So, I'm the sort who's usually only ever been vaguely aware of Toku stuff, but I've recently started Zyuranger after picking up the set a while back and finally getting around to watching it. I had previously watched through the Japanese Spider-man, but that was my only real experience watching through a Tokusatsu show. And to be honest, that had me a little wary going into this. Like, I love the goofiness and I can totally get down with this stuff, and that stuff made Spider-man great in small doses. But to be perfectly honest, the repetitiveness definitely wore on me, and I have to say that I'm not really big on the whole stock-footage style reuse of drawn out super move sequences and stuff (much as I'd guess that may be blasphemy in here).
Fortunately, though, Zyuranger has pleasantly surprised me. Like, Spider-man 100% stuck to formula in the way the problem of the week occurred, Spider-man beats up the small monster, it grows big, and then he summons his giant robot Leopardon and we see the whole transformation sequence, and then he used his super move and that's about it (said super move being throwing the cheap looking sword). It never really deviated from that, and there really wasn't much to speak of in terms of larger plot threads.
Meanwhile, Zyuranger has been changing things up a good bit. Not every monster grows giant before being killed, there are currently 2 different super robots that can be combined into, and there's actually some legitimate fighting while in giant mode instead of just using the super attack every time. Heck, even the non-combined robots occasionally get a legitimate chance to fight! (I'm about half-way through currently). And there's of course been the big Green Ranger arc, which... I'm dicey on. I enjoyed it well enough, but holy hell that was a quick heel-turn. Like, multiple episodes of "I want to kill you and take over the world", and then he has a moment of realizing he can't bring himself to kill his little brother, and then all of the sudden he's on their team and really cares about protecting Geki (said brother, just to be safe). I do rather like the creepy child and limited lifespan thing he got saddled with, in that it's done quite well at first, especially considering the obviously limited budget that can definitely hurt their execution of stuff. But it's made him a bit awkward where these one-offs I'm in the midst of are concerned, because he pretty much just pops up to summon his dragon for the others to use and then immediately ducks out. Oh, and I rather like Bandora, she's a nice thoroughly ridiculous villain with the straightforward silly-evil motivation of "I hate kids, so I'm just gonna kill them all".
It's not a perfect show by any means (in particular, the characters pretty much have no development outside of "rah, we fight for justice"! Oh, and the show seems to have immediately forgot that they're supposed to be from the distant past, which is weird), but I've been having fun with it. Just out of curiosity, how does Zyuranger rank against most of the other Sentai shows? I'm planning on grabbing the other ones that have a US dvd release (and I'm really glad to see that being done finally), but I am kind of wondering if I'm watching one of the better Sentai series, or perhaps one of the lesser ones, or I guess maybe one that falls in the middle of the road. Also, are there any particular recommendations for standout Tokusatsu shows? Like, I've always been kind of curious about Kamen Rider stuff for example. Bonus points if it's something that has an official/legal English subbed version.
(Also sorry if this is kind of a weird giant post to dump in the middle of you guys discussing episodes of modern shows and the like, just taking a glimpse at the rest of the thread).