[GoldenXtreme]

I finished up Exceedraft today. It wasn't bad but it's notably worse than both Winspector and Solbrain in most respects. The show carries forward the human crime oriented angle of its predecessors and has far less video and sound editing jank, but it suffers a lot from feeling like the show just didn't have anything to say. Winspector is about the importance of saving every life possible and Solbrain takes on the challenging idea of saving the hearts of people, but Exceedraft is a cop drama that just says trite things about people and society. Another minus is that the suits aren't very good compared to its predecessors either (I LOVE the Solbrain suits). The show also tries to delve deeper into the team members as individual characters, but I didn't feel like it added much, and I feel like the characters involved in the crime of the week tended to get neglected instead. Hayato gets far less focus than Daiki or Ryoma did too, so he wasn't much of a leader figure.

The further along the show goes, the more the rescue aspect starts to feel neglected, escalating into the characters getting combat oriented suit upgrades and... peaking when the show features a war between the biblical God and Devil where humanity is nearly wiped out by God's judgement for the finale? Did Exceedraft just get revived from death by aborting the child of God?! After a certain point I just had no idea what the show was even about anymore.

Largely unremarkable, but with occasional good episodes. Then the show loses its mind. Definitely the weakest 90s Metal Hero I have seen so far, but it DID make me appreciate Winspector and Solbrain even more than I already did. I guess things just weren't the same without Noboru Sugimura as head writer.

PS: I added a Metal Hero tier list to my signature recently! If Sentai is ending and I have a list for that, I think Metal Hero deserves one too.