[Fish Sandwich]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

TOKUMEI SENTAI GO-BUSTERS MISSION 17 - "AND THEY CALLED IT GO-BUSTER BEET!"

...

There's some real interesting stuff this episode is doing with its narrative, but a lot of the second half of this one for me felt like a toy commercial. It's fun to watch, but it wasn't what landed most with me this time out.

At the very least, there's a pretty strong connection between the toy commercial stuff and the narrative, in the sense that it's a ton of mecha action in a story about the two dudes with a passion for mechanical engineering, debuting the robot of the one dude who designed his himself, while also making his opponent a cheap villainous knockoff of his design. Thus allowing Jin to sort of demonstrate that personal engineer pride by triumphing over it in battle. This is Go-Busters we're talking about, after all -- connecting the mecha stuff with the overall plots as much as possible was a conscious focus.

Anyway, good episode for Ryuuji again, even if, like back in episode 8, I didn't appreciate what he offers the show as much at first. His dynamic with Jin is fun for reasons that are mostly opposite to Hiromu. Obviously their personalities are still quite different, but Jin and Ryuuji share an interest and even some history together in a way that once again gives interactions between this particular combo clear avenues for unique drama.

Plus, Jin even brings out the best in Kuroki while he's at it! Having someone around who treats Kuroki as a work buddy rather than The Commander really lets him start feeling more human in a way that feels very appropriate for this show. Again, Jin and J, man! Once upon a time, I could've imagined this show without them, but like, after seeing all that they add, I'd never want to bother.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Androzani84

So here we are, at the debut of our 6th Ranger mech, Buster Heracles.

Well, I suppose Go-Buster Beet's immense strength could be described as herculean in nature...

[Sunred]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sh Ranger

I'm sure there's a way to make that meal work. Maybe as pancake topping? I'd eat it.

Perhaps.

[Kamen Rider Die]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Androzani84

Also, our Metaloid and accompanying Megazord is based on a fork. I like the design, but the motif is fairly lame and this is where I noticed the repetitive ?steal energy? plots I complained about a while back, so there?s some points against it.

I'm still okay with it! I think the specific setup here -- Enter stealing Jin's Enetron to pay Jin back for stealing the Vagras' Enetron -- makes it feel more personal and less some scheme the Busters happened upon. Enter really wants to mess with Jin and J here, and that's a little different than normal.

Also, I love Forkroid! The Over-Time subs have him saying he's going to fork the Busters up, and that's delightful.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

Obviously their personalities are still quite different, but Jin and Ryuuji share an interest and even some history together in a way that once again gives interactions between this particular combo clear avenues for unique drama.

And speaking of making things personal -- I really enjoyed how clearly annoyed Jin is at how Ryuji has squandered his potential in the name of being a nice guy and a good brother. Jin's story with Ryuji has a level of regret and anger to it that his story with Hiromu pointedly didn't. Jin's got an investment in Ryuji -- literally, in that he's going to be making regular withdrawals from Ryuji's bank account.

[Kamen Rider Die]

TOKUMEI SENTAI GO-BUSTERS MISSION 18 - “A JOINT OPERATION AT 3000 METERS”



If the last three episodes were about Jin (and, to a lesser extent, J) testing the Busters to figure out if they could be of use in the battle against the Vagras, this episode is about the Busters trying to decide if Jin (and, to a lesser extent, J) is going to be able to work with them to defeat the Vagras. We’re out of the Can We Trust Jin (And, To A Lesser Extent, J) woods, and the attendant questions of identity and history and motivation, and onto the brass tacks of whether or not the efficient, militarized Go-Busters can work alongside a golden asshole and a silver dick to get literally anything done.

I think you can call this one a success, both in-universe and out? The Drillroid and Alpha Megazord are dispatched, and it’s down entirely to the cooperation of all five Busters. It kicks off in a way that seems guaranteed for failure, and utterly predictable – Jin shows up with his I’ll Take It From Here energy, kidnapping Hiromu (hilarious), browbeating Ryuji (effective), and leaving J behind to team with Yoko to take down the Metaroid (delightful). But then it slowly but surely pivots into a story that exposes Jin as willing to go along on someone else’s ride, and J as willing to think of someone outside of himself.

