[Fish Sandwich]

~Fish's Zenkai Tour!~

Episode 4 – Denshi Sentai Denziman



I basically don't have any interesting preconceived opinions on Denziman to share? I think the most intense thinking I've ever done about the show might honestly have just been trying to decide if I wanted to spell it Denjiman or not for this post. Outside of that, it's always been little more than THE "default" Super Sentai show in my mind. Like, those first three shows are this weird little trilogy in my head, where Toei hadn't totally worked out a formula yet and thus tried radically different approaches each time, and then Denziman simply is the formula they landed on.

I can't tell you what makes this show unique with my surface-level knowledge, but I can easily point to the great number of tropes now considered completely integral to the franchise that either originated here, or at least really started to take root. The "____ Sentai" title formula. The "____man" sub-formula that would prove popular for a time. The specific style of the visors on the costumes. The big robot that now transforms. Proper transformation devices. Heck, I think this is even the first instance of whimsical theme naming for the main cast, with each of them having their color represented in their family name. It's really a groundbreaking show in a lot of ways, and unlike when Toei tried to follow up Goranger's popularity with JAKQ, Denziman's own success paved the way for Super Sentai to become the juggernaut of a constantly ongoing franchise it is to this day.

Looking back at it from my admittedly shallow point of view, though, I think all that innovation has always worked against getting me to see anything interesting about Denziman itself. I could perhaps best sum it up by saying the suits have always looked to me like a generic off-brand Sentai you'd see in other media (compare this to my glowing opinions on the Goranger designs), and I feel bad about even thinking that as though it were a negative, because all that thought does is prove how much influence Denziman had on the franchise's direction going forward.

As for the first episode, though? Well, it lines up with everything I just said rather nicely, as it turns out. This is a premiere that Toei has basically made again countless times over the years. It's 1980 now, and spies are way lamer than awesome sci-fi adventure movies, so say goodbye to highly-trained special operatives fighting against criminal syndicates, and hello to ordinary civilians recruited to stop an invading space empire. It's a drastic shift when you stop to think about it, and I have to commend Denziman's premiere for how bulletproof it is. Again, I could decry it as "generic", but flip that around, and I can praise it for creating a framework so perfect it can still be used largely unchanged decades later.

There's not much in the way of deep dramatic substance and characterization, the way the previous two shows made an effort to fit in, and it's not quite as bombastic as Goranger's introduction (it is extremely hard to top the audacity of the Black Cross murder montage), but it effortlessly establishes the threat of the villains, gives us a broad idea of where the characters come from in life, and gets them suited up early enough to have pretty much the entire back third of the episode be all action, all the time. You wanna talk future Sentai staples, they even manage to get an entire giant robot fight in the premiere, which isn't always something you can take for granted, even today.

I'm not like, pumped up about Denziman after watching the first episode, exactly, but I'm nodding respectfully in its direction now, if that makes sense. This is a really nice, straightforward premiere that moves a pretty brisk pace. Throw in the fact that the Denzimen were recruited by way of an intelligent robot dog, and you've got the makings of a pretty entertaining show here. It definitely seems like something that would've grabbed the attention of kids at the time, especially.