Clap Your Hands

On the other hand, though, a lot of Atsuhiro Tomioka's writing quirks are showing and it makes me want to rip my hair out. Tokutubers have complained about Setsuna's episodes recycling his gimmick of "not understanding emotions" and like... where were you during Boonboomger? Tomioka characters are written to have a specific personality quirk and don't really develop. The story is usually about things happening around them, not to them. You can find a lot of examples watching through the anime series Tomioka has written for, like the Pokémon anime and Inazuma Eleven games.

Character dynamics were reset and twists were added that didn’t elaborate on existing plot points, and instead feel like they were added for Takahashi to utilize his usual shock value writing style.

I won’t talk about points that have already been made about the production or whatnot because that’s been done to death already. But the show really had this odd contradiction in what kind of show it wanted to be.

On one end, Gozyuger wanted to be an anniversary season of Super Sentai (The Sentai Ring gimmick was very front and center) and celebrate/feature past Reds through the use of the Universe Warriors.

On the other hand, the show also wanted to reinvent the Sentai formula much like how Donbrothers and King-Ohger attempted to. The premise of the show is supposed to be a battle royale, with each Gozyuger able to match the power of an entire Sentai team/Kamen Rider on their own, as was discussed in a production interview. Allowing each ranger to pilot Tega Sword by themselves also adds to the changing of the normal format, seeing as solo piloted robots in past shows were usually a late-season addition.

The main problem is that Gozyuger clings to both ideas but doesn’t fully commit. The team kinda clumps together for a lot of fights even when the contestants of each No. 1 battle are pretty clear. Even when the rangers are doing their own thing before a fight, they kinda just… all show up. It’s not as effective as how Donbros and King-Oh was selective with who showed up for a fight. In majority of the Gozyu fights, Hoeru is always present, the focus Gozyuger/Universe Warrior of the week is present, the others show up after the initial square up, Kumade also shows up just because, so on and so forth.

That doesn’t really reinforce the idea that an individual Gozyuger can take on a kaijin or a Universe Warrior by themselves.

In the introductory episodes, there was more of this individuality to each of the rangers that slowly became less prominent as the show went on. I’d say around when Universe Tyrannoranger appeared. And as much as I enjoy a good Koichi Sakamoto fight scene, these kinds of fights only diminished the notion that the Gozyugers were individuals. Which makes the impact of Fire Candle proclaiming that they’ve become a real Sentai in the final episode seem weak.

Another element that was sorely missing was more of the Universe Warriors. I get that they probably couldn’t have a Universe Warrior for every single episode, but when Kinjiro and Sumino show up with new rings they acquired offscreen, that kinda made the importance of the Sentai Rings weaker.

Which makes me worried about how Gavan Infinity will be handled. The main writer is listed as Atsuhiro Tomioka, who was the main writer for Boonboomger, the Pokémon series, the Inazuma Eleven series, the Danball Senki trilogy, and many other anime. I’ve expressed my dislike of the writing in Boonboomger in the past, but I realized, looking at Tomioka’s writing credits, that it’s because he’s primarily a “scenario writer”. He writes things that happen around the characters, not things that happen to the characters.

Now, this is my personal experience with his works, but for Inazuma Eleven and Danball Senki, the base stories of the games were also pretty barebones, but the corresponding anime was paced better because they could use the games as an outline. The same goes for the recent Red Ranger Isekai, which Tomioka is also credited as writer in, using the manga as a base to create more with the anime.

Boonboomger felt much like the outline of a game with the characters each having a backstory, a personality trait and a unique character design, but not much more, with not much done to develop their front story. Gozyuger at the very least made attempts to connect each ranger’s backstories with their front-facing character arcs, with mixed results due to an imbalance of character focus. Donbros was better in this regard because the characters’ backstories were not important to the overall plot, as more focus was on the characters themselves, and King-Oh was well balanced with front and back story, backed by consistent character arcs and story beats that paid off in the end.