[Switchblade]

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Originally Posted by Androzani84

And this episode also features the debut of Sabaki (I haven’t looked up what that means yet, I’ll get back to you on that one). As someone I follow on Twitter pointed out, he must’ve been someone on the crew’s favourite, since he appears in more episodes than the other non-regular Oni (even after the staff turnover mostly drops the minor Oni in favour of more focus on the main ones) he appears in the HBV and a post-show stage show. All he hasn’t received is an appearance in Decade and a Ridewatch in Zi-O’s toyline.

It probably helped that his suit looks like way more effort was put into it than Danki's. Danki just wore an Ibuki suit with a different chest piece, Sabaki was wholly unique. Plus he was a string user and you'd have to really try hard to make one of those terrible (spoilers for 21 episodes from now).

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sunred

In retrospect from a merchandise perspective, Hibiki was lacking. The henshin belt that is meant to be the flagship merch was replaced with tuning forks, whistles, and a wristband, what came close to a belt was a loincloth with a drum for a buckle and two drumsticks, though the roleplay weapons department I will give credit. And the disk animals were heavily underutilized as gimmick items. Meanwhile, we got a 5 sibling sentai team that was Harry Potter-ing it up with a feature phone that doubles as a wand, kickass robots, and let us not forget a magic lamp with a cat genie inside that doubles as a gun and is voiced by the dude who is Trunks and MMPR Japanese dub's Billy/Blue Ranger. And the studio behind Godzilla was doing their own thing with a show about a trio of heroes who also ride giant robots, etc. TL;DR the show under Takatera was gorgeous but merch was lacking except for the roleplay weapon toys.


If I may add, there was also Nexus and Max, Sazer X, and Kamen Rider The First looking back.

I can't speak for Sazer X, but I'm not sure how merch-driven those other shows were. That said, I'd have bought the hell out of Nexus's multi-form separating jet/tank.