Tokumei Sentai Go-Busters
Busters, Ready Go!
The year is 2012 of the Anno Novi calendar, and modern life is supported by a new, clean energy known as Enetron. However, in the parallel universe of Hyperspace, the terrorist organization Vagras seeks to steal as much Enetron as it can to fuel its campaign of conquest and subjugation of humanity. 13 years ago the computer virus Messiah, the leader of Vagras, attempted to take over the Transport Labs and use its resources to consume the Earth; in desperation, the researchers inject their children with a vaccine program to empower and protect them, and transport them out of the lab before the entire facility was transported into Hyperspace to prevent Messiah’s victory. Now, in the present, those three children have grown up, and together must battle against the sinister Enter, agent and executer of Messiah’s will.
From the very start, Go-Busters presents itself as a very different show from its predecessors; the heroes are government agents in the mold of super-spies with cameras and binoculars that double as guns and knives, their suits are made of a pleather material rather than spandex, the giant robot battles are conducted with far more intensity and effort than has been seen in a long time, and the villainous cast is extremely small, most of the series being comprised only of the CGI-and-voice Messiah and face-actor Enter, and there is the later addition of Escape, herself also a face-actor as opposed to a rubber-suit as has been the norm. Combined with an overall more grounded tone and approach, this was a show that I was very excited for and intrigued by.
Unfortunately, the show did not do well; in fact, it stands as having the lowest ratings in the franchise’s history, outrageously bad among the target audience of kids especially, and from what I understand the toyline did poorly as well. How did this show with such promise do so badly? For the longest time I couldn’t understand why it wasn’t being received well, and so when the inevitable retooling happened, with tone shifts and even a rush to what was obviously the original intended ending, an ill-conceived crossover with Space Sheriff Gavan to promote his new movie and replacing the kick-ass opening theme with this…this awful track that barely qualified to be a random insert song for a random fight scene, much less the opening for the entire show, and I couldn’t figure out why this was happening.
Then I went back and re-watched some of the earlier episodes, thought on them, and then I figured it out; the show was just too fixated on the little details. The early episodes ran on a steady slow burn, lining up all the little pieces here and there to set things up for the next episode, and unfortunately a lot of these details were logistical issues that don’t really matter, were things that very few people could be expected to be emotionally invested in. Furthermore, Enetron, the central McGuffin of the series before the retool, was very poorly defined; as far as can be told it is a natural resource that has to be refined into a liquid not unlike gasoline but can also be used like electricity apparently and…you’d think that with all the fighting over the stuff we would have found out more than that, but nope, it’s properties are just…whatever is called for by the plot of the episode.
So naturally, the retooling meant dropping all the slow and careful story-telling that characterized the early period, but this was only replaced by very stock and standard sentai plots and methods that proved ill-fitting with what Go-Busters had been. Furthermore, the show made very, very poor use of its only female villain Escape; the set-up was there, but she would just be gone for episodes at a time and they never followed through on what they had with her, leaving her a dismal and disappointing existence on the show.
Then there’s the ending, the second one after the rushed through conclusion of what was obviously meant to be the original ending before Executive Meddling forced everyone to stick a fork in it and move on as best they could. Basically, Masato Jin, one of the two extra rangers for the series, dies, which by itself I could deal with and could accept as a harsh but necessary tragedy given how inevitably and inexorably it had been built up towards, even after the retooling. Unfortunately, the rest of the team does survive, even though the battle in Hyperspace had damaged everything so badly that the entire dimension was literally collapsing all around to the point where we can visibly see that they are on an isolated bit of land in the midst of gaping holes of exposed data. In short, they survive because Sentai Miracles, but this miracle is denied to Jin because Drama. This is inconsistent, and could have easily been fixed if the team had been quicker to act instead of collapsing before having a couple of what amount to spirits yelling at them to get back up and get back home. But they didn’t, they went with the sloppy route, and I am left annoyed.
Still, after all that negativity, I would be remiss if I did not talk about the good parts of the show, which were really quite good; I really liked the team, both the core three members and the two extras who join a third of the way into the show, they were very well developed and had a great comradery and chemistry together. The designs for both the mecha and the villains, be they monster-of-the-week or the upgraded forms for Enter and Escape, were all really good. Enter himself was a really great villain, growing and changing and always able to be a real threat to the team, an impressive accomplishment for just one guy.
Overall, Go-Busters had some very serious issues but there was a good show underneath it all.
