There’s some toku references floating around in some game threads and LPs, but I didn’t see a general discussion thread for it.
Well let me tell you, LP Zone, there’s nothing nothing on earth like a genuine, bonafide, electrified, NINE RANGER TOKU THREAD!
Hi, I’m kevlarSweaterVest, and I’m a horrible nerd manchild who loves watching brightly colored karate people kick the shit out of foam-rubber monsters.
This is the place to talk about Super Sentai, Kamen Rider, Ultraman, and all the rest. We might as well talk about Power Rangers here, too, since that’s an increasingly stable mobius loop of media.
I might turn this into a proper OP with a billion pictures and gifs later, who knows.
So, I think I love Kyuranger? I think there were some missteps. Red this year is a really lazily-introduced character. He goes from literally having no idea that a massive evil empire controls most of the known universe to immediately wanting to kick its ass. Hopefully they’ll fill him out with some backstory, because right now he’s “heroic vagrant from some galactic backwater who interrupted his road trip to join a paramilitary rebellion force”.
On the other hand, it is SO STYLISH. All the rangers are based on constellations, and their visors are all glittery to imply that they’re full of stars. There’s also a lot of variation in the suits- the non-human rangers all have very divergent features; two of the robots have more armored, rigid-type suits, the third robot has wings, and the wolfman alien’s ranger suit is furry. Their mechs are controlled from a gyroscopic sphere with a cockpit, and all of those comprise separate control cockpits in the giant robot, Voltron-style.
Also, in the preview for episode 2, Libra Gold is posing like DIO,
, which was apparently everything I wanted from life at that moment.
Ex-Aid has been quite good and has me feeling more positive about it than Ghost. The burgster episode was incredible and I couldn’t stop laughing during it.
Here’s a helpful non-spoiler:
Gaim makes a lot more sense once you realize it’s Urobuchi making a Shin Megami Tensei series within the narrative confines of a Kamen Rider. There’s even a Law Hero and a Chaos Hero who aren’t the protagonist.
Ex-Aid is great, yeah. Burgmon was adorable, and also this brings the idea that you don’t have to Rider Kick the Bugster to defeat them.
On Kyuranger, I don’t really like Lucky’s catchphrase, he said it a bit too often in the episode and reminded me of Takaharu in Ninninger. At least he can put some emotion into it.
Also I think that all of the Kyuranger suits are slightly different from each other.
I didn’t really notice it much from Red, but they all have their kinda one-dimensional quirks that will probably get smoothed out over time.
Green is a Shadenfreude Grand Master who thinks it’s hilarious when her friends screw up.
Yellow cannot perceive the world without first categorizing it by way of a metaphor about cooking. Black is Objectively The Best Character, my giant son.
Pink hasn’t gotten her KyuBall yet, I guess, but her shtick appears to be either “your robot mom” or “the only one with her crap together”.
I haven’t been interested in the past few Sentai series, but Kyuranger definitely has my attention. I’m a bit worried about all of the members getting decent characterization considering they’re practically starting with a 9-person team, but the first episode did a good job of at least highlighting their quirks while keeping things moving. Also, the unique suits are fantastic.
I also haven’t been interested in Kamen Rider since I got burned out on Gaim, but I’ve been hearing great things about Ex-Aid and really need to get back to it. It’s kind of funny. In my group of friends, I was the only one who actually liked the suit designs initially, but I’m also the only one who hasn’t kept up with it.
OMG you really need to watch Zyuogher, like all the characters are adorable, (especially the 6th member) fun and great (save for yellow some of the time), the villains are awesome and have depth, and even most of the filler episodes are great. It’s one of my top Sentais alongside ToQger and Gokaiger.
ToQ’s overall execution was really uneven, but:
The villains were great and stole the show. The episodes about drama amongst the Shadow Line generals were by far the best ones.
Their sixth was really good, too. They used a gimmick that they don’t use super often where he’s a defector from the Shadow Line, and so he places ENORMOUS philosophical value to things that are antithetical to Shadow Line’s agenda of static nihilism.
His catchphrase always made me laugh. “This is where I die” Also yes even though I loved the heroes and wanted to hug all of them, the villains were some of the best I’ve seen in a sentai series.
I haven’t gotten into any particular series (mostly due to lack of time), but I love the tokusatsu/sentai aesthetic. I’d just buy all Kamen Rider figures if I could.
I haven’t seen many tokusatsu shows, but I really enjoyed Kamen Rider Fourze and so far Ex-Aid has also been an absolute blast. Gaim is on my list, and since I’m caught up on Ex-Aid, I’m looking to watch that soon. I hear that’s one of the best of the more recent shows.
