Sunday, February 24, 2013

Kyoryuger: first impressions and contrast with Go-Busters

After watching the first two episodes of Kyoryuger, here are my frist feelings about that series, and I will also do a comparison with Go-Busters, because it's very striking how those two series are really the opposite of each other.
The first striking point of Kyoryuger, as seen in the first two episodes, is how energetic that series is: plenty of action, and of course, plenty of hot-bloodedness, which pretty much fits the dinosaur theme of the season. Moreover, even if we begin to learn the background of the heroes, the series takes its time to have them know and appreciate each other. In contrast, Go-Busters, especially in its first episodes, was pretty low key, and rather focused on explaining the drama that the characters have undergone when they were children, the importance of Enetron and the general context, and all the characters had a pretty serious tone, and shared a similar background.
Another major contrast is that Kyoryuger's designs ( especially seen with the Kyoryubase, the villains, and even, in a way, the mechas) are colorful, fun looking, when Go-Busters's designs were more stern and more dull.
While Go-Busters had a very "professional team" feeling, Kyoryuger looks more like "a bunch of misfits put together to fight an enemy force".
Now, more insight about what I think of Kyoryuger based on the first two episodes; my feelings are pretty much the same that those I had when watching the scans and learning about the heroes's background, the supporting characters and the villains.
The heroes are, as I said, pretty colorful, all showing a real personality. Even if Kyoryuger doesn't avoid the stereotypes (Red being hot blooded and enthusiastic, Blue is the soft guy, clumsy and unsure of himself but overall a good guy, and Pink, a rebel princess, who wants to be (and in fact already is) a badass princess), the series uses them nicely. Moreover, the supporting characters seen so far (Blue's sister and niece, and Pink's servant) help make us care about those heroes, because it makes their personalities feel more human. It's gonna be interesting to learn more about Green next week, especially his relationship with his father (besides, having Ayumi Kinoshita (Dekayellow) and Junichi Haruta (Goggle Black/ Dynablack) (to be seen next week) is always a treat. Even if we don't know a lot so far about Green and Black (Green is gonna have focus in next week's episode), they seem to  have potential as well.
Torin is a very nice surprise: while in the scans he looked pretty silly, his voice actor is great, and perfectly makes the big bird (or perhaps feathered dinosaur) feel like a mentor figure.
The villains are a mixed bag: while they are pretty colorful, I don't feel they have much potential, storytelling wise, because they seem pretty much one dimensional ; Chaos seems to be an adequate villain boss, but his underlings look more like a silly bunch. However, seeing three of the generals leave the base to go to the field, with Aigaron even fighting was nice; (and Dogold is likely gonna fight next week) was nice. Another nice idea was to have the mooks being able to assemble together to make big monsters; it's a nice twist from the usual "becoming big" mooks seen in Shinkenger and Gokaiger. 
The action, the mechas, the weapons are pretty fun so far, with a fun use of the dinosaur theme, and the samba stuff isn't too much invasive.

Kyoryuger has a nice beginning. However, like a lot of recent sentai series, it is a risk of suffering from plot stalling, especially given its relatively one dimensional villain group,  and I really hope that Riku Sanjo is gonna write a worthy storyline for Kyoryuger.


1 comment:

  1. After seeing 2 episodes of Kyoryugers, I still miss Gobusters as most "TRUE" Sentai fans will fine my comment insane.
    Toei pretty much is running out of ideas as "Themes" will be recycled for three times. We have went through Electronics, Cars, now Dinosaurs. Very soon they will do Ninjas but that will he a different story.
    It is too soon to say as the series is still beginning! It 's not going to out shine Zyuranger anytime soon as Zyuranger has captured what a quintessential Sentai series is.
    What Gobuster lacks in the huge amount of character department, Kyoryugers is making up for. GoBusters only had 5 Busters plus the only three well two villains. Kyoryugers is hinted it a possible 25 Ranger and the total of 5 primary villains as they come off very wooden and silly looking in designs, especially the heart and candy theme villain.

    For now, only Kyoryu Green, Black and Pink are the more potential characters.

    For Go Busters as it is and will be the biggest flawed and unsuccessful series ever!
    I did like the series and very soon I will see.the 50 episode again. The problem within the series. The main characters are not developed as only Masato Jin and Beet J. Stag are way better characters as they are the cool bangai heroes. The costumes in my opinion is the best and original designs with pleather instead of spandex. Unlike Kyoryugers, Go Busters lacked mostly in the props and weapons department.
    For now 2013 is still a fresh year. Lets hope for the best.

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