First of all, Happy Valentines to those celebrating. To be frank, it’s actually not a real celebration, especially knowing the history behind it, but rather a highly overrated marketing event designed by Companies to boost their sales. But I can see why many people would get so worked up about it, after all… they’re busy enough to only have this ONE day to express love to their beloved people, right? (hope this festive doesn’t numb you from sensing an obvious sarcasm when you see one LOL)IMHO, I think Birthdays and well, EVERYDAY of the year are MUCH better times to do so, especially if they ARE *cough* serious about caring for others…
Anyway, I don’t usually post stuffs on weekends, moreso to commemorate an occassion I couldn’t care less. But just hours ago, Toei gave us their version of Valentine present: Doubutsu Sentai Zyuohger’s premiere. So this is my first impression of the new show. Read on!
The opening song sounded nice, but it’s definitely not the best I’ve heard from Hideaki Takatori. The ending song by Youhei Oonishi was somewhat the same. It didn’t immediately grab my attention too (unlike Ninninger’s). Similar to the previous title, they had this color guessing thingy again, this time using Cubes rather than fireworks. Which was a bit useless IMHO. The choreography looked elaborate, with each members getting solo gestures. It looked fun though, considering this came from the same guy who did Kyoryuger’s. Not feeling the tune right now, but I hope both songs will grow on me.
As for the team members. Red… whatever his name was, is another loud Red again. Which is a shame, since he would have been better with a cool and silent persona, especially with that charming look. The others haven’t shown much personality, due to spending most of the episode in their Zyuman forms. Of course, one of the members just had to show resistance/rivalry against Red. This time it’s Tusk, the Green Elephant (once again, it’s the cool one). Here’s hoping the plot won’t focus too much on Red again, and will have a good balance with the rest of the team. I won’t bet on that though, especially knowing the first episode was already heavy on the Red-centric side.
Story-wise, it’s a pretty standard Sentai origin, I guess. Red got sucked into the Zyuman World (which looks neat, albeit LEGO/Minecraft inspired), where he encountered the other members. The Deathgalians started invading Earth and Red became anxious to get back, he took the Cube of one of the 4 Zyumen (I forgot who, I think it was Sela?), and everyone was thrown back to Japan, which was already burning with fire. The Zyumen used their Cubes to transform and fend off the Deathgalians army. Awakening Mode already! Red got fired up, and took one Cube (his?) that’s just sitting there on the ground (complete with childhood flashback thingy) and transformed into Zyuoh Eagle. The monster was defeated, and got turned into giant. Classic Sentai trope. So it’s time for the Cube Animals. Which looks better on screen than on toys (plus, the ending scene reminded me of Shinkenger’s Origami). And ZyuohKing debuts. Yep, they really didn’t waste time introducing the mecha too. I was actually hoping they would keep this combination for later episodes, just like the 90s Sentai. Oh well, perhaps they need to sell these toys right away to cover the… production cost? Yeah, it’s a sales promotion episode indeed!
Overall, it’s an okay first episode I guess. Not bad, but also not mindblowing, rather generic in fact. I mean, we’ve seen this pattern over and over again in the past 39 titles, so nothing new. It’s also still unclear which direction the show are heading, so it’s too early to judge. But I need to see it fully once again with proper subtitle before I can give it a score. Mind you, I saw this via KeyHole’s free account which obviously is unreliable for proper streaming (with the connection cutting off every now and then). So I definitely missed out a good number of information during the down time. Also, I’ve been thinking on doing another weekly review for this show (just like “Kamen Rider Ghost”), because I thought the show showed great potentials. However, my experience with Ninninger made me a bit wary, and well, this first impression wasn’t exactly convincing enough for me to make a firm decision. I guess, I’ll try to reconsider it and see what happens after I see again, hopefully soon