Ryusoulger 02 released

[takenoko]

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Previous episode rating: 3.47 / 5 (17 votes)

Alt Title: All over the place

Because of how uneven the episode is, I'm going to do the unusual thing of breaking up my rating across a few topics

Characters 2/5
It's just so uneven and it still feels rushed. I get red is supposed to be spirited, but he's also naive, but uncharacteristically competent in battle, and none of that really meshes together into a cohesive character for me.

Pink and blue only get bit parts again and don't help with the mecha fight, wah wah.

Considering this is the first episode with Ui and her dad interacting with the Ryusoulgers, they really don't give much time to developing just what their relationship is. Amazingly, green and black get even less screen time. All these lead to...

Story 1/5
Yeah, this story sucks so far. We're just going from place to place to chase the McGuffin, oops, now we're distracted by a Minusaur. They literally drop their main goal of finding Kishiryuu to A) Find a fencing tournament B) Then they get distracted by a Minusaur. Then, when red's looking for the wife and kid, he immediately finds them, and they know where the Kishiryuu are. If this were well-written, all these things would be playing into each other in some sort of cohesive, logical progression.

But as it is, it's just a bunch of problems solved with Deus Ex Machina. It's hard to get excited if the story and characters aren't supporting each other.

Action 5/5
But after slogging through the episode for 15 minutes, we get to the action. And then you realize where all the budget's gone. No lie, the action looks amazing. The effects are cool and great, like pink and blue fighting the giant Minusaur in just their base ranger forms.

Kishiryuu-Oh reminds me of Ace from Go-Busters. I don't mind the lego gimmick, I think the whole thing looks pretty cool. But again, I have to bemoan red is doing the mecha thing by himself.

Music/Sound 4/5
Rewatching this, it's amazing the little touches they put into the sounds. Like watch the dad, he tosses his cane and there's like a crash of something off screen. And no one draws any attention to it, but it's a funny little nice touch.

So what now?
I'm honestly not a fan of the ZyuDenchi thing where they get a bunch of random powers. Also kind of dumb that there's literally a far ZyuDenchi already and they do it again here.

But before showing me a CGI mess, maybe do some character and world building. I feel like I literally know nothing about blue and pink. And red is a doofus who gets tough in battle. At this point, Ui is the most well-developed character, and she's supposed to be the annoying sidekick, so how did this happen?

Notes:
-Are those goats fucking in the background?
-Only two episodes in and the key to victory is a fart joke.
-Oh, so he's a Headmaster.
-Green and black get screwed over again. Who the hell is that at the end?
-The spear guys are cool looking, but they don't do anything in this episode? Again, I guess Toei is trying to shake things up. This might have been effective on me, since I want to see how those guys fight when they really start showing up.

[Lunagel]

Ay, where to begin?

For starters, that was the most ham-fisted opening explanation I've ever seen. I wouldn't mind if it was a clip show, but re-explaining shit in episode 2 that you already explained in episode 1 is just stupid. Not to mention awkwardly spelling out "hey do you think this evil group that wanted to take over the world is trying to take over the world again?" Children aren't that dumb, they can figure out stuff for themselves. This was a prime example of a point where they should've used "show don't tell".

The interaction with Ui and her dad was incredibly forced. I know they have to throw them together somehow but they were just thrown together. And the Dad's like "3 suspicious strangers moving in? Alright, my daughter has friends!"

Seeing as "YouTuber" is one of the most popular answers to "What do you want to be when you grow up?" recently (it's up there with "idol" and "train conductor") I can only assume that Ui is an attempt to appeal to the tech generation, but it's not done well. If Ui turns out to be a super unpopular YouTuber I'll be satisfied but I doubt they'll take that direction.

The fencing subplot felt squeezed in and frankly superfluous. The guy doesn't deserve a family if he's going to abandon them for TWO FUCKING YEARS so he can do fuck all. What even is the point of that?! Wouldn't you want your family cheering you on? Wouldn't you want to save on rent?

