[Den-O]

I think it's probably better to talk about where this show hasn't gone

I was really pumped at the beginning but I knew that whatever came after Gokaiger wouldn't be nearly as good by comparison. I lowered my expectations appropriately. But even that wasn't enough.

This show has/had promise. Ryuuji is a great Blue. He's animated, fun, great in suit voice, best buddyroid. All around great dude. Yoko is cute and from time to time interesting. But Hiromu is like the Heero Yui of Gobuster. Boring, emotionless, and utterly without passion. Nick is a damn transforming robot motorcycle that some how is still boring and Usada is the most useless highly advanced robot ever!

Jin and J are nice additions. Although I still can't stand that Magi Yellow is Jins' actor. The kid is on the way wrong end of the snaggletooth spectrum to play someone as badass as Jin. J is brilliant. Easily the best standalone character of the series. A smart ass 'imperfect' robot that can also henshin. What more could I ask for?

To be honest all of the support characters are so bland and cookie cutter it's painful. Enter is an interesting villain but Escape is just awful. And the mecha, dear god the mecha. Individually is where all of the Gobuster mechs shine. Literally every combined form I've seen is just an atrocious mess in both show suit and DX toy form. The concept is there, the design is mostly there, the execution is painfully lacking.

Overall I feel like this show had tons of promise with a relatively creative/new plot. The mech battles are filmed fantastically and made to feel very real. The characters can be interesting when taken as a group but taken individually very few of them shine. The biggest problem is that nearly every episode feels like filler with fluffed plot in between to keep us interested.

I may sound harsh on this show but it just had so much promise and really hasn't delivered. I'm hoping that whatever revelations lead to the use of the Super Modes and the new mech Tategami-RaiOh will be good. Those 2 things look like the turnaround point of this show. As we stand right now, at the halfway point, I don't think I could convince myself to ever watch this show all the way through again.