[Tokumonkey]

My feelings on this figure are so mixed. Some of the sculpting is great, but some of it severely hampers his articulation. Even despite the bicep squivel, he can't quite touch his Transpod. The sculpt elegantly displays the chest straps, but at the cost of freedom of movement.

Swapping the hands is stressful; the plastic feels brittle, so I fear it'll break.

I started off liking Go-Busters, got bored with it when its plot didn't seem to go anywhere, and only returned and finished the series in the last few months. I was surprised by how much better the series got toward the end, and there's a mecha battle in the last ten episodes that may be the best Sentai mecha fight I've seen. I love how they appear to have introduced Tategami Li-Oh entirely so we could have a version of Go-Buster-Oh and still have Buster Ace, the best-looking mecha, acting separately.

I greatly appreciated a lot of stuff the show did: the many nods to Power Rangers, and to a western audience in general. The gratuitous English, even when it's awful ("Let's Morphin'!" "Let's driving!".) Separating the metaroid and the megazord, so we almost never had a monster grow to giant size after defeat. It had a really good sci-fi feel. I like the idea of the heroes as cool-headed professionals.

I also think the show had some serious flaws in the Buddyroids; most of them didn't have a deep enough personality for me to care about them, but the writing really, really wanted us to care. The show was aiming for a cool vibe, but the Buddyroids kept undercutting the sense of cool. It was also pretty clear that we got the Buddyroids pretty much at the expense of more senshi.

Hiromu and Yoko weren't especially likable for the first half of the series. There wasn't enough going on with the villains for the first half of the series, and Messiah itself felt lame and undercooked.

The series corrected most of these things by the middle and end of the run. I saw Tokumei Sentai Go-Busters vs. Doubutsu Sentai Go-Busters last week, and it may be my single favorite Sentai movie... and then I noticed it apparently didn't try to sell me movie exclusive toys! I was gobsmacked. On the downside, the Doubutsu Sentai were a little more fun, and I kinda wished I'd gotten more of their series.

You're absolutely right that the shades on these figures should've been chrome; the oversight causes the figure to miss the element of the suits that pops most.

I ended up buying the original trio. I skipped Cheeda Nick even though his design is actually pretty cool. I'm guessing your Cheeda bike is from the retail toyline for Go-Busters? The scale is pretty close!

I love the new gallery. I'm glad I'm seeing this now that I've come to appreciate Go-Busters a great deal more. (Seriously, ToQger and Ninninger felt so often formulaic that watching a Sentai that actively tried to overthrow familiar Sentai formulas was an eye-opening relief.)

Flaws aside, I wish we'd gotten Figuarts of Beet Buster and Stag Buster... and particularly Enter's FANTASTIC suit from the show's final episodes. (When was the last time we got a toku villain suit with that much love and detail after episode 40?) Here's hoping Toei will someday revisit some of the coolest elements from Go-Busters.

Fingers crossed for the Toku Toy Box!