Ohranger Episodes 11-14

 

EPISODE 11

Enter the Soda. It's surprising he came back to Sentai; gossip says that he was kinda hurt when Suzuki cut him out after Fiveman. He had been with the franchise since its beginning! He wasn't the only one left behind -- Suzuki recognized during Fiveman that they were getting in a rut, so he wanted fresh blood for Jetman and avoided getting back too-familiar staff members like Soda and director Takao Nagaishi. Soda eventually returned to the franchise, writing episodes of Kakuranger. I feel like with Soda's Kakuranger and Ohranger episodes, they want him to tap into what he first became known for, which was the more comedic and outlandish Goranger episodes. (If you worship Baseball Mask the way Japan does, you can thank Soda.) He eventually gets relegated on this show to being Mecha Guy.

So we get this weird episode. While not exactly the greatest intro for Soda to this series, it's not the weirdest this show will end up offering, and even has a kind of logic and balance to it. The Baranoia are depicted a little harsher here, behaving a little more like what you'd expect from machines who hate humanity -- disgusted by the way humans treat the machines in their lives. It can get goofy, but it's not as bad as I remembered it.

This is Shouhei's first solo outing and, while we don't get to find out anything about him, he's at least funny here, devising a plan to stop the monster that he doesn't bother to explain to his teammates that well. And we get some sweet, sweet Yamaoka action, some really cool stuff that was probably too dangerous to film since it looked like it had just rained.

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EPISODE 12

This is the one that tends to kill my attempts at rewatching the show. I'm surprised it's a Sugimura script, although it does seem like something you'd find in Jiban. This episode to me is like a perfect representation of my problem with Ohranger -- an absurd scenario by the villains, depicted in a comical way while the heroes take it all 110% seriously. Ohranger's always straddling that line, and it just doesn't add up to a whole. So you'll be left with "Well, so-and-so's likable" or "It had some cool action." It's just a collision of tones and styles and everything's working against each other and...it just makes Ohranger not seem like a full experience. And it's not like I want the heroes yukking it up or breaking the fourth wall pointing out how stupid everything is, because that's obnoxious, but I feel like when you have a cast like this who are capable...maybe reward them with some decent plots, you know?

I feel like my brain just can't process the way this show is presented as having such stupid villains and plans, yet the hero half is taking everything so seriously. I think it's why I feel like I'm never all that familiar-seeming with the show. Part of my draw to Ohranger is that I feel like it's a show that I've not seen much or am not overly familiar, but I think that's something caused by the tonal flip-flopping not leading to a well-rounded experience. And for as seriously as the hero side is taken, from the actors to the way the action is depicted, it's strange to me that there are rarely any attempts at giving these characters...you know, character! They're hardly even just archetypes -- there's a broad idea, and the rest is left entirely up to the actors, whose feelings may depend on their mood that day of filming. (This is how Shouhei goes from the angry, second-in-command-of-a-few-words one episode to Masaoka's clowning around the next. Or the way Juri goes from tough-gal-with-tude to peppy pothead.)

So that's what simmers in the back of my mind as I watch this episode. The rest of it is just me being annoyed by crying babies for 20 minutes. Maybe the Baranoia had a point.

Familiar Face of Sentai Past: Hatsue Nishi, aka Fiveman's Doldola. 

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EPISODE 13

The first script from Susumu Takaku, a story that has the usual warmth and soulfulness found in his work. I imagine snotty youngsters snickering at this episode, but it works if you're an animal lover. Even if not, the episode offers a lot of cool action spectacle, taking place in a mountainous terrain, the Baranoia forces chasing Momo down in action set pieces that recall the long pursuit scenes from the first episode. (And Momo's facing it all on her own!) And the monster of the week's design is hilarious, with the little dude on the head controlling the bigger, normal suit.

The episode has a good sense of tension and pace, as Momo is on the run without her Power Brace. And the Baranoia threat is a classic scenario of attempting to get Mt. Fuji to erupt and flood Tokyo with lava. It's an often used scenario, but at least a little more deadly and believable than spraying people with gold glitter and getting them to eat cars.

People probably expected something different from the writer who brought you Metalder, now working on this robot-centric show, so it's funny that his two episodes don't really deal with the Baranoia or make any kind of statement about technology or machines or machine sentience. Here he chooses to just focus on a heroine in jeopardy. This would be the last toku Takaku wrote for, so I think he was mostly just ready to move on by the time he got this gig.

How about that dog, though? Yamaoka's known for pushing his actors as far as they can go, and he doesn't go easy on a dog, either, throwing him into the middle of explosions. The dog's practically a JAC member! 

Action, action! Go-go-go!

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EPISODE 14

An Uehara episode, one that I always remember as being worse than it actually is. I like the idea of Baranoia warping this new technology of man's for their own ends -- turning the Pinocchio prototype helper robot into a secret assassin. I think my problem is with the various Pinnochio robots' designs. They're a little dopey and already look pretty Baranoia-like, despite the fact that they're not supposed to be related to Baranoia at all. So you're already suspecting these things to be bad. In that case, perhaps this was the time to haul out a past prop and repaint it -- have them look like the Dark Q from Sunvulcan or something.

