[Fish Sandwich]

~Fish's Zenkai Tour!~

Space.41 – Uchuu Sentai Kyuranger



(I know it looks like nobody is missing, but even including the silhouettes, this is only 75% of this team's eventual roster.)

Kyuranger is a show about nine warriors of legend chosen to free the universe from the evil clutches of an oppressive space shogunate. I know I usually don't lead off with bland exposition, but I have a point I'm about to make, and for the sake of keeping everyone up to speed, it's important to note that number. Nine. It's one of Kyuranger's biggest selling points, to the degree it's right there in the title. It's an absurdly huge size for a Sentai team, and, as if to stress how bold and impactful that scope is, it's constantly noted in the story that this team has that legend associated with them. It is very specifically nine heroes who are said to bring hope to a cosmos in turmoil.

So then why, come the ninth episode of the series, are there already ten of them?

Whenever I think about Kyuranger, there's plenty that comes to mind, and I'll get to the rest in a bit, but above maybe everything else, there's a single line that sort of defines the entire series to me. See, the episode in question, where the Kyurangers get their first of three additional members in a show literally named after the specific size of its already huge cast of heroes, centers around the team's commander, and the reveal that before gathering the Kyurangers proper, he once tried to fight on his own using an imperfect imitation of their powers. His arrogance in thinking he could take on the bad guys himself resulted in tragedy, and he'd prefer to put it all behind him, but he's encouraged to fight alongside the other nine as a true Kyuranger with a simple bit of optimism – if the legend tells of nine heroes, and there are actually ten, that means reality is even better than the legend.

Back when it started airing, I was honestly a little uneasy about the idea of Kyuranger still feeling the need for traditional extra heroes, so first of all, I'll always remember that line for the sheer immediacy with which it turned my entire opinion around. Put like that, there could be a hundred Kyurangers, and I'd just think it was cool. And because that line did stick with me so much, I always kept coming back to it throughout the series, and realizing how deeply that sentiment reflects both Kyuranger's overall style, and also its central message.

Kyuranger, in terms of style, it's basically go big or go home, to put it simply. You'd think the oversized cast would be enough to get that across, but it really goes above and beyond that, also shooting for an epic space opera premise while it's at it. That the show even managed to not collapse under all the weight it was putting on itself would be worthy of praise in my book; that it manages to actually make that ambition a strength is downright impressive. Kyuranger captured my attention from the earliest reveals. I mentioned talking about Kyoryuger how cool I thought it was that the series highlighted the individuality of the team's members in order to emphasize their strength, and Kyuranger takes that idea even farther. Kyuranger has a really good tagline that sums it all up – each one of them is a Super Star; the nine of them together are All Stars. To create a threat big enough to justify a team this incredible, the usual alien invader premise is flipped on its head, with an entire universe, already conquered, that the heroes are tasked with liberating from scratch. Which is awesome! Everyone loves some underdog heroes! To get across that any one of these guys would be a cool superhero on their own, every single Kyuranger has an individually tailored suit with distinctive details not shared with anyone else, communicating their style far more than just the usual different helmets would. Which is awesome! Everyone loves some thorough design work!

Well, okay, I mean, I love it, anyway. I'm sure there are people out there who don't jive with the Kyuranger aesthetic for whatever reasons, but I'd hope even those people would still be able to appreciate the sheer effort went into the visuals for this series. The endless creativity of the designs year after year is one of those things that keeps tokusatsu so infinitely fascinating to me, and Kyuranger is one of those shows that feels like it was truly giving 110% on that front. Maybe 900%? It's sort of baffling to me even now how perfectly they designed those suits so that none of them looked the same, while also, you know, still making them look the same. They're immediately recognizable as a unit, but even if you painted them all one color, you'd never get them mixed up. And then there are all those little touches, like how the visors aren't simply black, but this subtly elaborate sparkly gradation to make them look like space. And then like, all the mecha and gear are really cool too? The main nine members all have a personal weapon somehow made from different combinations of the same three pieces, and like, yeah, you can sort of tell there were limits to how unique they could truly get, but to manage a full set of nine from such an economical set of restrictions at all is some serious wizardry.

But I'll have more time to gush about the exceptional quality of the visuals in a second. I also mentioned Kyuranger's central message. Kyuranger is a series all about the value of positive thinking. So it probably won't come as a surprise when I tell you I loved everything it had to say. Remember, this is a world where the bad guys controlling the universe is the status quo, and not merely the threat. The show leans into how necessary optimism is to even think about toppling that, and as with many other Sentai, it has a Red that's emblematic of those themes. In Kyuranger's case we have Shishi Red, the self-proclaimed luckiest man in the universe... whose name is also literally Lucky. The show does some really clever things with Lucky! At first glance, he seems like some carefree idiot with an unjustified belief in his odds that reality inexplicably bends backwards to support, but the trick to his character is that, for all the legitimate good fortune he happens into, he still faces hardship, and a lot of what he considers "lucky" is merely him looking on the bright side of any given situation. The conclusion the show comes to is that his refusal to focus on the negative creates his exceptional luck, and I think there's a genuinely fantastic lesson in there about what a difference a change in attitude can make. It's all a matter of perception, you know? It can be easy to have a couple things going wrong in a row distract you from a dozen things that have gone right in the same span of time, and in my experience, simply getting too caught up in that really is the worst thing of all. That kind of pessimism is a nasty spiral leading to even more mistakes and misfortunes, so what Kyuranger says is that, maybe the opposite is true there as well. Maybe making that choice to keep putting one foot in front of the other really is what matters most. And you know, I haven't toppled any oppressive space shogunates, but there have legitimately been times in my life where the wisdom of the words "YOSSHA LUCKY~!" has kept me on the right track, and I'm thankful to Kyuranger for that.

