Yoroiden Samurai Trooper

 Around late 80s to early 90s Saint Seiya was really popular and obviously there were clones popping out to capitalize the trend. From what i know there are two of these clones that got international exposure and worth mentioning at least, one of them is Tenku Senki Shurato and the other is Yoroiden Samurai Trooper. Since i watched Shurato a while ago already i thought i may give Yoroiden a run as well considering i used to watch some of the episodes when i was a kid just like Shurato.

I thought i could expect better from something by Sunrise but 39 episodes proves to be opposite. In a nutshell Yoroiden is Saint Seiya clone with Samurai Armor flavor and an inferior one too.  While Samurai Trooper work just fine as a kid show, it was a wasted potential just like Shurato other many animes. While the Props like Settings and Characters are not as good as Shurato, it was decent enough and the Samurai Armor design are pretty cool too, character development is almost nonexistent. The main characters didn't really have character growth and by the second half of the series 4 of the 5 Samurai jobs really bad. All they do is getting beaten out of crap while the Red guy took the spotlight with his White Inferno Armor.Not to mention that the special attacks of each main characters are really dull compared to the series equivalent. While i don't expect good story in this kind of series, it gets rather decent in the middle before shortly took a nosedive. But in my opinion the worst part of Yoroiden is rather shallow adaptation of the Samurai theme itself, which was kinda vexing. In short the series failed to be "Japanese" enough for an anime that uses the most iconic theme from Japan.

 Due to poor character developments, it is very hard to get attached to any of the characters. But at very least i do like one of antagonist named Shiten who turned to good guy since he is probably the most developed character in the series surpassing the 5 Samurais. There were OVAs for Yoroiden but i doubt it gets any better. Interestingly if Yoroiden ever got a reboot i think it will likely have some Yaoi nuance on it. I used to have the toy from the series as well and thus naturally interested with the Armor Plus lineup of the series. Unfortunately the price for these was rather absurd so i guess i will be keeping a watch from sideline for a while.