[Kamen Rider Die]

TOKUMEI SENTAI GO-BUSTERS MISSION 10 - “A REASON TO FIGHT”



It finally hit me with this episode what the main difference between Sentai and Rider is, based on my gigantic sample size of ten episodes from one (1) Sentai season, versus 26 Kamen Rider seasons: there’s no subplots here?

I mean, there’s definitely background stuff happening around the edges, character development stuff mostly – Hiromu learning a lesson, or Yoko confronting Ryuji’s dark side, or whatever the moral of the episode is – or the slowly developing plot of Enter’s Zord-building scheme, but there isn’t, like, a B-plot for an episode. We’re in one story about 1-9 characters each episode, with two or three acts per episode, and that’s it. There aren't really cutaways to completely separate plots that bubble up in the background, or act as a release valve for tension occurring elsewhere, or just provide an isolated spotlight for a different cast dynamic. Like the title says, there’s a Mission, and that’s what you’re going to get for 20-odd minutes.

I think that’s proven fairly successful as the framework for an action-adventure serial featuring three main characters, but it sort of handicapped this otherwise excellent installment devoted to the relationship between Hiromu, Rika, and Nick. Namely, we haven’t seen Rika since Mission 1, I don’t think anyone’s mentioned her in a serious way since then, and I don’t think she ever shared a scene with Nick before. (I may be overlooking a flashback or something here!) In an episode that already has to take us from Rika and Hiromu on the outs because of his decision in Mission 1, all the way to her understanding his, uh, Reason To Fight by the end of the episode, it doesn’t help things to have so much of the family’s backstory consigned to an exposition-heavy scene on a bridge between Nick and Rika. Like, it would have been nice for pieces of this story to have been dropped in a few episodes back? Or maybe Nick could’ve shared a scene with Rika, even once? It’s a lot of information that show didn’t have time for previously, and it made a few of the emotional beats not really land for me super well.

(It sort of also doesn’t help, for me, that this is a story about Hiromu and Rika that Hiromu is strenuously excluding himself from. I get that it’s true to his character, and I get that a lot of the point of this episode is how Nick is the glue binding the family together instead of the thing breaking it apart, but it still means that there’s no real cathartic moment between Hiromu and Rika at the end.)

But, y’know, I still think this one worked okay for me. There’s a lot of sweetness in Nick’s desperation to patch things up between Hiromu and Rika, as well as some stunning visuals throughout that sell the significance of the weight that Hiromu and the rest of the team have been carrying for the last 13 years. (That shot when Nick is consoling a scared Rika while Ryuji fights the Megazord in the background!!!) It’s a tense, exciting episode of Go-Busters that manages to sketch in some fun new layers to the relationship between Nick and Hiromu. Sadly, the relationship between Hiromu and his sister wasn’t my favorite part of the episode, but I guess it’s hard to deliver that sort of density when you’ve only got the one plotline per episode. I will try to get used to the difference!



IT’S TIME FOR Special Buster!

Man, that fight between Hiromu and the Metaroid… so good! The idea of doing a close quarters, one-on-one duel is exciting enough, but that finish was gorgeous and clever. I am really digging the action on this show!

(NOTE: Sorry to anyone who posted earlier today that I didn't respond to! I didn't see the new posts until I got on here just now, and it's very late, and I need to get to bed, but I appreciate everyone who posted today!)