There has been a disappointing trend in Japanese live action in which a group on grunts, once defeated, will explode. But things were not always this way — minions would have unique and appropriate death sequences, depending on their composition. Of course, things were not always that way either.
Early on in Japanese live action, special effects were limited, to say the least. When a minion was defeated, in particular robotic minions, they would fall to the ground, maybe arch their back or writhe very briefly before the shot would cut to an exploding firework on the ground. Not particularly exciting, but good enough for the technology of the time. No doubt they had visions of better effects, which would have led them to give the Hiderers from Changeman their own unique death sequence. Prior to that, and subsequently up to the Golem Hei in ZyuRanger, if a minion was defeated, they would lie on the ground or, if robotic, explode. That was all there was.
Perhaps, then, I (and other interested fetishists) were spoiled by the Z-Putties (made of clay, shattered from a strike to the 'Z'), Orgettes (made of fluid; spewed liquid when slashed), Karths (made of stone, shattered when defeated), and Rin-Shi (undead, burst into purple bits/mist). But even the Karths, later in Boukenger, could be seen exploding in a fiery blaze.
In two of the more recent Super Sentai — Goseiger and Gokaiger — the Bibi and Gormin, respectively, would expode when defeated. The Bibi were, to my understanding, supposed to be mannequins animated by the Bibi bugs. I couldn't tell you what the Gormin (pictured above) are supposed to be, except that they're made of metal, but they don't seem to be robots. I did not watch any of Shinkenger, but I recently spotted an episode of Power Rangers Samurai in which the Moogers (Nanashi Company in Shinkenger) blew up in effigy, despite being giant crustaceans. None of these three should be exploding, in my opinion.
And really, the fact of the matter is that it costs money to animate those sorts of things. You could tell that, by the end of Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers Season 2, the animations for the Z-Putties shattering was less and less detailed compared to earlier episodes. Likewise, there was a lot of recycled shots of Hiderers melting to blue goo later on in Changeman.
The Buglers in Go-Busters, at least, have marked a slight return to that direction. They do explode, but with alphanumeric characters flying out of the explosion — they being some sort of physical robotic manifestation of data, it makes sense. One, recently, omitted the explosion and simply disappeared in a flurry of data.
It'd be nice if the trend bucked back to more creative animations. But I sense that, even if they did, sooner or later, they would return to simply exploding.
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