[Fish Sandwich]

~Fish's Zenkai Tour!~

Episode 10 – Choushinsei Flashman



Most of what I knew about Flashman was that its theme song is also insanely catchy. I like to listen to all the Super Sentai themes in a row every now and then, and those few minutes when it gets to Changeman and this show right in a row are always so glorious. I mean, the Flashman lyrics literally have them bragging about not even knowing what the word "danger" means in-between that repeated chant of "FLASH! FLASH! FLASH! FLASH!" It's got a way of sticking in your head is what I'm saying.

Beyond that, I mean, it's the show that introduced the concept of the second robot to Sentai, which is a crucial point of no return for the franchise giving over ever more to the demands of marketing. I mean, I'm sure it sounds downright quaint now, but the robots were and are kind of like mascots for Sentai shows, so suddenly deciding the "face" of a series was no longer good enough to last a whole year was kind of a fateful moment, and reflective of a larger trend forming with robot anime and the like as well. But like, fun as this tangent is, that second robot is obviously introduced way past what I'm here to cover today, so I should move on to the premiere itself.

It's another winner for Soda! Flashman seems like a show that will be my jam when I get around to seeing it in full. I'm going to start with a very specific reason why and work outwards from there – the characters' names. Seemingly a minor point, but this is the first Sentai with a cast that only has given names written in katakana rather than kanji. This is one of my favorite recurring Sentai tropes, used in shows that want to signify an "outsider" status to the heroes in some way, such as in ToQger, where the protagonists don't remember their families, or in Zyuranger, to reflect the fantasy origins of the cast. Flashman did both of those things I just mentioned right on the first go, further proving what a period of rapid evolution the franchise began once Soda took the reins with Goggle-V.

What I love so much about this setup really comes down to me finding outsider protagonists fun in general, I guess. There's an inherent energy to a story centered around characters that fundamentally don't "belong" in the environment they find themselves, and for a Sentai specifically, that idea that the team really only has each other to lean on contributes to the characterization just as naturally. There's only so much of this that can be explored in a single episode, of course, so I'm more talking about the possibilities of the story right now, but it's a first outing that does a great job at assuring the viewer there will be more to come.

The backstory of the team in Flashman is that they were all stolen from Earth at a young age by the bad guys and ended up being raised by more benevolent aliens out there in the cosmos, returning to their home planet all these years later to stop those same bad guys from laying waste to it. It's a golden premise, giving the heroes the simultaneous driving forces of revenge as well as the idea of them questing to reclaim the identities that were so cruelly stolen from them, which is of course all on top of the simple desire to protect that precious planet known as Earth, something they'd appreciate more than usual because they can't take living there for granted.

Like, jeez, that is some seriously fertile ground for good storytelling right there, right!? But not too serious, because while the potential of that last paragraph is hinted at, a lot of what the premiere is concerned with is making it clear that Flashman, true to its name, is not going to be a show about gloomy tragic people bemoaning their horrible fate. No, instead, everyone has this fantastic youthful brightness to them I found really compelling, even in the brief window of time I got to know them in for now. They're all very eager in a way that's so fun to watch, and they have great chemistry with one another. Again, It feels like seeing the future of the franchise in action, because this is all stuff I associate with more modern shows, and yet here it is all the way back in '86.

This is another one that left one heck of a first impression. I feel like it's sort of telling that this is the first show since all the way back when they were introduced in Battle Fever J to hold off on the giant robot in the premiere. Don't get me wrong, I would absolutely have welcomed some combination action here, but I think the lack of it after so many shows in a row suggests a certain level of confidence Flashman had in itself to be a little different. I look forward to seeing how much of that raw potential was realized some day!