[Kamen Rider Die]

TOKUMEI SENTAI GO-BUSTERS MISSION 6 - “COMBINE! GO-BUSTER OH!”



Perfect example of a stock tokusatsu story, livened up with a heavy amount of action, a steadily mounting number of insane obstacles, and a little bit of specificity, until we get a charming and relatively enjoyable episode of Go-Busters.

It’s not the deepest or most surprising story, to be honest. It’s basically One Guy On The Team Tries To Do Too Much, and that really leaves out virtually everyone except for Hiromu, since no one else in this episode needs to learn anything. This isn’t last episode, where a variety of characters had to deal with overlapping personal crises; this is just Hiromu Needs To Learn To Let Go, and it takes the whole episode to get there. (The flashbacks help explain why Ryuji doesn’t just immediately tell Hiromu what he’s doing to keep the team from succeeding, but it still feels a little unnecessarily padded.) Everyone in the cast is just trying to stay alive until Hiromu can work through his obvious self-centered/martyr belief that he’s responsible for everyone’s safety, and then they can all get back to work.

The way this thing smartly disguises the thinness of the plot is by just going Defcon 1 on everything from almost the first scene. We get a Base Under Siege plot from both an internal AND an external threat, requiring the Go-Busters to battle through their own base, eventually wringing out a victory from the simple fact that none of them died in the end. It’s a very fun episode of action and collapsing safety, but as soon as it’s over it’s like, Hey, we didn’t really accomplish much.

I mean, there’s Go-Buster Oh! That’s cool! I don’t love the design – it’s just boxes on boxes, in ways that seem less effective in combat – but the episode at least gives us the triumphant formation of the combined Buster Machine, followed by the requisite Not Facing The Explosion detonation climax shot. It feels appropriately grand, the culmination of the team acting in unison.

Except, again, it was pretty much just Hiromu. There's not a single point in this story where Yoko and/or Ryuji need to raise their game or learn an important lesson about teamwork. They were both doing their jobs well the whole time! This isn’t some Den-O Climax Form or Zi-O Trinity Form thing, where multiple characters need to figure out their stuff before they can tap into the combined power of their connection – it’s literally just the entire cast waiting for Hiromu to stop doing too much and screwing up. That’s it. That’s the lesson. The rest of the episode makes up for it with some jovial villainy (Enter! In rare form!) and tense stakes, but it’s all in service of a standard plot, minimally applied. Not a winner for me, this one, despite so many fun ingredients.



IT’S TIME FOR Snacks!

This is such a minor thing, but I noticed it last episode without being able to find a spot to touch on it, so I’m glad it came up again: The Go-Busters have their own branded snacks for Yoko? This is what Japan’s tax dollars are going to, making sure Yoko doesn’t have to get by with mass-produced biscuits and candy? I love it, it’s so stupid, it’s so great.