It's also just weird and sloppy to shoehorn in Shouhei and act like this is his episode, just because he's randomly obsessed with a ramen place that this robot happens to be working at. Why use a ramen shop as a place to test run your robots? That company was destined to fail with that kind of thinking, man.

I also don't feel like Juri would be so enamored with the Pinnochio infant robot and be so 1) unprofessional as to bring this glorified Cabbage Patch Kid to work and 2) oblivious as to bring it to the high security base. It seems more like a Momo maneuver to me. (Sorry, Momo.) I could even picture Shouhei bringing it in as a joke, not thinking of the risk. It leads to that cool scene of Goro rushing the robot out of the base, though, when it's discovered to be a bomb. Still, there's a weird dash of sexism here, as the two heroines go gaga for the infant robot doll, while Goro and Miura exchange knowing glances like "We've got the Choriki dongs, we know something's up here and them women there can't help but let their emotions cloud everything."

Ohranger Episodes 8-10

 

EPISODE 8

This episode is just basically pleasing Bandai for holding off so long on getting Ohranger Robo. Total nonstop mecha action. There are things that are cool on paper, but there's just no feasible way of conveying the scenario on a 1995 toku budget. (Baranoia chains Ohranger Robo and throws it into the sun, where quick thinking by Oh Red leads them to using the alternate headpieces to get them out of the jam.)

Here's a problem I have with this episode, and it's something that happened in the previous one, too. We see the Ohranger as being so skilled and confident, but the minute something's not going their way, they're ready to give up. I don't want overly confident heroes to the point of them being cocky, but when even Oh Red is like "The mecha won't move! Baranoia's won, they're going to take over Earth, we're fucked!" it's just a little too much. And they ALL freak out like that here. At least have Red be the calm voice of reason.

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EPISODE 9

Before some know-it-all wants to feel fancy and cry "stock plots" or "tropes," I'm here to say that some writers just have pet scenarios they'll often revisit. Toshiki Inoue's one of those writers. A lot of Changerion is Inoue cutting loose with a lot of his favorite scenarios...

The first scene of this episode is something that's done more believably in Changerion. In short, the gals of the show are shopping and wind up selecting the same dress and exchange some insults. Inoue likes this plot of having heroines who bicker but end up having to put aside their differences to work together. It works in Changerion, because Eri and Akemi always had a simmering competitive thing going between them, and their fallout drives the episode for when they team up. Akemi's actress is also noticeably younger than Eri's, so the "obasan" jab works there. Here it's just used as a humorous way to kick off the episode, and it just doesn't seem very Juri or Momo-like. Call me judgmental, because we don't exactly know much about these characters at the moment, but Juri never seemed like the type to shirk duty to go shopping and find a rad outfit to attract guys. Momo and Juri also seem in the same age range, so their brief beef seems more mean-spirited than it should. (Juri is supposed to be 22 and Momo 20; however, in real life, it was the reverse -- Tamao Sato was older than Ayumi Asou.)

Other than that, this episode sees Inoue also visit his Turboranger script in which Haruna feigns defection in order to get the antidote for the poisoned heroes. The disappointing thing here is how easily and quickly the three Ohranger guys are taken down. But it's meant to be comedic, and this is a comedic episode. People target this episode as the first of Ohranger's being "retooled," but I think a comedic episode was required and probably going to land at this point anyway. 

And it deviates from the Turboranger scenario in that the focus is on both heroines -- with things meant to be somewhat bleak because the tough Juri has "defected," leaving things up to seemingly timid Momo -- and that the monster is aware of the deception. (Momo calls the monster's bluff by outdecepting HIM and tricking him with...a holographic projection of the seemingly-healed Ohranger guys? When did she get that made?!) Toku heroes pretending to be bad is always hard to buy, but maybe Juri would...I didn't peg her for the type to want to play dress up for guys, so maybe she *would* join Baranoia, eh?

There's some bizarre shit in this episode, like the already-mentioned holographic projection, and Miura misleading the heroines into thinking they have less time than they do in order to motivate them. Inoue crammed all the silliness he could into this one, but it's a fun showcase for our heroines. I'm an Inoue apologist and Tamao Sato fanboy, so...

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EPISODE 10

Uehara's first script for the show! And it's kind of plain. Don't get me wrong, he gets nuttier than I care for later on. It's just surprising that the episode feels kind of like...an extra episode was ordered, so they scrambled to throw this thing together. You know, like how a lot of the Sentai movies feel.

I think Bara Hacker's cool, though, and I like his memorizing all Ohranger attacks and trying to get into the secrets of their mecha. Yamaoka's back, so there's some great looking action shots.

