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Originally Posted by Aoi Kurenai

A lot of it is in Japanese, but here's a rundown of what happened. It's very spoilery so I'll hide it.

There are some great statements on it from Lynxara in the Low Visibility Podcast episode she did on Go-Busters and she elaborates on this much more eloquently than I ever could.

Go-Busters was supposed to be a sort of Sentai "reboot" after Gokaiger was the big party series to celebrate all things Sentai. Go-Busters would try to take things in a brand new direction that Sentai had never seen before. One of the ways Toei tried to do this was by hiring Naomi Takebe as the producer. Takebe had only ever worked on Sentai in very minor positions early on in her career, the late 90s. She's mostly known for doing a lot of work on Kamen Rider. Even though she only came into her own as head producer with Kiva, she had worked on every Heisei Rider show in some capacity before then. She was the producer on Kiva and OOO.

Basically, Rider has more of a mass appeal in Japan. Think of it as Avatar or Young Justice to America, a kids show that adults aren't too embarrassed to admit liking. That's what Toei wanted Sentai to become, they wanted to elevate it to something different. This is one of the reason the Go-Busters were the first Sentai since Goggle V to wear outfits that aren't spandex, to give them a higher quality and more "realistic" look. Same for the real time transformations.

On top of trying to make the show a little more mainstream, it was also what's called an "answer show", a show that takes a recent event or topic in the public mindset and tries to address it. In this case, Go-Busters was supposed to help kids through loss after the events of the tsunami. Kamen Rider Fourze was the same sort of answer show, only its approach was completely different.

From Goseiger to Gokaiger there was a drop in ratings, so I would imagine Toei wanted Go-Busters to do better. Unfortunately, it premieres to the lowest numbers Sentai has ever seen. By the end of its run, Go-Busters becomes the lowest rated Sentai ever, a title Kyoryuger now holds. Early on it's pretty evident that things are changing, one of the sub producers is let go and around that time, the show basically abandons the plot line revolving around Enter's quest to make an ultimate Megazord. In the series it's written off as a simple battle with the new mecha at the time, which is okay as that might have shown how strong that new mecha is...but that's not what happened. We we ended up getting is a battle with so little fanfare around it that the new robot doesn't seem like it's taking on anything except another typical monster of the week.

There's also this absurd change in Hiromu's character. If you compare Hiromu from episode 22 to the Hiromu in the first few episodes, it just doesn't seem like the same guy, and it's not a character development thing. This is one of those things people thought of as a direct response to the low ratings. It was thought that Escape's introduction was the same thing, but she doesn't do much for the ratings either.

The big signal that something is going wrong with the show comes with episodes 29 and 30. Now, many people will probably claim that it's normal for a Sentai to have a big battle in the middle of the series, and that's true, but this isn't just a big battle. This is removing a huge part of the show, essentially wiping its catalyst from existence. The Rangers no longer have any hope of finding their parents since we know they're dead for sure by the end of 30 and the Enetron plot is all but dropped after this point. New enemies attack without any sort of regard for their energy supply, I think there was maybe one or two after this point that actually deal with this as an issue. Then you have things like the protector gear training just not being cohesive with what the Powered storyline ended up leading to.

But yeah, after 30 you are essentially watching a different show. That new opening is even supposed to highlight that with a completely different tone to itself than the first. Sentai, and most tokusatsu in general, are not like anime shows that change openings so often. The theme song is supposed to be the representative identity of the show over the year and Go-Busters marks the first and so far only Sentai since the year-long formula became the norm to have more than a single opening that isn't just a different mix or verse of the original. It's also no coincidence that this happens on the very same day that Kamen Rider Wizard began its run.

As it turns out, Go-Busters was bombing not just in the ratings but in toy sales. It had some pretty bad numbers and the combination of that and the low ratings have some obvious effects on the show. Say what you will about this being a toy commercial, but Toei does want their shows to do well, production members are positively gleaming in magazines when they talk about specific shows that did well in the ratings - Decade and Double for example.

On the day the Kyoryuger pictures were first leaked at the Bandai retailer conference, the president of Bandai himself says that Go-Busters was a disappointment - which is the same reason it's being skipped for Power Rangers. This leads a lot of people to believe that Toei and Bandai are completely out of touch with kids. There have been numerous examples of military and armed organization themed kids shows in recent years that just bombed and Sentai suffered for them not realizing this sooner. A lot of the Japanese fans absolutely hate Go-Busters because it's thought of as this show that betrays what Sentai should be in their eyes, so it's never been warmly accepted by the mass Japanese fanbase of adults. (or kids apparently as it has some of the lowest ratings in the kids demographic that Sentai has ever seen) One of the major criticisms of Bandai as a company right now is that they aren't taking any chances or being innovative. After the failure of a show and toy line, they go back to dinosaurs, a super safe bet as no dinosaur Sentai has ever done less than spectacular, and now they're moving on to trains, another incredibly safe bet for Japan.

That's a very nice read. Good job finding it and sharing it mate.