[GoldenXtreme]

All this Sentai talk made me want to watch a new one, so I figured it would be fine to watch Gaoranger alongside Skyrider, since it gives me a nice break from the Showa-ness when it gets to be too much. I've always been interested in Gaoranger for some reason, I considered it strongly when picking my first Sentai to watch back in the day, but I wasn't actually sure what to expect. After watching the first 2 episodes I'm actually really struck by how much of a throwback the show feels like? The narration style, the way characters don't use names (I assume this will be a bit of a plot point, but still), the weirdly savage fights that strongly remind me of Amazon, the way the show just thows the main character into the plot with no explanations. It all feels very deliberately retro, so it might be less of a contrast to Skyrider than I initially expected. That said, I'm... intrigued? Like, the start is definitely a lot to take in, what with our animal-empath veterinarian protagonist (who, as far as I can tell, has no relatives and probably lived on the streets given how quickly and willingly he abandoned his old life) getting kidnapped to a floating turtle island so the sentai team can have a new member. It all feels very bizarre, but the show also has a very distinct style to it, and the second episode with Red trying to reason with the monsters was unusual. I'm hoping some of the more novel aspects of this show pay off nicely as it goes along!