[Fish Sandwich]

Quote:

Originally Posted by MarsHottentot

Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger
EP 1.

Ooh, is this gonna be a thing from you from now on? Welcome to the novel-sized post club, I guess.

I'm just gonna use this opportunity to say some (more like a lot of) stuff about my experience with Gokaiger, because now I'm feeling a bit nostalgic. Hope that's cool.

You actually hit on a lot of thoughts I remember having watching Gokaiger's premiere WAY back in the distant past of 2011, when I just a greenhorn Toku fan getting into Kamen Rider through OOO and Ryuki. I was even using TV-Nihon's subs back then, to my great shame (I kid, I kid, they're alright). Naturally I'd heard of Super Sentai, and I was a decent fan of Power Rangers, but there was this new show about pirates or something and it looked pretty hype. Like, I feel like EVERYONE was talking about Gokaiger back when it aired. That first scene even made fluff headlines on mainstream-ish websites because it was so crazy. So, even though I wasn't particularly interested, I decided to check it out because why the heck not.

The next part of the story is maybe not the development you'd expect from a story like this, but the show didn't actually hook me that much. I mean, I enjoyed it, and I kept up with with it, but at a pretty slow pace. It's a similar deal to how I feel about Zyuohger right now. It's really dang good, but it didn't click with me very deeply. I've always felt I don't appreciate OOO as much as I should given it was my first Rider show, and Gokaiger is like that times a hundred.

Having had years to think about it and the context of other Sentai shows I've seen, I think my big problem is I honestly don't the like the cast too much. Don't get me wrong, Captain Marvelous is a legend and all, and none of them are really bad characters, but their basic archetypes weren't very interesting to me and frankly they weren't the most fleshed out bunch beyond that. Seeing their guest appearance on Zyuohger is what really put it into perspective for me. They show up, and proceed to do exactly the same song and dance as like half the episodes in their own show. They act kind of like jerks. Turns out they're pretty cool. The end. Those two beats repeat A LOT in Gokaiger and it maybe would've been nice if they became a bit more communicative after a while. It borders on Inoue-esque at points. Would it really hurt Marvelous to drop the cool guy act for five seconds and just admit he's a total softie deep down?

I don't know, there's so much going for Gokaiger I feel bad picking on it at all, but something about the team themselves just never quite gelled with me.