[Kamen Rider Die]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sh Ranger

It's Mission 1, but sometimes it feels like Mission 2, right? Nakamura is introduced as the new member, so Gorisaki and Usada can deliver exposition to the viewer through her, without sounding unnecessary. There's so much information dropped here that I would've preferred to get it in smaller doses. When the Megazord signal appears, Nakamura does her job so easily that it doesn't feel like she's a new member at all.

Yeah, it... I absolutely see why the show wanted to have an outsider come into the organization to facilitate some crucial exposition, but it's crazy to me that she's, like the fourth most important plot in the episode. She needs to be our POV, and it instead feels like a minor detail that's haphazardly tossed into the mix. I would've greatly preferred her to either have been excluded (her introduction allows a couple minor lines of dialogue that could've been prompted by anyone) or made the focal point. As is, not a great use of the trope!

(And I really don't like Hiromu's haircut.)

[Switchblade]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sh Ranger

Kyoryuger Episode 10 was around the time of Kyoryu Gold's awesome debut, which renewed my interest since he started as a pretty serious character. But yeah, this show was pretty insufferable. Well, at least I was able to finish it, unlike ToQGer.

It must have been before that. The straw that broke the camel's back for me was the KyoryuGray episode, where the crux of the plot was "Daigo, you aren't worthy to be KyoryuRed because you're so perfect you have no possible room to improve... oh wait, you just got even more perfect! Truly, the sun must raise and set out of your ass!"

It was about 50% that and 50% just being unable to tolerate the sound effects any longer.

[Kamen Rider Die]

TOKUMEI SENTAI GO-BUSTERS MISSION 2 - “A PROMISE MADE 13 YEARS AGO”



Bickering siblings! I love it.

I can’t imagine a premise like this existing in larger Sentai casts. The idea of three survivors of one tragedy creating a found-family bond over 13 years… like, that just wouldn’t feel right if there were five or six of them. That’s just a support group, and its got a different metaphor attached to it. With these three kids and their three helper robots, it’s clearly a story about how families can fight, but they never stop drawing strength from each other.

It works to drastically reframe the previous episode’s Hiromu story from New Go-Buster Finally Answers The Call To Heroism into something more like Estranged Brother Returns To His Family. It’s a more nuanced and approachable version of all of the characters, especially Yoko and Hiromu. (Ryuji continues to be the best older brother imaginable, and this show never lets me forget it.) Hiromu’s dedication to his biological sister’s very reasonable fear that Hirmou will suffer the same fate as their parents if he decides to combat the Vagras now looks like an untenable rejection of his found family, and something that he’d eventually need to rectify. Similarly, Yoko’s petulant dismissal of Hiromu’s presence is less her being a bratty teenager, and more her spending 13 years wondering why her brother reneged on a fateful promise. There’s a deeper context to everyone with this episode, and it even made last episode work a little better for me in retrospect.

It for sure doesn’t hurt that the small-team spy ops stuff continues to be a highlight! The battle against the Burneroid (please don’t make me go back and check to see if that’s right) feels robust and strategic at the human scale, and then bombastic and ridiculous at the Zord scale. I don’t really love the CG versions of the Ace robot, but the beefy suits and model city stuff really clicked for me. Felt appropriately epic, and worthy of this team coming together for the first time.

The weirdest part of this episode for me, and the thing that’ll probably always feel a little slight to me, is the one-and-done of it all. Kamen Rider shows that ran with single-episode stories to kick off their runs (Ghost, Saber) were a rougher start for me, and ones that took me longer to warm up to. It honestly isn’t until the more complex two and three-parters that I would grow to love them. I… don’t feel like this show is going to do those types of multi-stage serials? It’s not hurting them now, for sure – I loved this one, and retroactively appreciated the last episode more, which I liked a lot to begin with – but I wonder if it’s going to make me feel like I’m getting less narrative that way. We’ll see!

For now, I can’t really think of anything that this episode did wrong for me in that one-off format. Enter is a cool mouthpiece for an unknowable villain (All the French! So neat!), the support staff strikes the right balance of Exposition and Warmth, the team really popped as we learned their weak points, and the backstory was succinct and meaningful. A+ episode for me.



