I'd like to be excited about Zyuohger. I like that Junko Komura's getting a shot at being main writer, but I remember being interested in the news that Riku Sanjou was doing a Sentai and he ended up crapping out Kyoryuger, a show I can't stand. And even though I think I've probably enjoyed more of Komura's standalone episodes in Gokaiger and Akiba S1 than anything Sanjou has done...I feel like Toei's gotten to a point where they've taken on the thinking of every lazy, obnoxious bastard on the internet who thinks they're cool and likes to dismiss all this stuff as "kids' toy commercial, luzl." There's too many corporate fingers in Toei's toku pies nowadays that I don't think it even matters anymore who's writing it or producing or directing it -- everyone's kept on such a tight leash by the unimaginative bean counting jackasses that it's made all of their shit start to look the same.
I can't be excited about Utsunomiya returning as producer. Sure, I liked Shinken and Gokai, but he killed and killed again all that goodwill with Wizard and the terrible, terrible ToQger. And while I'm not expecting Zyuohger to be a cameo-fest and huge anniversary show like Gokaiger, it's kind of sad that it seems like they might not be doing anything to acknowledge the anniversary (40 is more notable than 35, IMO), the way Kamen Rider's pretty much dropped ever doing anything special for an anniversary. Ideally, they'd do something like Ninninger -- have past animal Sentai heroes show up for team-ups now and then, but, you know, do it in a GOOD way. (And that better include the mythological beast shows, so there can be some Changeman and Dairanger appearances!)
The suits are generic, and remind me a little too much of ToQger's. (Since green's one of my favorite colors, I have to mention how much I hate the really light green that ToQ and Zyuoh use. It just looks bad to me.) The mecha's stupid, but at least I don't care about mecha. Even though writer Komura says Liveman is her favorite Sentai, I'm not holding out hope on cool villains like Volt -- toku's given up on having cool villains. (ToQ's Zet came closest to being the best toku villain in a long while, but the show had no idea what to do with him.)
The best piece of news so far is that Susumu Terajima is playing the mentor. I've always liked that guy and have been waiting for him to pop up in a toku finally.
Yeah, thanks Ninninger. I went from starting the year trying to keep an open mind about the new show, since the past few years of Sentai have sucked so bad, to not even being excited about the 40th anniversary series. Damn, is Ninninger awful...