Ladies and Gentlemen! {Banana new shoe}

[Slowking]

The interaction with Ui and her dad was incredibly forced. I know they have to throw them together somehow but they were just thrown together. And the Dad's like "3 suspicious strangers moving in? Alright, my daughter has friends!"

Yeah that was bad. Although I felt that Ui by herself in other scenes (at the hospital or outside the fencing arena) had some moments which show a completely different person to ep 1 - perhaps she gets how serious this is?

Also regarding the three of them moving in, it could have been done better; at least Professor Amachi made the Goseiger work for him to be able to stay at his place.

The fencing subplot felt squeezed in and frankly superfluous. The guy doesn't deserve a family if he's going to abandon them for TWO FUCKING YEARS so he can do fuck all. What even is the point of that?! Wouldn't you want your family cheering you on? Wouldn't you want to save on rent?

I know they tried to say that the Minosaur would target the rival in order to explain the "random building gets attacked and character of the day's rival happens to be in that building" but I didn't buy that at all. That was bad.

Also the wife and child seem pretty happy and not at all saddened by his absence.

Ladies and Gentlemen! {Banana new shoe}

lol

[takenoko]

Oh yeah, I totally forgot to complain about the fencing subplot. I just hate how it's resolved. Bad writing, bad!

And he gets them back without learning a lesson or changing his ways. Why is he even apologizing? If you thought what you were doing was wrong, don't abandon your wife and child for two years. Everything about it was unsatisfying.

[Dengar]

Yeah no. I'm this close to dropping it already. Ryusoul Red being such a huge idiot totally came out of left field to me. And it's not even the likable kind of idiot. Fuck that shit. I give them one more episode. After that I'll just settle for catching up on Gokaiger or something.

And some people may remember me defending pretty much anything (even KR Ghost) so this is really saying something.

[KamenriderDuel]

This show is what would happen if some kid asked a genie for better mech fights in Sentai. His wish is granted, but at the cost of literally everything else in the show. The in suit fights are pretty good too, but I'm starting to accept the fact that I'll be watching fifteen to twenty minutes of garbage for a good five or so minutes of solid mech combat. Here's hoping that black and green will balance out this show a little bit.

[BreadToku]

Gonna reiterate what others are saying about the story and characters being less than stellar so far. I know we're only on episode two, but I feel like we don't even really have the basics of everyone's personalities yet. Also the very first victim-of-the-week victim happens to be ridiculously unsympathetic.

I talked about how the first episode felt like it made sure to throw everything it can out the gate to make sure to sell as much as possible, and I feel this episode proves it in hindsight. We have Kou learning to work together with Tyramigo, and we have the debut of it's standalone robot mode in this episode. But both of these things aren't at all a big moment because we had him piloting the full mecha combination in the first episode!

Ah, well. The swordplay choreography is looking great though, perhaps on-par with LVSP's dynamic marksmanship, as was all the cool shots of our heroes fighting a giant monster with just their various weapons, though I don't think this is going to last for too many episodes more. What I do hope lasts is the quaity of that mecha fight. I'm definitely reminded of Go-Buster Ace as well, along with V-Rex from Timeranger. This thing is incredibly cool in both dinosaur and humanoid modes, and I don't think I'll get tired of watching it any time soon.

[Catastrophe]

So this episode felt a little rideresque to me. Guy has problem and monster is created from it and team resolve it. What are the chances they find his family straight away?

Sentais strength is the episodes are character focused. I didn't really feel that from this episode. They hardly fought the monster either. At least the robot fight was a good chunk of the episode.

The robed guy is definitely the grandfather. Couldn't have made it any more obvious.

[resop2]

I have figured out Ui's back story!