IT’S TIME FOR BUSTER Red!

Honestly could’ve been any of them this time out, because no one character felt slighted, but I really came around on Red in this one. Hiromu’s guilt about choosing his biological family over his found family was a unique beat for a genre that tends to completely ignore that tension (mostly by making sure the characters have nothing but their found family; also they’re all orphans YAY I NEVER GET TIRED OF THAT), and I dug his little character flaws. The chicken thing comes back after Mission 1 and finally gets explained, while his brusque honesty continues to make things worse with Yoko. Solid episode for that guy, even if I still think he’s the weakest actor of the trio.

[Sunred]

As someone who saw Super Sentai for quite a while, the timer was a really nice touch that made sense for Go-Busters to me especially with the covert ops element of the show. The closest one we had was in an episode or two in Megaranger, which I won't go into detail because I hope Die watches it in the future as I pray that he tolerates the film quality.

Fun fact.
This one I should've said last episode but didn't to give Komiya and Baba more of the spotlight. Hiromu's sister Rika Sakurada is played by Risa Yoshiki who had a guest role in Tokusou Sentai Dekaranger back in 2004, so 8 years prior to this show. She later came back to the series in this show and after the show went on to marry Masato Wada who played male lead Nobuo Akagi/Akiba Red in Hikounin Sentai Akibaranger. Wada is part of D-Boys, an acting troupe of Watanabe agency that is also home to many tokusatsu actors since 2005 starting with ex-member Yuichi Nakamura who played Kyosuke in Hibiki and Yuuto/Zeronos in Den-O.

Some buddyroid trivia.The names of buddyroids are a combination of their motif animal and a food (which, for this I'll go with the Asian formatting of Surname first). Also, this is a personal observation, but their surnames seem to be wordplay on Japanese surnames as well. Cheeda seems to resemble Shida, Gorisaki sounds similar to Horisaki, and Usada resembles Utada to me. But here are the motifs:

Cheeda Nick > Cheetah + Niku, as in the Japanese word for meat
Gorisaki Banana > Gorilla + Banana
Usada Lettuce > Usagi, the Japanese word for Rabbit + Lettuce

They are all voiced by known voice actors. Nick was voiced by the late Keiji Fujiwara who is most known for being Hiroshi, Shin-chan's dad, in Crayon Shinchan, the narrator of Sgt. Frog, Maes Hughes in Fullmetal Alchemist to name a few. He was also Tony Stark in the Japanese dub for the MCU movies until his unfortunate passing not too long ago.

Banana was voiced by Tessho Genda, a veteran most known for being Optimus Prime since G1, or Convoy for pre-Michael Bay movie era Japan, as well as Action Mask (Action Bastard in the English dub) of Crayon Shinchan (of course, do check his creds in Wikipedia or AnimeNewsNetwork to learn more.

Lettuce was voiced by Tatsuhisa Suzuki, who most toku fans will know as the Japanese voice of Kit Taylor in Kamen Rider Dragon Knight before this show. He was a rising star around this time and shot up to being a big name after, his other notable works being Ohma Tokito in Kengan Ashura on Netflix and Noctis in Final Fantasy XV. He is also the husband to LiSA, the singer who probably is most known for singing the themes to Sword Art Online, Fate/Zero (the anime penned by Gen Urobuchi aka the dude who wrote Gaim) and freakin' Demon Slayer.

One more. Tohru's actor Naoto Takahashi has also been in a few other toku shows as well. The first one being Gokaiger as a small guest role where he plays the pupil of a legacy ranger who guest stars. After this show he went on to be in another regular supporting cast role in Ultraman Orb, the 50th anniversary show.

[Kamen Rider Die]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sunred

The closest one we had was in an episode or two in Megaranger, which I won't go into detail because I hope Die watches it in the future as I pray that he tolerates the film quality.

I just started watching my first ever Sentai, after years of Kamen Rider, and y'all are ALREADY trying to set me up with other shows?! Let a cubist monstrosity get his footing before you start planning my future! Yeesh!

