[Matrixbeast]

I loved all the Gekirangers. I would totally grab figures of those two

While I do get what you're saying, I'm trying to approach it from the mindset of a 10 year old who wants to watch his weekend action shows. We learned a lot about them, and they got their moments to shine, so I'm just making an assumption that I'm pretty sure that kids weren't personally bothered that they weren't getting a ton of focus.
But the villain scenes were changed. Instead of it being the typical moments of them plotting their next action and summoning their next monster, it became exposition. Rio and Mele's dialogue were important to keeping up with what was going on. Only Maku really hit that area of familiar Sentai big bad, and he didn't last too long.

Still, I never felt Retsu and Ran were forgettable. Despite their lesser relevance to the plot, they still had a much bigger presence than, say, Ako from Jetman or DekaBlue, whose name I forgot

Concerning ToQger, perhaps kids in Japan are finally learning to enjoy the villains~