Let’s start with Jin first! While it’s funny to start off with Jin once again just doing his own plan, it’s already starting to wear thin, and I think the show gets that. We don’t want to be in a series where cool guy Jin shows up to take over every scene, while Kurorin blusters impotently back at base. There needs to be a sense of equality here, which is what the three Busters managed previously. So the story slowly layers in Jin’s trust in Ryuji to keep them all safe, since it’s what Ryuji’s best at, and lets Hiromu tweak Jin’s plan when the facts on the ground start to change. As soon as Hiromu says he has a plan, Jin’s all in on it, no questions asked. It’s a spirit of teamwork that feels like a natural outgrowth of the shit Jin put everyone through over the last three episodes, and it makes it seem like he needs the team to believe in him, as much as he needs to know if the team’s worth believing in.

On the other side of the episode, we have a terrific outing for J and Yoko. It’s mostly just Yoko playing the straight woman to J’s baffling lack of clarification and constant indifference to anything happening outside of his own head, which is fantastic, but it resolves itself into a nice lesson of letting people be weird and not judging them. If it never quite reaches the same level of character-driven success as the Jin story, well… I mean, J isn’t as deep a character, and I think “poignant comic relief” is maybe all we should really ask for from a Super Buddyroid.

Really strong episode for moving us out of the New Character Smell of Beet Buster and Stag Buster, and into a series that feels like all five Busters are operating at the same level of investment from the production team.



IT’S TIME FOR Drillroid!

Again, I love a monster that is just trying to do its job, and can’t understand why it’s getting hassled by Sentai heroes. Drillroid’s sheepish apologies and I’m Just A Simple Drill catchphrase made me honestly feel a little bad for him, as the Busters just start whupping on him as he’s wandering confused around a power plant. Hard to evoke sympathy as a drill-covered Metaroid, but this guy managed it!

[Androzani84]

The one with… a really weird translation choice on OT’s part. Basically, in the first half of the episode, there’s a scene where Yoko tries translating “Beet J Stag” into Japanese, resulting in “Kabuto J Kuwagata”. But OT, in all their infinite wisdom, decided that it didn’t make sense for her to speak Japanese (?) and changed it to her translating it into Latin, despite Latin not even being taught in the majority of schools in the west, let along the east. And Yoko is definitely not the type of person who’d go out of her way to learn a dead language.

Aside from that note, it’s a Mouri episode, we get all 5 Buster Machines operating without combining, a rarity post the first few episodes (individual mecha fights in Sentai are a lot like Kamen Riders on their bikes: mostly confined to early episodes) and the rare case of a monster suit being recycled as a different monster with the same motif.

[Kamen Rider Die]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Androzani84

Aside from that note, it?s a Mouri episode, we get all 5 Buster Machines operating without combining, a rarity post the first few episodes (individual mecha fights in Sentai are a lot like Kamen Riders on their bikes: mostly confined to early episodes) and the rare case of a monster suit being recycled as a different monster with the same motif.

No Enter, either, but that sort of works in this episode. With five characters across two divergent plots, there's probably no room for the standard scene of Enter getting yelled at by Messiah, and then swanning around before activating a Metaroid. We gotta go right into the action! The Megazord's already here!

[Fish Sandwich]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

TOKUMEI SENTAI GO-BUSTERS MISSION 18 - “A JOINT OPERATION AT 3000 METERS”

...

IT’S TIME FOR Drillroid!

Again, I love a monster that is just trying to do its job, and can’t understand why it’s getting hassled by Sentai heroes.

These sort of blue-collar monsters of the week are one of my favorite things in Super Sentai. (Or any toku show that does something similar, for that matter.) I adore that middle-ground they occupy where they're perfectly happy to pull some villainous scheme on behalf of whatever evil mastermind, but they themselves are doing the work with no particular malice. It's like, even the mooks have gotta make ends meet somehow, you know?

Anyway, perhaps because I take the writing quality of this series for granted, the thing that sticks the most in my memory about this episode is what's right there in the title. Just seeing Go-Buster Ace in some deep cave instead of the usual city set is such a break from the norm that it left a strong impression on me for the visual variety alone.

...To the point I forgot this is also the one where Yoko and J get to hang out, even though I remember that quite a bit too, especially because it was probably when I started warming up to J. 10/10 combo right there! (Of course, every combo in this show is a 10/10 combo, but still.)

[Kamen Rider Die]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

Anyway, perhaps because I take the writing quality of this series for granted, the thing that sticks the most in my memory about this episode is what's right there in the title. Just seeing Go-Buster Ace in some deep cave instead of the usual city set is such a break from the norm that it left a strong impression on me for the visual variety alone.