...Huh, that got a bit more... philosophical? than I was expecting? Like, the key thing here – or at least I thought – is that this is very much the big fun space Sentai, before it's anything else. Just take the first episode, for example!

Kyuranger, admittedly, had a few teething problems when it first started, and Lucky was without a doubt the biggest one of them. He's straight up obnoxious here, if I'm being honest. And it should mean something coming from me, because I just got done telling you how much I adore his character. The show develops him in all sorts of great ways, finds perfect uses for him in the narrative, and he gains a fair bit of depth and nuance... after this. Here, I mean, I don't want to make it sound like he drags the episode down around him, but simply in terms of how endeared you're going to be to Lucky from just the premiere... it's hard to imagine you would be? He comes off blissfully ignorant of everything going on around him, decides he's going to become a superhero for no particular reason, insults a wolfman for refusing to fight an overwhelming evil before even hearing his very particular reasons... there's a lot about Lucky here that simply isn't flattering, but at the same time, I'd at least argue that none of this is without purpose. I think the show is trying to stress at the outset how much of a firecracker he is – someone who shakes people out of stagnation simply by being around, and it's certainly accomplishing that much. Plus, while he may spouting off his catchphrase with absurd frequency, something I appreciated going back on a rewatch is that the very first thing he does in the show demonstrates exactly that dynamic I was talking about earlier. He gets dragged into the adventure after horribly crashing his space bike into a planet, right where the Kyurangers are fighting some mooks, and his immediate response is to loudly celebrate the fact that he landed safely, as though this was all according to plan. That's a pretty definitive entrance for Lucky, I'd say! You absolutely can not stop this man from rolling with the punches. And tell me, is it bad luck that he crashed, or is it good luck that an unexpected stop led him to a group of heroes he'd end up saving the universe alongside? Like I said: it's all in your perception.

So there are absolutely things about the premiere's script worth praising. It's just that it's also insanely hyperactive. I looked back at my original reaction to it in the episode thread, and years later, I still think my description of this episode as "like if someone tried to edit Star Wars down to 20 minutes" is rather apt. This thing is speeding through all sorts of different locations and plot points, squeezing in the origins for two different Kyurangers, and stuffing it all with as much thrilling action as possible, and the end result is that there isn't much time to give any nuance to what's happening. All the characterization, especially, is all very, very loud, without being much else.

The trick here is that I don't only mean to say it's like watching a 20 minute movie as a bad thing.

Straight up, this is easily one of the most visually impressive Sentai premieres of all time. And I've seen 'em all now, too! I'll qualify it with that "one of" because there's room for debate about what exactly constitutes being visually impressive, but Kyuranger, man, it's basically hitting any criterion you could list all at once. Takayuki Shibasaki did some amazing work directing this one, and the work everyone else was doing was amazing too. Loads and loads of shots that look great because of great composition, or great computer effects, or great practical effects, or any combination of those three. You get the feeling watching it that nothing was ever ruled out and also probably that they were dumping a ton of money into it. It's extravagant. There's no way I can hope to get that across with only my words. Especially when there's such an extensive list of things that impress me. Allow me to just call out a mere fraction of those things. I dig how evenly the mecha are portrayed with props and CG, because it really suggests they were always focused on what would work best in a particular moment. I dig how many different tricks are used to convey that we're on alien planets. I dig Lucky's doofy B movie spacesuit before he gets his regular outfit at the end. And hey, speaking of Lucky! For however obnoxious he is, I'm not going to believe you if you try telling me it wasn't awesome that he made his entrance as Shishi Red surfing into the atmosphere on a meteor shower. And again, the effects for it actually look good.

Make no mistake, this is absolutely a solid first outing for Kyuranger. It makes sacrifices in its storytelling, sure, but that comes with the tradeoff of how much its able to focus on wowing the viewer with the sheer scale of its action – something very unique to Kyuranger in particular, that arguably hasn't been topped since, and thus worth highlighting.

From this point on, the show eventually settled into a groove on Earth for a stretch early in its run, making the opposite tradeoff, and calming down a bit to get to work on solidifying the way it delivers its plots and character development. This was interesting in its own right, and on the other side of that, the show goes back to that full space opera flavor, now with the kind of richer narratives it was struggling with at first. Kyuranger is a series that always feels like it's climbing to greater heights to me, and that made it a delight to follow from start to finish. It's a show that just ~barely~ misses out on being one I'm eager to call an absolute favorite, but I think that has everything to do with what came next, rather than it not having a lasting impact on me. Like, I'm being dead serious when I say "YOSSHA LUCKY~!" has become a bit of an inspirational motto for me. If anything, I think Kyuranger is a show that's really deserving of a complete rewatch from me at some point, to reconnect with how much I actually do love it.

This was the first outing as main writer for Nobuhiro Mouri, who generally spends more time playing in other writers' worlds, and I always got the impression he was seriously having some fun with what is, to date, still his only turn as main writer. He personally handled the vast majority of the scripts, and while I'm trying to wrap this post up right now, I will mention that I find Kyuranger has a notable sense of forward momentum in its plotting you don't always get from Sentai. There's always some greater goal the heroes are working towards, or some dangling plot threads driving the story onwards, and it really feels like every fun adventure leads into the next. I think the way the show builds on itself in this fashion is key to that sense of it getting better and better as it goes along.

But now I'm just looking for excuses to keep talking. Which apparently I could keep doing for a while! I honestly thought this one might end up being a bit on the shorter side, but that only goes to show how much I underestimate my own affection for Kyuranger. This show was my jam week after week when it was airing, and even now, I maintain a massive soft spot for this oversized group of universal saviors and their bombastic exploits. Kyuranger might be a show that has its rough edges here and there, but with all the positive qualities it also has, why bother getting hung up on the negative, right?