And thanks for the trivia!

[Sunred]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

I just started watching my first ever Sentai, after years of Kamen Rider, and y'all are ALREADY trying to set me up with other shows?! Let a cubist monstrosity get his footing before you start planning my future! Yeesh!

And thanks for the trivia!

You're welcome.

[Switchblade]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sunred

Cheeda Nick > Cheetah + Niku, as in the Japanese word for meat
Gorisaki Banana > Gorilla + Banana
Usada Lettuce > Usagi, the Japanese word for Rabbit + Lettuce

Today I learned that Gorisaki and Usada have last names.

[Androzani84]

Sadly, my view of the episode was pretty much the opposite. I still don’t really like Yoko that much, and my reaction to the weak point scene can be summed up as such.

(Then again, I’ve never found Kobayashi to especially excel at comedy. She’s very hit or Miss on that front)

Also another gripe I have with the show is how every monster is going for the bad guy’s goal in exactly the same way (attack a tower), rather than somehing more appropriate to their motif. For a contrast, to keep with Sunred’s bringing up Megaranger, one episode would have a rose monster turning kids into tiny clones of itself, while another would have a moth monster releasing a pollen that’s utterly lethal.

[AkibaSilver]

Oh hey, Gobusters! The first ever Sentai show I watched in full all the way back in too-many-years ago! Still love the aesthetic of it, and my hazy memories of the story are also very solid.

[Fish Sandwich]

S*** is it time for Buster!?

I had a feeling you weren't going to make your first Sentai thread Jetman or Donbrothers, Die, but I also didn't really expect you to follow up on the foreshadowing way back in like, probably the Ryuki thread(?) where you mentioned Go-Busters was probably going to be your first Sentai.

I'm glad you picked this one though!

Speaking from experience, I definitely think this is a great Sentai for Rider fans who aren't that interested in Sentai, because, believe it or not, that's more or less where I was at back when I first watched it.

I wasn't as apathetic as Die, but I had spent a whole year watching Gokaiger and having it not click that much for me, so the next show coming along and having that instant surface-level appeal of being basically The Cooler Sentai, with its sick tactical leather suits, radical real-robot style mecha action with tight cockpits full of instrument panels and switches, that smaller, more approachable cast, a Red who rides around on a bike like those bugmen guys I already like...

The show was definitely calling out to me to a pretty huge degree. I fell off it after a few episodes when it was new anyway, but when I finally got around to it in full around the time it was ending, it ended up being the show that, to this day -- even in a post-Saber world -- I still consider my favorite toku show period. Not only did it do a ton to entertain me with all those simple pleasures I just mentioned, but the stories it told and the characters it had have really stuck with me over the years. It's one of those shows like Kuuga where on top of simply having fun watching it, it's also something that's genuinely influenced my life in a positive way, and it's kind of hard to top that level of attachment, you know?

But of course, I'll have plenty more time to reminisce in the next two-ish months. For now, I'm just happy to see you already having your fun with those first two episodes, Die. I was actually half-prepared to make an argument about how the premiere is one of those ones you appreciate more in retrospect, but uh, turns out you already figured that out without me saying it! The way I see it is basically Kobayashi wanted to give you a broader, rounded look at the show in that first week and then dive more into the individual elements as she goes along, rather than building it all up slowly, which has the opposite risk of not hooking a viewer who might not realize there are going to be important elements in the show they might like that haven't shown up yet.

I'm kind of thinking out loud here though, so I'm not sure how much sense I'm making. It's just that after watching and writing about 45 different Sentai premieres, I've kind of come to appreciate what a tough balancing act those things can be. Even just the question of whether or not to have the robot in there right away has huge implications. You'll get more time for plot and character without the second fight scene, but in Go-Busters case, for example, you can't demonstrate what makes it Go-Busters without showing the fairly unique idea of having the mecha action happening alongside the ground-level stuff, as opposed to the typical Sentai formula where the robot is basically the encore performance after the main fight scene.