Tokusatsu 101 Lesson 4, Colored Heroes & Spiderman?!

Related tags: Kamen Rider, Toku, Tokusatsu Written by: Barim

Flamboyantly Colored Heroes & Spiderman?! Well, it seems some time has passed and I kept forgetting to even continue this series, but now I will. It becomes even weirder when you realize the next few series I would discuss, might be even more iconic and the third probably as weird as they might get for you.

So now you know of the early Kamen Riders, single heroes who got shit done on their own. But like I said in my very first lesson, there are other Masked Heroes. I even showed the intro to a show called “Himutsu Sentai GoRanger” (Secret Taskforce FiveRanger). Wait, did I say 5 and ranger? Indeed, these guys look an awful lot like Power Rangers, if it wasn’t for the fact GoRanger ran from ‘75 till ‘77 for a runtime of 84 episodes. Although it has only been recognized as part of the Sentai series since ’94, these colored heroes are truly the Dai Sempai of all those color coded heroes that came after them. Even the Power Rangers.

Now, what made these five such rolemodels for the generations to come. Like I said, they were color coded. The Leader AkaRanger (Kaijo Tsuyoshi) wore red, which since then has been the color of most (exceptions can be counted on one hand) Sentai leaders. He also had his own weapon, a whip. This is another recognizable part of the Sentai series, as the other four had their own weapons as well, which weren’t whips!

Number two was AoRanger (Shinmei Akira) the blue ranger, who used a bow. Third was KiRanger, the yellow Ranger, who used a polearm. There were two yellow rangers, as one (Ōiwa Daita) got a promotion with the company, but still returned as Yellow later, replacing his replacement (Kumano Daigorō). The fourth ranger was MomoRanger (Pegī Matsuyama), the only female GoRanger, appropriately dressed in pink, she used  shuriken and bombs. Rounding out the group was MidoRanger (Asuka Kenji), the green ranger, who used a boomerang.

Also, unlike the Kamen Riders, they didn’t have fancy origin stories. All were normal humans who were selected from their company EAGLE to form their secret Sentai. The Sentai was formed to fight the evil cyborgs of the Black Cross Army, which was led by the likewise named Black Cross Fuhrer. All his cyborgs wore masks and their names referred to the masks they wore, even including the word Kamen in all their names. The Black Cross Army was a threat to the entire world, but their losses in Japan resulted in their Fuhrer calling back more and more operatives to Japan to oppose the GoRangers.

GoRanger was followed by JAKQ Dengekitai, with Dengikatai being Blitzkrieg Squad, a word not quite unlike Squadron. The JAKQ part refers to the four main members of the team. These were bionically enhanced humans that were already at the top of their respective fields before becoming enhanced.

Sakurai Gorō was the Spade Ace of the team, wearing red as the leader of the team and wielded a specialized bow.  Higashi Ryū represents the J in JAQK, as he was the Diamond Jack, he wore blue and wielded a sword. Karen Mizuki was the Heart Queen, designating her as the only female of the team, she wore pink and used a Q-shaped magnet.  Rounding out the core four was Clover King, Daichi Bunta, who wore green and had a hammer as his personal weapon.

JAKQ consisted of four members at first, but later gained a weird fifth member, Big One, representing the Joker of the card deck. Banba Sokichi was a master of disguises and was recognizable by his rod, the big baton and the roses he always introduced himself with. He wore a white suit with highlights in the colours that so far had only been worn by male Senshi. Red, blue, green and yellow, despite there being no yellow ranger in JAKQ and the remaining member being pink.

JAKQ fought against the evil CRIME. Whom they took down in 35 episodes, either because JAKQ was too strong, or rather unpopular with the viewers.  They did meet GoRanger in a movie after the series, working together to take down a revived CRIME. Kamen Rider 1, 2 and V3 were also shown in stills, as they were also fighting the armies of CRIME off-screen.

JAKQ wasn’t followed by a new Sentai series. The next series, that didn’t spring from Ishimori’s head, didn’t start till ’79. Instead the next series TOEI made in the category was a tokusatsu version of Spiderman. Who even had a giant mecha which became a staple in later Sentai series. This Spider-Man even used a henshin device to put on his suit. I’ll spare you the further details (while I doubt I could wreck your childhood further) and summarize in short what this all means for the Sentai series.

GoRanger started it all with the coloured 5 ranger band who use unique weapons. JAQK introduced the concept of a Ranger who joined later and who’s costume differs, and is usually more powerful than the rest.  And to top it all of, Giant Mecha to battle the enlarged opponents, come from Spider-Man.

Indeed. The Power Rangers had a gigantic Zord because: Spider-Man did it first!

You might also like these related posts: