[Locke]

Time for my final voyage with the Gokaiger and final thoughts on the series. Was that a Cowboy Bebop reference? You beautiful bastards.

Considering Joe was the Captain's First Mate I was really disappointed that he stayed behind and sent Gai with Marvelous. Like why? If the excuse was for him to go DekaBreak and do one of the most badass takedowns in the whole show, then I understand. Because man that was great.

Ackdos Gil was pretty badass, fighting off Gai and Marvelous without stepping off the throne. It's a shame the only time villains are interesting in this show is right before they die.

Overall Gokaiger is surprisingly bland and formulaic for most of its run given how flashy it all is. It isn't quite the pile of wasted potential that Kyoryuger was, but that is because I never got the sense that Gokaiger could have ever been as great as Kyoryuger might have been if it capitalised on its potential.

The show at least ends on a high note, even if the entire show leads to a enormous dead end with a fight tacked on as an epilogue. I honestly enjoyed this series more often than I didn't, but thinking back I honestly couldn't really tell you why, especially as with even the lightest of critical eyes the show fails in a major way.

Like it starts seemingly with the intention of doing something original despite the tribute aspect of the series but the most amazing part of this aspect of the series is how quickly this goes out of the window, and how suddenly the show has so little variety every episode bleeds into one another.

Like I enjoy the Gokaiger as a whole, but individually the only real stand outs for me are Ahim and Joe. Marvelous was a bad shounen protagonist by the end even if he was always entertaining, we ended the show knowing next to nothing about Doc or Gai despite being a series where the character arcs were basically complete at the beginning and although Luka had a good story, and lots of character growth, she was poorly acted and the brutality depicted in her flashbacks by the Zangyack was so clashing with Zangyack we got in the main story it may as well have been a plothole.

Like I absolutely love the gimmick but between the vast majority of awful tribute episodes, and utterly boring mech battles I would have happily scarified the fun team changes in the henshin hero segments to cut out all of this stuff all together. Heh it's funny, the tribute aspect of this show is the worst part about it.

Hell, it's difficult to even appreciate the henshin hero stuff honestly, as the only time there was a villain worth beating on was right when they were about to die at the very tail end of the series. Maybe the Gokaiger are a team fitting this tribute, but the villains most certainly aren't.

And that isn't mentioning their final big game breaking decision at the end, which is probably one of the single most terrible moments in my entire sentai watching history.

Overall if it had a better ending, I'd probably put it in my mid-tier shows. It's certainly watchable as it has so much flash, but between the shit ending, generally terrible writing and some of the worst villains in the history it's a show that starts promising, ends high but is a true battle of commitment and intelligence to make it there.