[Fish Sandwich]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

TOKUMEI SENTAI GO-BUSTERS MISSION 43 - “CHRISTMAS RESOLUTIONS”

So, I believe I've neglected to bring this up in this thread yet, but I've always loved Christmas, and a lot of that comes from my love of storytelling, and how much I feel that specific holiday can offer to a story.

Of the many reasons I'm so fond of Go-Busters, one of the bigger ones is how much I love that decision to have the tragedy that forms the backbone of the narrative happen on Christmas, and everything the show gets out of that. This episode, in a lot of ways, is the ultimate payoff for that.

Christmas as a storytelling tool can be a symbol used to emphasize cold and lonely feelings just as often as warmth and togetherness, and the former is where Go-Busters starts out. That music box especially, when it's introduced, it represents a melancholic longing to be reunited with lost family, and of course, in the end, that dream didn't end up coming true for the Busters.

...Which is what makes it all the more satisfying that, due to the nature of Sentai starting early in the year and airing *for* a whole year, taking place vaguely in real-time the same way Kamen Rider does, we actually come up to Christmas towards the end of the show, and the fairly usual routine of a holiday-themed episode becomes a huge opportunity to definitively show how much these characters have changed in the year they've been fighting the Vagras, swinging the use of Christmas all the way towards the other end of that symbolic spectrum.

It's for sure the use of that music box that's really the cherry on top. Easily one of the scenes from this show I'll always remember most vividly. It's handled in a supremely beautiful manner throughout, to the point that even Nick's goofy singing, which might seem like undercutting the drama of the moment, actually just perfectly cements the whole point of the drama, especially with that shot of Hiromu inside his helmet smiling. The whole reason a music box playing Jingle Bells makes for such a strong representation of sadness is because music boxes inherently have kind of an empty sound to them, so for that to suddenly burst into this joyous rendition of the song courtesy of one of the most important people in Hiromu's life, right as he's explaining how much Enter is failing to grasp? It's brilliant, plain and simple. The show set itself up perfectly to knock an episode like this out of the park, and they didn't waste that opportunity when it finally came around.