[Kamen Rider Die]

TOKUMEI SENTAI GO-BUSTERS MISSION 47 - “RESETS AND BACKUPS”



I don’t generally love the series-long villain schemes of toku shows. It’s not the parts of these shows I find the most joy in. Themes, character arcs, comedic subplots, melancholy beats… that’s what I love to talk about, and think about, and remember. The overarching schemes of would-be despots and genocidal tyrants, they aren’t so much my thing.

So imagine my surprise when I loved everything about the Enter scenes in this episode.

A lot of it is in the performance. Enter’s been a bright spot for this whole series, mostly in how the actor navigates his role as emissary for a screaming digital interdimensional skull god. There was always a playfulness to go along with the obsequiousness and malice, giving you the sense that Enter was aware of how ludicrous his master was, while just sort of shrugging with an It’s A Living smirk. Since his return as Papa Enter/New Messiah, there’s been a chilling serenity to his performance – the register has turned down from Flamboyant to Regal, befitting his new role. It makes the opening sequence of exposition – detailing what Enter’s been up to since Mission 33, and what he’s planning to do now – into something more captivating than a connecting-the-dots speech would normally be. He’s revealing his masterstroke to the Busters not out of a sense of gloating, but because they’ve all been involved in this process for months, so it’s only right that they should know what they’ve helped build.

And then, added to that around the edges, we get that old Messiah insanity creeping in – the uncontrollable anger, the frustration with Escape’s devotion, the way the Go-Busters can suddenly get under his skin by dismissing his power. The contrast of the Messiah madness with the Enter equanimity creates a captivating tension to what would otherwise just be the setup for the series final finale. It’s so fun to watch, and it made me care about a part of this show that I was not expecting to enjoy.



IT’S TIME FOR Chicken!

But there’s also the plot of this particular episode, and I also thought that was a blast. Pivoting directly from Enter Is All-Powerful And Has Neutralized Hiromu right into Hiromu getting traumatized through chicken training is a pretty, pretty good switch-up. Using that as the jumping off point to create a second episode in a row about the massive character growth these kids have achieved over the past year in recognizing and managing their flaws through their teamwork and friendship was a delightful choice. (If Mission 48 has a middle section where Hiromu and Ryuji open up a candy shop for Yoko, I will not be shocked.) The idea that Hiromu’s trauma is partially about his inability to ask other people for help is brilliant, and the solution of everyone kicking the crap out of him is inspired. Used as a mirror to Enter’s self-proclaimed evolution, it’s a nice little story to tell as we ramp up for the final finale.

[Androzani84]

My highlight for this episode was the fact that someone programmed Lioh to say “Sakurada Hiromu Chicken reaction detected!”. Which gets even funnier when you realise that not only is it a sound the actual toy has, but it has similar lines for the other two (though they aren’t as funny out of context).

And continuing the theme of its smaller counterpart, KuwagataZord is my favourite Megazord design purely for how hilariously doofy the beetle horns look on the Beta body. And since the basis turned out NOT to be J’s pet, I’d like to imagine it was Momoi Taro’s Kabuto Gii-chan, for some added cruelty related to that Donbrothers episode.

And Enter can now do the Volcanick Attack. I couldn’t quite tell what the flashback to him giving Hiromu the 13th Card was to (I’m assuming it was early in the second act), but it does create a few disturbing implications as to what else he copied from his arch enemy.

[Fish Sandwich]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

TOKUMEI SENTAI GO-BUSTERS MISSION 47 - “RESETS AND BACKUPS”

Enter has always been one of the best parts of the show, but final arc Enter? Now that guy, he takes it to a whole new level. There was always the implication, from very early on, that Enter could easily become a much more devious and frighteningly competent villain if he weren't answering to Messiah, so having him formally decide to just be Messiah really lets the show finally run wild with the character.

There's obviously a lot of strong thematic aspects to the stuff he's doing right now, and how it contrasts with the heroes, which is also great, but even before any of that, I love this episode for that big cliffhanger reveal and how effectively it boxes the protagonists in. It's like Enter has basically weaponized the status quo of a show like this by making sure that a win for the good guys is still a win for him anyway. Exactly the sort of brilliance I'd expect from the guy.

[Sunred]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

IT?S TIME FOR Chicken!

Looking back now it's a damn shame Go-Busters never guest-starred Hidenori Tokuyama who played Yaguruma/Kickhopper in Kamen Rider Kabuto in an episode. Because after Kabuto, Tokuyama went on to play a ranger in the 2008 sentai show who piloted a sentient chicken helicopter. Truly a missed golden opportunity.

