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Easily my favourite thing about Meteor right now is his suit's awesome '90s-fighting-game-announcer Engrish. OKAY JIPPITER!

...so yeah, how 'bout that other new Sentai series we're getting next year, Akibaranger? I know we don't really have much information on it yet, but the prospect of a Kick-Ass-style Sentai parody (by Toei themselves, no less) sounds like a dream come true to me. Plus, hey, it's our first ever Sentai team with more girls than guys! I don't expect a full-year run out of it, but I hope it manages at least 13 episodes.

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This is actually the first I've heard about it. Super Sentai anime (apparetnly it's live action, but those shadows look pretty anime) parody (guessing it is since their title is "unofficial")? Might be cool.

Also, Midnight Crew Subs recently released a translation of Kamen Rider Spirits Volume 9, so I've started reading that manga series.

Edited by Ekaje
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Small update about the Super Sentai-Kamen Rider film. A teaser came out, though it has no original footage, reusing clips from Gokaiger, Fourze, and All Riders.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=EGmDMIPlDjM

There's also a picture of the filming with Decade and a few of the Gokaigers.

1326852752327.jpg

Edited by Ekaje
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I'm not crazy about Decade as a series or a character but I love the suit and the powers, so it's nice to see him back in the spotlight. For someone who was basically designed to be the mascot of the entire franchise, his tiny appearance in All Riders was seriously lame.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Gokai 48

Very nice episode. Seeing them take down their copies were neat ("Hey, I don't wipe my hands on my pants!" "You totally do." "I thought it was on purpose.") And the final fight between Marvelous and Basco was great, espicially with them switching their weapons and Marvy stabbing himself in the foot. I know it'll be just fine by next week, but still, they was pretty surprising.

Next week, the Gokaigers get the Triforce the greatest treasure in the universe and fight Insarn. Also actors from the teams that Basco took powers from will show up, though I think it'll just be their faces in white space like in 199 Heroes from the screenshots I've seen.

Also some stuff on the crossover movie and GoBusters. Copied from the Something Awful Toku thread copied from /m/.

Crossover:

p9nmH.jpg

*Features DaiShocker (Lead by Decade) and DaiZangyack (Lead by Marvelous)

GoBuster

Flx29.jpg

GoBuster Red: Sakurada Hiromu. A straightforward guy. His sister Rika prohibited him from fighting. 20 years old.

GoBuster Blue: Iwasaki Ryuuji. As the oldest guy on the team looks after Hiromu and Yoko. 28 years old.

GoBuster Yellow: Usami Yoko. Possesses an unbreakable spirit and is good with machinery. 16 years old.

2o7bt.jpg

Along with superhuman powers, Go-Busters possess hidden weaknesses:

Buster Red: Afraid of chickens

Buster Blue: If he stays too active, he gets over-heated and falls into an intense fever, so he has to stop and cool down every now and then.

Buster Yellow: When she uses up her energy, she must have candy to fill her back up.

The Villains: Evil Mechanical Empire, Vagras.

They plan on ruling the Earth and for that purpose they need to summon their boss, Megatron Messiah, who resides in subspace. To do that, they need to steal Energon Enetron, the energy source the Go-Busters are protecting.

The probable fourth ranger: Enter, the human spy from Vagras.

ShovelRoid, the first mechanical monster created by Enter.

Buglers, Vagras' foot soldiers.

uuqR9.jpg

ShovelRoid's ShovelZord. When transmitted from subspace, Vagras' Megazords borrow powers from their Metaroids.

wLf7e.jpg

Other scans:

http://smg.photobuck...oku%20Megapost/

Edited by Ekaje
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Fourze 20

Nice little development between Gentaro and Kengo, it was also interesting to see Ryusei be the one to help clear them up, he's slowly being befriended without even realizing it.

Magnet State was kinda disappointing though. It's really bulky, which means not much physical combat (doesn't look like the suit actor could even lift his arms in that thing), so it looks like it's going to be regulated to BEEP BOOP PRESS BUTTONS CG LASERS MAKE MONSTER FALL DOWN.