Oh, and they force in a new toy for no real reason! Ohranger ends up getting really bad about trying to somehow save their sinking ship by piling toys onto it. I think this thing is the earliest and most pointless introduction to a Sentai. (At the time, anyway. Nowadays, they get new pointless shit in every single episode of a Sentai. Every. Single. Episode.) The Giant Roller...is a bit goofy looking, I'm sorry. Especially when they cut to Red inside it, and he just looks like he's in the Human Hamster Wheel from Super Sloppy Double Dare. The sentiment is nice, with the wheel being one of mankind's oldest and most important technological creations, tying back into Ohranger's theme of ancient technology. It also just debuts here without any fanfare. "Bara Hacker knows all of our moves! Well, let's haul out the Giant Wheeler we've been working on!" Older shows would have had a reference to it previously, or show it being built, even if just at the start of this very episode. Very rushed and seeming like an afterthought. 

Ohranger Episodes 6-7 + MOVIE

 

EPISODES 6 and 7

Damn, it's been nice to not have mecha battles! And we've had to see the Ohranger find different ways to finish off threats, which has been cool, you know? They brought down one giant on their own; they had to stop the host parasite to save the day in another episode. Bacchushund cruelly executes another. But now we're headed into mecha snoozeville. And Ohranger eventually drowns itself in boring mecha stuff, so...ugh.

Actually, this two-parter is all around solid. Its focus is on Miyauchi, which is never a bad thing. Learning of the Choriki Mobiles, the Baranoia dread the Ohranger getting mecha as much as I do, so they devise a plan to target an exhausted Miura, drawing him out into the field where they can capture him and learn of the mecha, preventing its completion.

Niibori's the action director of these episodes, and he delivers some cool scenes (like Oh Red and Miura being attacked in a jeep). I liked the team split in two on separate missions -- Red, Green and Yellow out to save Miura while Blue and Pink take it upon themselves to debut their mecha. (I still wonder what kind of craziness Yamaoka would have given us for this big two-parter, knowing how far he likes to push things.) Episode Six is also the first to have a scene with the untransformed Ohranger fighting off Barlow soldiers -- maybe they're supposed to have developed a bit of Choriki ability out of suit, but I missed how unstoppable the Barlows seemed, that they COULDN'T be fought off hand-to-hand, untransformed. Grunt fights always contained the potential for cool choreography, though, so I won't begrudge Ohranger the opportunity to have more fights with the actors involved.

Sugimura always liked relying on dei ex machina; they're throughout all of his shows. Here Ohranger is bailed out by a praying girl that ends up helping the Choriki shine through and pull Ohranger out of a jam and successfully use Ohranger Robo. It's later said by Miura that nature is what responded, helping fuel the Choriki. This further establishes Ohranger's theme -- we have technology vs technology, but it's the human and living component on the side of the heroes that makes them persevere, a technology without heart is a dangerous sort of thing...

...too bad the Baranoia aren't cooler. I know I said I wouldn't harp on that too much, but it's hard when they're always just having hissy fits in their scenes. For cold machines without feeling, they sure like their hissy fits. It's really Bacchushund I have the biggest problem with -- I know it's supposed to be special that they got Toru Ohira, narrator of nearly every Sentai up until '83, to voice him, but he makes him far too buffoonish. I tend to really dislike the voice acting in Power Rangers, but I remember thinking David Stenstrom had the right idea when voicing Bacchushund's counterpart, King Mondo -- he put on this snooty royal voice. I think Seizo Kato would have been a better fit as Bacchushund.

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MOVIE

What is this shit? Who thought this was acceptable to put on the big screen? 

I guess the meeting went something like this...

Producer: Hey, Uehara. You know how you stunk up last year's Superhero Fair with Kamen Rider J? You got anything worse than that?

Uehara: Do I!

Keep in mind, I actually like those crazy Metal Hero episodes Uehara does where there's no real plot and it's just the hero thrown into wall-to-wall weirdness for the episode. But I don't think that sort of thing makes for a good movie, even though that scenario with a movie budget has the potential to be really nuts and memorable. But the Ohranger movie spares all expenses.

It just doesn't work here. It's not done well; it doesn't feel at all like Ohranger or a Baranoia plan. The filming location is mainly a sparse ranch that's so creepy it wouldn't be a surprise to find out the Japanese branch of the Manson Family lived there. The movie has a group of new monsters that are so cheap and poorly designed they look like Zyu2 rejects. And I find Miura to be kind of a dick in this.

And this sucker is 40 minutes! Why in the hell did they make every bad decision they could? "It's the movie for the anniversary series! Let's get back Uehara and have it be the first thing he does for this series! And you know his famous 20-minute-acid-trip-in-lieu-of-plot schtick from the Metal Heroes? Let's get him to do that for 40 minutes! And besides, if nobody likes it, we're sure to win some people over with the B-Fighter movie! Yeah! And we're already printing money knowing what a success Hakaider will be!"

Geez, and I wonder why Sentai theatrical works died for six years after this. It's really one of the top worst Sentai movies -- maybe THE worst, even by toku movie standards. Not even Yamaoka action helps much. This was only my second time watching this stinkfest; it's so bad, that's how strong its stench stained the memory.

Who would think that a movie with the premise of Bulldont making snuff films -- one which will hopefully star Ohranger -- could be so stupid? Who expects a movie like that to start with our villains being shat out of a metal horse? (The same place the script came from.)

 

They had to drag poor Yoshinori Okamoto into this mess?!

