[macblo]

I don't have that many big, series wide problems with Super Sentai as far as how they tell their stories. I mean, I have problems with a lot of the tropes they keep using that but that's less because the tropes themselves and more about how they use them. My biggest problem with Super Sentai as a series its entire business model.

OK, so Super Sentai is a team based TV show in which the biggest draw of the show merchandise wise are the mecha. There's nothing wrong with this set up in concept but the devil is in the details and Super Sentai, in my opinion, seems to go out of its way to downplay both of these aspects.

Starting with the team aspect of the show, one of the biggest problems I have with the show is the fact that the Red Ranger is that main character. Don't get me wrong, I understand that somebody has the be the face of the team, but it feels like the show does everything in its power to communicate to audiences that the red ranger is the only individual that matters in the team both narratively and commercially.

He's the main character of the show, all of the unique toys go to him, and only him, and if there are items that are used by the team as a whole, he's still the primary user. While none of this would be that big of a deal in a show like, say, Kamen Rider where the title very clearly states that there's somebody who's more important then everyone else, when a show called Super SENTAI does this, it kind of undermines the entire concept of the show and it makes you wonder why they even bothered naming the show after a team when one member matters so much more then the others.

I mean, isn't point of a team based show being able to see a bunch of unique individuals with unique talents working together to solve a problem? Why does the show assume that everybody wants to be the red ranger. What if somebody likes the blue ranger? or the yellow ranger? The show make so effort to appeal to anyone who isn't a red( or sixth) ranger fan that I can't help but wonder what's the point of having other rangers...

Now onto the mecha. Despite being probably the biggest draw of the series merchandise wise, It always baffled me as to why the mecha is so... inconsequentially to the show as a whole. In most shows, the mecha is nothing more then a giant weapon, used against a monster that's already been destroyed, in a battle that can usually be skipped without losing anything of value as far as either the story or the characters are concerned.

Some shows try and get around this through a few different methods, such as making them actual characters or having them grant the rangers a special ability that's usable outside of mecha battles, but those are either so rare that they feel like nothing more then one off gimmicks to make the show stand out in some way from other shows in the series or they're apply so selectively that if feels less like they're making that specific mecha better and more like they making other mecha worse by not having it.

Hell, most of the time they can't even be bother to make the additional mecha do something other then change one of the main mecha's arms or give them a different weapon. The few times the mecha has a gimmick other then 'changing arms' its almost completely ignored after the first quarter of the show.

To make a long story short, my biggest problem with Super Sentai as a franchise is that I feel like the show isn't very good at selling its concept. For all of the different experiments they've tried over the last ten or so years with the show, I feel like they've done very little to fix the core issues with how they sell the show.

I could go even further about my problems with the toys themselves, whoever decided that a tokusatsu in 2020 shouldn't have a collectible device deserves to sent to bed without dinner for the entirety of this show's run, but I think I'll save that for another day.