[Fish Sandwich]

~Fish's Zenkai Tour!~

Episode 14 – Chikyuu Sentai Fiveman



Fiveman is most known to me for being perhaps the original Worst Sentai Ever. I think it's fair to say it's a bit infamous for the trouble it had finding success. It suffered from poor ratings out of the gate (an after-effect of a time slot change midway through Turboranger the previous year), and it also consistently struggled to move merchandise, which is where things became truly problematic. While a Sentai can get away with one of those things at at time, both at once will get people questioning if it's even worth producing the series at all anymore.

It doesn't help that Hirohisa Soda has basically admitted he was running on fumes by this point, which is no big surprise. The man had been one of the leading creative voices on Super Sentai for darn near a decade at this point, with this being his ninth show in a row as main writer, and what's more, he'd been an episode writer on every series all the way back to Goranger. I'd be tired too! Anybody would be tired after all that! So you know, he could keep on trying to integrate whatever new themes or new twists to keep it fresh and relevant, but without a certain level of passion, that ironically becomes just another part of the routine, and the consensus seems to be exactly that – Fiveman is routine. Boring. Predictable. Unoriginal. Lame. It's no wonder Toei tried to mix things up so much the year after, right? Fiveman sounds like a total disaster!

Fiveman also has a premiere I enjoyed a ton, because I can be rather predictable myself!

I don't know, there's just something about the structure and pacing to this one I found pretty captivating. One of the more flattering things that's notable about Fiveman is that is was the first Sentai to use the idea of the team all being siblings. (This concept apparently may have been inspired by Japan's declining birth rate, which I want to mention because I think it's interesting that even a Soda show with the reputation Fiveman has was still trying to keep it real in its own way.) The family dynamic makes for a darn solid origin story.

It's another one that puts emotion at the forefront, dedicating a lot of time to playing out the show's backstory of tragic loss and parental sacrifice on a distant world before anything else, rather than only hinting at it or brushing it off with a quick flashback or something. It's a super smooth introduction that provides great context to get you invested in the heroes and despising the villains, right down to an awesome moment where one of the main bad guys receives a scar when the future Five Red blasts his face with a laser gun, making a stand against evil even while quivering in fear, since he's only a child. That is a heck of a way to start a rivalry right there!

Only after that entire thrilling yet depressing space adventure reaches its conclusion around the halfway mark are we introduced to the regular status quo for the series, with the five children making the best of their lives twenty years later working as school teachers, while of course being more than prepared to face those same villains when they finally make their way to Earth. The Fivemen themselves are introduced silently piloting their mecha in shadowy close-ups, a visual so cool it can get to me overlook my frustration that Fiveman only has three machines to make their robot. Without basic intuition (or the opening credits), you wouldn't even know who these guys are suddenly arriving to save the day, and it builds a ton of excitement precisely because of how restrained it is. Or at least as restrained as something that involves this many explosions and lasers can be, anyway.

Much like I said with Tubroranger being fundamentally awesome, I feel like it's probably best to take Fiveman on its own merits rather than getting hung up on how it compares to whatever else. It was the Worst Sentai Ever because it wasn't pushing things to exciting new heights the way a show like Liveman was, and I'm sure there are genuinely plenty of uninspired elements in it, but like, I don't think I'd be running away never looking back if this was the first one of these shows I saw? Heck, in my case, this is actually one where I would've gladly watched the second episode right there on the spot. Fiveman is just kinda cool to me, what can I say? From the name to the suits, it screams Generic Sentai Series, but on the other hand, I love those suits! Fiveman likely isn't the absolute best Sentai has to offer, but at least from what little I've seen of it, it certainly has a unique charm all the same.