[Fish Sandwich]

This is genuinely a lovely idea for a thread and I just want to take this opportunity to thank everyone on this forum for their persistent defiance of stereotypically grumpy internet behavior. It's wonderful being around y'all.

As for the topic, man, I mean, I can see parts of myself in so many of the characters in these shows – I think relating to characters is a lot of how we enjoy fiction in general – but while I could pick from an almost infinite number of people in tokusatsu to talk about, there are definitely two that jump to mind.

One is my homeboy Hiromu from Go-Busters, who I latched onto immensely when first watching the show. It's tough to describe; the kind of thing I would seriously need an entire Go-Busters-centric thread to rave about, because it genuinely is a case where almost every weird quirk of his personality was something I connected to fiercely. Like, him in that Go-Buster Oh debut is literally just me in any group project ever, for example. I love Red Buster so freakin' much that he has genuinely given me greater perspective on the entire idea of representation in media as a whole, because when I stop to think about why Hiromu makes me so happy, it becomes so much easier to understand why anybody would want to feel the same way – whatever that means to each particular person. I'm only scratching the surface here, but, suffice it to say, just one of many, many, many reasons Go-Busters will forever be in my heart the way it is.

The other is my homegirl Hiyori from Kamen Rider Kabuto, which probably won't be surprising to anyone who read my posts in Die's thread about the show. What's unique to her though, is that it was only really after going back to Kabuto for that thread, way more conscious of my own personality so many years down the line (Go-Busters helped there, 'natch), that I truly appreciated just how much of myself I do see in her. Like, I don't know how oblique I was being about it in there, because I often hesitate to share anything even slightly personal, but when I'm calling out all those very particular details in Yui Satonaka's performance, those are things I recognize, to a level that almost did feel like looking into a mirror at points. I praised her acting so highly because it comes off so much more genuine and specific than the standardized sort of performance you'd expect for a character like that.