Go-Busters and Timeranger; two experiments gone wrong?

[live jetabare]

Hi; after now more than two thirds of Go-Busters having already aired, it can be safely said that that series is an underperformer, at least rating wise. It can be noticed that Go-Busters was, in many ways, trying to bring something new in sentai, with its serious tone, its sci-fi feeling, its new aestetic choices. Which brings me to another sentai series, which also had a lot of new stuff among the franchise= Timeranger. Timeranger was a highly dramatic series, with a lot of emphasis on drama and social issues, with unuusual antagonists, very little humor, and more focused on how people deal with their destiny than how about heroes fight evil invaders. Even if Timeranger had decent ratings (even better than its predecessor, GogoV), its toys sales were an all time low in the sentai franchise, almost two times as low as even the lowest toy sales of other series. By an interesting coincidence, both series have been written by Yasuko Kobayashi.
And, both series have another similarity: they're gonna be followed by a series which is gonna use a child friendly theme, with likely high toy selling potential: animals for Gaoranger, with a fantasy theme ; Dinosaurs for Kyoryuger.
It's pretty interesting, but also sad, to see that when Toei takes risks in sentai, it's not rewarded by public success; and I fear that Kyoryuger isn't gonna be a very good sentai, because Toei is gonna have cold feet in trying to do daring stuff, and is gonna play safe with a pretty basic story.
Your thoughts?

 

[FieryRed]

Timeranger may not have had great rating nor spectacular merchandising sales back in its days, but right now many toku fans would consider it one of the best sentai series from the first decade of the millennium, and it has now received accolades that it did not get when it was first airing. One has to wonder if Go-busters will have the same treatment years down the line, when people would begin to see it in a new light?

 

[Dessa]

Do we really need 3 threads on "Go-Busters sucks"?

 

[live jetabare]

hey, you've misunderstood my thread; I didn't say "Go-Busters sucks"; I said "Go-Busters is unsuccessful" ; I think Timeranger is one of the best and most complex sentai series, with very daring writing choices; but it was a big flop in toy sales, despite having good ratings ( similar to Dekaranger's). I don't know about Go-Busters's toys sales, but its ratings are very low.

 

[Araki]

Timeranger may not have had great rating nor spectacular merchandising sales back in its days, but right now many toku fans would consider it one of the best sentai series from the first decade of the millennium, and it has now received accolades that it did not get when it was first airing. One has to wonder if Go-busters will have the same treatment years down the line, when people would begin to see it in a new light?

Timeranger ratings were actually an improvement over GoGo V and it was very well received amongst the fanbase, its only downside was selling poorly.
now what is the saving grace for Go-Busters ? i think they have nothing in common and the comparison is offensive with Timeranger :laugh:

 

[live jetabare]

Timeranger ratings were actually an improvement over GoGo V and it was very well received amongst the fanbase, its only downside was selling poorly.
now what is the saving grace for Go-Busters ? i think they have nothing in common and the comparison is offensive with Timeranger :laugh:

Toy sales are very important to evaluate a sentai series's success; perhaps even more than ratings ; and I've already said that Timeranger's ratings were better than GogoV.
Besides, I'm not comparing Timeranger and Go-Busters's quality: there's no doubt that Timeranger is MUCH better :laugh:
Moreover, Timeranger and Go-Busters have at least two elements in common: Yasuko Kobayashi and a serious tone.

 

[Toku Prime]

I'll be honest and state up-front that I'm a part of the minority who like Go-Busters. Having only seen the 8 episodes of Timeranger subbed by SHT/Over:Time I can't really comment too much on it. However, it seems to me that Sentai does shows like this every so often, that are perceived as underperforming and yet they introduce something new to the franchise that sticks, which makes them important to the evolution of the show and prevent it becoming too stale.

I can't recall specific figures, but from what I remember Go-Busters isn't doing badly in toy sales. There's been very little drop since Gokaiger, indicating that Sentai can still sell well even without a collectables-based gimmick.

 

[MattComix]

TimeRanger wasn't a failed experiment so much as it just didn't move the merch. Which is why we got the Bandaitastic power-animal parade in GaoRanger the next year.

With GoBusters there really just seems to be some lack of commitment after the early going and it just keeps wavering back and forth between neutral and desperate. I don't think there's anything wrong with GoBusters in terms of design and concept, not even the characters really (though I can of a couple things I'd change). It's something that's failing because for whatever reason the people behind it don't seem to believe in it that much.

I think with GoBusters it's not a failure of experiment as much as it is a failure to execute. I would be really curious to know what the hell happened with the production of this show. Maybe it just boils down to Takebe and Sentai are not a good mix. Or maybe Kobayashi has burned out completely.

 

[Keith Justice]

Do we really need 3 threads on "Go-Busters sucks"?

Don't discourage people from posting what they wanna post.

I hate that Gobusters gets so much flack, cuz it really is one of my favorite and most enjoyed Super Sentai. Gokaiger was a seriously tough act to follow, I think.

 

[Gonza23b]

We've already had enough of nonsense. Comparing with Timeranger is the last straw. This is the last time I'm going to say, I am not interested in ratings nor does say that it is a bad series, it is a very good series and has already been enough with this dumb matter.