Cegarth
This review may contain spoilers
Mild spoilers ahead:
Everything the show did well:
-Really cool semi-fantasy setting.
-Really great practical effects that look really well for the time.
-Consistently amazing action in both inside the mech and outside stunts.
-The red ranger Geki and the extra hero DragonRanger are entertaining and memorable overall.
-For the most part really entertaining monsters of the week.
-Some cool world-building here and there.
-Lami and Bandora are really entertaining villains, the latter basically hardcarries the show. (Her theme song is also really catchy.)
-Decent team overall.
-Interesting dynamic with the mecha being a God, the show does a proper job at making him feel as a larger than life entity.
Everything the show did bad:
-The show is too red-centric, it gives way too much focus on the red ranger Geki at the cost of the other rangers' screen time. The one from the core team to get the second most screen time, the yellow ranger Boi, gets the worst episodes and pretty much the few times the monsters of the week aren't entertaining. The rest become pretty likeable by the end but really don't have enough screen time.
-Prior to Lami's introduction, Bandora is the only great villain. But at least after Lami's introduction the other main villains become more active.
-The true main antagonist despite being kinda menacing and having done some horrible stuff to the cast, still manages to be kinda generic overall.
-Barza and Gnome trying to seemingly kill Ryota feels really weird, but it's only 2 episodes so it doesn't matter that much.
Reasons for the show's strengths:
Main writer Noboru Sugimura wanted to create a fantasy setting partially inspired by the Dragon Quest series to make the show stand out from other tokusatsu. Burai and Bandora backstories were also inspired from Dragon Quest. While dinosaurs are a pretty overdone theme now, it wasn't back then. The staff took inspiration of the original Jusrassic Park novel and decided on the theme, this gave path for future shows to have more concrete motifs in the future. The main producer Takeyuki Suzuki wanted to give more characterization to the main mecha which resulted in it being more interesting. This show introduced the concept of extra ranger, it was supposed to be a one-off inspired by Mad Gallant from Juspion but due to high popularity the concept stayed in future seasons.
Reasons for the show's problems:
Due to being inspired by Dragon Quest and other fantasy RPGs, Sugimura decided to make the red ranger Geki the main protagonist and more focal than other red rangers from previous seasons in order to emulate how in those RPGs the protagonist serves as the POV and takes the main decisions. But one cannot really adopt this style of writing with Sentai resulting in the rest of the cast being shafted.
Overall:
It's a great show overall, but it's really dragged down by the cast taking too long to become proper characters due to the show focusing too much on Geki, Burai and Bandora. But still by the end most of the cast while not impressive manage to be likeable at least and this show has some amazing practical effects that makes it stand out from other Sentai seasons. So would recommend to Sentai fans that are interested in a more fantasy-themed entry in the franchise.
-Really cool semi-fantasy setting.
-Really great practical effects that look really well for the time.
-Consistently amazing action in both inside the mech and outside stunts.
-The red ranger Geki and the extra hero DragonRanger are entertaining and memorable overall.
-For the most part really entertaining monsters of the week.
-Some cool world-building here and there.
-Lami and Bandora are really entertaining villains, the latter basically hardcarries the show. (Her theme song is also really catchy.)
-Decent team overall.
-Interesting dynamic with the mecha being a God, the show does a proper job at making him feel as a larger than life entity.
Everything the show did bad:
-The show is too red-centric, it gives way too much focus on the red ranger Geki at the cost of the other rangers' screen time. The one from the core team to get the second most screen time, the yellow ranger Boi, gets the worst episodes and pretty much the few times the monsters of the week aren't entertaining. The rest become pretty likeable by the end but really don't have enough screen time.
-Prior to Lami's introduction, Bandora is the only great villain. But at least after Lami's introduction the other main villains become more active.
-The true main antagonist despite being kinda menacing and having done some horrible stuff to the cast, still manages to be kinda generic overall.
-Barza and Gnome trying to seemingly kill Ryota feels really weird, but it's only 2 episodes so it doesn't matter that much.
Reasons for the show's strengths:
Main writer Noboru Sugimura wanted to create a fantasy setting partially inspired by the Dragon Quest series to make the show stand out from other tokusatsu. Burai and Bandora backstories were also inspired from Dragon Quest. While dinosaurs are a pretty overdone theme now, it wasn't back then. The staff took inspiration of the original Jusrassic Park novel and decided on the theme, this gave path for future shows to have more concrete motifs in the future. The main producer Takeyuki Suzuki wanted to give more characterization to the main mecha which resulted in it being more interesting. This show introduced the concept of extra ranger, it was supposed to be a one-off inspired by Mad Gallant from Juspion but due to high popularity the concept stayed in future seasons.
Reasons for the show's problems:
Due to being inspired by Dragon Quest and other fantasy RPGs, Sugimura decided to make the red ranger Geki the main protagonist and more focal than other red rangers from previous seasons in order to emulate how in those RPGs the protagonist serves as the POV and takes the main decisions. But one cannot really adopt this style of writing with Sentai resulting in the rest of the cast being shafted.
Overall:
It's a great show overall, but it's really dragged down by the cast taking too long to become proper characters due to the show focusing too much on Geki, Burai and Bandora. But still by the end most of the cast while not impressive manage to be likeable at least and this show has some amazing practical effects that makes it stand out from other Sentai seasons. So would recommend to Sentai fans that are interested in a more fantasy-themed entry in the franchise.
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