Ohranger Episodes 3-5

 

EPISODE 3

An episode that works thanks once again to some cool action -- it's mostly just Goro and a kid who's targeted by Baranoia on the run for an entire episode. The villain plan doesn't make the most sense to me -- this kid once found a fragment of a stone tablet that led to the discovery of all of the Choriki abilities, so the Baranoia want to scan his memories for the information on this one fragment he found. I like that they want to dig into the origin of the Ohranger's powers, but what can you get from this kid's fuzzy memory of one fragment?! Capture Miura and put HIM into the monster's contraption! You'll get way more info. And don't tell me Miura's too guarded to be captured, because they go on to capture him in just a few episodes.

Just a tweak in the writing would have made this work, like if the UAOH had let the kid hang around the area as they found more fragments and put the whole tablet together. Because it's not like it's a bad villain plan, there's reason to it. We've seen this scenario done stupider in other Sentais, like that Sunvulcan (or is it Goggle V?) that's trying to transform a modern day person into their ancient ancestor in order to somehow get a piece of info from the ancestor's memory...! What malarkey.

But we're just at episode three, and we already have a kid episode. Sugimura must have really been tortured, holding it in and doing two kid-free episodes.

Familiar Face of Sentai Past: Shirou Izumi, aka Yuuma/Change Pegasus and Burai/Dragon Ranger, in a flashback scene as the kid's deceased dad, who has a nice speech explaining the kid's fascination with geology.

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EPISODE 4

This one has a cool premise of the monster letting loose little parasites that transform people into Machine Beasts. There are a lot of cool fight scenes with fiery surroundings. My problem is just these two things:

1) I don't feel like the people who were transformed into machines should so easily be turned back. The cop dad who gets turned into the monster turns back and forth between his normal self and the machine, and it doesn't really work for me. Even if similar stuff has happened in toku since the beginning, the description of this parasite that transforms flesh into metal makes it sound like it should be kinda permanent, don't you think?

I don't see the Baranoia going for this plan, anyway. They're meant to think they're superior to humans. They think they're gods. So why would they want to turn the beings they think so little of into something like them?

2) We follow this cop dad and his kid and...the kid makes you want to poke out your eardrums like Kakihara at the end of Ichi the Killer so you're deaf to his whining. He's one of those kid actors who just screeches all of his lines, no matter what he's saying. He's not an annoying character, but the actor makes him annoying -- so you don't really care about him OR his dad. The dad has a kind of broad, comedic vibe to his performance, so a scene with him trying to shoot himself to stop his monstrous rampage doesn't play as seriously as intended.

If you can look past these things...you're a more forgiving person than I.

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EPISODE 5

Talk about a villain plan that makes no sense. This is the first episode to not be written by Sugimura, but by Toshiki Inoue. The memo must have been handed down "This is a Sugimura show, so don't forget to include kids." It's atypical of an Inoue script to be so kid-heavy, but this one has TWO.

I feel like this episode is just thrown in here because of a possible similarity to the previous episode. It makes no sense to me that Bara Cactus coughs up some gold glitter on people and...makes them eat machinery to take on whatever function said machine had? EHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH?! Seems to me like this script might have been a "they get turned into robots/machines," but it was altered after the last episode. So instead of people being turned into robots, a kid eats a computer and ends up as smart as a computer. Yeah, I don't think Inoue's one you turn to for sci-fi. (We at least get one cool Cronenbergian scenario of a kid eating a gun and getting a gun hand.) Inoue's more about human drama.

The story's focused on a bullied kid and his falling out with his older brother, and it's meant to mirror the Machine Beasts of the week, Bara Cactus and his brother. The ending scene with the wounded Bara Cactus returning to the Baranoia base to find his kid brother strung up and tortured to death -- only to then be executed by Bacchushund himself -- is a surprisingly grisly shock, and a typically Inoue way to end the episode. My problem is...there's no reason for us to believe that these two have developed feelings. Bacchushund is disgusted that the one seems to feel love for his brother. We don't know anything about the Machine Beast process to be like "Ah! They're capable of evolving" or whatever. Why are they cactus themed?! Does Baranoia create cybernetic monsters, turning living things into robots? I don't think so, that goes against their M.O. But why else are they called Machine BEASTS? So, there's no real reason to give a crap about these two, and it's not a good parallel to just have the cactus see the brother protect his one brother and develop feelings from that. It's not HORRIBLE, and you can just chalk this up to being an episode that comes too early in a show's run -- therefore it's not so smooth. But...it doesn't work for me. Save machines-who-feel for a more important storyline.

Also, an earlier Sentai would have given Yuuji a reason to care about these kids so much; he'd probably have had -- and lost -- a sibling. But then that reminds me of the Turboranger Inoue wrote where Shunsuke feels obligated to help the Fire and Ice Bouma brothers because he's traumatized by losing his brother. Maybe Inoue didn't want to repeat himself exactly (unlike a certain other Sentai writer who's going to be showing up on Ohranger soon). Here, we're just told Yuuji's an only child who envies siblings.

