1) The heroes
-Hiromu/ Red Buster: Definitely a very worthy hero
character. even if his weakness "the chicken stuff" is definitely silly,
fortunately, it's the only thing that is about Hiromu. As a hero,
Hiromu never stops showing his determination to fight, even despite his
big sister's fears. His bravery, deep resolve to fight makes him a true
hero. Moreover, he manages not to be the traditional "Red ranger", by
having a very blunt character, telling people how they are annoying to
him. However, it seems that through the series, that bluntness is toned
down, and he manages to be more likable. The fact that he's been shown
to disguise as a clown to bring fun to th children confirms that,
despite his bluntness, there is a heart of gold beneath. As the Red
Ranger, he' s the one who has the most powerful rivalry with Enter, and
when there is a rivalry between a great hero and a great villain, it
makes an awesome an powerful rivalry. Lastly, Hiromu, more than Ryuji
and Yoko, understands the most how painful sacrifices are sometimes
needed to the greater good. In the two big climaxes of the series, he's
the one who accepts first to make those sacrifices, and he's the one
who's the most involved in them. To sum up, Hiromu is a true Red ranger
hero, and he shows it when confronted with situations that few former
Red Rangers had to confront. Congrats, Kobayashi, for a great character
-Ryuji/
Blue Buster: the big brother figure. Unlike Hiromu and Yoko, his
weakness is very interesting, because as he becomes a berserker when
overheated, making him become a real destruction machine, it brings real
drama during the fights, because when he's overheating, not only he can
put his teammates in danger, but it can threaten his life too. It's
especially true when Escape is involved, because she wants him to become
that way for her fun. Even if he's the big brother figure of the three
first Go-Busters, he unfortuntely doesn't get much focus, and because
Hiromu is the one who displays the typical "second in command"
personality, he appears as somewhat bland.
-Yoko/ Yellow Buster : the
youngest of the team and the only girl. She shows the typical
characteristics shown in both the "child " and "girl" members of a
sentai team. Her weakness " her need for sweets, otherwise she can't
move" is a mildy interesting one, but not bad. As the youngest, she's
the one who is the most forced to grow up during the series, both by
having to be confroned by the fights, the sacrifices, and Ryuji's
overheated personality. Even if she undoubtly grows up during that year,
she doesn't have that much focus during the series, but the character
is reasonably well written for what she is; however she isn't a very memorable sentai heroine.
- Jin Masato/ Beet
Buster : Ryuji's mentor, he was involved in the tragic event that makes
the core storyline of the series. Even if he's managed not to be
completely sucked into Messiah, unlike Hiromu and Yoko's parents, his
body has however been partially been afftected, and he's forced to stay
in a capsule, appearing as an avatar and fighting with the others as
Beet Buster, thanks to his Buddyroid J. When he appears, he shows a
pretty fun personality, joking around, showing a reckless personality
and he's a strong contrast with the serious tone of the other
Go-Busters. He always wants to have the spotlight, and whenever J tries
to upstage him, he shows J his annoyance about that. However, it's
obvious that beneath this playful personality, he's in fact very aware
of the horror of his situation, which is only a little better than the
other EMC's fate; in episode 34, J reveals that the most Jin acts silly,
the most he suffers, and that it's his way to cope with his situation.
Even if he suffers from a lack of focus during the series, since his
real situation is only sparingly shown (we only see his real body for
the first time in episode 30, we see the sorry state of its body in
episode 40, and the series only deals with his status during the
finale), fortunately, the finale more than makes up for it, and he's the
one who brings the most emotion during that finale. He's well aware
that he has to be sacrificed to allow the others to finish Enter, and,
like the EMC staff in episode 30, he's the one who makes the Busters
realize the improtance of painful sacrifices. Even if he descibes his
situation while smiling, it's most than obvious that that smile is full
of pain, and it's thanks to Jin and his selfless sacrifice that
Go-Busters has such a climactic and emotional finale.
2) The Buddyroids
Chida
Nick (cheetah like robot) : Hiromu's buddyroid, who is able to become a
bike : he's the one who's been involved with raising Hiromu. Even is he
always shows deep concern and care about Hiromu, he often is showsn as a
pretty silly character, notably with his complete sense of direction.