Ui is a made up name that she made for her YouTube channel. Her real name is Miho Shinohara and she is a youthful looking 39 years old and the daughter of a paleontologist. In 1988 at the age of 9 she was given two toy dinosaurs by a stranger. The toys were magical and the two them, Mogu and Pigu, helped Miho leverage her fashion design talents by allowing her to henshin into a 17 year old fashion model named Fancy Lala. Miho has many adventures (usually requiring her to run several miles to make appointments since she could not drive) but eventually the magic wore off and she could no longer henshin. When Miho turned 17 she tried her hand at modeling again but was disappointed to find that many other girls had been inspired by Fancy Lala and now her looks no longer stood out. She has worked small jobs since then but is still desperate to be a star so she started a YouTube channel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pSCW05yEVs

[takenoko]

It's just weird to me. You have two episodes with no green or black, but don't take the time to really develop red/blue/pink in a way to make them really likeable? Were you saving the character stuff for after green and black joined? If so, why bother focusing on the main trio?

Look at Go-Onger. It's sort of the same thing, right? Except we find out about Sousuke, Ren, and Saki before they were heroes, how they became heroes. Who the bad guys are. Don't we even learn a bit about Hanto and Gunpei?

[hamn8rjr]

yeah, that robed guy was definitely Ui's dad. seriously, she sends her dad something, and that robed guy's phone just happens to beep. they weren't even trying to be subtle there. and as for those other complaints, I have to agree with some of them, but like I said before, I wasn't too sure about Gaim at first because of the whole fruit thing, but I'm giving this a chance. if there's one sentai I don't like, it'd have to be ToQGer. that one is way out of left field to me. seriously, look at their finishers, and give me a reason to not to be that into ToQGers.

but I'm still gonna watch this. they didn't exactly give any hints about the mini Don Armages or that Don Armage turned out to be Tsurugi's old friend. not to mention Lucky being Orion's descendant and a prince.

[msf232]

Spoiler

Is this something worth reviewing?

[midorininger]

Was it just me or did the minusarus kinda look like a Duke Org from Gaoranger.

love the costumes but hate the transformation. OR more specifically, the little dancing headmasters around them leading upto the cool part of the transformation which isnt epic enough to warrent the "dramatic"(?) lead up to it.

i kind of like that they arent altogether, and with it. a lot has just happened to them. HOWEVER, remember they are starting in MARCH, 4 weeks later than a typical Sentai. they may just cram the first episodes to compensate for time. which will suck and cause some fans to step away and lose interest. I was hoping to see Red/Blue/Pink be solo a little longer until like ... the teens when theyve mastered being Ryusoulgers, then Black and green show up and tell them they are still too weak. this way the 6th ranger if any, can join in like the mid to late 20 early 30s. that pacing would have been fine.

did i mention i LOVE the asymmetrical costumes?

[Mxylv]

I'm hoping future episodes will keep the shadow of the masters' deaths around.

wELP that didn't happen

Unironically, though, it feels a little concerning that they've shifted gears to a more episodic, comedic setting after a story-crowded and catastrophic first episode. There's still worldbuilding (though I hope they'll integrate it more naturally in the future), but it feels like this'll be the general format of most of the episodes from here on out. Throughout the series so far (which, I admit, isn't saying much), it feels like Toei have an epic, stunning mental image of what they want this series to be, but they don't quite seem able to bring it to fruition, whether it's a problem with their execution or they're just underestimating their younger audience.

With that said, this episode actually did a few things I liked. Monsters feeding on negative emotions feels like a rather tired trope in tokusatsu, but here we see it actively play out as opposed to its being vague and conceptual (plus, the monster growing large naturally definitely beats a human-level defeat followed by growing large for no real reason). RyuusoulRed was the only one in a mech this time, but this time feels a little better since the blue and pink arms aren't used. Seeing human-level Sentai members fight the mech-level monster was a pretty cool concept that I hadn't seen before. I won't say the series doesn't have potential, but there really seems to be a divide between the show Toei "wants" and the one they're winding up with, and if they're willing to take some slight risks the show may end up vastly improving.

Children aren't that dumb, they can figure out stuff for themselves. This was a prime example of a point where they should've used "show don't tell".

Actually, that quote had occurred to be too. Wanting to do some epic fantasy worldbuilding is neat, but it comes across as a mess if it's just people telling each other information they already know.

[hiro9796]

BTW Guys, any intention of subbing the Henshin lesson for Ryusoulger or there is a restriction for it? Just asking