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What are you watching (Sentai edition)
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12-02-2021, 06:07 PM
#
9018
Fish Sandwich
The Immortal King Tasty
Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: Every diner you've ever been to.
Posts: 3,833
~Fish's Zenkai Tour!~
Brave 37 – Juuden Sentai Kyoryuger
I was weirdly unenthusiastic about getting into Super Sentai, even as I was already dipping my toes into it starting with Gokaiger, as it was airing. So much so that I slept on Go-Busters for most of its run, only to end up becoming a huge Go-Busters fan when I actually remembered to give it a chance right as it was wrapping up. I was in the perfect position to jump onboard for the next show in line... but I was only a huge fan of
Go-Busters
, in that moment, so I slept on yet another show for most of its run. Somewhere in that gap I believe watched Go-Onger on a whim, and loved that too, as you might've read about. That show did a ton to warm me up to the franchise as a whole, which I don't want to understate, but there still wasn't quite a series that was for me what Gokaiger was for so many others. I didn't yet have this like,
exemplar
Sentai, that wowed me with its constantly epic over the top awesomeness to such a degree that I'd really start paying attention to the franchise the same way I was now paying attention to Kamen Rider. As Kyoryuger was nearing the end of its run, I decided on a whim, as ever, that I at least owed it the ol' guilt-free first episode. After all, if I didn't enjoy it that much, I could always go right back to ignoring it, right?
Dozens of episodes later, Kyoryuger quickly became some of the absolute most fun I have ever had pounding out a toku show.
I forget exactly how fast I was binging my way through all those episodes that had piled up, but what I remember for sure is the sheer
immediacy
of the connection I felt to Kyoryuger. The entire wavelength the show was operating on fit my tastes so well. It might need stressing exactly what I'm saying when I tell you I had fun watching Kyoryuger. Obviously I'm rarely watching a toku show that doesn't entertain me on some level, but I will tell you without hesitation that the experience of watching Kyoryuger for me was
more fun than shows I like better than it.
I don't know if it just hit me at the right moment or what, but for as important as Go-Onger was to this process, it feels in my memory like the pilot light Kyoryuger used to start a huge fire in my heart. Like, this series
reawakened
something in me.
And I suppose the thing it did reawaken was maybe just that childhood sense of wonder, if you'll forgive the cliche. But like, I've spent all this time stressing how I didn't "get" Super Sentai right away, and the whole reason I find that initial lack of enthusiasm strange in retrospect is because I've literally been fascinated by this stuff as long as I can remember, which you might've also read about earlier on the tour. (Lots of things coming together this week!) The appeal really isn't complicated. It's five or more rad as heck dino heroes fighting evil while catchy rock music plays. Swap the rock out for a dash of samba, and you've already got the basics on Kyoryuger.
That's maybe the crux of this one. My love of Kyoryuger isn't about any complex thematic reading, or the depth of its plotting, or anything like that. I mean, I'm sure I could make that case if I wanted to just fine, but the actual uniqueness of Kyoryuger to me is always going to be that visceral thrill of seeing these larger than life characters on the screen and thinking "these guys are so cool and strong!!!"
This in of itself is evidence of Kyoryuger's rock solid construction, though. Emphasizing the
strength
of the heroes was an active goal for the series, and that's apparent all over the place. (The "Kyo" in Kyoryuger even literally means strength.) I think they did a fantastic job of this, because the things that came out of this direction were what immediately drew me into the show's world once I starting watching it.
...That's a very natural segue into talking about the first episode, actually, so allow me to try and convey the overwhelming awesomeness of Kyoryuger's premiere from square one.