Next episode's switch set looks pretty cool though. Claws and a snowboard.

Edited by Ekaje
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Fourze 21

Magnet States did do something a little different, but I still don't see why it's special enough to get its own theme when they can only use it for a short time because it would get boring using a from that can only shoot and Limit Break. The boarding sequence was really nice, didn't know that Endless Play was going to be used in the series

Gokai 49

Last second cameos were neat, if short, and the tribute fight with music was nice. Disappointed that Insarn didn't really have much unique other than shooting a few rounds of missiles though.

And about Kabuto, the Clock up effects are really cool early on, but apparently they ran out of budget, because it gets used very sparingly later in the series. Some Riders never use it at all. And eh, TVN isn't the best, but the Kabuto subs were serviceable, despite the occasional word left in Japanese and and TL notes that are typical of them. Plus Midnight Crew has so many sub and scrub projects going right now I'm not sure how they're going to get around to doing them all.

Edited by Ekaje
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The real issue for me is just that I've got a ton of other things to watch; the sub group thing is mostly just an excuse to put it off. If I was really desperate to watch Kabuto I'd probably bite the bullet; I'm no great fan of TV-N's style and I'll always go with an alternative if it's available, but I've watched plenty of series they've done and it hasn't killed me.

Pretty old Fourze spoilers:

CosmicStatesnews1.jpg

Cosmic States and Meteor Storm, apparently.

I'm not super fond of Meteor Storm; the gold doesn't bother me too much (it reminds me a bit of Emperor Kiva, actually, which isn't a bad thing), but I'm not keen on the idea of removing the suit's asymmetry. The two shoulderpads in particular seem like they'd be unpleasantly bulky, especially for a form that fights with a staff.

Cosmic States looks really good, though, which is a nice change of pace after the last two years' terrible super forms, and with the way the switches work it almost certainly won't ruin the gimmick like Cyclone Joker Extreme did. It's really sleek and the weapon is nice.

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I'm not too sure about Meteor Storm, but Cosmic States looks pretty cool. Hopefully those switch icons on its chest means it'll be able to use all the switches without actually plugging them in.

EDIT: Someone just completed the translation for the Kamen Rider manga. This is the one made by Ishinomori that has a similar plot to the first TV show until the point where Hongo left the show due to his actor getting injured.

1: http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?3en0sxz4gn4v07a

2: http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?0nrbpb1x3b26nn2

3: http://www.mediafire.com/?3emwu9udov636fd

4: http://www.mediafire.com/?sd98ywbleld137b

Edited by Ekaje
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  • 2 weeks later...

Pirate Sentai Gokaiger Final Episode

My biggest problem with this episode was that due to Ackdos showing up late and not doing anything but sit around, the fight against him didn't have a lot of tension for me. But that's really my only problem, because the rest was pretty awesome.

After last episode's nice usage of all the great powers, even using the ones we haven't seen for a while and the Goranger power from 199 Heroes, this one has a very good showing of the keys. I think I heard that they used at least one from each series, but even if they didn't, what they did was really impressive, including SUPER RANGER. The best part is that by the end Ackdos was wasn't even fighting back, they were just wailing on the guy.

The typical final episode things were done well too, the helmetless roll call, and the final Galleon Busters were nice (BLUE CHARGE, point blank shot, and the Gokaiger logo shot).

Also liked how they had a few extra scenes with old actors when they gave the powers back, especially Aka Ranger's. Wonder if the Gokaigers going after the homeworld will be treated as an ending, or if it'll be continued in VS Gobusters or some other film.

Oh, and you know those sillouettes we saw of Akibaranger? Well, the show is live action, and the reason they looked odd is because they were the suits.

GVHZt.jpg

Yeah.

Also, the Century Kings subs of Kamen Rider Black were just completed a little while ago.

