If it was a single piece robo with a giant gun mode and a robo mode, I might be more willing to agree. That would be less monotonous and be a nice throwback to earlier shows. But did the individual PatWings really do much on their own outside one or two episodes? In fact, do we ever really see the individual components do stuff? Even from a toy perspective, all they seem to be good for is combining.
The individual components weren't used much, but they still did stuff a few times, including an episode that couldn't have happened without the ability to separate into individual components. From a toy perspective, their uselessness happens every time with plane/ship-type small vehicles, so there's nothing particularly bad about them.
Couldn't you say then that DekaWingRobo was emulating Shaider's Babylos and Spielban's Gran Nazca, which themselves probably got the idea from anime?
You're getting a single aspect out of it and ignoring everything else. Yeah, turning into a gun wasn't created by the Dekawing, but it's a combining, flying, dual gun wielding robot which also turns into a gun. All while actually looking very good. And actually, I don't think turning into a gun came from any anime. Or, if it came from one, it must have been copying from some specific title I've never heard anything about, rather than a general trend (unlike the sword finishers in middle/late 70s and early 80s).
Going back to the design, the DekaWing Robo toy ended up looking too boxy, but we're talking about the show here. I don't see how the series would have been any better if all the aerial action sequences with the DekaWing Robo had been cut in favor of more ground based stock footage for the Super Dekaranger Robo or just Dekaranger Robo.
Was FlashTitan necessarily stronger? And there was at least one time when FlashKing had to bail it out.
Well, the Titan Flash and Titan Boy weren't necessarily better, but the Great Titan was shown to be better than anything else that they had. Yeah, it was kind of a block that couldn't move, but it usually didn't need to anyway, even after its introductory story. The FlashKing's sword broke when it hit the last monster, but the Great Titan just let it absorb its own energy until the monster blew up. The difference
was pretty big.
Extra mecha used by the 6th Ranger that attaches to the main combiner. The DekaBike already did that in Dekaranger itself. If you're condemning the DekaWing solely based on such a general characteristic (It's a 5 piece combiner!) then I don't see how it's any better.