Right away, it's bad guys doing bad things. The first thing in the whole show is Shigeru Chiba narrating about how the dinosaurs were totally awesome until they went extinct, and then informing the viewer that the very same fate now threatens humanity. Bummer! So now all these freshly revived monsters are popping up in locations all over the world and messing stuff up, and we're barely a minute in. Even on a random small island out in the ocean, these dudes are harassing the locals. Then this one super brave guy who is apparently called "King" comes in to save the day and starts fearlessly throwing down with some goons. Sweet! Just when it seems like he's in over his head, this rad bird dude descends from the sky, tosses him a handgun shaped liked a dinosaur, and tells him to go to town, and then this "King" promptly starts wiping the floor with the bad guys. Sick! Then the bird dude summons a giant battery-powered robot Tyrannosaurus rex, who
also
starts wiping the floor with the bad guys! Then bird dude introduces himself as Torin, and tells King that him and that T-Rex, Gabutyra, are looking to put together a group of awesome heroes called the Kyoryugers, four of whom are shown already fighting in different spots around the globe, who will combat the oncoming crisis by doing
basically this
, but ALL THE TIME. King is understandably pumped as heck about this, as am I. It's been a little under four minutes; the theme song plays.
This was just the cold open.
I mean, how am I
not
gonna be hooked already, right? Look at how cool this King guy, Daigo, is, before he even becomes Kyoryu Red. And you're telling me there's at least four more people this awesome? Which brings me right to one of the things I love so much about Kyoryuger. Because of that whole "strength" thing, It makes a point that this isn't a team about five people who become strong when brought together, like usual. Any single Kyoryuger alone is already as tough as can be, and together, they're downright unstoppable. This leads to all these cool touches to the characterization that are so deeply appealing to me for reasons I can barely describe. It's the whole point of the loose multinational thing going on here, for one, with the different locations each member comes from being one of many things meant to stress that these are very fundamentally different people. This is a group consisting of a hot-blooded adventurer, a ladies' man with a troubled past, a goofy handyman who just loves his family, a stoic high school kid trained in the way of the sword, and an upper class college girl with a pronounced tough side.
It's an odd bunch for sure, and the thrust of the initial stretch of episodes is how Daigo is the only one eager to bring the team together as friends once they all wind up in Japan. Notably, they were making it a point not to even tell each other their civilian identities before he comes along, and that kinda says it all. Again, this gripped me right away for whatever reason. I love the awkward chemistry everyone has in their brief scenes together in the premiere, playing with this whole idea by having them meet as regular people ("regular" people), with the only thing truly uniting them being the other four's mutual refusal to call Daigo "King". Which of course gets a great callback at the end, when Daigo makes the mistake of telling the other Kyoryugers they should
totally
call him King because
everybody does
, which works about as well the second time. Despite the matching uniforms, the Kyoryugers initially feel more akin to a bunch of headstrong individual superheroes who form a team, rather than simply a team of superheroes, if that makes sense. Watching them grow to feel more like the latter than the former is part of the show's appeal, for sure.
One thing the team
does
have in common right away though, is that they all had to fight their own giant robot dinosaur partners to prove themselves worthy of their powers. Which is like, maybe one of the coolest backstories for a Sentai ever? We get to directly witness this in the premiere with Daigo, right on the other side of that opening theme (the episode is seriously this awesome constantly), and it's such an absolutely perfect way to set the exaggerated tone the show is going for. It goes back to the idea of making the heroes seem strong, of course, but more than even that, there's just an
intensity
to that as a concept, and it's the kind of standard you can expect from this show. In the premiere alone, before the rest of the Kyoryugers show up to help, the first real team we see fighting is actually Kyoryu Red alongside Gabutyra, stressing the dinosaurs plus humans cool factor of the premise in the most literal way possible. The two of them are tearing through even more mooks than at the start together, and it's a glorious sequence. Not to mention the proper monster of the week here is an ice-themed one explicitly credited with wiping out the dinosaurs. So in
the very first episode of Kyoryuger
, the real world history of the dinosaurs going extinct is made into a physical villain for the heroes to blow up in a fun action sequence. It could not possibly be wearing its status as a fantasy series on its sleeve any harder if it tried.
