[Kamen Rider Lucha]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dr Kain

I have to agree with Matrixbeast on this one. Yayoi was a waste of a character (although, she at least did not more than Koyomi in Wizard) with little development and she acted as nothing more than a background character. There should have been at least one or two episodes that really touched on her feelings for Daigo and we would have developed something dealing with Amy and Daigo's relationship at the end. Instead, it felt more like the writers just wanted to get that plot out of the way just to give it closure since they did not do anything with it over the course of the previous 46 episodes.

Kyoryuger is a really good show, but for all of it's great deliveries, it also wasted a lot of potential. The show knew how to engage its audience, get them to be interactive with it, it had energy, a strong cast of rangers, dinosaurs, and a good concept for the villains. Not to mention it had some of the least amount of filler episodes than we have seen in years. On the other hand, they pretty much wasted Amy and Yayoi's love triangle with Daigo, Daigo was to the Kyoryugers what Batman is to the Justice League, they really wasted the subplots they could have done between Uchy and Dogold and Ian and Aigaron, and the mecha designs themselves were subpar at best. In fact, forms were introduced in like one episode and then never used again, or if they were, were rarely used (Kyojin Western, for example). Finally, the other problem was, compared to Aba and Zyu, Toei played this series safe.

Uchy should have died and become the next generation of the Spirit Rangers since Ramirez and gang passed on to the after life.

I mostly agree with you, Kain, especially with the areas I bolded. Kyoryuger succeeds quite often, but there are a lot of problems that hold it back from being great. I really love it, but that doesn't mean it's flawless.

I recognize Kyoryuger is a mission show, where the mission was to create the Ultimate Super Sentai Series after Go-Busters (and Gokaiger**, to a degree) blew up the show's form. But even as it fully utilizes SS's most ubiquitous traits and cherry-picks successful plot/character elements from the best series of yore -- Kyoryuger often fails to actually feel like a Super Sentai. There's something slightly off about it.

I blame this disconnect on the show's borderline-hipster sense of self-awareness. The number of times Daigo calls his group a "sentai," or inspires his friends to be more like a "sentai," or justifies impossible actions because the team is a "sentai" -- it's unprecedented. And it breaks the show. Because how in the world does Daigo know what it takes to be a sentai -- or even what a sentai is -- before he's even joined the team? (Wouldn't it be a stronger story to watch Daigo learn what it takes to be part of a sentai as he, you know, becomes part of a sentai? Instead of coming equipped with a mental codex of sentai tropes.)

Especially early on, Sanjo presents Daigo as having the same metatextual knowledge of the genre's characteristics as the audience does -- but never shows us how or why he obtained that information. The constant meta-commentary drives a wedge between the audience and the narrative. It creates a sense of detachment because instead of actually taking us through a narrative that explores the traditional sentai story elements & tropes in an organic way, Sanjo shoves them in our face and has Daigo explain why they're awesome.

For example, if Amy runs into a problem she can't overcome, she doesn't go through an organic journey that changes her into a person who can overcome said problem -- as any sentai in the past would do. Instead, when Amy runs into a problem, Daigo shows up (or sometimes it's another character), and instead of helping her change, he tells her that she's part of a sentai, and sentai always win. So she rallies and wins. Character growth be damned. And that... kind of sucks a lot.

But even with this gripe, Kyoryuger finds a way to overcome (because they're a sentai, and sentai always overcome! Right, Daigo?). The show's sheer energy, positivity, zeal, and charm allow the show to be fun and enjoyable -- as long as you're in love with the genre like, I assume, most on this forum are (it probably plays infinitely worse for those not already enamored with sentai). Which, you know, is not a feat to be scoffed at.


**In a way, the Gokaigers are the Kyoryuger's mirror team. Where the Gokaigers outright reject the idea of being a sentai, even as they're surrounded by dozens of sentai teams, the Kyoryugers are nearly zealous in their adherence to the term and what it implies, even though they're utterly disconnected from the other teams. Kind of interesting.