Chojuu Sentai Liveman
Friends, why have you sold your souls to the devil?!
This is the opening narration to every episode of Chojuu Sentai Liveman, the Super Sentai series for 1988. At Academy Island, established by the U.N. to gather the best and brightest to develop new technologies for space exploration, three decide that the masses are unworthy of their genius, and so defect to the evil Great Professor Bias's (pronounced bi-ah-su) Brain Army Volt. In the process, they kill two of their fellow students who tried to stop them, the mutual friends of our three heroes. Years later, as the fruits of Academy Island's ambitions are about to bloom, the three traitors return to destroy everything, having cast away their humanity long ago. Our heroes have also been preparing for this day, and so have developed the technologies and weapons necessary to fight for all life on Earth, becoming the Megabeast Squadron Liveman!
Liveman has one of the strongest opening episodes in the whole of the super sentai franchise, with a lot of good, powerful drama, high stakes, and a dire threat that our heroes are only barely able to meet at the start, even the mooks represent a significant threat at this point in the series. It takes a fair amount of time for our heroes to build themselves up and develop their fighting techniques and become in practice what they sought to be in theory. Also, as one might expect, since the villains and heroes were once friends, though not especially close ones, the heroes strive as much as possible to redeem the villains, show them the error of their ways and convince them to return to the side of good. This also leads to a significant recurring theme whereby the heroes form significant bonds with strange, non-human beings like robots and aliens and such.
Among all our heroes, the most notable of the bunch is the robot helper, Colon (pronounced like cologne). She is easily among the best helpers in the franchise, a robot girl with a distinct Chinese aesthetic to her design who does the moonwalk during the opening credits, she gets solid characterization and is a stalwart ally both off and on the battlefield, though mostly off as she wasn't built to be a combat model. That distinction goes more to Megumi Misaki AKA Blue Dolphin. While, of course, the most emotionally tender of the group, she is also the most stern, serious, and focused on the group's mission, as well as the most studious of the bunch. The rest of the gang is also quite good, with solid characterization and some nice development over the course of the series.
The mecha featured in Liveman are also very good, not only featuring the first mecha to actually functionally resemble the animal it was based on, rather than just having a thematic paint job, but it also features the first time in the franchise when two separate giant robots combine together to form one super giant robot, a feat that would be repeated and duplicated and extended upon many times throughout the rest of the franchise and beyond.
The villains are very good, each capable of concocting clever schemes and full of ambition, determined to earn the favor of their evil master, who of course plays them against one another to better his own position. In addition, over the course of the series new villains are recruited by Bias, forcing the original trio to step up their game lest they be left behind.
However, there are some negatives that bring down an otherwise excellent series. First, the series only had three heroes at the start, and that was actually pretty good, but halfway through the series two new heroes are introduced, supposedly the younger siblings of the two friends killed at the start of the series...except that in an early episode in the series we'd met the younger brother of one of the fallen friends, and he was just a kid. The introduction of these new characters and their associated mecha was obviously pushed by marketing, and while they do mesh with the group in due course, its never quite enough to justify a blatant retcon. Also, the final episode of the series...it's awkward. There's a lot of ambitious ideas being thrown around and it doesn't mesh quite right.
Still, its a very good show and definitely representative of the 80's era of sentai.
This is the opening narration to every episode of Chojuu Sentai Liveman, the Super Sentai series for 1988. At Academy Island, established by the U.N. to gather the best and brightest to develop new technologies for space exploration, three decide that the masses are unworthy of their genius, and so defect to the evil Great Professor Bias's (pronounced bi-ah-su) Brain Army Volt. In the process, they kill two of their fellow students who tried to stop them, the mutual friends of our three heroes. Years later, as the fruits of Academy Island's ambitions are about to bloom, the three traitors return to destroy everything, having cast away their humanity long ago. Our heroes have also been preparing for this day, and so have developed the technologies and weapons necessary to fight for all life on Earth, becoming the Megabeast Squadron Liveman!
Liveman has one of the strongest opening episodes in the whole of the super sentai franchise, with a lot of good, powerful drama, high stakes, and a dire threat that our heroes are only barely able to meet at the start, even the mooks represent a significant threat at this point in the series. It takes a fair amount of time for our heroes to build themselves up and develop their fighting techniques and become in practice what they sought to be in theory. Also, as one might expect, since the villains and heroes were once friends, though not especially close ones, the heroes strive as much as possible to redeem the villains, show them the error of their ways and convince them to return to the side of good. This also leads to a significant recurring theme whereby the heroes form significant bonds with strange, non-human beings like robots and aliens and such.
Among all our heroes, the most notable of the bunch is the robot helper, Colon (pronounced like cologne). She is easily among the best helpers in the franchise, a robot girl with a distinct Chinese aesthetic to her design who does the moonwalk during the opening credits, she gets solid characterization and is a stalwart ally both off and on the battlefield, though mostly off as she wasn't built to be a combat model. That distinction goes more to Megumi Misaki AKA Blue Dolphin. While, of course, the most emotionally tender of the group, she is also the most stern, serious, and focused on the group's mission, as well as the most studious of the bunch. The rest of the gang is also quite good, with solid characterization and some nice development over the course of the series.
The mecha featured in Liveman are also very good, not only featuring the first mecha to actually functionally resemble the animal it was based on, rather than just having a thematic paint job, but it also features the first time in the franchise when two separate giant robots combine together to form one super giant robot, a feat that would be repeated and duplicated and extended upon many times throughout the rest of the franchise and beyond.
The villains are very good, each capable of concocting clever schemes and full of ambition, determined to earn the favor of their evil master, who of course plays them against one another to better his own position. In addition, over the course of the series new villains are recruited by Bias, forcing the original trio to step up their game lest they be left behind.
However, there are some negatives that bring down an otherwise excellent series. First, the series only had three heroes at the start, and that was actually pretty good, but halfway through the series two new heroes are introduced, supposedly the younger siblings of the two friends killed at the start of the series...except that in an early episode in the series we'd met the younger brother of one of the fallen friends, and he was just a kid. The introduction of these new characters and their associated mecha was obviously pushed by marketing, and while they do mesh with the group in due course, its never quite enough to justify a blatant retcon. Also, the final episode of the series...it's awkward. There's a lot of ambitious ideas being thrown around and it doesn't mesh quite right.
Still, its a very good show and definitely representative of the 80's era of sentai.