Kyoryuger is just one of those shows that knows exactly what it wants to be, you know? It's always struck me as a show with a lot of vision behind it, and I could go on and on about so many more touches that contribute to creating that energetic atmosphere it aims for. Two particular ones that deserve a mention are the way the Kyoryugers
dance
as part of their transformation, and the concept for the robot cockpit this year.
In the case of the cockpits, the idea was to have the team all standing on podiums, physically mimicking the moves they want the robot to make, which is of course way more active and thematically relevant than chairs and buttons would be. It's another thing where I can only sort of describe why, but I always found this brilliant. It looks very kinetic and appealing on the screen, and I feel like it sorts of connects the heroes with the audience as much as it does the robot, as if the Kyoryugers are the kids at home acting out these epic battles.
The transformations, on the other hand, I can get at easily. I always saw the dancing as a way to trick kids into a tiny bit of exercise whenever they're playing with their Gaburevolvers, for one, mostly because it's endearing to think of it that way. No standing in place if you wanna be a Kyoryuger! These guys are all about movement! ...Which is the other thing, naturally – it's yet another bit of cohesion in the show's style. Really, the whole emphasis on music probably deserves a section to itself, but with everything I've said about Kyoryuger being heightened and full of energy, the choice of samba as a motif shouldn't be too surprising. Music of that sort, it's all about people coming together and getting pumped up, and that's practically the mission statement for Kyoryuger.
I might've been lying when I said my love of Kyoryuger wasn't about the depth or themes earlier? Because on second thought, all this stuff qualifies, doesn't it? There's a thorough consideration that went into all these individual elements of the series, and how they speak to each other and interact to create a whole that conveys something specific to the viewer. Sounds like thematic complexity to me!
It's just that what the thematic complexity is conveying is mostly that Kyoryuger is simply
fun
, which I credit in large part to a writer I'm convinced was having the time of his life writing this show. Of the forty-five Sentai series that exist as I'm writing this, Kyoryuger is the
only
one handled entirely by a single writer, and I think that's just because Riku Sanjou can't bring himself to share it with anyone else. There's a vibe I consistently get from Sanjou's tokusatsu work that his main goal with any script is for you to have as much fun watching it as he had writing it, and nowhere is this more apparent than Kyoryuger. This is a series he's so attached to, that he'll even the write the script for a full-length extra episode of the series produced four years after it ends under the tenuous pretense of it being a cross-promotion with a mobile game that happened to have "Brave" in the title – which is a real thing that actually happened!
But man, at that point, it's no longer just Sanjou's attachment that's impressive, is it? Needless to say, Kyoryuger went over well for just about everyone involved. It stands to this day as one of the most financially successful Sentai ever thanks to the truckloads of merch it shipped, Korea liked it so much they made their own small sequel series that got dubbed back into Japanese,
the original cast and crew just made an extra episode out of the blue one day
... heck, even during the original broadcast, the ending theme for most of the show's run was filled with clips tons of viewers sent in of themselves happily dancing along. And you what? Good for Kyoryuger! I think it deserves every bit of that success! I know I certainly love it too, at least.
It feels like this is happening more and more lately, but I could easily keep gushing for so much longer. Just as an example, I kind of totally forgot to mention earlier that this was also the Sentai with Kouichi Sakamoto as a main director, and how perfect a fit he was for this job. (Some great explosions in that premiere!) There's a mountain of further specifics I'd love to talk about too, but I think the broad picture is pretty clear at this point. Kyoryuger is a beautifully bombastic good time in my book. It's got loads of exciting action, endearingly quirky characters, and surprisingly engaging drama, all delivered with genuine heart. In other words, Kyoryuger is arguably everything you could want out of a Super Sentai show. But then, with the impact it had on me, I would think that, wouldn't I?
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Last edited by Fish Sandwich; 12-02-2021 at
06:57 PM
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