I Found Cool Stuff -- Chapter 16: Samurai Sentai SHINKENGER
The latest sentai show, Samurai Sentai Shinkenger, has come to a close, and it's time to sum up the show overall.
Bottom line on top: I really liked this. It's not perfect, and there were a few rough spots, but this should go down in the history of the franchise as one of the stronger shows overall. The strong points can be carried over to future shows, and even the mistakes made were not so drastic as to ruin things, and could even be used as learning examples for the producers, or we can at least hope so.
I'll touch on various aspects of the show, grading them as I go, but in no particular order.
The Heroes: Grade A+, all the way. I really liked the personalities of all five of the primary rangers, and the actors did a fine job bringing them to life.
Takeru/ShinkenRed deftly avoided the dreaded "Idiot Red Syndrome" -- where the main character is made to be a blithering fool in order to make him more than a one-dimensional Hero Guy. Yes, generic Hero Guys are rather dull, but I'd argue that an annoying stupid main character (coughGekiRedcoughhack) is far worse. Takeru gave his red ranger some real dramatic meat, even without the final twist revealed in the final episodes.
If anything, I felt that the heroes should've been given even *more* screen time to develop their personas, I could watch a whole 'nother season about this ensemble! Chiaki/ShinkenGreen's determination to make something of himself (and exceed Takeru), Ryunosuke/ShinkenBlue's struggle between loyalty and his personal desires, Mako/ShinkenPink's strong family instinct and overall insight, and Kotoha/ShinkenYellow's feelings of inadequacy and earnestness, all these and so much more made every character very appealling.
Even the cast's weak point, Genta/ShinkenGold, wasn't too horrible. He started out overly goofy and annoying, but by the end of the show, they'd found a good balance with him, and he no longer hogged the spotlight nor detracted from the dramatic tone.
Supporting Cast: Grade A+ again! "Jii"/Kusakabe Hikoma is one of the best Adult Mentors in Sentai history, at least in terms of personality. You could see his bond with all the characters, but with Takeru and Chiaki in particular. He had something to teach the heroes, but was also technically their retainer rather than their boss, which worked out very well. He also had more than a few Badass Grandpa moments, used sparingly but very effectively.
DaiGoyou, much like his creator, Genta, was annoying and spotlight-hogging when first introduced, but eventually found his niche and made it work. Kaoru and Tanba, though introduced late, added nicely to the cast as well.
But an extra-special shout-out has to go to one of the show's most original additions to sentai history: The Kuroko Brigade! These silent helpers made the "We Heroes Have Arrived" scenes extra-awesome, added some great physical humor, and were given a valid justification for their presence. Namely, they handled the day to day record-keeping and cleaning, but also helped get civilians clear when combat started, and acted as goodwill ambassadors between the Shinkengers and the local community. I was kinda hoping that the Kuroko squad would've gotten a moment to demonstrate some combat bad-assery before the show's end, but that would've gone against their whole concept as the non-combat helper squad.
The Big Bad: Grade C-. Chimatsuri Dokoku, the leader of the Gedoshu. This character was going to be a tricky balancing act from the getgo, and it didn't always go well. The concept is that he's a seriously scary demon bent on invading the mortal world and spreading his particular brand of devestation and despair. Okay, so far so good. He's established as being freakishly powerful, and personally slaughtered the previous team of Shinkengers a generation ago. At that time, the previous ShinkenRed cast an incomplete seal upon Dokoku as his dying act, which banished Dokoku back to the Sanzu River (Japan's answer to the River Styx, basically), and made it so that Bad Things would happen to Dokoku if he tried to come back to earth directly. This explains why he doesn't just show up in Episode One and slaughter the new team immediately, but this is also where the problems creep in.
For most of the series, he doesn't do *anything*. He's not one for planning -- he's got Chitari for that. He just sits around on his ship, listening to Dayu's shamisen music, and drinking sake made from human tears and despair to keep his general state of murderous rage in check. On the few occasions when he does take direct action, it's very much an OH SHIT moment, but as a character and a "master villain", he's severely lacking. He'd have been better used as a Big Bad's scary-ass right hand man, in my opinion.
Supporting Villains: Grade A+, which more than makes up for Dokoku's shortcomings. Dayu, Chitari, Juzo, and Akumaro, all of whom made for very good antagonists.
