[Fish Sandwich]

~Fish's Zenkai Tour!~

Episode 7 – Kagaku Sentai Dynaman



What is Dynaman, besides the very enthusiastic reply of an Ultraman fan when asked who sings Zenkaiger's theme song? I suppose there are a few things I knew about it beforehand. The whole thing about the team's motif originally being baseball, before that got toned down in the final product. The trivia about the handful of episodes given a tongue-in-cheek gag dub and aired on US television, which is probably pretty well known, and I even watched an episode of it myself on a whim once, back somewhere around when I was just starting to really get into tokusatsu like a decade ago at this point. I actually still think about the "__ o'clock, in [location]!" gag they did with the transformation sequence there occasionally, so if you want to know my existing personal connection with this series, there you have it.

Something I didn't realize about Dynaman, despite it coming up in this thread only a little before I started this project, is that, well, to be as direct as possible:

Dynaman is AWESOME.

I mean, geez is there ever a spring in this show's step! The moment that sums the entire premiere up perfectly happens barely a minute after the opening, when the future Dyna Pink flips onto the future Dyna Red's motorcycle to tell him to chase after the bad guys he just witnessed doing bad guy things. His first thought is to ask who she is, and her response is to ask him why he's wasting time. This episode abhors nothing more than it abhors exposition and downtime, and this dialogue exchange is an absolutely brilliant mission statement on that front.

And it's totally got its priorities straight, is the thing! Like, "the bad guys are doing bad guy things" is information enough to go on, isn't it? The details can come later! You're here for heroic tokusatsu action, so instead of dawdling around bringing the story to the team, we instead bring the team to the story, in a glorious first act where the Dynamen-to-be all end up working together to try and fight some evil before they've even been given their mission, that just keeps escalating and escalating until the show has toss the team into the water, as though to force them to cool down for half a second.

It's basically an episode that has two climaxes, and considering the whole concept for the show is to be as dynamic as possible, it's doing a fantastic job at that. The other meaning behind that title is dynamite, by the way, and I am genuinely concerned about what the budget must have been like after all the explosions I saw in these 24 minutes. It's insane. This show is insane. Everything about the action feels so powered up and impressive, to the point it's surprisingly modern in a lot of ways. The biggest contributing factor there is that this is the first Sentai to make extensive use of wire-work stunts, something showcased with a lot of love once the Dynamen head into action.

It's all very exciting, and yet even everything I just mentioned only barely scratches the surface of how extra this show is. Dyna Red has two swords! Dyna Black is literally a ninja! A lot of those explosions are in color! There's a whole realm of crazy early 80's digital special effects on top of the practical stuff! And you'd better believe there's still room for a giant robot fight to cap it all off! Just like you'd better believe that Dyna Robo's special attack involves leaping into the air to come crashing down on the monster, because simply standing on the ground to hit them with a sword would be so much less exciting.

Total grand slam of a first episode right here. This one just shot WAY up on the list of Sentai I'm eager to get around to some day.