Ryusoulger
Apr. 21st, 2019 10:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
akinoameTrying to get into Ryusoulger, but it still hasn't bitten me yet. Sure, the characters are cute and all, but I feel like Sentai has a problem where they're not throwing in enough meat, so to speak.
Not that the problem is having a light-hearted, not plot-heavy season. I love ToQger, after all, and each episode of that is 24 minutes of trying to justify a dick joke about a train robot.
But I feel like there's a lot of potential in this season, and in a lot, to explore the overall world they've created. I actually think Lupinranger vs. Patranger did a pretty good job exploring their world, with a team of thieves already fighting the bad guys, while police had to gain powers to stop both of them. And sure, I would have liked Tsukasa and Sakuya to get as much love as the rest of the cast, but I never sat there, wondering if I liked the show or not.
Ryusoulger has the potential for a really rich backstory. It has three characters who grew up in an extemely sheltered world, told that they had to protect their temple from outsiders, raised on legends of monsters from millions of years ago who had been bested by their ancestors (also...HOW? Seriously, are they even human?). And then the monsters return, their masters are killed defending them, and their temple is destroyed while awakening a giant robot T. rex, which is just par for the course in this franchise. So now they have to interact with the outside world. And there's also two others who had left years before, but the world turned them harsher. How do they wind up with such wildly different views? And when you introduce a mentor just to kill them off in the first episode, how do you maintain a level of connection with the audience about them? How do you make us care?
And I feel like Sentai has been rushing these things. There's so many tropes they have to hit, so many toy gimmicks they have to sell, that they forget to slow down and tell a good story with good characters. Part of why I liked LuPat was that they took the time to build the characters. Keiichiro was one of the biggest surprises of the season for me, since he'd started as a cookie-cutter hotblood justice nut, and turned into someone deeply worried about his younger friend, Kairi, and realizing just how many issues the kid had and trying to be there for him while also trying to respect his space. And then of course finding out that he was Lupin Red and blaming himself for not having had the power to do more before Kairi had to resort to crime to save his brother.
So I hope I do wind up liking it, but for right now, it feels like a Kyuranger or a Ninninger, where I'm going to like the characters a little more after I don't have to deal with the show.
Not that the problem is having a light-hearted, not plot-heavy season. I love ToQger, after all, and each episode of that is 24 minutes of trying to justify a dick joke about a train robot.
But I feel like there's a lot of potential in this season, and in a lot, to explore the overall world they've created. I actually think Lupinranger vs. Patranger did a pretty good job exploring their world, with a team of thieves already fighting the bad guys, while police had to gain powers to stop both of them. And sure, I would have liked Tsukasa and Sakuya to get as much love as the rest of the cast, but I never sat there, wondering if I liked the show or not.
Ryusoulger has the potential for a really rich backstory. It has three characters who grew up in an extemely sheltered world, told that they had to protect their temple from outsiders, raised on legends of monsters from millions of years ago who had been bested by their ancestors (also...HOW? Seriously, are they even human?). And then the monsters return, their masters are killed defending them, and their temple is destroyed while awakening a giant robot T. rex, which is just par for the course in this franchise. So now they have to interact with the outside world. And there's also two others who had left years before, but the world turned them harsher. How do they wind up with such wildly different views? And when you introduce a mentor just to kill them off in the first episode, how do you maintain a level of connection with the audience about them? How do you make us care?
And I feel like Sentai has been rushing these things. There's so many tropes they have to hit, so many toy gimmicks they have to sell, that they forget to slow down and tell a good story with good characters. Part of why I liked LuPat was that they took the time to build the characters. Keiichiro was one of the biggest surprises of the season for me, since he'd started as a cookie-cutter hotblood justice nut, and turned into someone deeply worried about his younger friend, Kairi, and realizing just how many issues the kid had and trying to be there for him while also trying to respect his space. And then of course finding out that he was Lupin Red and blaming himself for not having had the power to do more before Kairi had to resort to crime to save his brother.
So I hope I do wind up liking it, but for right now, it feels like a Kyuranger or a Ninninger, where I'm going to like the characters a little more after I don't have to deal with the show.