[Kamen Rider Die]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Androzani84

My highlight for this episode was the fact that someone programmed Lioh to say ?Sakurada Hiromu Chicken reaction detected!?.

Li-Oh is the most irreplaceable member of the team! It can do everything!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

It's like Enter has basically weaponized the status quo of a show like this by making sure that a win for the good guys is still a win for him anyway. Exactly the sort of brilliance I'd expect from the guy.

It's a good twist, but my favorite thing is how it's also the most diabolical culmination possible for the ongoing story of how best to combine humanity and technology to create a better future. Some of my favorite villain plots are where the villain thematically wants what the heroes want, just in the worst way imaginable.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sunred

Looking back now it's a damn shame Go-Busters never guest-starred Hidenori Tokuyama who played Yaguruma/Kickhopper in Kamen Rider Kabuto in an episode. Because after Kabuto, Tokuyama went on to play a ranger in the 2008 sentai show who piloted a sentient chicken helicopter. Truly a missed golden opportunity.

We live in the worst timeline!

[Kamen Rider Die]

TOKUMEI SENTAI GO-BUSTERS MISSION 48 - “THE TRAP IS SPRUNG”



It’s a real plot-heavy episode of Go-Busters, which shouldn’t be a surprise – we only have two more episodes left in the series, and last episode’s bombshell cliffhanger needs a lot of space to be unpacked – but still took me back a little bit in how relentlessly it focused things on the two characters most impacted by Enter’s schemes: Hiromu and Escape.

Let’s handle Escape first, because it’s the part I was least into. As noted previously, I don’t think much of Escape’s various passions and pitfalls? A lot of it is the actor (I just don’t think she’s very compelling, past the initial allure of her being hot and dangerous), but some of it is how little her progression over the second half of the series amounted to much, narratively. She pretty much went from Serving Messiah to Serving Messiah And Also Hating Enter, you know? Ryuji can wring his hands over the unfair fate of Escape, but even he has to admit in this one that at her best she was still a devoted gun-toting minion of a screaming digital interdimensional skull god, whose last moments of autonomy were spent trying to provide Messiah with the raw materials to conquer Earth once and for all. While it’s shitty of Enter to keep reprogramming her, it’s not like she had a lot to offer either the story or the world before this?

But it’s Hiromu who gets the meat of this episode, even if that meat is less appetizing to me than usual. Hiromu ends this one where he started, but with the added result of knowing that the usual planning of the EMC and heroic sacrifices of the Go-Busters (the Red one, anyway) won’t help solve this problem. It’s a story that sort of touches on the major Hiromu beats – Hiromu’s pathological inability to start by asking for help, mainly and continuously – while closing off any and all possible solutions to the problem of Enter forcefully and non-consensually putting himself inside Hiromu’s body. (... no, I can hear it now.) There’s a bulk of this episode that’s less about the consequences of a trap being sprung, and more about how the trap can’t be unsprung, and it… I don’t know, there were some fun fight scenes, but this was an episode of ticking off possibilities, instead of telling me a lot about the characters.

There’s the potential for some very neat looks at Enter and Hiromu coming up, as this episode ends with Enter becoming a more literal and accurate copy of Hiromu (I just really like the idea of Enter becoming more perfect as villain, and how that thematically contrasts with this show's view on flaws being a part of every person), but I thought this one felt like half to a third of a story. Solid action, and pitch-perfect tension, but it didn’t really give me a whole story to chew on.



IT’S TIME FOR Yellow Buster!

Not a great episode for the non-Hiromu Busters (Ryuji gets some stuff in the Escape parts, but it’s mostly rehashing last episode), but I like that it’s Yoko who first tries to connect with Hiromu, mostly because she’s the other Go-Buster besides him that is completely ill-suited to a technologically complex plan of teleportation and gene sequencing. She, like Hiromu, would rather this be a problem that she could directly confront, but her version of that confrontation is reaching out to Hiromu and trying to be there for him. Unsuccessfully, sure, but it’s still a nice scene.

[Androzani84]

Honestly, I don’t think the show ever figured out what it wanted to do with Escape. She was introduced as the brawn to Enter’s brains, but then Enter went and proved he could be both at once after Messiah’s death. And as I pointed out in my episode 36 review, he did it better. And given her one defining character trait is “devoted to Messiah”, this episode feels like a send off to a far more complex and sympathetic character than the end result.

But on another note, her two new suits aren’t named here, but the Jp Wikipedia names the smaller form as Escape Life Form and the giant sized version as Escape Lambda. While the latter does fit the Greek alphabet name theme of the other Megazord, it seems a weird rename with the context.

