Fiveman Intro & Episodes 1-2

 

Fiveman...

It's kinda been my punching bag for a while. I'd like to like this show more than I do. Hirohisa Soda's my favorite Sentai writer, it's his last show as main writer. When I first got back into toku in the late '90s, and I was sampling post-Liveman Sentais, I remember getting to Fiveman, seeing its credits, and being like "Ah! This has the feel of the shows I grew up with." Other than the first episodes and the last episodes, it was hard to find the entire show for a while, and when I first watched it all in '05 or so...I was happy to be watching the show in full, but I was massively let down. It was generic as could be, and not the greatest way for Soda to go out. 

Now, it's obvious it wasn't planned to be Soda's last show; it's Fiveman's poor performance that let producer Takeyuki Suzuki to clean house. Had they known, perhaps some of Fiveman's...let's say "familiar" beats...could have been more of a celebration of Soda's accomplishments and all he did for the franchise. Fiveman mainly has Flashman Envy -- Flashman's one of the best, most consistent, tightly planned and unique Sentai shows. It's a good show to want to imitate, but don't be so damn lazy about it. (Fiveman even steals Flashman's narrator, Eiichi Onoda. "But, Shougo, a lot of shows share narrators!" Yeah, well, these are the only two Sentais Onoda narrates. Coincidence? Nope!)

So, as it is, instead of loving homage, or a pastiche of past series, the show plays like a writer desperate to reclaim past glory, recycling ideas from better shows for this lazy and aimless one that's just on auto pilot and constantly reminding you of those better shows. With Maskman, Liveman and Turboranger, the franchise had left the space shows behind, so Fiveman's also a curious step backward in that regard, when sci-fi was no longer so dominant in the zeitgeist.

The thing's a frustrating mess. Super Sentai Fivefingerdiscountman.

But before I get started...

People always like to poke fun at the team's name. They're "Earth Sentai" because Earth is their home. "Fiveman" may have been a rejected name for Maskman, but its origins are the same -- a nod to Goranger. ("Goman" doesn't sound good, c'mon.) During this rewatch, during one of the episodes with Star Five, I had the idea that "Starman" would have been a pretty cool name for the Hoshikawas.

 

EPISODES 1 & 2

A truly excellent premiere. One wonders how the show had its act so together to deliver this and then just fall on its ass for the rest of the series. I'm thinking through not just Sentai or toku, but all TV to try to find an instance of a show having a good pilot, but the rest of it falls so far in quality... It's like, if these two episodes were its own little movie, like ZO or J, then it would be like "Fiveman's awesome! Why didn't we get more of that?" Well, we did...we got 46 more episodes, and it's all downhill from here.

These episodes are more of a continuous piece than even the Maskman or Liveman premieres; you can watch the first episodes of those shows just fine, but Fiveman's first episode is deliberately paced to flow into the second episode and make one piece. If you watch just the first episode of Fiveman on its own, you might be bored or wonder where the superhero action is or why people like me call it a great premiere.

But it's good that it takes its time. We spend just the right amount of time setting up the Hoshikawas on Shidon, the tragedy that strikes. The Hoshikawa Kids' escape is tense and dramatic, with nice little details like Arthur's printing the family photo as an upset Gaku clings to him, accidentally hitting the print button. Arthur's the MVP of this premiere -- I like his vow to raise the Hoshikawa kids, his disappointment at Ken rejecting him as just a robot, his sadness that he knows he couldn't be the parental replacement, but how damned hard he tried anyhow... (I've said before that the ONE thing Fiveman has over Flashman is that Arthur's a better, more meaningful character than Magu could ever be.)

It's always funny to me that the show made a big deal about the heroes all being teachers, and then their school is destroyed in the first episode, so they never do much teaching. (In the first "This Seems Familiar..." segment regarding Fiveman's FIVE-finger-discounting past Sentai shows, the destruction of the school by enemies from our heroes' past might make you recall Liveman.)

Bad guys Zone are like a mash-up of Gozma and Mess, but nowhere near as interesting or threatening as any member of those groups. Empress Meadow is a nice design, reminiscent of Star King Bazuu, only not at all frightening or intimidating. Overall, I don't really like anime designer Koichi Oohata's designs for the main Zone officers, and it's sad that they're the last real group of face villains as I recognize them. (I like the big group of face villains Soda gives you over the two or three that had been the norm for Uehara, or the one human + thousands of suits of later Sentais.)

Patience pays off for Episode 1's slow build-up as Episode 2 is front-loaded with action; this was the first time SFX director Hiroshi Butsuda takes over Sentai's effects from long-time director Nobuo Yajima, and the show tries to remind you of it every chance it gets. (Check out Five Red's flying attacks or the cool way the team transports into the mecha's cockpit.)

The OP and ED theme songs and credits are also top-notch, with emotional lyrics, cool visuals for the OP, nice dramatic bits dealing with the heroes' being raised by Arthur for the end. Seriously, so much care and effort went into these first two episodes and the credits sequences and...where does it go?!