Post by RedKing on Dec 20, 2006 12:10:26 GMT -8
I just finished watching all 84 episodes of this series-the first sentai. I quite enjoyed it, in what seems to be a hallmark of the sentais as a whole, the show combined excellent character devolpment and intriguing stories with a great deal of incredibly stupid looking kaijin! Not to say they were all dumb, there were alot of cool looking kaijin, but ones like "Locomotive Mask" Baesball Mask" and "Piano Mask" were hilariously goofy. Still, this is an excellent series-the action and stunts are all top notch, as usual for Toei, and the Go Rangers themselves are all well developed as characters, plus Peggy Matsuyama, the Momo Ranger, wears some great little shorts all the time! The head villian-Black Cross Fuhrer-was originally played by Mitsuo Ando-Dr Botanus and Professor Gill in GIANT ROBO and KIKAIDA respectively! Unfortunately, the actor who replaced him gave the villian a different personality-much more animated and loud. Mitsuo Ando's approach was more threatening, as the huge starfish-headed demon didn't move much and just seemed to appear wherever he was. What I always like about Toei tokusatsu shows is there is an overarcing storyline to them, not just a "fight the monster of the week" approach common to Tsuburaya, though i dearly love both studios shows. And while this is the original sentai series, the general idea of a five person team originated with Tatsunoko's tremendously succesful and influential anime series, GATCHAMAN which started in 1972 and ran for over 100 episodes, and spawing 2 sequel series. The Gatchaman team was the template for numerous live action sentai shows and anime super robo series to come by featuring the leader, the second in command who is a darker personality, a girl, a fat guy and a kid. Aside from the sentais, other shows that incorporated this idea are COMBATTLER V, the first combination robot series, it's sequel VOLTES V, and GO LION(which became the lion Voltron over here).