen...busters04a.png

Hey, let’s talk about Zords for a minute.

(This episode mostly didn’t work for me narratively – it’s this weird melange of Red’s reckless dedication to rescuing the people trapped in hyperspace, Blue and Yellow flipping from That’s Not Good to He Was Right All Along a little too quickly for my tastes, and some ambivalent upper management stuff. It… I really didn’t feel like rooting for anyone at the end? It’s a tough one for me.)

I greatly prefer human-scale conflict in tokusatsu. I like to see stunt performs flipping around, dodging explosions, and generally looking like insanely cool superpeople. The farther a Kamen Rider show would get away from that – generally with neighborhood-sized CG monstrosities – the more I’d tune out. I can’t count the number of shocking climaxes I’ve forgotten thanks to everything switching to muddled, rubbery CG at the end. It’s just not my thing, and I think I’m okay saying that after watching a couple dozen different Kamen Rider series that’ve used it in varying amounts.

But Zords! Zords are a different thing.

I can’t really think of a Kamen Rider show that used a Zord regularly. (And, look: I’m just gonna call them Zords. If there’s a more technical Sentai term for them, I don’t know it, and you already know what I mean when I say “Zord”. Don’t act like this is confusing!) King Arthur from Saber? Maybe? I don’t remember if that was a suit or an effect; either way, it barely shows up. Zords are a Sentai thing, like riding motorcycles – it’d just be tacky if Kamen Rider ripped them off.

The Zords here aren’t completely new to me, as a storytelling tool. I never watched Power Rangers, beyond the last live-action movie, but I’ve seen some random Sentai episodes, so I get the Final Act Big Robot Fight template. I don’t know that I’ve ever enjoyed it in a Sentai show before, but I respect it as part of the process. Like, I don’t let it bother me, is the nicest thing I can say about it.

Now that I’m actually watching a whole series, though, I’m trying to really engage with that element of the story, the Zord Battle. I thought this one was a pretty good one, mostly for how it prioritized the physical combat of CB-01 and the Megazord, along with a slightly tactical approach to things, rather than just brute forcing things in a short sequence. It has some of the same moves that the Blue/Yellow/Cutteroid battle has, but with a slightly slower, more methodical pace.

The biggest change for me, though, is how the Zord battle… like, it’s all about passion, you know? The human-scaled fights can be overcome by flashy tricks and outflanking and power-ups, but each one of the Zord battles so far is all about the conviction of Red triumphing over the obstacle in front of him. He just has to want it more than his opponent, and he’s got a chance at victory.

Which, you know, I can see why this is the episode with the most integral Zord fight! This one’s all about the power of conviction, and how what can look foolhardy or reckless is really just dedication and resolve and OH GOD DAMN IT now I like this episode. Stupid Go-Busters!

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/sen...busters04b.png

IT’S TIME FOR Commander!

The whole support crew really shone in this one, but Commander went above and beyond. I like how contentious things are with him at the end of this episode, even though they’re all pulling in the same direction. He’s not there to be their surrogate dad or hapless patsy or goofy exposition dispenser – he’s there to execute the mission, and the Busters are just a weapon in his arsenal. He will give them all the support necessary to win, but those victories are only in service of his objectives. There’s a nice parallel between him and Red in this one, even if I ended things wondering what exactly Ryuji’s problem was. (Is Ryuji not clear on chain of command? He’s the one who always seemed to get that there was a military hierarchy at play!)

Well, there is this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbuEg2v9Arg

The closest they have to a giant robot are a bird-shaped flying thing and a flying bulldog-looking thing. :lolol
And they have a hot air balloon...

Funnily enough, from what I read, the Commander wasn’t really a popular character until the guy playing him citizen’s arrested an upskirt pervert. But given the same actor supposedly got caught in a scandal a few years back (details are fairly sketchy on both stories), one wonders what the perception is of him now.

Anyway, I’m only half able to recall what this episode was, and I’m guessing the Megazord battle (never really liked them applying that term to the bad guy robots. It sounded more like an insult to Power Rangers than a cute homage, especially when the good robots are consistently called “Buster Machines”. Thankfully, the Power Rangers adaptation of this series completely renamed the enemy robots Gigadrones) is the one that ends with Ace merely destroying the enemy’s Metaloid accoutrements, but leaving the robot intact.

Ah, but it's Showa, and therefore disqualified from my interest. But I appreciate the thought!

Crazy! I like him, though.

While Ryuji is a cool professional, he's still a big bro as well, so of course he'd have a problem with Kurorin treating Hiromu as expendable like that. It's also a sign of Ryuji having a passionate side when he feels like something is morally wrong. Hiromu shows good leadership here by intercepting his punch though, he understands that it's not like Kurorin is the only one using them to get what he wants, as the Gobusters are using him to get what they want as well, so he makes it clear in a determined way that they're going to use each other. This is another unconventional thing about Gobusters, that they're not best buds with their mentor like you'd often see in other Sentai.

Sure, but I guess my confusion was that Ryuji literally just learned this lesson with Hiromu -- the parallel between Hiromu and the Commander is sort of the entire point of the end of the episode. Ryuji and Yoko had this epiphany midway through the episode that conviction can be conveyed in different ways through different people, and the Commander is basically just telling them that he's fine going to great lengths to defeat the Vargas and get back the people they lost, just like Hiromu. It feels a little hypocritical for Ryuji to draw a line here?

The robot fight in this one is an eternal series highlight for me. All of it is fantastic with how it emphasizes that real-robot flavor of these big machines as machines, with Hiromu having to work around the damage Ace is taking and all that, but it's that whole cross-counter ending that truly makes it stick out as one of those definitive moments from Go-Busters for me.

I lack the words to really get at it properly, but that whole sequence with the saw blade stopping *this* close to chopping up our heroes, and the way the lighting in the cockpit changes from that dangerous red to an uneasy pitch black before the daylight finally pours through the gaping hole left when the saw falls out onto the ground... like, it's beautifully put together, for one thing, but also, just narratively, the mood of that moment after the fight, where it's more relief than celebration, it's a very *this show* thing in my mind.

Also love that beat with Hiromu trying to play it cool as usual before falling over and actually making that little effort to admit some vulnerability for once. It's hard to argue in too much detail about the episode's overall story not having seen it in a good while, but I remember it being a winner... you know, like basically every episode of this show. :p