This was one of the first yuri stories I ever read, and it's certainly quite moving to see it arrive at a conclusion. Sometime's a writer I find quite interesting, since there runs through a lot of their work, longer and shorter, an intent to play around with expectations of genre and appearance, not necessarily looking to 'subvert' them (a term that often tends to impose a false homogeneity upon the subject of its presumed overturn), but to texture them with queerness. This is manifested, of course, in their foregrounding of queer characters themselves, but this also extends into a wider illumination of queer readings and themes implicit in the conventions and appeals of a genre- in case of this story, the transforming sentai heroes who become truer and grander versions of themselves (I love how they yell "Trans Up!") in recognition of a common, generally outside threat such as aliens, are 'claimed' by queer characters who use them to protect their status quos, finding a sense of self and a place in the system by recognizing the virtues of humanity and working to protect it.
However, while an uncritical or simplistic application of this theme can be used to endorse conservative, pro-police and pro-military standpoints about protecting an imagined community from outsiders by donning a patterned uniform and joining a cause greater than the individual, Sometime also acknowledges that queerness is spiritually incompatible with such pro-establishment narratives ("Yuri Terrorism" is another charming, if tongue-in-cheek instance of their rebelliousness in this regard), since those very establishments have historically aimed to erase queer communities and people. Therefore, they present in this story the common queer desire to reclaim and integrate into these established narratives of 'protection' and 'service' to gain a sense of power and normalcy, but also alloy it with a willingness to challenge and complicate those narratives by asking, through the Antinoids, exactly what makes a 'monster'. Honey's defection serves immediately to shatter a simple human-good, Anti-bad binary, being not a midseason twist or a sixth ranger's gimmick, but the central thrust of the premise, a commitment right off the bat to avoiding narrow divisions of virtue and vice in favor of exploring the deeper motivations that drive people to align themselves with various causes.
Sometime's consistent humanization of the Antinoids, who indeed make up a bulk of the cast, makes it almost impossible to engage with the series via simple hero vs. villain lens, and the fact that the Antinoids, who grapple with a consistent sense of alienation, are further displayed to engage in interests and fields often taken up by queer people to find a sense of belonging and challenge popular narratives, adds a great deal of depth to the genre-staple-allegory. Melt's interest in playing around with biology and genetics as well as Kyouka and Cool's interest in fandoms, the latter especially finding her sense of humanity in media positively depicting queerness, allows for a spectrum of deeper readings alongside the standard toku action fun, while also directly helping improve the series' execution of those very sentai tropes leading into its moving denouement.
The traditional emphases on love, empathy, friendship and togetherness blown to epic proportions in the final chapter are classic messages of a genre generally aimed at children, which might feel cliched at first to a desensitized adult reader, but are lent an incredibly affecting authenticity by the series' aforementioned foregrounding and implicatures of queerness, because to people who've been consistently discriminated against, erased, othered and either excluded from or stereotyped by popular narratives, the ideal of an all-accepting love that moves beyond good and evil (endorsed verbatim by the series) is immensely cathartic and appealing. It may resonate therefore with particular force in the hearts of an adult queer reader precisely because it represents our hope that there may come a day when we may move on from the traumas and loneliness of our pasts to find communities that love and accept us for who we are, creating not merely a world where there's no need to transform, but a world attained precisely by our transformations, by 'transing up' and 'combining', a world where queer people may finally become themselves. Adding to this, the standard post-finale aftermath where the characters are shown to be leading quotidian lives is not a standard 'end of adventure', 'coming of age' denouement, but an utopic achievement, because a genuinely accepting 'normal' is so much harder for queer people to truly settle into, and so much more precious when it is achieved.
Sometime is thus able to masterfully deploy and interweave themes of queerness into the series at levels so deep that it goes beyond just being 'tokusatsu with lesbians' and is able instead to breathe into the tropes of the genre an entire micro-epic of queerness, lending it incredible relevance and vitality and letting it become every bit as cathartic, heart-pounding and inspiring as a more traditional sentai series might be to a child nostalgically looking back on the past. Sometimes, then, doesn't merely revive that past, but is able to actively reclaim it, to engage with the exclusionary tropes of a genre that may make queer viewers feel alienated and meaningfully challenge them, even as they also present us with queer heroes and queer optimism, allowing their characters to be more than heroes or villains firing at each other across lines in the sand. The transformations, combinations, costumes and explosions key to the genre are made delightfully camp, bringing to the forefront the implications of fluidity, transitions and fulfillment-in-cohesion that younger or less prudent viewers may have missed, even as those performances necessarily reveal the falseness of an absolute virtue and vice and emphasize instead authenticity in the moment and the interweaving of personal rhythms into a symphony that celebrates individuality, the masquerade that bursts joyously into unity and revelation. All in all, it works delightfully to not only recolor a popular genre in queer hues, but to assertively create within it a space for both subversion and expansion, and is a shining example of what a skillful 'queering' of a traditionally masculinist, cisheteronormative genre can achieve, making it both truer to itself philosophically and capable of socially-relevant reinvention. I loved this series, plan to reread it soon, and am also quite interested in Sometime's current Afterschool Re-Reincarnation, which seems to be aiming for a similarly innovative queer-rebuilding of the DQ-inspired-isekai genre.
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