[Kamen Rider Die]

Hi, there. I’m Kamen Rider Die, and this is KAMEN RIDER DIE WATCHES TOKUMEI SENTAI GO-BUSTERS.

…which is so weird!

Not the Watch thread thing; that’s second nature to me by now. I did a rewatch of Double (and a watch of Fuuto PI) at the beginning of the year, and finally sat down to get through the incredibly strange Outsiders series of one-shot disconnected narratives last month. (There’s also an entire archive of older Kamen Rider shows – most of Heisei and the first three Reiwa shows – at my website, if you’re interested.) Coming into August and watching a new show while chatting about with you all on the TokuNation boards… yeah, that’s a nice thing that I’m pretty used to.

But: Sentai.

I’ve never watched an entire Sentai season before. Scattered episodes, sure – the first few DonBros before life got in the way, the occasional Kamen Rider crossover thing, April Fool’s gags, and one-offs with friends. But I’ve never sat down and watched a complete Sentai show from beginning to end. I honestly don’t know if I’m going to like it, or what to expect.

With the conclusion of my first Phase of doing these threads, where I worked through every Heisei and Reiwa Rider to get to the present, I knew I wanted to make the second Phase a mix of rewatching shows that I never wrote-up, and trying to find new toku experiences to share with all of you. And top of that list was finally watching a Sentai series.

When I was getting into Rider more seriously, it was Go-Busters that first got my interest on the Sentai side, so I knew that whenever I finally carved out time to dive into Sentai, it was going to be Go-Busters. A lot of it, honestly, was the show’s pedigree: Kobayashi’s next toku show after OOO, and OOO was my favorite Rider series for a good long while. (It’s Geats, now. Probably forever.) Her deft touch on character development and incredibly addictive long-form plotting made me intensely curious about how she’d level up after OOO. Combine that with what looked to be a reasonable-sized cast of characters (a far cry from Kyurangers’ University of Sentai-sized cast of costumed space heroes) and I thought it’d be a good one for dipping my toe in, considering my historic ambivalence towards Sentai.

I just… I never really got on with the vibes of Sentai. It always felt a little too simple, or too cheerful. Rider shows could be goofy and dumb, but they usually had a strong current of tension running through them that made me feel less like a grown man watching a TV show designed to sell toys to Japanese children. With Sentai, it felt like a show you’d only watch as an adult if you were babysitting a kid.

Which I know is wrong. I know it! There’s very little daylight between Rider and Sentai – this isn’t the difference between Matt Reeves’ The Batman and something like Batwheels. (Although, I didn’t watch Batwheels, so maybe that show’s also an incredibly dark exploration of how a lack of connection between the populace of an urban area allows the worst groups to profit off of that isolation to pursue their own agendas? LMK!) But in isolation, I must’ve been missing the context that would help me find in Sentai what I loved in Rider: great characters, strong messages, compelling drama, tense stakes, and probably at least one goddamn puppet that I’d grow to tolerate.

So that’s why we’re here. I’m going to try and give a Sentai show a fair shake by meeting it where it lives, and being open to its specific approach to toku storytelling. Hopefully I’ll find in it what you all have found before me, but if not? At least I’ll finally feel like I know what I’m talking about when it comes to Sentai.

Since this thread is going to be my first time watching Tokumei Sentai Go-Busters, I thought I’d sketch out a couple three things to keep in mind for anyone participating in this thread:

PLEASE DON’T POST ANY SPOILERS ABOUT THIS SHOW. Like I said, this one’s all new for me, and I’d prefer to experience it episode by episode with as little foreknowledge as possible. Please try and keep any discussion to the current episode, or anything prior. (And don’t use spoiler tags! I see the posts without the tags, and it can absolutely ruin stuff for me.) Thanks!

I DON’T REALLY CARE IF YOU TALK ABOUT OTHER SENTAI SHOWS. I may or may not watch other Sentai shows in the future (probably DonBros, someday), so it won’t really bother me if you want to make comparisons to Ninninger or whatever. Just remember that I a) won’t get the reference, and b) probably won’t care if you try and explain it to me. I’m currently here for Go-Busters and only Go-Busters!

I MAY TALK ABOUT RIDER SHOWS, BUT ALSO MAYBE NOT. I’ve never done a non-Rider thread before, so I have no clue how much I’m going to try and explain things in Rider terms when it comes to deconstructing story beats or characters. Maybe a lot! Maybe never! It’s real uncharted territory. Just letting you know that if you’re worried I might ruin something from Revice for you, there is maybe a small chance of that happening.

TEAMWORK MAKES THE DREAM WORK. Sentai is all about teamwork, right? I feel like that’s a thing that even a novice dummy like me can say with (unearned) confidence. Well, these threads are the same thing, but with maybe less color-coding to them. I like getting to share my thoughts and opinions on toku here, but I love getting to read your thoughts and opinions on toku. No one has to post if they don’t want to, but my favorite threads are the ones where people experience this show alongside me, or use this thread to reminisce. I’m never more grateful than when you all feel like sharing.

As always, I genuinely can’t remember if that’s all of the important stuff, despite writing some version of this maybe 20 times by now. I think it is? If not, I’ll be sure to mention it in the thread after suffering brief but harsh consequences for my oversight.

If you’re wondering what order this thread is going to go with regard to various off-shoots and follow-ups, please enjoy this By Release Date viewing list that Androzani84 was kind enough to put together -slash- if there’s any problems with this list let me know:

1-9
Super Hero Taisen
10-23
The Movie
24-27
vs Beet Buster vs J
28-46
vs Gokaiger
47-50
Returns
Super Hero Taisen Z
Kyoryuger vs

I’ll be using the NonActionableFansubs version of the main series (based off of Over-Time?), and whatever random subs I could find for the other stuff. (Mostly TV-Nihon?) This thread will get updated with new episodes daily, except for Wednesdays, or if there’s something going on and I just can’t find the time that day. (I’ll always let you know ahead of time!) Hopefully it’ll be a fun late-summer/early-autumn for us to tap into the Sentai zeitgeist of 2012. I look forward to teaming up with you all on this project!

Now let’s watch Tokumei Sentai Go-Busters!