[Kamen Rider Die]

TOKUMEI SENTAI GO-BUSTERS MISSION 8 - “PROTECT THE MACHINE BLUEPRINTS!”



All jobs suck to some degree. Some of them suck a lot – there are any number of jobs that people do to survive, not because they’re the culmination of a long-held dream. But even the jobs that are the expression of a childhood wish, or that to the outside might seem like the best thing in the world… those can sort of suck, too.

I run a comics shop, and I’ve worked in comics retail since I was a kid. (Off-the-books afterschool work at a comics shop for store credit was pretty routine in the 90s!) To many, many people, that’s a dream job. Tons of adults have worked shit jobs for decades, just to be able to eventually open their own comics shop. The thing is, it’s still a job. People have this fantasy that it’s just reading comics all day, and talking to people about stories, but it’s so much more monotonous work besides that. It’s placing orders with vendors, unpacking shipments, cleaning up messes, logging in inventory, responding to emails, hauling boxes, and – since it’s also retail – eating a seemingly endless amount of shit in the name of customer service. It’s grueling, both emotionally and physically. (This is, of course, not counting the persistent low-level anxiety of trying to keep any business afloat in 2024.) It’s easy to lose sight of how lucky I am to be doing something I’ve always loved, and that dozens of my customers would kill to do, because the reality of it can be frustrating and depressing.

And that’s basically Kazuya’s story here. He’s a guy who wanted to be an engineer, eventually became an engineer, and realized that it’s just as annoying in many ways as any other job. He has to take orders, follow instructions, and generally feel like a tiny cog in a giant machine – fitting, since his job is designing Buster Machines. This was his dream as a kid, him and Ryuji both, but now it’s just some pointless corporate boredom.

It’s even Ryuji’s story, from the start of the episode. Ryuji’s a goddamn costumed superhero, but he still has to get up at the crack of dawn to train, since he’s the oldest Buster on the team, and he needs to be able to keep up with Hiromu’s all-star status and Yoko’s youthful enthusiasm. Even Ryuji’s job is sort of a hassle, and he’s a Sentai hero. Every job! They all sort of suck!

But this is a show that’s about preparing kids for the workforce, and while it’s important to be brutally honest in pointing out that getting their eventual dream job is not going to be relentless joy, it’s also important to say that a lot of that joy can still be found if you have the proper perspective. Kazuya isn’t making blue-sky sketches of his dream robot, but he’s still a crucial member of a design team that’s visualizing the next stage of giant robot technology, for use by legit superheroes. Ryuji may be doing a job he never really wanted, but he’s still surrounded by friends, doing something that matters. No job is perfect, or will always feel worth doing, but it doesn’t mean they’re never worth doing.

This was a surprisingly mature episode, which is maybe appropriate for a Ryuji spotlight. It’s all about a sort of professional malaise, and I think anyone lucky enough to work in their dream industry will recognize some of themselves in Kazuya, while anyone unlucky enough to have to work outside of their dream industry in order to make ends meet will recognize some of themselves in Ryuji. A bit more downcast than the typical rousing Go-Busters installment, but no less thoughtful for it.



IT’S TIME FOR Gorisaki!

Cute episode for Ryuji’s soft-spoken, endlessly worried Buddyroid partner. I like the reminder that Gorisaki and Ryuji only got partnered up when Ryuji was already a teen, as opposed to Hiromu and Yoko getting their Buddyroids as younger kids, so the bond between them is a little more tenuous in Gorisaki’s mind. It’s adorable to see this big blue monkey robot fret about whether Ryuji likes working with him or not!