ToQger First Impressions

Well I've seen the premiere of ToQger and yes this is a bit late, but better late than never. Its time to get down to business. Based on the information that was released early on, it was clear that this show was seemingly going for a light tone. What did I think of it? You'll find out soon enough.

The episode opens with a nice bit of narration about the importance of imagination. We see a train from the Shadow Line abducting children and surprisingly there is an adult on board. Suddenly we see the dark train being chased down by 5 trains from the Rainbow Line. After a battle between the trains, the dark train is driven to a dead stop and we're shortly introduced to our heroes: The ToQgers, well 4 of them anyway as Right doesn't join until later in the episode.

The dark train's design is decent enough with a nice looking albeit very generic skull on the front. It should also be noted that the miniatures for the show look fantastic. I'm a bit mixed on the theme song. It is decently exciting but it might get rather annoying at some point. As for the ToQgers, the color scheme is about what would be expected with the colors being red, blue, yellow, green, and pink. Though it is nice that they went with a nice bright shade of green instead of the usual shade. The color swapping however could use some work. In the premiere it just gets played off as a flashy way for them to simply switch weapons and it really doesn't affect their fighting ability in any way.

I was expecting each color to be linked to a specific ability and by assuming that color, a ToQger could gain access to that ability. The cast seems interesting enough and imagination being the source of their power is a cool idea. Its really interesting that Kagura can use her own imagination to augment her physical abilities and I'm wondering if the other ToQgers can do something like that as well. Her signature weapon is also a bit twisted in a sense as she used it to shrink some foot soldiers and began literally crushing them like ants. However it is an interesting idea for a weapon regardless. Personality-wise, I don't mind Right at the moment, for now he is just a reckless guy. He even went so far as to jump onto a moving train before grabbing his henshin device.

That just might be my favorite gag in the premiere.

The design for ToQ-Oh is just massive and way too bulky though I will give the designers some points for going with full-size trains and instead of just giving each ToQger an individual train car. ToQ-Oh actually moved a lot better than its design would imply. Given its overly bulky design, it definitely wouldn't be the most agile mecha so it was a great idea to have it fight on tracks. The villains' designs are interesting though the premiere didn't give us much insight into their personalities.

In terms of the comedy, it had a little too much slapstick from my tastes but it was still enjoyable. I just hope it won't sink to the level of relying too much on the slapstick to get the comedic tone across.

Well those are my thoughts on the premiere. Overall, it was a decent premiere and it looks like the show will be fun. I'm not going to set my hopes too high. All I can hope now is that the show will be entertaining and not rely on padding as much as Kyoryuger did because that can really hurt the show.