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I highly doubt next week's finale is gonna change my opinion drastically, but I liked the show for the most part. Stacey was definitely the most consistently good part, I'll say that much. glad the creators liked the actor enough to just make a whole new character to give themselves an excuse to hire him (assuming that story doesn't turn out to be false later).

With Komura Junko as the writer, sometimes you get a Lupin VS Pat, and sometimes you get a Jyuohger. With the exception of Stacy, for the most part these characters are just kind of boring and unmemorable to me. It doesn't help that Covid is going on and most of these aren't human actors

I don't think the show is bad, but it's just kind of okay to me. Sometimes the antics do make me laugh. I always enjoyed seeing Zox dance. The bond between Stacy and Yatsude and Stacy's general plight genuinely moved me. And there were some genuinely good one-off episodes with a monster of the week with a really cool gimmick.

But any time the story focused on Kaito, the Kikainoids, the pirates, or the bad guys, I didn't care since the characters didn't grab me. The story felt poorly thought-out, and no one really goes through any sort of character arc (besides Stacy).

Speaking of bad guys, it was sad to see Suzuki Tatsuhisa get replaced as Gege, since I liked his performance on Go-Busters, and Gege's scheming was pretty interesting up to a point. Also, why doesn't anyone else talk about how fucked up it is that Barashitara has like 300+ wives who are all obviously not around anymore. Were they war brides? I know it's a kid's show, so I'm overthinking it, but why drop in a detail like that and not ever explain it. Like what happened to Stacy's mom? Probably won't get an answer with one episode to go

How about the quest to find Kaito's mom, just ends up her being found by the dad in the second to last episode? If the writer doesn't care about this story, why should the viewer?

The show isn't bad or cringey to watch (well, most the time), but it's not good either. B-. The show forgets its an anniversary show most the time, and so did I for most of this review

Very 'Meh' season.... I barely felt anything for it. Sure, it gave me occasional laughs here and there and a handful of interesting stuff may have happened, but in the end, it won't be anything memorable. And following that, I'm very surprised as to how everyone else loves it so much and thinks so highly of it. I have checked how people feel about Zenkaiger on Twitter, and their reaction to it is waaaaaaay more positive than me. I still don't understand how I could feel so differently about this season than other people do...

The plot, I have to say ended up better than expected. The god being the big bad at the end and how the whole god plotline progressed was actually kinda impressive. Although they had a serious lack of consistency. And a huge load of information was dropped in the final episode about how what the god wants and why he sided with Tojitendo at first. And that left very less room for anyone but Kaito in the finale. But guess that's how it is...

For the characters, I barely felt anything for them. I didn't feel anything for Kaito for most of the season's run, which is the saddest thing for this Sentai season. Yes, Kaito wasn't a red, neither did he make me feel like he was the protagonist either. And after finishing the season, I think Kaito's actor, Komagine Kiita's potential went wasted because Kaito wasn't a good character. I hope the actor can use more of his potential in DonBrothers and presents us something better than Zenkaiger's Goshikida Kaito.

The Kikainoids were the Kikainoids. I think I had a little more respect for Zyuran because he played the brother/best friend/uncle figure to Kaito and that was nice from time to time. Gaoon was also meh for me, sad since he is voiced by Kaji Yuki... For Magine, I think they wasted a lot of potential by making her centered around fortune telling alone.... They could have done so much more with the Magiranger theme than just fortune telling, and there were fight scenes where I went, "You have Magiranger powers, use that here for goodness' sake!!" Vroon was also quite far from what I'd expect a Boukenger themed Ranger to be. Boukengers were about adventures and Vroon is about books. I don't think they could possibly be further apart from each other.....

Now, Zox. Ah, the only silver lining to this rather boring season. I liked Zox ever since his debut. And I was glad because his debut was earlier than the typical sixth Ranger debuts. The singing and dancing kept me entertained while he was on screen. His development during the season was nice too. For Flint, I think I like her more than before. I like that she's smart and a tomboy- one of my favorite character trait combos. I kinda wish she became a ranger too (not the temporary body switch Twokaizer one).

The villains were meh too. I wish Gege's story was more consistent and we got to know other things about him like how Bokkuwaus found him or what his origins are.... Barashitara is just a plain jerk.... But I am STILL curious why Stacy's mom would agree to marry such a dirtbag.

And finally, our REAL protagonist, Stacy. I get that people like him a lot more than I do. Of course, the reasons are obvious and Stacy is the most developed character from Zenkaiger. And like I have said before, I believe they treated him like he was the protagonist of this season. But for some reason, Stacy didn't have a big enough inpact on me as he did on others. I don't like how he's a human-kikainoid hybrid... And some other traits about him. And again, I am STILL curious about his mother. Where is she from, what she did, how she met Barashitara, how she died all these questions are still unanswered. And as much as I don't like Stacy, I would like if they made a V-cinema centered around him to answer some questions like these or maybe even a spin-off like what they did for Yodonna. Anyways, I don't dislike Stacy anymore. Just don't like him enough to say that he was one of  the good parts of Zenkaiger.

Quoting Connie from Zenkaiger 48 discussion thread:

Connie_Edogawa wrote: ↑Sun Feb 20, 2022 1:01 pm given that the team's gears turned into the gears from next season, it feels like part of why this season doesn't feel as high stakes near the end is because it's basically turned into a prologue for next season.