And while the last two episodes had Yamaoka style to help save them, this episode's action director is Kazuo Niibori. Niibori's an amazing suit actor, but his record as action director has always been a little spotty for me. He's no Yamaoka, but he at least tries to keep Yamaoka's pace in this episode. Still, the difference is felt.

Ohranger Episode 2

 

EPISODE 2

Keeps with the nice pace of the first episode by having the race-against-the-clock premise of Goro needing to get the others back to base to receive their powers all while a giant mecha is attacking the city (and taking prisoners). The first full team battle does not disappoint, as all of the suit actors show their Choriki Strength, and the set piece here is big and chaotic, a Yamaoka specialty. I love that the regular sized team takes on the giant mecha and successfully bring it down without a cheat.

Only making a cameo last time, we're given our full introduction to Hiroshi Miyauchi's Miura. Casting Miyauchi as the mentor is just a genius move in order to celebrate the anniversary. I blogged before that there are rumors in the Japanese fandom that the production wanted Akiji Kobayashi as Miura, but his health was in decline. He ended up passing a year after Ohranger. I still don't know how true all of that is, and while it would have been awesome for Kobayashi to have had a Sentai role, it doesn't quite mean the same thing as Miyauchi's casting does. Miyauchi is just perfect. I've often thought of what it would have been like if they had gotten Naoya Makoto instead, and it's just not the same. Miyauchi better conveys the mentor and, as a performer, is flexible to the tone of the show. He's happy to play comedy without sacrificing his authority or coolness. You think Ohranger would be better regarded by Japanese fans just for the fact that Miyauchi is a regular in it -- that's a big deal!

It's funny how much Metal Hero blood is pumping through Ohranger and yet it doesn't feel as blatant as Heisei Kamen Rider does. Directors like Makoto Tsujino and Takeshi Ogasawara are more Metal Hero directors than Sentai ones. We just had Miyauchi as the mentor in two of the Metal Heroes, they brought Yamaoka over from there (he in turn brought in guys like Kazutoshi Yokoyama), they get Seiji Yokoyama for the soundtrack, they wanted to go with a theme song that was more Metalder/Blue Swat than the standard toku opening... When the Ohranger untransform after their first battle, they're sweaty, with Goro doing that old Winspector shake off the sweat and bask in the sun bit that Masaru Yamashita created. I feel like early Ohranger's even filmed in a style closer to the '90s Metal Heroes than the Sentai at that time. Meanwhile, a lot of people who had been Sentai staffers went over to B-Fighter...

After only being seen briefly at the start of the first episode, we're also given our first big encounter with Baranoia. And, yeah, they're grating. They move around too much. They're whiny and loud. I always wondered if they turned out this way because Toei knew they had to start Power Rangers-proofing their shows. Because the Baranoia CAN have cold speeches about humanity, but the suit acting is all just...over exaggerated and goofy looking. (The suit acting looks amateurish, like the way a lot of monsters of the week behave. We know Kazutoshi Yokoyama and Yasuhiro Takeuchi are more talented than this.) And then there's their moon base, making the set look IDENTICAL to Bandora/Rita's. What's the purpose of that other than catering to PR? My case for why I never necessarily bought into the Ohranger-changes-tones-because-of-the-subway-attacks is that B-Fighter suffered no changes. Toei still put out a movie that year centered on the villainous Hakaider...in which every human character dies! So I basically think Ohranger's biggest problem was that it wanted to do one thing but was very conscious of what PR would want.

This episode highlights my problem with Baranoia in one simple scene: Acha and Kocha descend and address a panicked crowd about Baranoia's intentions. The crowd is terrified and yet...look at Acha, for crying out loud. Nobody would be scared or intimidated by that thing. Not even a kid! The T-800 he ain't. And the entire time Kocha is parroting him in a kawaiiiiii anime voice. It's so much scarier to leave it at the endless Barlow soldiers and giant mechas and not know their origin than it is to show these guys, and especially act like the two comedic ones can stir any kind of terror within a person. (To be fair, I like Acha's design, and he works as the dorky servant character he's supposed to be. His voice actor is great and nails the part. The character's just not good as a face for the villains in this scene.)

But we know the Baranoia. The heroes apparently do, too. They know, at least, that they're based on the moon and...choose to do nothing. That's not my problem, really, my problem is more that the heroes knowing their location takes away from the threat they posed in being mysterious. If it's a so-far successful invasion of alien robots, then how much scarier would it be to wonder and not know where they come from, where they could be? And then you can unspool that mystery of...hey, these guys were created on ancient Earth! But the show just quickly wants to get to business as usual, where the heroes know the bad guys and the invasion and take over is glossed over.

 

Akiji Kobayashi in the 1995 Takeshi Kitano movie Getting Any?, to give you an idea of what he'd have looked like in Ohranger.

Ohranger Episode 1

 

EPISODE 1

One of the great toku premieres. Well, it's one of my favorite toku premieres. It's in my top five Sentai premieres. Funny that some of the shows that I'm not the biggest fan of will have great premieres, like Fiveman. But Ohranger's is big and puts on a spectacle, and Yamaoka is just hitting it out of the park with the action from the get-go, from throwing the four Ohranger into mayhem to Oh Red's powerful first battle.

