Let's Watch Wednesdays Week 14 Gekiranger 40-42
 

The silently mighty Suguu has become the topic of interest as it appears that this powerful GenJyuken user has deep ties to GekiJyuken.

The always entertaining and awesome Kenji Ohba makes an appearance as well playing Dan, a gifted GekiJyuken user that Rio strove to surpass, Miki and Gou called friend, and Jan will learn to call something else.

And Rio evolves into the Genjyuoh that Long desires. The secrets that come to light will affect both sides in this conflict, and nothing will be the same.

So Let's Watch Gekiranger 40-42!

That was such a fun set of episodes. Learning the back story about how Rio, Gou, Miki, and, in a way, Jan, are all tied together was awesome.

Dan himself is cool, he gave one stilted as hell dying speech to Rio, but I still like him well enough. His entire "Geki soul" becoming Suugu was also a nice twist.

Seeing Jan get ecstatic over finding out who his family was a touching moment, and overall, I quite liked this set of episodes.

I like the Dan arc a lot, but I also think these are the episodes where Jan's babyspeak really works against the show. It's hard to really get emotionally invested when the main character is saddy-sad at his burdy-den and lack of a bondy-bond family.

Mele's still hot, though.

Ah, the Dan arc. Of all the big wham moments in Gekiranger, this trio of episodes were the best. The learning of the backstory about Dan and learning his current fate, Jan struggling with the not having a family like the others and being placed into a fated battle, and his ultimate realization which makes come back stronger than ever. All good stuff. And then we are left with two questions. Why was Dan so badly injured before fighting with Rio? And if Dan's village was truly destroyed by a storm, why are there gashes and a scale left behind in the rock face.

And how fortunate is it that the only thing in the entire village that wasn't buried under the mud was a locket with a picture of Jan and his parents in it?

Gotta love plot convenience!

Yup, gotta love convenience :lol. Anyway, another cool little moment in rewatching this series is knowing who Kenji Ohba is now. Back when I first saw Gekiranger I was still a greenhorn. I mean I saw it reported he was an alumni, but I wasn't really aware of his legacy in Tokusatsu. Thanks to Gokaiger, I can really appreciate his appearance here. It's a pity Dan is dead. Ohba could have been another warrior, GekiTiger or GekiByakko or something.

Ohba has been around the block a few times, and I love him each and every damn time.

I'm actually in the same boat as MidoGreen.
When I first saw Ohba, it was in Gekiranger, and I had no idea how prolific he was in the Toku industry. It's nice to come back to this point knowing who this man is. Pretty cool.

I don't remember him being in Gekiranger! He probably was in for few episodes.

So Jan being the spawn of Kenji Ohba,doesn't that automatically make him one of the best Reds just by gene pool alone? :p

Yes. Yes it does. :lol

According to the Power Rangers Wiki (Which also covers Super Sentai), he was only in Geki for 4 episodes.

Yup, I'd say by blood alone Jan has all other Reds beat :lol. It'd be interesting to see Jan meet Battle Kenya, Denji Blue, or Gavan one day.

Anyway, in the imortal words of Uncle from Jackin Chan Adventures "One mooooooore thing~". I'm digging the character song contest endings. Gou is my favorite currently.

I hated those ending themes :lol

And seriously look at Ohba's credits. The man is a toku legend. He was:

Suit Actor for
Kikaider/Jiro
Akaranger
One of the Akumaizer 3
Bibbyun

Actual actor for
Battle Kenya
Denji Blue
Space Sherrif Gavan MANY many times
Shurikengers' human disguise
Dan from Gekiranger

And he was one of the stunt/suit actors for the original Kamen Rider series!

That's Legen, wait for it, dary.

It's crazy to learn that he was a suit/stunt actor for both Akaranger, the first Red ranger, and the original Kamen Rider. That's freaking awesome.

Apparently, he also did his own stunts as Battle Kenya and DenjiBlue.

Indeed. For any character he has ever played he has done all his own stunts. Including his recent appearances as Gavan.

There are a couple really fun episodes of Metalder where Ohba, the main actor from Sharivan and Spielban, and some other veteran stunt actors showed up to get into some crazy action set pieces. It's really neat to see them all getting into crazy fights and stuff.

When I took a look at Sanyo,Long,Mele and Suguu lined up it hit me,they're the Four Symbols.The only reason I know about that is Digimon,but yeah Phoenix,Tiger,Dragon,Tortoise.It just blew my mind when I saw that and now I don't mind Mele being a phoenix anymore.

Rio is a griffin,that doesn't fit into that mythology hmmmmm.

Great episodes though,I really like that we got into Jan's backstory and it was really touching.And his vocabulary didn't bug me at all,in fact it probably added to his emotional scenes much more for me.

So I'm guessing only 2 more weeks of Gekiranger huh?It's gonna be pretty sad to see this show end,but at least I got Vs Boukenger and Go-Onger to look forward to.And also rewatching the Gekiranger Gokaiger episode.

Actually we've got 4. 43-45, 46-48, 49-50, Geki Vs. Go-On.

And I'm not sure who agrees but I think Rio's griffon form is just fugly as hell.

There's only 49 episodes, so I was assuming it'd be 43-45 and then 46-49.

I'm not a fan of Rio's Griffon form. Kurojishi for life!

And if anyone can tell me the significance of Rio's becoming a griffon beyond "Griffons are half lion," I'd love to know.

Well, there was a story called "The Griffin and the Minor Canon" in which a minor canon befriends the last griffin, who came into his village to see a stone representation of himself, in an effort to make sure the griffin didn't eat anyone. The griffin doesn't eat anyone, only eating during the equinox, but the townspeople are still wary of the griffin, and send the minor canon away in order to lure the griffin away. However, the griffin ends up doing the duties of the minor canon in his absence, and reveals to the townsfolk that he planned to eat the minor canon. In the end, the griffin takes the statue of himself into the mountains from whence he came and dies.

Make of that what you will.

Duh. I tend to forget it's only 49. So yes that means we have 3 weeks left.

43-45
46-49
Geki/Go-On

Yeah. Last time I checked the central cardinal god is Huanglong, a golden dragon. Hmmmmm.

I'm the same way. GekiRanger was the first time I saw him, so I had no idea he was anything important in the Toku world. I even have the Newtype The Live issue where they do a feature on him being in Geki and nothing clicked. In fact, since I hadn't see Geki since it aired, I did not even realize he was in it even when I first watched the Gokaiger vs Gavan movie. It was not until I was going through my Newtype Lives last year when I flipped through the GekiRanger issue and was like, "OMG, that is Gavan's actor!!"