However, he's manages to be an average character
Gorisaki (gorilla
like robot): Ryuji's Buddyroid andprobably one of the most annoying
characters, because of his worrywart personality. He doesn't really have
very interesting development .
Usada (rabbit like robot) : Yoko's
Buddyroid, and a smartass who never hesitates to tell about the silly
side of her. Like Gorisaki,, he doesn't get much deveolpment either,
even if he's slightly less annoying.
Chida, Gorisaki and Usada are
usually staying in the base, but starting with episode 33, they've been
involved in the fights as the Powered Morphins
- Beet J Stag (beetle
like robot)/ Stag Buster : Jin's Buddyroid. Despite being a robot, he
has one of the most interesting and fun personalities in the show. He's
completely egocentric, seemingly only caring about himself, wanting to
show off, keeping a serious tone even when he's doing pretty silly
stuff. As the comically serious, he's bringing a lot of laughs during
the series. However, like Jin, J has hidden depths. Despite being
apparently egocentric, several episodes, especially the finale, show how
much he cares for Jin, and how he suffers when he sees Jin putting
himself in danger, and how he doesn't want him to play with his life. As
the finale shows, he's been deeply affected by Jin's sacrifice, and
misses him very much.
3) Supporting cast:
Energy Maintenance Center crew
Takeshi
Kuroki: the leader of the team: he's a pretty classic commander figure,
and he's very serious and ready to do everything to eradicate the
Vaglass threat. Unfortunately, he doesn't show more development
Toru
Morishita and Miho Nakamura : the two assistants, they're the ones who
are detecting the appearances of the Metaloids and Megazords; they
pretty much play a "communication officer" role, and they don"t have
much development beyond that.
Other characters
Hiromu's sister :
she's very reluctant to have her brother fight the Vaglass, but she's
forced to accept it, notably because of her brother's determination to
fight. In the few episodes we're seeing her, she's shown as a somewhat
overprotective figure, but eventually a likable one
4) The Villains
The Vaglass: one thing that I've been enjoying is that most of the
Vaglass have been played by face actors (human looking villains) instead
of suit actors
Messiah: the apparent Big Bad virus responsible of
the tragic events which starts the storyline: he's the virus which tried
to turn everything into his own data the day of Christmas, 13 years
before the beginning of the series, and he's only been stopped by being
sent to hyperspace by Hiromu's Messiah is shown mostly as a red skull
full of data: he always seems to be angry, with a completel lust for
destruction, and has a pretty childish personality. Eventually, it's
obvious that Messiah isn't a really interesting Big Bad, more a
destructive force than anything else : the true main villain and real
Big Bad of the series is of course
Enter: an avatar made by Messiah
from various data. He's the one who is the mastemind of every plot
during the whole series, and he's pretty much a one man army. He's the
one who creates most of the Metaloids, and as a result, the Megazords,
and in the first half of the series, he's involved in helping Messiah
have enough energy to get out of Hyperspace. He's shown as a pretty
competent villain, beign able to get some victories during the first
half of the series, to make a new type of Megazord. He's also a very
active vilain, often being involved in fights against the heroes. He at
first shows a playful personality, especially by a huge use of
gratuitous French. However, whenever he feels that he's been
outsmarted, his playful side disappears, and he shows very powerful
feelings of rage and hate. He has a very high opinion of himself,
eventually wanting to become the perfect human, the most perfect
creature in the world, and whenever he underestimates his enemies, he
tries to discover why to be able to be even stronger against them.
Indeed, he realized, when Hiromu decided to sacrifice his family to shut
down Messiah a first time in hyperspace, how he's underestimated Red
Buster's determination, and how he understood the spirit of sacrifice of
the former EMC team trapped in Messiah, even when it involved his
father. As a result, he decided a new plan, with the Messiah cards
allowing him to get data from people, to understand them better and use
that data to make him the strongest being in the world. After watching
Escape getting a powerup, he gets also one for himself. Enter has a very
powerful rivalry with Red Buster; he's fascinated by him, so much that
he manages to become a twisted version of Red Buster, and of all humans,
it's Hiromu's data he seeks the most, and succeed to get, managing to
become a twisted version of Red As a very smart villain, he put a
Messiah card inside of Hiromu's body, deeply aware that it would be safe
there, so he's able to come back even if he's seemingly destroyed.
When he reveals the Busters Hiromu's status as a back up, he knows he's
putting the heroes in a very difficult dilemma, even if Hiromu has shown
to be able to do the ultimate sacrifice. However, he once again
underestimated the powerful spirit of sacrifice of the heroes, and
notably, Jin Masato's, a character he never really focused about, and
that mistake eventually became his downfall.
Even if Enter's
development has shown a few inconsistencies, notably because of the big
changes Go-Busters underwent in the middle of the series, for the most
part, Enter has been shown as a very powerful villain, one of the most
well done and intense sentai villains of the sentai franchise.
Escape:
a female avatar created form diverse data, appearing in the middle of
the series. She's been created by Messiah, and displays mostly two
personalities traits: a big lust to intense fighting, with powerful
opponents, and a big devotion to her Papa. As a result, she's always
ready to directly fight her opponents She even is able to get more
powerful, because of both those elements. Her lust for fights proves to
be very dangerous for Ryuji, because she enjoys a lot fighting him in
his beserker overheated state, Unfortunately, she never really manages
to show herself as a true game changer, because her personality never
goes beyond her lust to fight and Papa love, and as such, it's still
Enter who remains the only true main villain of the series. Enter
doesn't like her, but is well aware she may be useful, and mostly
tolerates her. She eventually is revealed to only be used a sa pawn by
both Messiah and Enter, and at the end, is more seen as a corrupted
program than anything else. Because at the end of the series, she's been
repeatly shut down and then resurrected, her defeats feels pretty
anticlimactic, and it eventually made her look like a weak villainess
-
The Metaloids (and Messiah Metaloids): robotic like opponents, made
from objects from everyday life infected by the Metavirus: they rarely
showed very interesting personalities, and were pretty seen as Enter's
mere tools.
- The Megazords: one interesting twist of Go-Busters was,
instead of having the small villain being turned big, to have giant
robots being made at the same time as the Metaloid, using first three
basic models (alpha, beta, Gamma), and adding some of the Metaloid's
design. Enter eventually managed to make another type, the Delta type,
based on BC-04 's design, but it didn't really bring a lot more. Lastly,
Enter and Escape have been able to have their own type of Zords. It
allowed an interesting situation where some of the hereos were fighting
the big Megazord, when the others were fighting the human sized
Metaloid.
-The robotic buglers mooks were reasonably well done
5) The action and mechas
I'm
not the best to review the "action and technical side" of a sentai
series. However, I can say that the action was pretty well done, with
nice fights, notably the ones between the heroes and Enter.
The
mechas: the series decided to use both the animal and vehicle motifs,
with each mecha having both a vehicle mode and an animal mode
(Cheetah/Car (CB 01), Gorilla/ Truck (GT-02), Rabbit/Helicopter (RH-03),
Rhinoceros beetle/ Crane (BC-04), Stag Beetle/Jet (SJ-05), and
Lion/Bike (LT-06 ;Tategami Lioh); the movie had also a frog/ submarine
(FS 0O) which also appeared in an episode) ; besides, CB 01, BC-04 and
LT-06 being able to be big robots. If the robots made from one robots
did look pretty fine, especially Go-Buster Ace or Go-Buster Lioh,
unfortunately, most of the big robot using more than one mecha, like
Go-Buster-Oh, Great Go-Buster, or Go-Buster king, looked pretty bulky
and were more often than not pretty ugly looking
6) Storyline and episodes:
And
here is the biggest issue with Go-Busters: even if it had a very
powerful and very emotional storyline, the series suffers from very
badly done storytelling that really harms a lot the series. It proves
that Kobayashi has a lot of trouble handling a 50 episode long story, as
Go-Busters suffered a lot at first from plot stalling. Besides, the
more than likely executive meddling made it even worse.
