[Fish Sandwich]

Well, it's finally here. Toei's half-baked, uninspired attempt to save Sentai with a generic show about the bravest, most legendary knights who ever ripped off their entire shtick from like a half-dozen other Sentai. Which begs the question: is it any good?



Of course it's good, alright! I admit it! Dinosaurs are always awesome! Too awesome. So awesome I think what I was really angry at Toei for this whole time was simply that they took the easy way out, and not that the concept was redundant. But I'd have to be exceptionally stubborn to pretend like it wasn't apparent at every turn how serious they are about making Sentai hot again. The designs and gimmicks are basically all the best features of every Sentai ever thrown in a blender, with some Lego sprinkled in for flavor. They got some J-Drama writer who I gather is pretty good. Friggin' Kamihoriuchi is directing! How could any of this have gone wrong?

It couldn't, and it didn't. This was a very solid premiere, and while not without its issues, there's no reason to think the future is anything but bright for this show. The things I have complaints about are fairly minor. Like everyone, I felt things moved... not so much too fast as they were too weird. It probably was due to being trimmed down a bit too much in editing or something, but the pacing here felt strange despite the plot being sized just right for one episode. Whatever the reason, the way everything is established consequently lacks a certain oomph it could've used, and as such I don't feel particularly attached to any of the characters or their world yet. I'm filing this as a "minor" complaint because frankly lots of TV show premieres that DON'T have to worry about sticking a two minute robot fight in their half hour timeslot can have trouble with this, and for Sentai this is nothing unusual.

I also have some actual minor complaints, like how bizarre it was to see everyone transform at the end for no discernible reason. I mean, I kind of get it from a meta perspective. The heroes are setting out on their quest with renewed purpose or whatever, and obviously that roll call stock footage is too good to just not show people right away, but maybe it would've been better just to rework the story so that everyone goes to the temple and you can have the big debut fight? Because as it is Blue and Pink are basically doing nothing during the entire climax, and Koh doesn't get the extra in-depth characterization during that time that might make that decision worth it.

There's also plenty to like though. I think. I'm honestly too distracted thinking about that two minutes of robot fighting to come up with more than a few examples. If the rest of this episode lived up to how amazing that was, this would've been the best episode of Super Sentai ever made. I thought Gekitouja could move, but Kishiryuoh, man. Kishiryuoh is something else. And it's not even just the nimble suit making that scene so cool. The building block shtick was incorporated in a way that only further emphasized how unique and awesome it is. I'm seriously having to force myself to talk about the rest of the episode, because the second that thing started running, I stopped caring about everything else.

Everything except the ending theme, that is. I actually really liked that, which shocked me because it's the same singer as Magiranger's atrocious ED, but I guess it's not like that matters that much. The opening is also great, for the record.

Anyway, I still don't have any strong opinion on this show either way (and I never actually hated it when it was announced or anything), so it'll probably be a few weeks before I come to any real conclusion. But, come on, it's me. I'll probably love it to bits by May.