Junji Yamaoka, the best action director of toku, made his Sentai return with this series. He was action director of most shows from Goranger through Flashman. He did the first few Maskman episodes but left the series. He then moved on to the Metal Heroes, overseeing the action of Jiban through Blue Swat. Getting him back was just icing on the cake, because Ohranger's action is one of the best things about it. There are earlier Sentai shows that would lack substance, but Yamaoka would go and do his thing and make up for anything by delivering awesome action. (Honestly, a lot of the Metal Heroes he worked on would be so much lesser without his action scenes.) And I feel that's the case with Ohranger a bit -- the heroes not as deep as you'd like them? Who cares, look how much ass they kick!

This episode sets up the invasion just great, with parts of the world already defeated. The Baranoia here are mysterious, which really works for them. I've said before that I think this episode is so good and memorable because we don't spend a whole lot of time with the goofy Baranoia leaders -- we're mostly looking at the situation from humanity's perspective, where it's just an endless army of the foot soldiers and giant mechas that are leading the assault. And I think having it be a mystery who was behind it would have worked better than finding out right off the bat it's these cutesy guys. 

The episode also keeps vague just how long Goro has been fighting as Oh Red as the others are being prepared. He seems like he's been at it for a while, and I think that's a cool idea, to think that he's been out there kicking ass on his own. Maybe he tried to fight back Baranoia in other locations, even.

Yamaoka captures the peril of the four, as they're shot down by Baranoia and have to make a journey through nature, with his usual intensity. He throws everything at the performers -- we get crazy, cool shots of the heroes fighting and falling into waterfalls, but it's also like we're witnessing the cast and characters go through bootcamp. It's baptism by fire; they endure these attacks and come out of it ready to take on the Baranoia.

Another great thing Yamaoka does is convey the power of the Ohranger suits and the machines. He's going to make you feel the SUPER POWER, dammit, and he does. The unpowered four UAOH members aren't able to do much of anything against even just the foot soldiers -- they're too damned strong. If you think of other robotic Sentai grunts, like the Jinmers in Liveman, the show had the heroes deal with them without much fuss, even out of suit. The Barlow soldiers aren't shoddy bomb casings full of used pinball machine parts -- you'll bust your hand if you try to even just punch them. And once Oh Red enters the scene, HIS power is conveyed just as nicely, showing you the impact of his punches and kicks. Yamaoka has the Ohranger suit actors move in such deliberate and forceful ways, they carry themselves in such a way, they just seem so strong and confident. I've never been a fan of the Ohranger designs, but the way the suit actors present the heroes, and the awesome action scenes both go a long way in making them look good. I also have to credit the suit actors for being able to kick so much ass despite those helmets seeming like some of the most unpleasant helmets to see out of.

Just an action-packed premiere that keeps hitting. So many action set pieces despite the fact that there's no transforming hero until the last scene!

Familiar Face of Sentai Past: Ryousuke Kaizu, aka Takeru/Red Mask.

Familiar Voice of Sentai Past: The show's narrator is Nobuo Tanaka, who I like to think of as the Anniversary Narrator. He was Goranger's original narrator and then returned ten years later for Changeman; he was 10th Super Sentai Turboranger's narrator and then Ohranger's. It has to be more than bias for his involvement with Changeman because I just like Tanaka's narration: it's clear, but he puts a lot into it. I love how he does the episode previews for this show. "Choriki Henshin! OLE!!!!"

Chouriki Henshin! Ole!! (Ohranger intro)

 

I was recently rewatching Batman Forever. The stuff with Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson is the strongest part of that movie, and I was kind of like "Have you ever seen a superhero thing where the heroes are so grim and yet the villains are so goofy?" Usually it's the opposite, you know? Or both sides will be either goofy or grim. There must have been something in the water in 1995, because Ohranger's similar.

It was a fun time in the late '90s, looking up all the tokus I remembered as a kid on the Internet and finding out about all the shows that came after. (And before, of course. At the time, I was more curious about the newer stuff.) Ohranger was one of the shows I was really drawn to. I remember watching the credits in shitty RealPlayer, for one. I liked the themes. I liked that the cast seemed mature and that they were military -- and the action bits looked great. I was let down when I got around to seeing it but didn't think it was atrocious until I saw the show in its entirety...

My biggest gripe was always the main villains. They looked stupid. They acted stupid. It's a complete tonal clash with the way the heroes acted. He might get hammy, but Masaru Shishido is taking this *seriously*. He's freakin' intense. We get all the info about how dangerous the Baranoia is...and then we cut to them: those fat, silly designs, those silly anime voices, the suit actors moving around too much, their base evoking goofy Rita Repulsa's and giving you nightmares about that show. It didn't match up. I think these villains, and villains like these, reflect negatively on Sentai. They're goofy and stupidly designed and not threatening and KIDDY. Why go so hard with the hero portion but be so damned kiddy with the villains?

