[GoldenXtreme]

Watched Winspector, which is a surprisingly unique tokusatsu show to this day. As the whole "Special Rescue Police" part of the title indicates, this show has a mashup of elements from both police mystery shows and disaster rescues. In fact, you can really see how this show influenced later rescue themed tokusatsu like GoGoFive and the Tomica Hero series. But even then I was surprised by all of the unique things this show did. It entirely lacks any kind of overarching enemy, entirely focusing on human villains committing crimes with nary a standard tokusatsu monster in sight. Despite this, the show still has plenty of big explosions and flashy scenes that are the hallmark of the genre (while also having substantially less stock footage than the other Metal Hero shows I have seen, thank goodness). The style and quality of the individual episodes vary *wildly*, from episodes featuring exaggerated villains who want to blow up buildings for getting in the way of their RC vehicles to grim and grounded stories of revenge and the failures of the justice system to bizarre environmental parables featuring robotic human faced mutant bats. It's completely chaotic and had me alternating between laughing at the absurdity of everything and being gobsmacked at the fact their aired an episode where a kid threatened to blow himself and the police station up with a bomb. The madness of it all often felt more like a 70s than a 90s tokusatsu to me, for better and for worse.

I thought it was pretty interesting and honestly a big step up from my prior Metal Hero experiences, even with its weak points. Also it had Hiroshi Miyauchi in it. Instant upgrade to any show. Hoping the later entries in the Rescue Police trilogy will iron out some of the issues this show had, while keeping the good points!