EDIT2:

Also, out of nowhere, full subs for Dairanger were just released.

http://hikarisenshi.wordpress.com/2012/02/21/hon-h-s-dairanger-is-released/

Edited by Ekaje
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  • 2 weeks later...

Gobuster 01

Very good start. The characters didn't get to show off their personalities or traits (superpowers) that much, but this did a very good job at setting up the series. The action was cool (especially neat how the Transpod gives a reason for weapons to come out nowhere), and I love how they pulled off the mech battle without making it seem like a formality after the monster is beaten. Hope they keep that up at least to some degree. It's overall a very nice refresher after the "show off great power CG/toy, win" that was the majority of Gokaiger mech battles.

The setting is pretty interesting as well, with a base full of support characters and mechanics (that dance!). The buddyroids are also suprisingly nice characters, with Cheeda being a worrier/brother figure to Hiromu, the bunny being a wiseguy, though blue's seemed like he won't be able to do much more than worry, though that's obviously a premature judgement.

The realtime transformation was a surprise, wonder if that'll just be a thing for this season, or that SS will be using more non-stock footage transformaions like Kamen Rider now.

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Oh, and you know those sillouettes we saw of Akibaranger? Well, the show is live action, and the reason they looked odd is because they were the suits.

...

Yeah.

This is either going to be an embarrassing trainwreck or completely awesome.

Go-Busters Episode 1:

So basically this is what would happen if Dekaranger, Power Rangers RPM and an Ultraman series had a baby. I'm definitely impressed.

Go-Busters is visually a pretty big step up, in terms of costumes, effects (more the real-time transformation than the mech CG, which is still fairly crappy) and even the Kamen Rider-like filming style. The story obviously wasn't super deep, but for an establishing episode it got the job done: We didn't get to know any of the many, many cast members particularly well, but the premise and setting were nicely established. We didn't get absolutely every scrap of information, of course, but there was at least enough detail to spare us the who are these people even? feeling I got from, say, Go-Onger. Overall, nice work, and certainly one of the better Sentai premieres.

The mech battle was definitely one of the bigger draws of the episode for me, and I hope Go-Busters can keep it up. The giant-size fights in Gokaiger were almost a chore to watch sometimes, with tons of stock footage and the monsters often barely getting a chance to fight back. The fight between Go-Buster Ace and the Megazord in this episode was a breath of fresh air: dynamic, fairly tense, and shot from angles that maintained a decent sense of scale (seeing the Megazord next to the Vagras minions before it was teleported in helped with that too). There was still more lousy CG than I'm comfortable with, but at least it was used to keep the fight interesting and show us something we've never (or very rarely) seen before in the form of the non-stock-footage mech transformation sequences.

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So, an Akibaranger preview happened.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsGTm5xcPsU&feature=player_embedded

It looks like it'll be...something. If you can't tell, their transformation devices are some kind of anime girl toy, they drive around in the ANIMEMOBILE (it would be so amazing if they got caught up in traffic and got made fun of for their car), and they all stumble/fall down/are surprised by the explosion. I'd say it'll be worth watching at least once just for the sheer ridiculousness of it.

Edited by Ekaje
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  • 3 weeks later...

Didn't post for a few weeks for no other reason than being lazy.

Fourze 27

This episode was really good. Gen's grandpa is a pretty cool guy, and it's a neat callback that he's a bike mechanic. I guess his father is going to be of some importance in the future since they bothered talking about him, and giving him a flashback and behind the back shot.

But onto the most important part of the episode. Kijima was amazing here. He was just screwing with Ryuusei so much, with that torrent of bad jokes and that crabwalk, and then he actually stood around and waited for Ryuusei to take off his suit. He had been kind of annoying up to this point, but I really like him as a villain now. Too bad he'll be leaving soon now that he's gone supernova and will probably get taken out by Meteor's really brightly colored powerup.

Also:

V553C.png

And there's a new Super Hero Taisen trailer, with more returning actors and suits.