And that was a big deal-breaker for me. No matter how much I liked the cast of heroes or the music or the awesome action, the villains were dumb, seemingly spliced in from a much lesser show. And the reason I've always doubted the whole "Ohranger was going to be super serious, but real-life events caused them to change gears" is because of the Baranoia. They were already designed and written and cast before the show changed gears. There was always going to be a style clash with these stupid dolts. (I blame the cartoonish cutesiness on Power Rangers; I've read that, since PR was a proven smash success by this point, Ohranger was the first Sentai really hampered by them keeping PR's needs in mind.)

But I've always felt a strange kind of...pull to the show. I wanted to like it. I have a reputation for hating every post-1980s series, but there are so many shows that I'll want to like more than I might. There's so much promise to it but disappointment in so many areas. I never had the greatest quality videos of Ohranger, but when I watched the full series, it was a heinous quality...like 10th generation VHS transferred onto VCD and then crammed all onto a total of 3 DVDs. I'm not even exaggerating -- if I still had those copies, I'd screengrab them to be like "See the shit the fandom put up with before downloads and official DVDs!?!" So to get to see the show in decent quality when the Shout Factory set came out...made a lot of difference. I already worshipped action-director Junji Yamaoka, but his scenes just really popped when they weren't reduced to 10,000 pixel squares. And CCLemon always talked the show up and helped open my mind to it a little more.

The state of modern toku helped. When modern day villains are non-existent or nicer than the good guys, the Baranoia start looking better. Nostalgia also helped. There are things about Ohranger that totally remind me of that time I described above when I got back into these shows. If you want to believe that the show was altered due to real-life events, then you have to allow some leeway there. Having so many staff members fluent in so many different styles, the show was bound to have an identity crisis...

...but getting all of those different people is something special about the show. From producers to directors to writers to a couple of cameo appearances, it was the first Super Sentai series to truly celebrate the anniversary. I love subtle homages to Goranger in Changeman. I love Liveman and Turboranger, but...they didn't go out of their way to celebrate the franchise or its legacy. Ohranger really was the first to go that extra step and try to acknowledge the series' milestone.

Chief producer Takeyuki Suzuki, who had been chief producer for Sentai since Goggle V, paired himself up with producer Susumu Yoshikawa with Kakuranger to lead Ohranger and the anniversary celebration. Yoshikawa had been chief producer of the Battle Fever through Sunvulcan run of Sentai and shared the title of chief producer on Kaku and Oh with Suzuki. Joining them as a sub-producer, being groomed to take over the future of the franchise, was Shigenori Takatera, making a triumvirate of past, present, and future. Both Suzuki and Yoshimura had planned to use this anniversary celebration as a note to go out on, both moving on after the show's conclusion, with Sentai then getting a surge of new faces behind the scenes as the millennium approached.

Main writer Noboru Sugimura returns after putting his quirky spin on the franchise as main writer of Zyuranger, Dairanger, and Kakuranger. But the really neat thing? All of the sub-writers are former main-writers! They got everybody -- Shozo Uehara (main writer of Go through Sun), who was returning to the franchise for the first time in 14 years; Hirohisa Soda, main writer of the Goggle through Fiveman run; Toshiki Inoue, the newest veteran as main writer of Jetman. They even included Susumu Takaku, who has long been credited as Battle Fever's main writer, despite having to step back from that show due to scheduling conflicts and having the show unfairly credited entirely to Uehara over time.

The characterizations of the Ohranger aren't always consistent, and there's a constant tug-o-war regarding the show's tone -- and a lot of that probably comes from the differing styles of all the writers contributing. There are parts of Ohranger that I used to dismiss as pointless and goofy, but yet another thing that opened my mind a bit about the show was when I finally got around to watching every Sentai series and more toku -- specifically the '70s or early '80s shows -- and you can see how certain aspects of the show (like Uehara's episodes) evoke those years. Growing up with the Soda Sentai shows, the ones that came at a period where they were trying to aim higher and appeal to a wider range of audience, it was an adjustment for me to get into, say, those early shows that are driven by (often kid) guest stars or the more comedic and mecha-focused '90s shows. Look at the villains of the Soda era alone -- when you're expecting a group of all face villains, played by the likes of Shohei Yamamoto, Yutaka Hirose or Akiko Kurusu, then getting to those early shows with a very small, masked villain group or the modern shows with all masked villains is a huge change.

(A weakness of mine, I must admit, is that I tend to think Showa = the mid-late '80s shows I love. So I would criticize people who said "Ohranger is a good tribute to the Showa era," because I didn't personally think it was a good representation of the Showa I knew, of MY shows. But Showa encompasses a big chunk of time, which include the '60s and '70s shows I mentioned -- that's the area Ohranger DOES attempt to focus its honor.)

I don't want to dwell on how much I dislike the Baranoia the way I dwelt on the problems I had with Koutarou Tanaka in my Jetman posts. (Remember, though, I came out of that last Jetman rewatch actually appreciating him a bit more.) I would like to say, though, while I don't like their designs, that the Baranoia suits are very well made. They look solid; they're detailed. They have all of these moving components and tons of lights. They look robotic, and toku's come a long way from the days of, say, Magma Taishi.

So, let's get started and then go pre-order the Memorial Edition Power Brace. OLE!!!!! 