Basic
storyline: At Christmas day, 13 years before the beginning of the
series, a computer virus, Messiah, became completely berserk,and
threatened to destroy the world by assimilating everything aroung it. To
stop Messiah, the Energy Management Center didn't have any choice than
bringing Messiah and the whole Energy Management Center (EMC) building,
including themselves, into an alternate dimension, while, at the same
time, three kids, including two of the children of some of the Energy
Management Center were sent from that dimension to the real world with
special abilities to be able to fight Messiah and his underlings, the
Vaglass, as the Go-Busters. That basic storyline shows amazing
potential, with the heroes having a deep and personal motivation to
fight, because of how they've been personally affected by the Vaglass
and how they hoped to save their families. Unfortunately, after episode
1, the series seemed to go pretty nowhere, with the most notable story
arc, Enter trying to make a new type of Megazord having a very
anticlimactic conclusion. In my opinion, the series suffered a lot of
having only ONE meaningful villain (Enter) during the first 21 episodes,
because it made the series look pretty repetitive, since Enter had
almost noone to interact with. Moreover, the intro arc of Beet Buster
and Stag Buster felt pretty lacking, because it hasn't been done in a
very climactic way. Even the arrival of Escape, while bringing a little
more diversity in the villain cast, couldn't really avoid the feeling
that nothing really meaningful happened during that first half of the
series. And then we have episode 29 and 30, when the core plot of the
series, the fight against Messiah is dealt in a pretty rushed way;
episode 30, with the heroes having to make the ultimate sacrifice, and,
pretty much, basically concluding the main plot of the series, looked
pretty much like a series finale, which is not really appropriate when
you're in the middle of the series. The fact that a two part episode
crossover with Gavan just after episode 30, without any time to deal
with how the heroes coped with what happened after that powerful arc,
made it even worse. To finish the series, a new plot, the "Messiah
cards" plot, with Enter as a central character, has been introduced out
of nowhere, with Enter revealing that it has made Messiah's back up
cards. During the second half of the series, fortunately, the plot
stalls much less, with the heroes and villains getting Power ups,
intense fights and of course, a five episode final arc which ended to be
very powerful. However, it doesn't prevent the series to still have
some problematic storytelling problems, mostly caused by the fact that
Go-Busters had too few main villains, and, as a result uses too much the
"seemingly killed, then going back to life" plot trick, that eventually
feels very tiring, especially with Escape. Escape alos suffers from
never having been a true challenge to Enter's supermacy among the
Vaglass.
Except the Escape part, the five episode final arc of the
series was amazingly well done, showing Enter as a very worthy Big Bad. A
very good point however of Go-Busters is the fact that it avoids the
"Happy ending feeling", in both the finales; okay, the world is saved,
but the Busters have failed to save, first their parents, and then, Jin.
It brings a very bittersweet feeling, and it makes the endings (both of
them) very realistic and sincere.
7) Conclusion
Go-Busters is a
show that had an amazing potential, with very powerful storyline, and
some very well done characters. However the series suffered a lot from
huge storytelling problems, which unfortunately really harms the quality
of the series, with plenty of plot stalling and some repetitive plots ;
the Gavan crossover was especially pretty pointless. The series seems
to be in two parts, each one having a plot, and the two parts are
somexhat inconsistents with each other; if making Messiah's back ups was
so easy, why only do it so late? It's obvious that the "Messiah card"
plot wasn't planned a the beginning. Moreover, it even makes Enter's
loyality towards Messiah feel inconsistent: in the first half, he's
annoyed by Messiah, but is mostly loyal to him, while in the second
part, he only sees Messiah as a tool. It would be understandable if he
wished the Go-Busters to shut down the big Messiah in episode 29-30, but
he never shows such desire, and even fight the heroes very strongly.
Besides, having basically two "season finale like arcs" feels very
awkward, and episode 50, despite being a very powerful and gripping
episode, feels somewhat very similar to episode 30, especially with the
dilemma that the heros have to confront. That said, by choosing to have a
bittersweet ending instead of a happy one was a very fine idea: Jin's
sacrifice in episode 50 was pretty unexpected, and it really brought
even more emotion.
My final score for Go-Buster is C ; awesome
potential, but very very flawed execution. It's especially annoying
because Go-Busters has been revealed to be unpopular, which means that
Kyoryuger unfortunately might be too goofy, because Toei is gonna be
afraid to use Go-Busters like stuff ( it's especially a shame, since
Go-Busters could have been the first year with the big come back of
mostly human looking villains in the sentai franchise).
Hope you're gonna enjoy that review