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Fourze 27:

Kind of an odd episode, in that a lot of things happened (Gen's grandpa, Supernova Cancer, Meteor's identity being let out of the bag), but there wasn't much of an actual plot. It was still a lot of fun to watch, though, at least partially because Kijima's a riot when he's on form.

Goro was interesting too, even though he didn't show up for very long; he felt almost like a returning supporting cast member from a Showa Rider show or something. He seems like a fun guy, anyway, and I hope we get to see more of him.

Go-Busters 4:

This show is still impressing me, especially with the effects and the way the mech fights have been filmed. This week's was particularly good: I'm pretty sure this is the first time I've ever seen an attack have more of an effect on the cockpit of a mech than just causing shaking and sparks. I've got my fingers crossed that they can keep this kind of thing up without straining the budget. If money does get tight, I'd prefer to have a few episodes without mech fights. Actually, I'd kind of like to see that anyway for variety's sake, and it wouldn't be terribly difficult to explain within the show's mythology.

My favourite of the Busters right now is easily Ryuji. It's nice to see a character in Sentai who's calm and sensible without being an aloof jerk, and I've always had a tendency to gravitate toward reliable team mom-type characters (in Sentai, see: Renn, Makito). There's always the risk that his lack of super exaggerated traits might leave him feeling a bit bland if he doesn't get much development, but hopefully the smaller cast will keep that from being an issue.

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I've been watching Go-Busters and I'm loving every minute of it so far. I enjoy the tone, I like the three main heroes (Ryuji, especially. It's good to see someone who can be both a standard reckless hot-blooded hero, but also a calm and collected warrior), and god oh god do I love the Go-Buster Ace. What a fine piece of mecha that is, I hope that Bandai makes a Super Robot Chogokin figure of it.

My one nitpicky complaint so far is that Messiah itself is sort of a boring, stereotypical computer virus villain, but I suppose that Enter and his magnifique flamboyant-ness is enough to keep the baddies entertaining.

I think this may be the first sentai I actually watch from beginning to end. It feels more akin to Power Rangers RPM than any Sentai that I've seen before, which is not a terrible thing, by any means.

Also, Fourze is on episode 27 already? Jeebus, I have some catching up to do.

Edited by gnth®
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I suspect we're going to be in for some kind of twist regarding Messiah in the future, since he doesn't seem very sustainable as a main villain. He's not just irritable and generically dumb like Venjix or Shinkenger's Dokoku; he's so mindlessly angry that his tantrums and total inability to form a strategy make him a real threat to his own side. I'm guessing that he'll get smarter and calmer as the series progresses (as he gets more Enetron?), someone/something will merge with him (Enter?) or he'll be outright replaced (by one of the humans from the experiment? Maybe it'll be a Wizard of Oz sort of situation).

Or I suppose it's possible that beings like Enter are aspects of Messiah's personality instead of their own individuals, and the Messiah that we see is just a representation of his desire to be free. That seems a little random, but Sentai's done weirder things before.

Edited by Octarine
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Forgot about this thread because Rangerboard's been handling all my Toku needs.

Go-Busters is AWESOME. Didn't think Gokaiger could be topped, but this is well on the way there. My favorite part is the real time everything. From the morphs, to the Megazord transformation, it injects a nice bit of realism into the show. The scene where Enter attacks Blue Buster while he's morphing was a very nice touch. Something about "transformation is a free action" has always bugged me. The show as a whole is like some wild cross between Totally Spies, Transformers, and Power Rangers. 3 of my 4 favorite franchises in one go! Works for me!

Also, had the chance to watch Shinkenger and Goseiger. I did a really TL;DR post about Goseiger, but to sum it up, mediocre season is mediocre. Like, it wasn't really BAD (in fact, it's better than Samurai), but it's not really good either. It's a crying shame that it came after the spectacular Shinkenger, and before Gokaiger; then Go-Busters came and changed everything. GoseiKnight is a complete and total badass though, and easily the best part of the series.