The year is 2012 of the Anno Novi calendar, and modern life is supported by a new, clean energy known as Enetron. However, in the parallel universe of Hyperspace, the terrorist organization Vagras seeks to steal as much Enetron as it can to fuel its campaign of conquest and subjugation of humanity. 13 years ago the computer virus Messiah, the leader of Vagras, attempted to take over the Transport Labs and use its resources to consume the Earth; in desperation, the researchers inject their children with a vaccine program to empower and protect them, and transport them out of the lab before the entire facility was transported into Hyperspace to prevent Messiah’s victory. Now, in the present, those three children have grown up, and together must battle against the sinister Enter, agent and executer of Messiah’s will.
From the very start, Go-Busters presents itself as a very different show from its predecessors; the heroes are government agents in the mold of super-spies with cameras and binoculars that double as guns and knives, their suits are made of a pleather material rather than spandex, the giant robot battles are conducted with far more intensity and effort than has been seen in a long time, and the villainous cast is extremely small, most of the series being comprised only of the CGI-and-voice Messiah and face-actor Enter, and there is the later addition of Escape, herself also a face-actor as opposed to a rubber-suit as has been the norm. Combined with an overall more grounded tone and approach, this was a show that I was very excited for and intrigued by.
Unfortunately, the show did not do well; in fact, it stands as having the lowest ratings in the franchise’s history, outrageously bad among the target audience of kids especially, and from what I understand the toyline did poorly as well. How did this show with such promise do so badly? For the longest time I couldn’t understand why it wasn’t being received well, and so when the inevitable retooling happened, with tone shifts and even a rush to what was obviously the original intended ending, an ill-conceived crossover with Space Sheriff Gavan to promote his new movie and replacing the kick-ass opening theme with this…this awful track that barely qualified to be a random insert song for a random fight scene, much less the opening for the entire show, and I couldn’t figure out why this was happening.
Then I went back and re-watched some of the earlier episodes, thought on them, and then I figured it out; the show was just too fixated on the little details. The early episodes ran on a steady slow burn, lining up all the little pieces here and there to set things up for the next episode, and unfortunately a lot of these details were logistical issues that don’t really matter, were things that very few people could be expected to be emotionally invested in. Furthermore, Enetron, the central McGuffin of the series before the retool, was very poorly defined; as far as can be told it is a natural resource that has to be refined into a liquid not unlike gasoline but can also be used like electricity apparently and…you’d think that with all the fighting over the stuff we would have found out more than that, but nope, it’s properties are just…whatever is called for by the plot of the episode.
So naturally, the retooling meant dropping all the slow and careful story-telling that characterized the early period, but this was only replaced by very stock and standard sentai plots and methods that proved ill-fitting with what Go-Busters had been. Furthermore, the show made very, very poor use of its only female villain Escape; the set-up was there, but she would just be gone for episodes at a time and they never followed through on what they had with her, leaving her a dismal and disappointing existence on the show.
Then there’s the ending, the second one after the rushed through conclusion of what was obviously meant to be the original ending before Executive Meddling forced everyone to stick a fork in it and move on as best they could. Basically, Masato Jin, one of the two extra rangers for the series, dies, which by itself I could deal with and could accept as a harsh but necessary tragedy given how inevitably and inexorably it had been built up towards, even after the retooling. Unfortunately, the rest of the team does survive, even though the battle in Hyperspace had damaged everything so badly that the entire dimension was literally collapsing all around to the point where we can visibly see that they are on an isolated bit of land in the midst of gaping holes of exposed data. In short, they survive because Sentai Miracles, but this miracle is denied to Jin because Drama. This is inconsistent, and could have easily been fixed if the team had been quicker to act instead of collapsing before having a couple of what amount to spirits yelling at them to get back up and get back home. But they didn’t, they went with the sloppy route, and I am left annoyed.
Still, after all that negativity, I would be remiss if I did not talk about the good parts of the show, which were really quite good; I really liked the team, both the core three members and the two extras who join a third of the way into the show, they were very well developed and had a great comradery and chemistry together. The designs for both the mecha and the villains, be they monster-of-the-week or the upgraded forms for Enter and Escape, were all really good. Enter himself was a really great villain, growing and changing and always able to be a real threat to the team, an impressive accomplishment for just one guy.
Overall, Go-Busters had some very serious issues but there was a good show underneath it all.