[Kamen Rider Die]

TOKUMEI SENTAI GO-BUSTERS MISSION 42 - “PLUNGE INTO THE MEGAZORD!”



While this definitely has the feel of a Final Act episode – doubling down on Messiah’s evolution, giving Escape a Papazord to pilot – it’s not at all the part I was into. Once we got into the final few minutes and every cast member had to do the UHH?! sound to the debut of the Papazord, I sort of checked out? It’s fine, but it just wasn’t anywhere near as interesting to me as a basic Go-Busters story about recognizing your flaws without beating yourself up about them.

I mostly… I sort of don’t care about Enter’s potential resurrection of Messiah? I don’t think it’s a bad story, but it misses for me the stakes and tension of the earlier hyperspace stories. Messiah’s plots back then were as Gathering oriented as Enter’s are here, switching out Data for Enetron, but they felt like something that required the Go-Busters to learn and improve in order to combat. Here, it just… doesn’t? The first scene of this episode is about how in sync the Busters are, and how easily they defeat the Trainroid (who is back for no established reason). A later incredibly good scene is about how Yoko’s abduction to a pocket dimension is met by the non-Jin parts of the team with both a coherent strategy and a belief in Yoko’s abilities. Messiah got beat by this team before they got cool power-ups, an additional Buster Machine, and tons of earned confidence, so it's hard to muster up much enthusiasm for a rematch. I’m just not seeing a point to Enter’s schemes if this is the team he’s up against?

But that’s a minor thing! I really liked the first 18 minutes of this episode, specifically for how it kept the scale human-sized. The threat isn’t really the Megazordroid, it’s human failing and the pressure we put on ourselves when we’re weak. Seeing Yoko ineffectively try to cheer up depressed people by powering through their hesitation and doubt, and then accidentally realizing that her best example is in allowing herself to be weak in order to show the ways we’re all capable of both weakness and strength? That’s the best part of this episode for me. It’s not about some amorphous Gathering Data scheme that percolates in the background as Enter increasingly needs a haircut, it’s about Yoko trying to help four depressed strangers find the strength to forgive themselves for being weak, and allow for the fact that weakness is as much a part of them as strength is. It’s a part of this show I’m going to remember long after I’ve forgotten what the last dozen episodes have been building towards.



IT’S TIME FOR Plot Holes!

So, Yoko gets abducted to the Megazordroid’s train car, which exits regular space into some pocket dimension. (Hyperspace? It’s never established.) As soon as she gets on the train, she finds out that CALL MODE is blocked, due to her being extradimensional now. She immediately realizes that this also means -- and this is stated on the show -- that she can’t Morph. This holds up, because she doesn’t Morph during the fight with Bugglars, and Ryuji and Hiromu have to be Morphed before they get on board. (Hiromu doesn’t even use Powered Custom until he and Enter fall off of the train back into regular space!) But then, near the end of the episode, back in the pocket dimension… Yoko shouts LET’S MORPHIN’ and she’s the Yellow Buster, like nothing was ever stopping her before. Ryuji also calls for Powered Custom, like nothing’s stopping him. What happened to the block that kept Yoko from being Yellow Buster back in the first half of the episode?