Guys.. You need to stop doing this on a work day. 😛
So once again this post will be about what caught my eye this go around. Apologies that there will be the YouTube timeline strip in some of these screenshots, but damn a lot of this is just in a single frame or so. As before, image heavy post after the read more.
Apparently I completely missed this from the first trailer at the 13 second mark. Some sort of attack weapon on a whip (?) with a brief far away look at the attacker.
There’s a brief look at the other armors in this trailer. Putting a pin in that for now because we have to pivot here.
The official website updated with more character information, though there’s still things there to be revealed. And we appear to have the new armor names now? If you look at each armor, under the diagonal slash there is some text in English. We also got names (in Japanese) via an official social media post. (Instagram) So combine those along with some other info I found and we got the armor names:
- Heat aka Shakunetsu
- Water aka Suiren
- Wilderness aka Kouya
- Sky aka Soukyu
- Light aka Senkou
From XMezumiiru:
灼熱 – Shakunetsu is Burning Heat
水簾 – Suiren – Water Bamboo Screen
Other reading: Shishi odoshi
This is the bamboo pipe, screen, and pot that are used in Japanese fountains that are used to scare away animals. It also has the connotations of bringing death. It’s also a reading for waterlily, that’s extremely toxic.荒野 – Kouya – Wastelands
荒 has wilderness in it, but it’s an area that is moving towards being barren, it’s part of the verb ‘to lay waste’蒼穹 – Soukyu – Blue sky
Not the typical reading, but it can be associated with aonibi that are lost spirits with blue tales, similar will-o-the wisps.閃光 – Senkou – Flash of Light Poetically, this is used for lightning, but it’s also associated with a stroke of inspiration, but it’s also a reading for war
For now I’m going with Heat, Water, Wilderness, Sky, and Light for the rest of this post just to try to keep things simple and coherent.
Now, picking up that pin.
The Water armor now has a shield on its back, which looks fin-shaped as far as I can tell. Also he’s wielding a sword, length undermined at this time.
The armor might have ice powers, which.. hey that’s a Yami (aka Darkness) armor thing. Unless he is breaking out of ice in this scene?
The Wilderness armor looks very boxy and reminds me of characters from Mega Man. The armor now has a double bladed axe with a spike?
The Sky armor doesn’t look too different from what we can see, aside from again a bit of a boxy look at the knee. (We seriously need a closer look at it.) Also it seems that the charged up arrow releases several magical energy arrows now.
Also note the weird square stirrups behind the foot of the armor are definitely back. I remember them being utilized one singular time in the original series as a grab point. I seriously hope some enemy takes advantage of it for that exact feature. 😈
The Light armor’s sword is different, and possibly the armor grants a speed boost of some kind.
The official site has brief audio clips of each new Trooper and they all sound male. So those hoping for a continuation of an all boys team got their wish.
Finally we get an extended look at that enemy that Gai is fighting. I tried to splice a couple of the frames together and do a quick job trying to hide some of the split lines. Whatever look we have of the new villains is still either far away or blurred. At this point it feels like the villains are being a slow roll tease.
So closing thoughts.
This seems to confirm the original armors were destroyed. How these new armors came into being is still a question that remains to be answered. Did these new armor bearers somehow breathe these new armors into being, so to speak? Did the original armors’ energies remain somehow and are reforming into these new armors? Or perhaps with the seal on the Youjakai (aka Netherworld) breaking some energy was released into Earth and became these reformed armors? Is it some completely different lore reason that I can’t think of? We shall see.