Next time: the end results of Enter’s “Morphin”.

[Sh Ranger]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

TOKUMEI SENTAI GO-BUSTERS MISSION 48 - ?THE TRAP IS SPRUNG?

Ryuji can wring his hands over the unfair fate of Escape, but even he has to admit in this one that at her best she was still a devoted gun-toting minion of a screaming digital interdimensional skull god, whose last moments of autonomy were spent trying to provide Messiah with the raw materials to conquer Earth once and for all. While it?s shitty of Enter to keep reprogramming her, it?s not like she had a lot to offer either the story or the world before this?

I think what hurts for Ryuji is that Escape had her choice, regardless of how poorly misplaced, taken away from her, when it was Ryuji declaring his own choice to fight his way in Episode 25 that earned Escape's respect for him as a worthy rival. Even if Escape didn't have a lot of different sides to her, she was always a proud and honorable fighter with a purpose she believed in, but Enter reduced her with each iteration until she was too berserk to even get to enjoy the fight. Ryuji understands the pain of loving something and being unable to pursue it, but at least he still has his dream of becoming an engineer ahead of him, while Escape has been denied the only thing she had left. Sadly, the last gesture Ryuji could do for her was put her to rest and that's the tragedy of Escape, that she knew exactly what she wanted to do but was never allowed to die on her own terms. Ryuji's and Escape's rivalry is a story about two people struggling to follow their purpose when the world gets in the way and that's why I appreciate it.

[Kamen Rider Die]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Androzani84

Honestly, I don?t think the show ever figured out what it wanted to do with Escape. She was introduced as the brawn to Enter?s brains, but then Enter went and proved he could be both at once after Messiah?s death. And as I pointed out in my episode 36 review, he did it better. And given her one defining character trait is ?devoted to Messiah?, this episode feels like a send off to a far more complex and sympathetic character than the end result.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sh Ranger

I think what hurts for Ryuji is that Escape had her choice, regardless of how poorly misplaced, taken away from her, when it was Ryuji declaring his own choice to fight his way in Episode 25 that earned Escape's respect for him as a worthy rival. Even if Escape didn't have a lot of different sides to her, she was always a proud and honorable fighter with a purpose she believed in, but Enter reduced her with each iteration until she was too berserk to even get to enjoy the fight. Ryuji understands the pain of loving something and being unable to pursue it, but at least he still has his dream of becoming an engineer ahead of him, while Escape has been denied the only thing she had left. Sadly, the last gesture Ryuji could do for her was put her to rest and that's the tragedy of Escape, that she knew exactly what she wanted to do but was never allowed to die on her own terms. Ryuji's and Escape's rivalry is a story about two people struggling to follow their purpose when the world gets in the way and that's why I appreciate it.

Sure, I mean... this is a story beat that's about Ryuji's empathy and humanity, and that's why it works even a little. I got nothing bad to say about Ryuji being horrified that even an enemy is reduced to a plaything for Enter.

I just... Escape, you know? If she'd had an arc that showed the potential for change, or had made a genuine connection with a single non-Messiah character (because Messiah is barely a character to begin with), or had a moment across a few dozen episodes that even approached the complexity of a throwaway Humagear story from Zero-One, I'd feel something more about Escape's dying desperation to make a Papa (any Papa!) happy. But we sort of never had that here, at least to my tastes, and so Ryuji's anger and horror feels like it's being applied to a treasured playlist on Spotify or something.

[Fish Sandwich]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

TOKUMEI SENTAI GO-BUSTERS MISSION 48 - “THE TRAP IS SPRUNG”

Obviously in the larger scheme of the story, the decisions Hiromu makes in this one are not meant to be seen as ideal, but man, as someone who's probably at least as big a fan of Red Buster as Enter is, I gotta tell ya' -- it's real hard to not just unironically love Hiromu going full macho action hero and deciding to settle things with Enter personally? Nick even hits all the classic loyal partner beats to earn the right to tag along, and the end result is like this epic teleporting sword fight that starts plummeting over the side of a building and ends with a desperate life-or-death gamble that puts the resolve and guile of hero and villain alike to the ultimate test?

It's really not healthy! The fact that Hiromu in the climax here would rather burn himself alive than ask somebody to help is not something I should be encouraging, but dude, when it makes for television this entertaining, I just can't find it in me to be too hard on the guy!

More seriously, I mean, of course I do quite like all that "larger scheme" stuff going on here too, and that's even a big reason why this fight sticks with me so much, but just for the spectacle alone, this is an episode I'm fond of.