It was a very cool visual, yeah, and I also appreciated how much effort needed to go into defeating the Megazord this time out. It wasn't just figuring out how to overpower it in the city like usual, it was a puzzle they had to solve to even confront it, and then a strategy need to be devised on the fly once the battle actually started. Fun story!

[Kamen Rider Die]

TOKUMEI SENTAI GO-BUSTERS MISSION 19 - “MY COMBINATION! BUSTER HERCULES”



I don’t want to make a big deal about this episode’s title, because I don’t think it’s some massive problem, but it’s alarming and frustrating that anyone in the production team could look at this stellar, emotional episode about Nick and Hiromu and go The Whole Episode Is About The New Buster Machine Combination In The Final 90 Seconds Actually. I get that these shows exist by the grace of toy companies, but it honestly feels a little insulting to treat a strongly-written episode like this as merely the runway that allows for some new toy design to be promoted to a nation’s children. I don’t like it!

I did like this episode, though; quite a bit. It’s not the most complicated story of all time – Nick feels like he isn’t special enough to be Hiromu’s partner, mostly in light of the new Super Buddyroid that everyone’s losing their minds over – but it’s so evocatively told, and leverages so much of the weird relationship between Hiromu and Nick, that I am okay with a simple story that hits the bullseye.

This was a nice compliment to the recent Jin Is So Cool quartet, focusing instead on how J’s combat abilities and heroic demeanor can make the other Non-Super Buddyroids feel diminished by comparison. While Usada and Gorisaki have clearly defined roles on the team outside of their integration with Buster Machines (although Usada’s designation as a sorter of data feels a little invented on the spot), Nick’s just… the Bike Guy. He’s a partner for Hiromu, but not in the close way that Gorisaki and Usada are with their Busters. Nick’s just, like, how Hiromu gets to work. He’s not a teammate, he’s a chauffeur.

Nick’s crisis gives us an absolutely unforgettable montage of him trying out different specialties – chef, painter, model? – before accidentally landing on the thing he’s always been good at: raising kids. Usada’s still in the middle of helping Yoko become an adult, and Gorisaki was way too late to be more than a butler to Ryuji, but Nick’s been a formative influence in Hiromu’s life since he was 7. While Nick looks at himself as surplus to requirements, the only reason the Go-Busters are as effective as they are is because Nick showed Hiromu how to pursue a goal and see it through. Nick’s value is, and always has been, his ability to get people to believe in themselves. (Arguably something he’s too good at, considering how Hiromu turned out!)

We get a pretty fantastic pep-talk from Hiromu to wrap things up, which is always a treat, considering how perennially ill-suited Hiromu is at making anyone feel better through dialogue. His point here is a good one, which is that it’s hard for Hiromu to believe in himself if Nick – the one he learned resolve and strength from – can’t believe in himself, so get it together and be that source of strength that everyone depends on. It’s a fun way of honoring the bond between Hiromu and Nick, re-establishing Nick’s spot in the Buddyroid hierarchy, and reminding the audience that helping other people become their best selves is maybe cooler than jumping into battle as a silver superhero. (I… am not sure about that last one, but this episode has me in a good mood, so I’ll let the show have it.)



IT’S TIME FOR Red Buster!

You cannot have a successful Nick spotlight episode without Hiromu being his most abrasive and difficult, and boy did this episode not disappoint on that front. He instantly finds Nick’s quest for meaning to be less interesting than the coffee he just grabbed from the kitchenette. He meets Nick’s self-doubt with a stone-faced scolding. His climactic pep-talk basically amounts to I Can’t Be As Awesome As Usual Without You Getting Your Shit Together. And then he calls back the Bike Guy thing at the end just to needle Nick! I love it! I love how much of a dick Hiromu is to everyone he cares about!

[Androzani84]

So here we are, at another episode of Shimoyama’s. And like I pointed out last time, he resolutely refuses to focus on the main Busters, or the “steal Energy” plots, instead having the focus of the episode and the evil plan of the week be Nick. And it’s a pretty fun episode on top of it, if I remember correctly (it’s been a while).

And I have to say, I love Buster Heracles having a whole second face hidden under Go-Buster Beet’s. Definitely helps it stand out more than “Go-Buster Beet with a new arm” (and to add a bit of toyline foreshadowing, SJ-05 has the same joint engineering as RH-03)