Ratings Poll: Engine Sentai Go-Onger

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< GekiRanger | Go-Onger | Shinkenger >

Did you like Go-Onger?

☆☆☆☆☆ Let's Go-On!
20
33%
☆☆☆☆ Great partners
18
30%
☆☆☆ Between Worlds
14
23%
☆☆ Let's Not
4
7%
☆ Junk Banki
5
8%
 
Total votes: 61
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Re: Ratings Poll: Engine Sentai Go-Onger

Post by takenoko »

I really like Sousuke. He's a zealous red, but in a way that's likable and charming. I dunno. I've always thought of him as a bit of a parody character, so it probably helped that I didn't take him too seriously.

I feel like green and black probably haven't even done anything by episode 4, and would recommend watching till at least the Go-On Wings appears?
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Re: Ratings Poll: Engine Sentai Go-Onger

Post by Lunagel »

It's hardly fair to judge a whole series if you've only seen 3 episodes of it. That's like saying Return of the Jedi is bad because you only saw the first 10 minutes of it and nothing happened.
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Re: Ratings Poll: Engine Sentai Go-Onger

Post by Bomyne »

I give it a 1... It would deserve a 0... but... Go-On Wings gets it into the 1 category. Not enough to save it but... Meh, I'm going to go back and try for forget I ever watched every episode and movie of this Fail sentai...
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Re: Ratings Poll: Engine Sentai Go-Onger

Post by Phoenix512 »

I think Go-Onger has a special charm to it. Sure all of the characters are silly for the most part but they work well together.
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Re: Ratings Poll: Engine Sentai Go-Onger

Post by D_B »

This was the first Sentai series I did not watch each and every episode as soon as I got my hands on it...
It ended up taking me the better of three YEARS to choke my way through it. The story wasn't always completely horrid, but I honestly felt something between a serious dislike and utter hatred for virtually every character.

So, yeah... I hate to rate anything a 1, but this one... that's all I can offer.
Not to worry, it's still better (in my opinion) than Go-Busters.


envedges wrote:...if someone ever ask me which Toku year was the worst, I'll easily respond with the answer 2008, because this and Kiva were pretty bad in my opinion.
I have to agree, of the Heisei Riders, Kiva was similarly my very least enjoyed... 2008 was pretty rough. Especially with it being the season directly after Den-O and Gekiranger... it was just a disappointment.

I'd also like to point out, as a side thought, that this was the Sentai that kind of "broke" something for me with the series as a whole. Prior to GoOnger, I found enough enjoyable with each series that I kept up with them pretty much every year that I was able, for the vast majority of my life. After this season, I struggle to get through roughly 50% of them.
Maybe it's just me, I dunno. I just wanted to put that out there in case anyone else felt similarly.
(To clarify, I mean I loved Gekiranger, hated GoOnger, loved Shinkenger, hated Goseiger, loved Gokaiger, hated GoBusters... 50% of the series to follow GoOnger have just been painful for me to try to get through. Not sure if something with the show itself changed, or if it were something changed with me, though.)
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Re: Ratings Poll: Engine Sentai Go-Onger

Post by a3s1r »

it's a 5 for me. I loved the series and t was the first Sentai I watched and this is the first overconfident Red Ranger that I actually liked (King and Right can just quiet down). my only gripe is that I would have liked to see more of the recycling thing going on since the show had the whole 'Don't Pollute' PSA. But the mecha are alive, the villains are lovable and Engine Oh G12 is a clusterbomb but it's the best one I've seen (except maybe GoBuster King, but I thought that didn't mesh too well). Loved the silliness and the whole engine soul= mecha talking through holograms on the phones. I just wish Disney had actually done it justice, RPM wasn't even entertaining as a kids show and that's sad because it would have worked with talking cars.
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Re: Ratings Poll: Engine Sentai Go-Onger

Post by lio_convoy »

I didn't think it the worst. I will leave that to Dairanger, to me. I didn't think it was the best. That is Gokaiger, to me. It had humor. It had stupidity. It had Bomper and talking partners. It was fun. I give it a 4
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Re: Ratings Poll: Engine Sentai Go-Onger

Post by mholden020 »

