[GoldenXtreme]

Periodically, I get the hankering to see a new Toshiki Inoue show, even knowing this is roughly the equivalent of intentionally slamming my hand down on a burning hot griddle. Long story short, I watched Super Light Warrior Changerion, another baffling work in his repertoire. It's hard to know where to start with this show, which is largely a series of disjointed gags and Inoue's typical obsession with romance. but also ends with children assassinating a politician and also maybe everything is a dream? And it's a show that exists in-universe as a show in a bafflingly meta episode about Changerion getting bumped from it's broadcast slot by breaking news about aliens. Honestly when the show is at its most mind meltingly insane it's really hard to not be fascinated by what is going on, but I also think that it took the show too long to hit its stride and a lot of the early episodes in particular weren't as madcap and funny. Inoue was largely doing things that I have seen from him so many times they just don't have impact anymore. His weird issues with women, love dodecahedrons, and fixation on driving gags into the ground are full display early on. The show also has another issue in that it just looks completely awful for a 90s tokusatsu. I did a little research after I finished the show and apparently they had switched from film to videotape recording for Changerion, so I imagine the awkwardness of using an unfamiliar technology resulted in the show looking like such a mess. The other factoid I learned is that the Changerion suit was apparently INCREDIBLY heavy, which explains why the choreography was generally not very good either.

So, how do I feel about it in the end? It's hard to say, it was a bizarre experience that was unlike anything I had seen before, yet also repetitive. I definitely consider it above the dregs of Inoue's works, but I wouldn't call it a show that was good by any stretch of the imagination. All I can say is Toshiki Inoue once again got a rise out of me, for better or for worse. Remember to assassinate pretenders to the throne with guns and grenades kiddos!