I was going to write a long diatribe about how much of a mess this series is. But frankly, I'm not sure I can top Lunagel here. She's done such a good job outlining the many (many) failings of the series. Ultimately the whole thing feels like it was ad libbed, or since the source of its woes was the writing, perhaps I should say mad libbed.
What worked for the series was the characters. They lined up a capable cast to portray them, and while the plot couldn't follow a thread over multiple weeks to save its life, the characters were given plenty to do. They often didn't have arcs, but for characters that aren't Jirou, they usually had something interesting to do.
And I appreciate that, in rare exception to Sentai norms, this wasn't a Red-centric series. He was an outright Gary Stu from start to end (even Lucky/KyuuRed didn't get to go that far overboard), but when it wasn't an ensemble story, it was Haruka's story. Sentai so often gets stuck on Red and making Red's story and the series' main plot thread one and the same, that it's refreshing that Red isn't actually the most important person driving the plot forward.
Also, can I spend a moment gushing over how much I love the fact that all the main characters are face actors? Coming from Zenkaiger and its lack of humans, this is a night-and-day difference. Having actors who can properly emote massively elevates the characters. It's the difference between being a soulless catch-phrase machine and someone the audience can empathize with. 9 regulars (plus 2 recurrings) was probably overdoing it from a production standpoint (it makes it hard to give each a correct amount of focus), but it pays off with each character having a range that just can't be matched with suited characters.
But that's about as much as I can say about the series that was nice. There's just no way to sugar-coat this: Inoue embraced chaos writing for this series, and as a result far too many things went unexplained or were never developed properly. Sure, it was enthralling on a week-by-week basis because we never knew what was going to happen next (and, it would seem, neither did Inoue). But when you look at the series as a whole, it's never going anywhere.
Worse, it felt like half the time the fighting didn't matter. The fights rarely advanced the plot itself, especially after the first dozen or so episodes. Rather the fights are what broke up the drama/comedy acts for the rest of the show. The MOTWs being the embodiment of desire could have made for some very interesting stories. Instead they were shoved out of the picture so quickly that half the time we never got a good look at them; they're just a blur of vaguely themed designs, especially as we got deeper in the show. And don't even get me started on the giant robot fights; I don't know what Toei was trying to do, but those were a failure at every level, from choreography to writing.
Meanwhile Jirou belongs in a special awards class all of his own. Never have we had a 6th ranger that was so underbaked. I could name worse 6ths (e.g. Jyuohger's TheWorld/Gold), but you'll be hard pressed to name one that had less to do. He does technically have an arc, but because it was so poorly handled it ends up being a source of frustration rather than a source of entertainment. He really didn't fit into Inoue's plans, and it shows. Though I suspect Toei/Bandai can shoulder some of the blame, as well. Riddle me this: why was the ranger silver, but the tiger purple?
There are a ludicrous number of plot threads that are either incomplete or just never explained. I should probably try to list them all here for posterity's sake, but I'll save that for another time to keep this post from running long.
Ultimately, there is not a single episode of this series that I rated below a 3, other than perhaps the clip show. But as a series, I'm rating this as a 2. In small bites the nonsense is great, but as a whole it adds up to less than the sum of its parts.
There it is! There is the magic phrase that summarizes all of this in a single word: disdain. This entire series feels like Inoue is grumbling at being assigned to write another toku series. The man clearly wanted to write a light drama/comedy, and he did his damnedest to do so, even though that's not what Super Sentai aims to be. The result is an interesting drama, but a terrible Sentai.
And I don't want to come off as some kind of purist that doesn't want to see the format change/evolve with the times. Sentai has to change to remain relevant, and Toei's writers need the artistic freedom to try new things. But that kind of experimentation is best done on an episode-by-episode basis, not the entire series itself. Inoue was allowed to run right off the rails, and it made for a subpar Sentai.
And the thing is, the toys are normally more of Bandai's problem, not the viewer's. But when the writing is so unfocused/uncontrolled that there's no real effort being made to provide in-universe explanations for the various power-ups (i.e. toys), it makes the basic 30 minute toy show model fall apart at its seams.
aWhat you get may be a better story in the short run, but excluding Inoue's inability to follow up on a plot thread here, in the long run it makes for an increasingly incoherent story. And ultimately, if the show doesn't move toys, it won't have any reason to exist. And that is a problem for the viewer.
