During these past few months, the newest Super Sentai series, Donbrothers, began. My history with Sentai is way more on and off compared to my time with its sibling series, Kamen Rider. While I’ve generally consumed Kamen Rider content like an addict, I’ve only lightly dipped into Sentai and have yet to actually finish a series at the time of this writing. I got 9 episodes into Zenkaiger, which I honestly did enjoy a lot. I honestly can’t tell you why I didn’t finish it while it was airing. It was a genuinely fun show to watch. Simialrly, I got 10 episodes into Jetman before I stopped watching. That one is a little easier to explain simply because life stuff started kicking in and I fell into the card game vortex once it settled down. I’ve also seen the first few episodes of a couple others, like Gokaiger and Gobusters. The point is that I fuck with Sentai; I just haven’t finished an entire show yet.
So here we are with Donbrothers. Donbrothers is written by Toshiki Inoue of Kamen Rider Agito, Kamen Rider Faiz, and Choujin Sentai Jetman fame. That by itself got me on board. While I have my gripes with Faiz, it was still a good ride, and I loved Agito the whole way through. For all his other faults, Inoue is really, really good at writing characters and character interactions, and those two things are arguably the most important things to me in just about any fictional story. Kamen Rider Agito spent a lot of time with its characters and their relationships and Kamen Rider Faiz can be called a soap opera that just so happens to have a Rider in it.
One of the interesting things about Donbrothers so far is that it’s currently being told mostly from the perspective of Haruka Kito, the the yellow ranger of the team, rather than the titular red ranger, although he is obviously at the center of it all. Her life is thrown into disarray, and she’s told by Taro’s father to find him and team up with him. The first few episodes follow her trying to find Taro’s identity, and she eventually learns who he is. The challenge is understanding and working better with him now that she knows who he is in addition to becoming wise to the rest of the team’s civilian identities.
Donbrother’s tone is very fun. The show has a good bit of comedic moments and interactions. From Kito being kicked trying to find Taro, to Taro’s antics during fights, to Kaito’s very laid back reactions to any and everything while in his shop, there’s a lot of laughs to be had, big and small. Still, the show does has its serious moments, especially in regards to life. the show’s more serious moments during these first few episodes have revolved around the death of innocents who couldn’t be saved by the team. The first episode has Kito’s friend get killed after being turned into a monster, and a similar fate meets the MOTW of episode 3. Both times, the deaths are treated seriously and earn emotional responses from Kito and Taro.
The show’s visuals are a 10 out of 10…until we talk about the CGI. The CGi during the big robot sequences is fine. It’s the CGI beng used for Kijino and Inuzuka, the pink and black rangers, that’s wack. it’s mostly in the first episode more than the others, but the CGI for them is really bad/noticeable. It’s not the end of the world since the team regularly makes use of Avatar Changing to change into other Sentai, which means Kijino and Inuzuka’s CGI gets replaced with a physical suit + actor when they change into a past sentai.
The character setup in Donbrothers is really fun. The team fights together, but they’re not “together”. When shit starts popping off, the rest of the team just gets summoned to the fight, and the majority of the team don’t know each other’s civilian identities in the beginning. At the time of writing, Kito,Taro, Kijino and Saruhara know each other’s identities, but no one knows Inuzuka is the black ranger and he doesn’t know any of their identities.
Also, there’s a bit of drama with Kijino’s wife and Inuzuka’s girlfriend potentially being the same person. On top of that, she is more than likely a newly introduced antagonist, a Beastial. Never change, Inoue.
The character dynamics are setup really well right now. The dynamics between the team members are a joy to see and Taro and Sonoi, one of the antagonists, have had some really good bro moments in their civilian lives, unaware of their true identities, of course.
How the show handles Sentai’s usual “Invincible Red” trope is pretty interesting. Momoi Taro’s perfection actively keeps people, civilian and teammate alike, from relating to him properly. He scared off his hometown populace by constantly showing up/correcting people all the time, and it’s very clear he’s the only DonBrother totally proficient in combat. Even in everyday life, he completely outdoes everyone who steps up to bat in literally everything except Rock Paper Scissors, and even that is only because his coworkers realized that he is physically incapable of lying and just ask him what he will throw before they start. So far, the show has done some interesting episodes directly addressing his inability to lie, and there have been multiple moments where Taro ponders how he can be bring people happiness. A really poignant moment at the end of the episode about Kijino challenging him has him admit defeat to Kijino because Kijino was able to genuinely make his wife smile, something Taro feels he could never be able to do.
All in all, I really love DonBrothers. It’s crack. I look forward to watching every weekend. I can’t wait to see what happens next.