Lunagel wrote:It's hardly fair to judge a whole series if you've only seen 3 episodes of it. That's like saying Return of the Jedi is bad because you only saw the first 10 minutes of it and nothing happened.
I agree 100%. I didn't stop watching because it was boring, I stopped because the characters were so irritating (to me). My first Sentai series was Shinkenger, so I saw the Go-Ongers in the crossover movie, then I saw Sosuke again in Gokaiger, and for whatever reason he was irritating in those, too. I typically give a series 10 or so episodes before ever bailing, but I just couldn't do it with Go-Onger. Maybe someday, but not any time soon.
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Re: Ratings Poll: Engine Sentai Go-Onger

Post by toni2212 »

I give it a 4. The show has indicated early on that it was aimed at children, so I was expecting it to be on ToQ's level of mediocrity, but somehow it's fun. Probably due to the cast's strength as an actor. Although the villain doesn't really impose a REAL threat due to them being treated comedically too. Nice to see Nao Oikawa and Kickhopper in the series much.
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Re: Ratings Poll: Engine Sentai Go-Onger

Post by GaMa7 »

I'd say 3. I love whacky sentai series and Go-onger doesn't disappoint in such aspect but it just wavered in terms of interesting episodes. Rarely I was really eager to get to the next episode. Plus I really not liked the mecha design that much aside from Engine-Oh but it's a matter of tastes. The soundtrack was pretty awesome with such a great variety and some gems like the Engine-Oh theme. The cast wasn't bad too and even if not I'm a fan of the "screaming red" type I managed to tolerate the character with time because the whole group had a good alchemy in my humble opinion. An ok series at best for me.
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Re: Ratings Poll: Engine Sentai Go-Onger

Post by mholden020 »

I've been going back to watch the older Sentai series that I didn't watch after starting with Shinkenger and going forward. Instead of watching these series in order, which would have put Go-Onger last, I decided to just get this one out of the way to avoid ending on what could have been a bad note. It's very true that I went into the full series expecting to get something bad, but that seed was planted while I was watching Shinkenger and the Go-Ongers made their appearance in the crossover movie. At the time, Shinkenger was the only Sentai I knew, so Sosuke's behavior was jarring to say the least. A year ago I tried to watch the series and stopped after three episodes, unable to stomach Sosuke again. This time, I got through the whole series and, while my rating of "1" will not change, the way I feel about the show has changed. Still, I feel that if I give a show a bad rating, I should explain why.

First, the Good:
The series had tremendous potential to be something decent. I don't think the silly-Sentai series can hold a candle to the more serious series, but Go-Onger had the foundation to be one of the better series. Characters were written well, with solid backstories, motives, etc., and despite six different backgrounds were able to form a team. To further that, the team (once Wings accepted the original five) was able to work well despite consistently being under-powered. It's interesting to note that Go-Onger lacked a "power-up" for any of the members despite all of the shows before and after having some kind of power-up mode.

The series also won points from me by having the characters appearing in-suit without a helmet in almost every episode. When you have a series where the heroes are in a full body-suit with a completely opaque helmet, it's difficult to envision the actors as the characters sometimes. Having them appear helmetless was a good choice, in my opinion, and I'm shocked it doesn't happen more often in newer series since it's been done in both Super Sentai and Kamen Rider.

However, there was a lot of Bad:
I did say that the characters were well written, but were often either mis-used or under-used in the show. We had these characters, but no reason as to why they were there. There was a potential for good character development that simply never happened. The writers seemed to start the story on the day that they were attacked at Motegi, and the time before that didn't exist. Go-On Wings were presented as the children of a wealthy family who underwent strict training on Machine World, but basically nothing beyond that. How did they wind up on Machine World in the first place? What were the Engines doing at Twin Ring Motegi? Can anyone walk up and say, "I want a colorful suit!" and be paired with an engine in the way Hanto and Gunpei did? There was a lot that went unexplained and in all 50 episodes, I never felt like these guys had any real reason why they were there.

The episodes were also arranged in a very strange way and didn't fit together properly in the flow of the general story that was going on. For instance, Bomper's "runaway" episode came extremely late in the series, episode 46, at a time when the show is wrapping up. The episode was great at showing how Bomper is important for the team, but this is something that should have been placed early in the series, not at the end. Similarly, Hiroto's episode where he takes care of some alien tadpole-thing, #41, probably should have come when Wings was introduced, not at the end of the series since it showed a compassionate side to Hiroto.