I'm surprised that I found Shinkenger to be just as good as everyone said it was. In some aspects, it was better than Gokaiger. The soundtrack for the series is excellent, and I was actually disappointed that Goseiger's is so...generic in comparison. I think is was better for me that I had seen all of Power Rangers Samurai before going in, cause it helped some things to click better. Genta is the Sentai equivalent of Jim Carrey. His mannerisms and quirks are hilarious. Ryonouske is also a riot with his overzealousness about the samurai lifestyle. I hate to have to rag on the Goseigers, but the best part about Goseiger vs Shinkenger was indeed the Shinkengers.

Speaking of Samurai. The Samurai Rangers are the Shinkengers with all the depth stripped away from them. It's the most baffling thing I've ever seen. Granted, I'm new to a serious watching of the PR franchise, but still. Super Samurai has a been a bit derp so far. They totally messed up the whole Shark Sword deal, that's for sure. Word on the block is that Clash of the Red Rangers isn't in continuity with the rest of the show, so that's fine by me. That said, I can't get enough of that US exclusive armor, even though it's totally pointless. (What does sticking the Black Box on the Mega Blade even do?) I actually went and bought all 6 of the Mega Mode Ranger figures, as well as the role play Mega Blade cause I love the look of the Armor. Gonna get the Super Mega Mode figures as well and if

Shark Attack Mega Mode, Super Mega Antonio, Mega Mode "Kaoru" and Super Mega Mode "Kaoru"

don't get released, then I'm gonna buy extras and make my own.

Also, saw the preview for this weeks episode. I'm so hyped about all that Shogun business!

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The show as a whole is like some wild cross between Totally Spies, Transformers, and Power Rangers. 3 of my 4 favorite franchises in one go!

How terrible is it that I actually needed to stop and think for a minute before it occurred to me what franchise #4 was?

I've only seen a little of Goseiger, just the first five or so episodes and the two team-ups, but I was really intrigued (if not exactly impressed) by what I saw. It kind of bums me out that the story and characters are apparently so mediocre, because the basics were definitely there. Alata seemed like a really different sort of red, and I liked Hyde as well (see: my thing about loving Sentai characters who are cool-headed without being assholes). The old-school suits, the cards, the guardian angel thing... even the Headders seemed alright in the wake of mechs like Gekitouja, some of the stuff from Go-On and Shinkenger's later clusterfucks. I still kind of want to go back and give it another shot when I have the time, just in case I'm that one freak in a hundred who loves it.

And yes, Shogun Mode looks pretty amazing, even though I don't care for the regular Mega Modes at all. It's a bit scary how Super Samurai's introducing new toys in virtually every episode with no downtime, though: even as a kid, I think I'd find that really transparent.

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  • 2 weeks later...

LET'S DOUBLE POSTING

So a while ago I posted about how I went (slightly) out of my way to track down the first Ultraman series on DVD. Naturally the logical thing to do after accomplishing that feat was to spend a completely unreasonable about of time torrenting Ultraman Mebius and watching that instead. So yeah. Just finished.

I found the series to be kind of a mixed bag overall. There were a lot of things I appreciated, like the great miniature work and the emphasis on actual strategy beyond just blowing up the bad guys, but the weak story held it back a lot. None of the villains displayed any kind of dimension or motivation beyond wanting to conquer the Earth because, with no real plans aside from sending a bunch of monsters in a row to attack Japan. Most of them only appeared for two or three episodes maximum, too, which is pretty pathetic. While the individual episodes' stories were usually pretty good (although there were still too many main characters for the series' own good: what exactly was the point of George and Marina?), that really wasn't enough to sustain a fifty-episode series for me.

Also, while it's probably tacky to say so, I really didn't care for the reuse of so many suits from the classic Ultraman series. Some of them still held up pretty well, especially Ultraseven and the Maquette Monsters, but a lot of the others looked really, really bad. I know Mebius was an anniversary series and I'm sure real Ultra fans appreciated all of the callbacks, but I personally wouldn't have minded a little more originality if it meant more monster suits like Dinozaur's and less like Yapool's.

