The End of Super Sentai was an Embarrassment for All

The current Super Sentai show is (was, seeing as it just ended) No.1 Sentai Gozyuger, labelled as the big 50th anniversary show. The qualifiers on this statement are multilayered:

• "50" in Japanese is pronounced "go zyu".
  • Aside: if you thought "wait, what?" to this statement then I invite you to look up the differences between Nihon-shiki, Kunrei-shiki, and Hepburn romanization.
• It has been about 50 years since 1975's Gorenger, the original Super Sentai.
  • However, Gorenger ran longer than the usual 1 year, JAKQ ran less, and they took a break from 1977-1979 to make Spider-Man instead.
  • Thus, this is the 49th show.
  • 2019's show was Thief Sentai Lupinranger VS Police Sentai Patranger, which they choose to count as two teams for the purposes of making the numbers line up.
• Toei announced that Super Sentai was going on ice after this due to flagging toy sales (and almost certainly some other quiet legal weirdness with Hasbro and the Power Rangers brand).
  • Aside: Let me be clear. I am under no illusions that they won't revive it the second the notion becomes profitable. But let us operate as though there will be no Super Sentai for the foreseeable future.

So, with the context of this being the Last Hurrah for the metaseries, surely they'd go out with a bang, right? Right?

Short answer: No.
Long answer: I think this show might be worse than the one that was literally 90% green-screen.

Gozyuger was already flagging for a while due to its inconsistent characterization, sauceless main cast (with the notable exception of Daisuke Sambongi's character, Fire Candle), and lack of meaningful metaplot. Main writer Akiko Inoue (nepo baby of noted tokusatsu screenwriter Toshiki Inoue, himself nepo baby of noted tokusatsu screenwriter Masaru Igami) has proven that she's great at chaotic one-off comedy episodes and seemingly helpless tying anything into a coherent whole.

And then there's that whole business...

You can investigate the particulars of why this happened on your own time; frankly I think it's a disgrace on part of Toei and the agency. As for the show itself, it was 37 out of 49 episodes deep, and the bulk of the remainder had already been filmed. The resulting edits and pick-ups are rough.

Consider the following. For an entire normal season's worth of episodes, every group shot has to be cropped or zoomed so the original actress is out of frame. If the new actress needs to do anything, we either cut to a shot obviously filmed separately or just straight up composite her in with green screen. Toei could not even be assed to reshoot the traditional helmets-off roll call in the final episode.

The final episode of all Super Sentai.

It is not often something makes me feel such deep embarrassment on every possible level. I feel embarrassed having enjoyed early episodes. I feel embarrassed for everyone involved in production and how they had to cobble together such a mess of a show at the worst possible time. I feel embarrassed for the cultural institution of Super Sentai, which must exist in the sociopolitical environment where the entire entertainment industry is run by idiots and assholes.

What a fuckin' way to go out.