[Fish Sandwich]

~Fish's Zenkai Tour!~

Episode 20 – Gekisou Sentai Carranger



When I first got done watching Carranger a few years back, I said I'd recommend it to anyone with a pulse, and while that's an exaggeration, the statement still speaks to to how enthusiastic the series made me feel. So what's the appeal of this particular show, then, that I'd make such a bold claim about it like that? Carranger is popular enough that a lot of you won't need me explaining, but, to take things back to the starting line...

After Ohranger, Super Sentai was in the market for a new chief producer to helm the next show, and a guy who was already one of the producers on Ohranger was a natural choice for a promotion. Which meant that Carranger would be helmed by none other than Shigenori Takatera, a man who never met a tradition he wasn't willing to break for the sake of his artistic vision. An auteur, if you will. Fans of Kamen Rider will know him, by name or not, for the groundbreaking work he did on Kuuga, as well as the equally distinctive style he lent Hibiki prior to that series' infamous change in staff. But Carranger was the very first show he was in charge of, and while I'd never given it much thought before... you can tell it was him!

Carranger is well known and often highly regarded as a full-blown self-parody of Sentai. It goes way further into outlandish comedic territory than even Kakuranger did, and the sheer level of irreverence it displays is hard to imagine coming from anything other than a crew with so much fresh talent, and so little restraint. Yoshio Urasawa in particular, the guy Takatera picked as the show's main writer, was someone who hadn't even watched a Sentai before, let alone wrote for one, so he ended up just doing whatever he felt like. (Needless to say, Takatera deeply respects Urasawa.) And considering his background as a prolific writer for the Toei Fushigi Comedy Series, it should go without saying that he felt like writing some zany scripts! He was apparently especially proud of coming up with the whole "fighting for traffic safety!" catchphrase of the team.

Hard to blame him when that line is such a clear summation of everything Carranger is about. It's a real attention grabber, and a microcosm of how Urasawa's writing hides genuine brilliance behind equally genuine foolishness. A funny joke because of what an absurd thing that is for a team of superheroes to focus on, but also something that neatly reflects the duality of Carranger's style, in that there's nothing in there explicitly telling you it's meant to be silly. It's a line that's always delivered with utter seriousness, and the beauty of Carranger is how it can walk this fine line between "exposing" the ridiculous nature of hero tokusatsu and simply being the exact thing it's making fun of. Where exactly the irony begins and ends is often left to the viewer's interpretation.

For an example of what I'm talking about, the very first line of the entire series is narration introducing us to a peaceful and harmonious planet... named Hazard. The show doesn't make a comment on the irony of this, as it's far too busy giving a completely straight-faced fantasy prologue about a world under siege by villains, and a brave young survivor who will undertake a quest to unite five heroes of prophecy to put a stop to the evil that destroyed his home. Granted, I guess that planet sure became a hazard around the time it got blown up, but the name itself, it's part of this grand mythology the show establishes for itself... that just so happens to be themed exclusively around cars and traffic. There's a surprising level of detail and consistency to the world-building in Carranger that might feel familiar to fans of Takatera's other shows, it's just that here it's all completely nonsensical, and entirely in support of more nonsense. Cars aren't some contemporary, grounded and relatable motif for Carranger; they're literally magic.

And yet, on the flipside of all this, the protagonists and villains alike are as ordinary as can be. The bad guys for the season are nothing grander than a bunch of common street thugs (but from space), almost adorable in their ineptitude, despite posing a legitimate threat. And the heroes? Despite the destiny that awaits them, they're introduced griping about their boring ordinary jobs working at a garage together, and their fearless leader even complains that he isn't getting paid enough to protect peace in the universe on the side. In my favorite moment of the entire premiere, their mentor figure has to literally drag them onto the battlefield, tied up by a rope and everything, because they're all being *that* uncooperative. And they STILL need convincing to transform and fight. It's all pretty genius.

I remember this being another premiere that didn't leave the absolute best first impression, and it wasn't until a bit in that I started to realize how great the show was, but going back with all that knowledge, it's way easier to appreciate everything happening here. Carranger has enough layers that trying to paint a whole picture of it in one episode was going to be a difficult task, and I think they picked their priorities as well as they could have. The big sacrifice is the more thorough characterization that gradually takes shape from this point on, but in exchange, you get a great feel for the overall tone and atmosphere of the series. There's a lot of absurdity, a lot of chaos, a lot of destruction, and even a not insignificant amount of genuine heroic determination.

The last one in particular is greatly helped along by one of the other new people Takatera brought on to Sentai, composer Toshihiko Sahashi. His soundtracks excel at being at once grandiose, heart-pounding, and more than a little jazzy, while "merely" being fantastic at everything else, making him a natural fit for a show as varied as Carranger. Sahashi is one of several people I'm extremely grateful Takatera got involved with the franchise, and while my bias is showing as I say this, I completely understand why he went with him as the composer for nearly every show he was a producer on after this.

If it's tricky to sum up Carranger in one episode, then summing it up in one post isn't easy either. Again, I think it's a surprisingly complex series in a lot of ways, but I suppose the simplest thing to say about it is that it's rather charming. Or like, is "inviting" a good word, maybe? There's something easy to get into about a show that starts each episode with a genuinely uplifting heroic anthem, ends with a relaxing jam about the monsters partying away the humiliation of defeat, and can have any number of absurd(ly cool) happenings between. It kinda snuck up on me how much I actually liked Carranger as I was watching it, but its distinctive style has always had a fond place in my heart ever since.