[Daikaijuman54]

Boy, I've hardly even talked about this show and it's already over!

Well, no time like the present to recount the whole thing as best I can without making this a wall of text, but in the event it does, I'll sum it up in this one sentence:

It was a fun ride. It also made me hungry for Curry on an almost weekly basis.

Now for all the other nonsense.

At first, I thought BoonBoomger was a step down from King-Ohger, being more silly and not as ambitious. Not that there's anything wrong with that, even if I wasn't a particularly big fan of the suits. In the beginning, I genuinely thought this show would have made the Big Bang Grand Prix part of the show as the latter half or something, but instead it went for a bit of a roller coaster.

The idea of "taking the handle" being expressed throughout this show felt like the usual stuff with Shounen/Tokusatsu Shows, but as it progressed and we got to the last quarter with the ISP (which I always felt like were going to be villains at some point but relaxed that notion after Shirabe turned over a new leaf, but then circled back after the boss was revealed) basically handing the Earth to the Hashiliens, it put into focus what this show was putting up, and boy did it win me over completely! While not in itself novel, the fact that the story had that overlying layer of corruption, exploitation, and deceit and the overall theme of taking control of your life, was genuinely something that changed my stance on my initial thoughts on the series.

And the whole thing was just plain fun. If there's one thing I can say about Sentai, is that they really do a good job of making a fun and enjoyable show, regardless of whether or not they take it seriously.

For the cast: Jou is best boy. Easily my favorite, just beating out Sakito, ByoonD and Boondorio, who were all delightfully fun characters. Mira was good, maybe not as good as OniSister from DonBrothers, who start off basically the same, but I do like how the show started and sort of ended with her getting married. Genba was neat, kind of thought they'd go to his planet like I did with the BBG, but I guess that was me thinking they'd pull a King-Ohger with how this show was going. Ishiro was cool, and I must say, his "betrayal" honestly felt in line with how he was presented in how he joined Taiya, where I thought for sure, he might have actually been willing to betray them, but of course I figured he'd turn back by the end, but it felt well played to me at least. Taiya, I feel like there's a lot about him. On one hand, it's nice to see a calm and collected Red every once and a while, but on the other hand, it feels like we don't explore nearly enough about him. He's flipping rich, which made me question how thing would play out when the ISP started acting suspicious, not nearly enough time is spent about his past, and sometimes it's a little too obvious how he'll handle (heh) a situation. Shirabe was one that grew on me a lot as the series went on. Also, the car/racing puns in their names were not lost on me.

I absolutely enjoyed the villains this season. The San Seaters were a blast, MadRex was cool, Cannonborg was fun at times, Disrace had some good moments, Grantz, I feel could have done more, and Spindor was not at all what I was expecting whenever he got mentioned, but that didn't stop him from being a dangerously interesting villain to watch. Also, the Automonsters were entertaining to watch as well (the Getta Monster made me laugh every time he appeared).

The mechs were pretty cool, 119 was one of my favorite power-ups, but let's not forget the Champion Forms just giving everyone a jacket was a very clever and different take from the norm, but I loved that all the more so!

I'm a little torn if I put this over DonBrothers (whose biggest crime was that it had a bunch of lore and worldbuilding it kept teasing but spent a little too much time being silly), or Kiramager (as much as I enjoyed that show, it felt a little generic at times). I'd have to make a ranking of the Reiwa Sentai at some point, but for now, I'm absolutely excited for Gojyuger! Can't wait to see that one.