[Fish Sandwich]

~Fish's Zenkai Tour!~

Episode 17 – Gosei Sentai Dairanger



I get the impression Dairanger is a pretty beloved series by die-hard Sentai fans. It's another one I basically only ever see brought up in the context of glowing praise. The Sugimura era is loved for a couple of shows in particular from what I can tell, and this is without question one of them.

The thing is, I didn't think the premiere was all *that* great as I was watching it, but sure enough, it only took a little bit of thinking to realize what was going on there.

See, much like Jetman and Zyuranger before it, Dairanger was still making some pretty massive strides when it came to pushing Sentai in new directions; it's just that it did it in a subtle enough way, and did it so successfully, that it took me a second to figure out all these things my brain was filing under "been there, done that" were things that I haven't actually seen up to this point in the tour. The shows I was subconsciously comparing it to all came after, and once I recognized that, I recognized how big this show kinda is.

Super easy example – Ryou; Ryuu Ranger, otherwise known as our Red for the show. He's just some random dude working a completely ordinary job at a restaurant, who gets caught up in events and ends up becoming the last member to join the team. The premiere is essentially his origin story, told from his perspective as he involves himself in this crazy new world of fantasy and adventure. Big deal, right? Having Reds who don't fit the traditional image of a leader is totally common, and having them join the group late is basically its own trope at this point. And it is! ...after Dairanger started it.

It's so fundamental now that I took it for granted, but basically every Red prior to Ryou was made out to be the most charismatic, or the most brave, or the most skilled, or the most powerful, or the most passionate, or sometimes all of those at once. Ryou, as he's presented in the first episode, is very much just some random guy off the street, way out of his depth. Someone with hidden potential who's quick to leap to the rescue when a monster runs off with a child, sure, but it's all very down-to-earth. We aren't dealing with a literal prince from ancient times here. Ryou could be anyone you know, and he could even be you.

While it's far from the absolute most engaging or exciting premiere I've seen doing this so far, there's absolutely something to be said for how textbook it is – especially when it's the one writing so much of that book. And while roving gangs of bad guys on bicycles may be a surprisingly underwhelming concept for an action sequence, once the team transforms, there's still more than enough flair to the proceedings between all the awesome martial arts posing and that legendarily cool RyuuseiOh prop.

Talking strictly about the premiere is also probably underselling how great Dairanger truly is, because I know a lot of that is in how it all fits together in the long run. Everything I mentioned about Ryou here was part of a larger initiative this show had to explicitly make all five heroes the "main" star, and that balanced character focus is one of those things I've long heard spoken of fondly. Everyone apparently gets their turn, and that's communicated through things like who gets to say the catchphrase in the roll call, or how the commercial bumper eyecatches feature a single member of the team each episode rather than the whole group. (Though sometimes it's also a different member on either side of the break.) Once again, these are ideas many of the following shows would run with, so even though this paragraph isn't coming from a place of personal experience, I'd be remiss not to bring this stuff up, because it's core to the show's appeal among fans.

So yeah, while it didn't have a first episode that immediately resonated with me the same way some of them have, and it's the least I've had to say about a show in a while, I definitely get a strong feeling Dairanger is worth the hype it gets, and I could see the seeds for a great run being planted in that premiere. Not a show I've ever felt super eager to get around to for whatever reason, but almost certainly one I should be getting around to.