I think this is one of the big downsides of this season. Sentai is good BECAUSE each season is independent and self-contained. If a whole season is wasted like this just because it was an element to set up the next one, then we probably would never have gotten good Sentai seasons. Gokaiger, Lupin vs. Pat, Dekaranger, Go-Busters, Shinkenger(among others)- all these are good because they're separate and independent. I don't hate the idea of two seasons being interconnected and one being the sequel to another, but I do mind it when they make the first one as carelessly as Zenkaiger. The only thing that matters isn't just the beginning, middle and end of the story, and I believe the characters are the heart of Sentai. This also makes the stakes high for DonBrothers. They wasted a whole season just to set up for DonBrothers, the season better be good. I've heard good things about the season, and I'm excited for it. Hope they live up to my expectations.

Zenkaiger began by throwing out the last 10 years of continuity in order to satisfy Shirakura's obsession with parallel worlds. It then proceeded to do fuck all with its anniversary elements. Gokaiger, Decade, Zi-O, those shows all are based around their anniversary elements. They're fundamental to the show. But take Zenkaiger's anniversary elements out and the show is exactly the same. Take Zenkaiger's anniversary elements out and I'd have probably enjoyed it a lot more, because I wouldn't have been expecting so much. For Zi-O I was hoping for Gokaiger 2. For Zenkaiger I was hoping for Gokaiger 2. Both disappointed me in different ways.

I'm cautiously optimistic for Donbrothers. What we've seen so far looks almost like an apology for the last year, but keeping Zyuran and Kaito around isn't gonna help. Of all the shows to get a sequel, why did it have to be this one?

This is the first Sentai I haven't finished in over 15 years. I just never could get over the Kikainoids and their lack of emoting, nor the happy-go-lucky plots.

it was a weird series to be sure, but it was also a product of its time, while the silliness did start to grate during the mid-mid/late part I think the late part of the series starting with that last character that was introduced saved it from a 3 star rating from me cause the final "bad guy" so to speak was honourable and wasn't twat!

HowlingSnail wrote: ↑Mon Feb 28, 2022 11:36 am I'm cautiously optimistic for Donbrothers. What we've seen so far looks almost like an apology for the last year, but keeping Zyuran and Kaito around isn't gonna help. Of all the shows to get a sequel, why did it have to be this one?

Yeah, out of all the good seasons out there, why did they choose to give Zenkaiger a sequel. If one of the good seasons had a sequel, I'm sure the reaction would've been better than this. I was also annoyed about it when I heard the sequel news. But I want to be hopeful for DonBrothers. It seems to have potential and I've heard it would be much more serialized than its predecessors. So hoping and praying for good things in DonBrothers.

Kaito and Stacey carried the season the best they could.

Zox was just barely ok but ruined with the stupid henshin dance. Flint was wasted when she could easily be a silver ranger and used a lot of powers from previous female rangers.

The villains were all bad and the show is just the villain of the week for almost 30 episodes. The only relevant part is the hakaiser mini arc but it was not good enough.

I think that for a season with restrictions due the covid pandemic they did the best possible but also as someone else said it felt like the actor that played Kaito is good and with a better script and character he will be even better.

I will give this a 5/10 just because is an anniversary season but it without a doubt the most weak anniversary season up to date.

Lets hope that Toei is saving the big season for the 50th anniversary.

>Flint was wasted when she could easily be a silver ranger and used a lot of powers from previous female rangers.

Wow, I'm actually angry to hear this since that would have both made her a more interesting character and add a much needed interesting character to the dynamic

Where the hell was my Go-On Wings v2?

Lunagel wrote: ↑Tue Mar 01, 2022 8:42 pm Where the hell was my Go-On Wings v2?

I was also wondering the same thing. They wasted the opportunity to make a Gold-Silver sibling duo this season....

Kurow wrote: ↑Tue Mar 01, 2022 5:51 pm Zox was just barely ok but ruined with the stupid henshin dance. Flint was wasted when she could easily be a silver ranger and used a lot of powers from previous female rangers.

You know what bugs me about this? The body swap episode where they have Zox in Flint's body becoming Twokaiser. They made a suit for Hinami Mori (There are BTS pics of her in the suit for her henshin sequence, they didn't just paste her head on his body), and even put Ryoko Gomi in the suit instead of just having Shigeki Ito pretending to be a girl, and yet they still for some reason didn't give her a skirt on her suit. Come on, guys, you made gender-swapped Patranger suits for one-off appearances, why not this?

Actually, thinking about it, Canalo and Takamichi had their sisters be prominent supporting characters too. Calling it now, the 6th Donbrother will have a sister supporting him.

Spoiler

Although isn't the current rumour that we're getting a duo?

4/5
PROS
I really enjoyed the wacky and nonsensical humor that was displayed in this; every episode had a moment that made me laugh pretty hard.
I thought the soundtrack was pretty cool.
The characters felt well fleshed out for the most part except for the bad guys, who I guess were all kinda one-dimensional.

CONS
The suits. Why couldn't they have normal Sentai suits and then have the robot suits when they grow big?
Not having a Pirate World for Zox to defeat was a big missed opportunity
The finale was soooo anti-climactic; nothing happened!

I still really enjoyed it, and now looking forward to Donbrothers and its terrible CGI

Don't like Koumura Junko since Zyuohger and LuPat, so no hype for Zenkaiger from the beginning when I heard she's head-writer. Many weak-points from the past still continued to this series: weak villain, many filler episodes, uninterested in cast except Stacey. Zenkaiger is her 3rd series in 5 years, I recognize that no new writer has these chances like her. Hope she won't write any Sentai in future.