...I still love the idea behind the series, though; giant monsters are awesome, giving the superhero a human backup team makes for some great variety in the action and the Ultraman costumes are very appealing in a classic sci-fi kind of way. Just because I found Mebius a little bleh doesn't mean I've given up on the franchise or anything. I think I'll give Nexus a try next (meaning... eventually. I need a break right now), since it's supposed to be much more serialized than most Ultra series and the super grimdark tone should be a nice change of pace from all of the wacky fun stuff I've been watching lately.

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Fourze 29

Pretty standard plot, but had nice action (as to expected since this arc, as well as the next one which will introduce Cosmic States, had Sakamoto directing) and Switch use.

And since I didn't talk about it last time. Meteor Storm. Eeeehhh. It's not terrible, I guess, but the colors don't really work for me (the blue could be a bit darker at least), and while I'm okay with the staff action, the Beyblade finisher in the last episode was really lame. It's also lame that Meteor, with his upgrade, was busy fighting Dustards when last episode he took out what was the strongest enemy to that point.

Anyway, it was also amusing to get to properly see Ohsugi being goofy, since for a few episodes he's just kinda been there. Wonder what him discoverign the Rabbit Hatch will lead to (probably him being the sponsor or something).

Edited by Ekaje
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Yeah, I'm really not feeling Meteor Storm. It looks alright, I guess, but a stick and a beyblade really don't feel like enough to justify the existence of an entirely new form. Even the transformation sequence is pretty weak.

The more I see of Fourze's Cosmic States, though, the more impressed I am. It looks really good, and the touch-screen switch chest thing should keep it from getting boring like Emperor Kiva or Cyclone Joker Extreme did. I'm pretty sure I've mentioned this already, but seriously. In a show that's all about form changes, introducing a static super mode is a really, really bad idea.

Go-Busters 6:

Aside from the slightly nonsensical "Hiromu learns a lesson about trust" plotline that didn't have much to do with anything, that was a really fun episode. It was great to see the Busters backed into a corner and forced to fight on their own turf so soon, and it was a bit of a genuine surprise that they couldn't prevent the hangar's detonation (even if that probably won't amount to much in the long run).

I actually like Go-Buster King a lot more than Ace by itself, although I do hope that it and the other individual Buster Machines will still get to contribute. Ace was just a little too slim and red for me; I like my Sentai mechs bulky and gaudy. The only thing I didn't really care for was the stock footage finisher, and even that was still one of the better examples of that kind of thing.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Fourze 31

Despite the fact that Aries will only be in two episodes, they did a good job at making him a good villain. Seriously, the fact that he has pretty much the whole school under his control under the threat of what is pretty much death is pretty scary.

And the ending made up for the Meteor Storm arc not being the one where Ryusei reveals himself despite pretty much admitting he cares for the KRC for me, having his transfomtion cancelled in front of everyone after "killing" Gen.

Though despite the rest of the episode being kinda dark compared to it, the beginning was funny.

"DANGER"

"DANGER"

"Hey, Kengo. What does 'danger' mean?"

"DANGERDANGERDANGER"

"GOODBYE!"

GoBusters 08

Nice to see Ryuji get a focus episode, and it was interesting to see them not how his age put him at a disadvantage compared to the others.

And this episode really showed how effective Enter is at actually getting stuff done. Even though Busters always win the battles, he pretty much always gets away with at least some Enetron, and in this case, completely succeeded in getting what he wanted. Makes up for the "main" villian being a RAGH HATE HATE RAGH floating head. Wonder when we're going to see the new Megazord since the next episode is a Yellow focus.

On a less positive note, I sure do love seeing GoBuster King reflect lasers and slash with his sword. Again. I'm pretty sure the ony original footage of it was it standing while it warped the ground to the Megazord.

Edited by Ekaje
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