except Carranger made this angle first and made it better :sweat:
While I am usually Carranger Apologist #1, I actually think the Go-Busters V-Cinema goes a lot farther with parodying Sentai, and is genuinely a bit meaner-spirited about it. All of Carranger's parody is very loving, and it takes place in a gentle universe where merely the threat of someone actually dying is usually treated pretty seriously. Nothing like Green Hippo's death scene would be permitted in Carranger.
In fact, compare the Green Hippo scene with the first episode of Carranger, where Dapp "dies." Sure, that time's a fake, but that scene is a pretty good indicator of how Carranger treats death. Dobutsu Sentai Go-Busters is, by design, a superficial universe where the emotions are overblown and ultimately fake. In Carranger, the situations are silly but the emotion is always very genuine and heartfelt.
To me it looks like this movie is parodying Go-Busters itself. Maybe Shimoyama isn't too fond of writing for a Kobayashi show? Heh.
I really feel like what Shimoyama was parodying here was the retool, and maybe how people reacted to the retool. I mean, the ending of the special is about how the real Tokumei Sentai has more substance than the superficial Dobutsu Sentai, by virtue of being real characters who underwent actual hardships in their lives. So the Tokumei Sentai will go on existing, while the Dobutsu Sentai fades away.
To me, that's like Shimoyama is saying, "In the long run, people will remember the great things about this show, and the shitty retool awkwardness will simply be forgotten." And to be fair, that's often how it goes with Sentai. Like, with Turboranger, it's very clear to me now that nobody really much remembers what the show was actually like before Kirika showed up and made it a passable season.
Somehow, I preferred the real Go-Busters over this Gobusters....
This seems like an re enactment of 80's Sentai literally, while real Go-Busters tried taking the 80's formula and gives it a new angle (although poorly done).
Dobutsu Sentai Go-Busters parodied virtually every prior season that contained something worth parodying. They really focused on parodying 80s and 90s Sentai, though, probably since those are the two most creatively fertile decades for the franchise. In the 00s is when you get Sentai kinda resting on its laurels and often being content to just remake old shows and eps with more CG.
And I think that tendency is probably the
actual target of Dobutsu Sentai Go-Busters's parody. I think the V-Cinema is actually about mocking people (fans and executives both) who rejected Go-Busters for being "not Sentai," but would've happily lapped up a show that was nothing but mindless imitation of what came before. Tokumei Sentai Go-Busters at least attempted to grow the franchise, even if it wasn't allowed to finish what it started.
can't remember which series did the character/actor introduction that way in the opening though... d'oh!
I believe they were specifically doing Jetman, but Fiveman's OP is also pretty similar. There's actually a lot of shout-outs to Fiveman in the Dobutsu Sentai Go-Busters stuff, which is appropriate given how much Tokumei Sentai Go-Busters is grim n' gritty Fiveman. (And how Fiveman is also a series that gets painfully, brutally beaten by the retool stick.)