[Fish Sandwich]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

TOKUMEI SENTAI GO-BUSTERS MISSION 6 - "COMBINE! GO-BUSTER OH!"

...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.

I'm really not sure why it needs to be anything more than that? If there's a good way to add depth or specificity or whatever to this plot, I certainly don't think it's by adding in lessons for Ryuuji and Yoko to learn about teamwork.

The way I see it, this episode as is is already extremely good about making its take on the combined robot debut as unique to this show as possible. You've got the competence of its villains making an unusual amount of trouble for so early on, because of that, you've got the organizational nature of the setting placed at the absolute forefront, and in the middle of all that chaos, you've got the Buster who's been doing things by himself for 13 years learning to understand that it's not only okay, but necessary to lean on his team in the episode that debuts the best possible physical representation of that lesson.

The pattern Go-Buster Oh uses, where the main component is already a fully-fledged giant robot on its own, is actually quite rare for Sentai, and I think this episode leveraged that for drama pretty spectacularly. A huge part of Hiromu's character is his borderline cocky level of self-confidence, and no part of the show has enabled that until now quite like having him always being the dude in the machine literally called Ace that gets to go and blow up the giant monster every week with its huge sword. The mecha action is very much his comfort zone, to the point it's like 90% of what Red Buster did in the premiere, even. Five episodes is plenty of time for both him and the viewer to get comfy with that routine, so I really think the show had every reason imaginable to contextualize Go-Buster Oh's debut in the way it did. One of the opponents Go-Buster Oh gets to stomp over is literally the exact Gamma type that gave Ace the fight of its life two episodes ago, just in case the episode wasn't being smart enough about all of this already.

Obviously it sounds nice in theory for there to be some more going on with the other heroes to flesh out the story, but I honestly think in this specific case, it'd just end up pulling the focus away from the unique elements of the show to give you a story that, even if it were "better", would just end up being way less Go-Busters and way more stock. Like, be careful what you wish for, I guess?

I don't know. I like this show a bunch so obviously I'm inclined to take its side on pretty much anything. Back in the day, I actually used to be right there with everyone thinking Go-Buster Oh is a bit messy (mostly because I worship Ace), but now, I mean, I'm tempted to do a whole second rant just to try and set the record straight after all the straight slander I'm reading in here.