#just mako being sillay

[milkfroggo]

Whoops, took a warm-up too far

[asanjou]

okay i should do this properly before i finish kiramager

i feel like i definitely didn't pay as much attention to shinkenger as i could have because whenever i watch anything with didi i spend half the time making horse noises into the microphone instead of watching whatever we're streaming. that being said shinkenger is really good it's so good

the characters are really interesting and unique without being too over the top i think like. ryunosuke seems like the silliest guy when you start watching but he spends a lot of time acting fairly seriously when he's not wrestling chiaki or genta in the background of shots.

i thought the team dynamic was pretty much perfectly balanced like we talked about this a lot at the time but having the token funny guy be takerus childhood bestie was perfect because takeru not being as harsh on him for acting sillay as he might have been on the others meant that personality niche was filled out while making him more human if that makes sense. since that's still early on where takeru hasn't really opened up a lot yet

speaking of takeru is a really good character he's soooo like. HE'S A NICE BOY and god's strongest autism warrior. i was worried from the first couple of episodes that he would have had some of the issues i had w/ tarou dbros (like him being much more competent than the others and the narrative rarely letting him be in the wrong because of that) but i think those fears were assuaged pretty quickly cuz you realise pretty quickly why he's holding them at arms length even if you don't understand the full picture until episode 48. his growth is really good i think and also like i said before the scenes where genta is going silly mode and ryunosuke is like "tonosama please let me kill this guy" only to turn around and see takeru like 😂 are sooooo endearing

i really liked that they did all the character focused episodes in pairs i thought that was smart since it lets you get in not only more character development but also really solidifies how the one on one dynamics are which was a strength of this team

that being said not a lot of the motw were overly memorable but that's not really something that's that important for a show with a really heavy meta plot so i can forgive that

villain wise dayuu was by far the standout for me she was incredible. like her backstory was crazy. the reveal that she was keeping that guys soul trapped in the shamisen for all that time was crazy. i liked that she was pretty calm and composed despite having all that hate and rage boiling just under the surface. i like what kobayashi did with her and mako where she takes character motivations that might be a little misogynistic to have on their own (mako wanting to be a wife/mother & dayuus whole miss havisham thing) and really fleshes them out and makes them real. i was never really sure what to make of her relationship with doukoku again cuz I was too busy pretending to be a horse but i do think it made sense the way she reacted towards him given what had been established about her character even if it was unhealthy for her & i think her breaking the shamisen to overflow the river for the finale was like. kind of a perfect plot point in the way that it was set up as well as being the climax of her character arc

also i don't get to say this about m/f relationships much but i thought her dynamic with juuzo was craaazy. i don't think i was attached to juuzo as most people i know but he was a good foil for takeru esp after the kaoru reveal. he would have been prettier with different facial hair but idk maybe i would have felt differently if id watched the show when it came out

i couldn't really tell if kaoru was something that they'd planned from the start or that they thought of later i think i would have to rewatch it because in retrospect it does make some things read different (like takeru training really hard to use the big sword) but again maybe id have picked up on the foreshadowing more if i hadn't been neighing. i thought it was a pretty smart move to have her be very similar to takeru personality wise because it means you can endear people to her despite not having the time to dedicate to fleshing out her character much. i liked that the shinkengers did seem to genuinely like her as a person (probably for the same reasons) and that that arc was driven by their love & loyalty towards takeru rather than a disdain for kaoru.

im obsessed with her and takeru planning the adoption thing btw you know they both know exactly how funny that is and how mad it would make tanba but neither of them are going to say it out loud. didi said at the time that any other writer would have had them get married to do that plot point and it would have been weird but fortunately kobayashi is the funniest to ever have done it. and i know kaoru leaves at the end of the show but to me they're like siblings now

idk if i have more to say tbh i didn't even think i had this much. that's a lot of paragraphs. um i never mentioned kotoha at any point but she's like a little sister to me i want to take her to pet goats at the zoo. takeru is a girl to me. shinkenger is a good show. ryunosuke slayed

thanks bye

WE FINISHED SHINKENGER...

final thoughts

shinkenger has the first female red ranger but it's not the one you're thinking of