[Kamen Rider Lucha]

This is the most excited I’ve been about a Sentai premiere in years. Maybe since Go-Busters. The episode is like if the Gingaman premiere had the urgency and narrative propulsion of the Ohranger premiere. In general, the episode had stakes and a tone reminiscent of 90s-era Sentai. That’s my favorite era of the franchise, so if this show continues to be influenced by those shows, I will be a very happy boy.

I usually hate when they introduce the mechs in the first episode (even though I get that they need to shill the toys these days), but this was one of the few times I’ve seen it work. It felt important to the story because the stakes of the action rise so fast. Because I guess we’re fighting kaiju this season? Love it. And kinda can’t believe it took 43 iterations to get around to “Sentai vs. Godzillas.”

I also very much love the neon mirror-room cockpits. I suspect those mirrors are going to allow for some cool manifestations of inner drama down the line.

The henshin is next level bonkers, and its silliness is so weird next to the more dramatic tone of a lot of the episode. I love weirdness like that, Sentai does it better than any other franchise around.

Overall, very impressive. You can tell Toei brought on a seasoned drama writer who knows what he’s doing. Good lord, I hope it can keep up the momentum.