[Fish Sandwich]

~Fish's Zenkai Tour!~

Episode 13 – Kousoku Sentai Turboranger



Turboranger is far from a show I know a ton about. It's another one with a theme song that totally slaps; the protagonists are all in high school; they drive sweet giant cars around. The bare essential knowledge you need, really. While it's something that plants seeds for later Sentai concepts that are way up my alley, Turboranger itself seems to be a show that isn't regularly touted as an exemplar of the franchise. I've never taken that as a bad sign, because we're talking about what came directly after Liveman, so of course it gets overshadowed, but still, the end result is a series I've only ever been moderately interested in.

Naturally, I went and learned a bit more about it in the process of making this post, and there were certainly some fun pieces of trivia to be found. The way these shows reflect and react to the culture of the times is often quite fascinating, so it was really cute to read that the then-fresh automobile theme was simply trying to ride the wave of massive success Tamiya's Mini 4WD kits were enjoying in the late 80's – a wave they rode all the way to the bank when the giant robot this year ended up selling like hotcakes, exactly as hoped.

I also learned just how weird that first episode really is. It's not exactly strange to want to do a big celebratory special to commemorate an anniversary. The thing is though, they wanted to do it so badly, they didn't care that it was a year late. The original intent was to do something like this between Maskman and Liveman, but that got nixed when Maskman's filming fell behind schedule, so we're celebrating 11 teams since Battle Fever J instead of that perfect, round 10. (This was back when Battle Fever J was considered the starting point for the franchise, which makes it all the more awkward that this is the first team with "ranger" in the name since the Gorangers themselves.)

Again, it's all a bit odd, but as a clip show, it's entirely harmless. There's a certain impact to seeing all these different groups standing together, a sort of forerunner to greater crossovers to come... especially since everyone seemingly showed up this time just so the Turborangers could give their villains a lecture about how cool they are. It's supposed to convince them to back off, but honestly, if I were one of the Bouma, I'd be so humiliated by getting dragged into a history lesson by my foes that I'd probably only be that much more motivated to conquer the planet. Imagine 53 dudes ganging up on you in a rock quarry only for 48 of them to decide to sit the fight out. It's a little patronizing!

Of course, that's not the real first episode, is it? While I'm going over it here because it's counted as such for simplicity's sake, the proper premiere is the second episode, and thanks to that, Turboranger has the unique honor of getting two episodes covered here. But really, this is the one that counts for something. And it's overall... pretty solid, to be sure. While I'm still deeply impressed by Hirohisa Soda's ability to write all these debuts in unique ways, I have to admit that Turboranger's particular take wasn't the most excited I've been so far.

I suppose the big thing to mention about the overall style is the deliberate gap between that visual concept of big fast road vehicles and the actual theming of the story, which has a plot revolving around ancient monsters causing trouble after being freed from their long-held magical seals. Because the fairies maintaining them can't keep it up any longer. ...Because most of them died from pollution.

The seeming disconnect here doesn't actually bother me at all. On the contrary, the mishmash of elements is so extreme it's clearly a conscious decision, and I can dig that. As far as the premiere is concerned, there's even a cute thing going on where our youthful protagonists are recruited because they're the only ones who can hear the pleas of the last surviving fairy – that classic sort of scenario of the kids who still believe in magic – except then the fairy in question was also already working with a scientist who came up with the idea for the whole car superhero thing. That sounds fun, clearly, right? Hard to hate a premise like that. That's the thing to keep in mind. When I say I "wasn't the most excited I've been", it doesn't mean it wasn't exciting at all. I do really like the gentle scene in the middle where the team see the fairy for the first time and save her from being pinned by some rocks; and in the opposite direction, I'm not going to say no to an action climax involving a giant flying sports car shooting down enemy planes with lasers.

That's kind of the bottom line, isn't it? It becomes easy to take these things for granted after so many series, especially when plenty of them have left stronger first impressions for me, but I don't want to downplay how fundamentally awesome Turboranger still is, either. Not a bad time at all with this one!