Kooky theory: A Cool Guy Guest Spot in Abaranger?

 

Abaranger was the second Toei tokusatsu series Naruhisa Arakawa worked on as main writer, the first of course being the big smash and fan favorite Kamen Rider Kuuga. I think you can look at Abaranger and make a case that Arakawa had more freedom on the show than is usual for a writer on Super Sentai -- the show is one of the more cohesive toku productions. The episodes written by the secondary writers, from writers with as differing tones as Sho Aikawa and Atsushi Maekawa, all flow well with what Arakawa established, which always made me feel like Arakawa had a hand in their episodes, perhaps guiding them the way a showrunner traditionally would in an American production. (I think Arakawa was also instrumental in getting Carranger writer Yoshio Urasawa to contribute episodes -- don't you find it a little too coincidental that Urasawa ended up returning only for Arakawa-penned shows? And Abaranger was his first time returning to the franchise since Carranger, too.)

So, I feel like Arakawa had more leeway than the norm, not only because he was on the path of becoming one of the genre's more popular and go-to guys, but because he delivered such a hit with Kuuga, and he had more power on THAT show than is the norm as well, actually receiving a rare "series creator" credit. So, he has some pull, and writers have pet people they like to work with from project to project, whether it's directors, producers or particular actors. I don't think it's coincidental that Kuuga's Mie Nanamori went on to guest-star in a flashy role in Arakawa's Dekaranger, for example. (And Kuuga's Yuudai Ishiyama appears in the first episode.) But did Arakawa ever want to use anyone else from Kuuga?

So here's Abaranger, his first show after Kuuga. There's some similarities, enough for Toei to semi-jokingly call Abaranger "Kuuga 2" to encourage people to check it out. I wonder if there was ever any temptation, whether on Arakawa's or Toei's part, to ever include anyone from Kuuga...?

Well, when I last rewatched Abaranger, episode 46 stuck out to me like it tends to do. It's a weird episode, in which it's revealed that Evorian had sent the very first Trinoid to Earth a full year ago. The Trinoid has a human disguise, as the charismatic, eccentric fortune-teller, Master Ran. This monster plays an important role in that he's not only been active for so long -- and successfully established his plan in that time -- but also in that he's instrumental in bringing main villain Dezumozoria back in a physical form. A lot of focus is given to this character, when a lot of the monsters-of-the-day in this show are treated as just quirky cannon fodder. But this guy was insidious; he was treated a little more seriously than usual. They were making a big deal out of this character; he's supposed to stick out.

Not only were they acting like this character was supposed to be important, but it's an important episode overall -- it's the first time Nakadai's not fighting the Abaranger, but fighting the Evolian instead. So Master Ran ends up with a bit of stunt-casting, a toku vet, to help stand out more -- he's played by GoGoFive's Masashi Taniguchi.

So, Master Ran's built up as a big deal, and we have a bit of stunt-casting. I'm rewatching the episode, realizing Taniguchi's kinda similarity to Odagiri and then it hits me. "Huh. I wonder if Arakawa wished he could have gotten Odagiri to play this small, but flashy role." I thought maybe I was thinking too much about it, but then the preview for the episode flashed through my mind. It highlights a line from Master Ran, his promises of an "akarui mirai" (bright future). Akarui Mirai/Bright Future is the title of a movie Odagiri made that was released in early 2003, the first performance after Kuuga that got him attention and critical acclaim. It would certainly have been a big deal if they had gotten him to guest star in Abaranger. And Odagiri was still on the rise, though, so I could imagine Arakawa or Toei thinking he wasn't out of reach and a guest appearance was feasible, especially if it was a part written specifically for him by one of the guys who helped launched his career. But -- for whatever reason -- it fell through. (Although Odagiri was receiving rave reviews for his villainous turn in the movie Azumi, and ended up winning the Academy Award in 2004, maybe someone thought it wouldn't have been right to see him return to toku as a villain so soon.)

 

And so we end up with...Odagiri-like Taniguchi. (They started acting around the same time, and while Taniguchi beat Odagiri to the punch in landing his first steady gig by several months, Taniguchi never had the push of an Odagiri, his career never skyrocketed like Odagiri's. And what's even funnier is that Odagiri auditioned for GoGoFive, and I always thought if he had been serious about that audition and actually was cast in the show, he would obviously have ended up playing Nagare.)

And now, to sidetrack a bit to another topic. This isn't a kooky theory, but veers closer to one of my Wishful Casting posts. On the subject of Kuuga and Abaranger. Nakadai actor Kotaro Tanaka kinda reminds me of a younger Shingo Katsurayama. Like I've always said, Nakadai needed to be played by an older actor. Anybody with any sense would look at that role and realize it only works with an older actor. So what if, just what if Shingo Katsurayama had played Nakadai/Abare Killer? I think he could have pulled it off, and I think it would be a bit of a shock after being so used to him as selfless and courageous Ichijou. I think it can be interesting when an actor you so associate with a heroic role ends up playing a villain. (I still think Fujioka should have played G4 instead of being wasted in that walk-on cameo.)