[Fish Sandwich]

So getting away from Carranger for a second, the mood struck me to rewatch Kyoryuger VS Go-Busters. It was pretty sweet.

I'm not sure what everyone else thinks of it but I imagine most people fall into the camp of either "they ruined my dino Sentai team-up by putting Go-Busters in it", or "they ruined my Go-Busters epilogue by putting a dino Sentai team-up in it". As a fan of both Go-Busters (<3) and Kyoryuger, I'm conveniently in the perfect overlap to enjoy the movie, and frankly, I think it does a pretty remarkable job to make the clashing premises fit together even slightly, let alone as well as it does.

I remember fellow Go-Buster cultists (or fans, but what's the difference?) being more than a little upset there were two other Sentai teams shoved into the yearly VS movie, seeing it as one last middle finger from Toei, that they were basically saying the Busters were so unmarketable even putting them with the Kyoryugers wasn't enough, but even so, I think Riku Sanjo really treated the team with respect.

It definitely leans heavily on the Dinosaurs! side of things, with the plot largely centered around the Kyoryugers, but the really genius thing that makes the whole movie come together for me is that, despite seeming less important on the surface, the Go-Busters do like, ALL the actual work throughout. The best part is that I'm not even exaggerating that much. The film really plays up the fact that the Go-Busters are professionals, using their intel-gathering skills to think up plans and executing missions with tactical precision while the Kyoryugers basically run around like idiots shouting about how "bureibu" they are and violating all known rules of gun safety.

I'm pretty fond of Riku Sanjo's writing, and I think this is a great example of why. Obviously he's not actually making his own team look bad, but even though the Kyoryugers are the center of the plot, the Busters are the ones who actually drive it forward. They're so critical to the story that if you wrote them out, the bad guys would win like ten minutes in, and again, I'm only sort of exaggerating here.

It's in no way an epilogue for Go-Busters (which is fine because the ending it already had was great), but the movie takes how the team are basically total outsiders to this bizarre plot about bad guys trying to steal dino energy for eeeevil and really rolls with it in a way that lets them shine one last time.

Beyond the satisfactory treatment of the Go-Busters, the movie itself is totally nuts in the best way possible. I mean, there's a chunk of it where the Kyoryugers get turned evil, put on all-black clothes for maximum eeeeevil style points, and go back in time to exterminate the dinosaurs by shooting them with handguns. And if that doesn't sell you on the movie right there, how about the explosions? So. Many. Explosions. Can you tell Koichi Sakamoto directed this?

It's all very bombastic, as is Kyoryuger's style, building to a big crazy climax featuring three teams of Sentai (and also the Go-Busters), and even more explosions, just for good measure.

Basically it's pretty dang enjoyable. I don't know if it's the best thing ever, but of the VS movies I've seen, it's one of the more memorable.

Oh, and since the movie awkwardly glued the ToQgers to after the end of the film, I'm going to talk about them awkwardly after I was clearly wrapping up the post.

I joke, but I actually sort of like it that way. Especially since this movie was even more busy than usual, I don't really think it would've made sense to put them anywhere else. It's just a nice little goofy fight scene to end things on after all the big action earlier, letting the ToQgers do their goofy thing. And I do mean goofy. I swear, you'd think these guys were all 12 years old or something.