[GoldenXtreme]

I ended up binge watching Legend Heroes over the course of a few days. The show was a little confused, but it got the spirit!

Legend Heroes is a Korean tokusatsu show from 2016. I remember back when it was new a lot of people really loved it, and I still occasionally see people comment on the series today, so I was very excited to try it out. The show combines Sentai-esque mech fights with Kamen-Rider-esque ground action. Narratively it borrows elements from various Battle Royale Kamen Rider shows. The protagonist Liu Bei is a lot like Shinji from Ryuki, a nice guy who gets swept up in a dangerous battle. The general suit style feels like a combination of Ryuki (animal knights) and Gaim (the warlords aesthetic). Perhaps most interestingly, the Dream Battle in Legend Heroes is very similar to the Desire Grand Prix from Geats, with people battling to have a wish granted and risking losing their dreams upon loss. This in spite of the show predating Geats by several years. Still, the show does enough unique things that it felt like its own show, and not just a knockoff.

Being a show from outside of Japan and not from Toei or Tsuburaya, it does feel like a unique take on the medium, though it does unfortunately feel like it suffers a bit from lack of experience by the staff. One thing that really struck me about it was how obvious it was that the show wanted to tackle more serious stories, but probably was not allowed. I have to say that I actually like the idea of one of these battle royale shows where characters don't necessarily die. Having characters stripped of their dreams offers plenty of interesting drama by itself, but the show was hesitant to really dig into the repercussions of it, with most characters who end up losing just getting instantly written out of the show without dwelling on it too much. Gongsun Zan in particular really stuck with me, since she was a major recurring character for the first stretch of the show and basically Liu Bei's sister, but after her loss is not even acknowledged in passing. It was so extreme I thought there must have been some sort of conflict with the actor, and was genuinely shocked she showed up again at the very end. Similarly, the show is very light on the blood and death, to the point it can get confusing! It's hard to tell if someone was serious injured, heck, it's hard to tell if character's merely lost the dream battle or legit died a lot of the time! Cao Cao meanwhile really felt like he was intended to be a sort of dark vigilante character before having his behavior toned down. The whole thing reeked of having been serious rewritten at points. Some more minor issues include the show's tendency to introduce plot points or characters, completely drop them for vast swaths of episodes, then suddenly bring them up again. Also it is light on the practical effects and the mech fights aren't too great (though this is an issue in quite a few Sentai shows too).

Still, I think the show had a real tokusatsu soul to it. It's goofy and weird and dramatic, everything one of these shows should be. The fact that I can actually critique on the same level as a big tokusatsu show is impressive in and of itself! It was really fun to watch and had quite a lot of charming characters and poignant moments. Liu Bei's relationship with his two angel partners during the show is nice in particular, with Xu Shu's death providing some genuine weight to the story. Even if it isn't quite as good as I initially hoped it would be, it was a particularly impressive effort for something from outside Japan.