Technical issues (and general laziness) hit this show harder than any other Sentai series I've seen so far. There were simple things such as:
- There was a re-used explosion graphic for every on-screen explosion. The overlay was extremely washed out and was likely recorded years prior to Go-Onger due to low-resolution. It looks remarkably similar to the Death Star explosion from Star Wars Episode IV. Large-scale explosions used a similar thing of a single explosion overlay, but that one looked newer, and was shifted on-screen to appear different (in one case, flipped) from shot-to-shot.
- The villains all took a long-neck design, which likely allowed for more detailed faces because the actor's head was in the "neck" and an eyeport was not needed in the face. This likely allowed for jaw mechanisms, which was seen in nearly every MOTW and the high-ranking Villains. Still, there were numerous monsters where the eyeport in the neck was plainly visible, and a few shots where the actor's eyes were visible. In some cases (such as Yogostein's father), a simple piece of mesh could have covered the gaping hole in the suit's neck, but it was left out and left visible.
- A few scenes (mainly Sosuke's lone fight scenes) had extremely visible squibs on his suit that appeared to be held on with duct-tape over the silver parts of the suit. The best example is Episode 48, around 10 minutes in.
- Gunpei's roll call was wrong in the episode 50 Helmetless Roll Call. Considering how every single roll call in the show was the same clip every time, and the other six actors got their arm-waving correct, it's very strange that he did that.

The biggest technical blunder of all had to do with the suit helmets themselves, specifically the visors. Magiranger's visors had a tiny, tiny point where you could see through them from the side at specific angles, something that showed up again in the Gokaiger helmets (and some of the older helmets, such as Carranger). In Go-Onger, however, there were a few instances where you could see the suit actor's face from straight-on. In the first 10 or so episodes, all five helmets had at least one scene where the suit actor was partially visible. The Go-On Wings helmets did not have that, and following their introduction the helmets appeared to be fixed (except for Go-On Green). The worst of these instances can be seen in Episode 3:

- In a couple scenes in Ep. 3, there were some scenes where it looked like the "action" helmet was used in a close-up shot, such as the one in the Spoiler below. You can see straight through Green's visor and also through the corner of Black's visor:
Spoiler
Image


- Not long after that, the three starter Go-Ongers pop out of a dirt pile and, while Hirofumi Fukuzawa's (Red) and Yoshifumi Oshikawa's (Blue) noses are visible briefly while they shake off the dirt, Sanae Hitomi is completely visible through Yellow's visor:
Spoiler
Image


While the rest were basically fixed, Green's helmet did this many times through the series, and a nose could be spotted a few times later in the series. Towards the end, the scenes began to shift towards backlight-only and this was fixed. It's possible that all the helmets were not completely in time for the show to begin, since there was a distinct change in the "prop" helmets the actors carried around later in the show.

There's also the case where I felt like this show was an experiment in the "toy fest" approach, as well as the first series I've seen (so far) where the characters had their own catch-phrase, like "Zubari!" or "Mach-anything". That got irritating after a while, but I can't think of a series where it was quite as bad as this one.


I'm sure if I'd watched this when I was six it would have been fine. However, I simply couldn't believe there were so many oversights in how the show was made and it became distracting. Sure, these shows don't go out on giant budgets, but there are simple ways to fix each of these problems that would have made the show look that much better. Like I said, it had the potential to be a fun and memorable show, but it's as if nobody wanted to put in the effort to do it.
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Re: Ratings Poll: Engine Sentai Go-Onger

Post by takenoko »

Huh, I don't think I noticed any of those things. I really liked the characters and generally had a good time watching their misadventures. It's kind of interesting to compare that with Jyuohger now, since it really shows how far a good character can carry the enjoyment factor for a show. Right now, I like Amu and maybe Tusk in Jyuohger? Whereas, Go-Onger oozed with characterization for all the characters.

It may not have been the best story, but it's one of my favorite series to have worked on. I didn't mention it in the first post, but this got a 5 from me. Part of the fun might have been the fact that I watched it live and had a community of people enjoying the episodes with me when I experienced it. Just a possible explanation for why I gave it a higher grade than maybe it deserves on an objective level.
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