Chitari, the brains of the outfit, has the most refreshingly simple motivation for what he does -- he doesn't want to DIE. If he doesn't help Dokoku, it's very possible that the Big D would've offed him without a second thought, and then at the end of the show, when Dokoku's been defeated, Chitari sounds the retreat, knowing full well that sticking around to face the hero's wrath is certain death.
Dayu is the "femme fatale" of the Gedoshu, and is given a rich and tragic backstory as the literal incarnation of "Hell Hath No Fury Like A Woman Scorned". She's also voiced by Romi Park, a notable voice actress, who really brings Dayu's tortured soul to life.
Akumaro is a deliciously evil schemer, and I suspect he was written in halfway through the show when the writers realized how crappy a Big Bad Dokoku had turned out to be. In many ways, the culmination of Akumaro's Ultimate Plan was a more satisfying story than the show's grand finale shortly thereafter.
Juzo, a half-human half-Gedoshu demon wandering swordsman, is my favorite of the bunch, a hard choice to make. Part of this is because he's played by Mitsuru Karahashi, one of my favorite toku actors (he's best known for Kaido, the Snake Orphenoch from Kamen Rider 555), but he's also got a fantastic visual design in both human and Gedoshu form. His dynamic with Takeru, whom he challenges to several duels over the course of the show, is absolutely riveting. Those duels are easily some of the strongest highlights of the year. But most of all, I love the bait and switch that the writers pulled with him. When Juzo is introduced, there's all sorts of hints dropped that he could somehow be "redeemed", and made into a heroic member of the team. When Genta was introduced as the real sixth ranger, it still seemed possible that Juzo would join as number seven -- he'd be the Darkness to Genta's "Hikari" (Light) element, and hey, having a team of SEVEN samurai is homage-tastic, right? But it never happenned -- and at the climax of the Akumaro arc, where Juzo featured heavily into Akumaro's plans, there was a moment that teased a redemption for Juzo. At which point Juzo stamped on those hopes rather violently, and reminded EVERYONE, Shinkengers and audience alike, what exactly it *means* for a human to fall to the darkside the way he did. He is not nice, he has never been nice, and he never, ever will be. I loved that scene.
Monsters Of The Week: Grade B. The designs for the monters were kinda nice, but none of them really stood out for sheer OMG KEWL factor. They avoided the weird stupidity of some past show's monsters (Ramen noodle monsters, or the infamous Koala Bear/Mushroom/ATM Machine monster from a particularly surreal AbaRanger episode), but none of the Monsters Of The Week ever quite managed to be as cool as the Supporting Villain cast.
Mooks: Grade A. Every Sentai show has a squad of non-verbal mooks, whose costume are usually little more than a leotard with some designs sewn on, and don't really add much to the show beyond fodder for the heroes to slaughter. The Nanashi Renju were a pleasant improvement on this, in several important respects. The costumes were much more elaborate and interesting, the Nanashi were much more threatening than most mooks that I recall (it's not unusual to see bystanders *dying* at the hands of the Renju), and most importantly, for the first time, we got GIANT MOOKS! Normally, once the Giant Robot gets summoned, the Mooks are left in the dust, but not this year! The O-Nanashi Renju were a giant variant that would attack the Giant Robot en masse, and use nice group tactics that actually posed a credible threat to Our Heroes. They also had a flying giant variety that would show up now and again. Hopefully, future shows will include giant mooks as well. There was also one notable episode where a squad of Nanashi were trained in using rifles, which was done in a very cool way and was a real threat at the time, but was sadly shelved by the villains.
Mecha/Equipment: Grade D. Unquestionably the show's weakest point. The basic giant robot looked passable, but the Origami mecha that formed it were just ugly. The later upgrades just made it worse, with the Beetle, Swordfish, and Tiger "equips" that just looked silly. The Ika and Ebi origami looked alright in their animal forms, but didn't make for very attractive robots, the Bull King Origami was blocky and weird, and the final form combining all of the mecha was just... over done. It looked like the suit actor could barely move, frankly.
The equipment the Shinkengers carried was a little better, but still not great. Their standard issue sword had an inverted cone-shaped mirror, so that when you spun the "hiden disc" tsuba on teh sword, the image on the disc would animate like a flip book. It was a cute gimmick that was amusing the first couple of times they did it, but got tedious very quickly, and it made the sword look somewhat clunky overall.
The henshin device this year was Yet Another Cellphone -- how many sentai shows have used cellphones now? At least half a dozen, if not more. But to be fair, this cliche was redeemed by the cellphone becoming a Calligraphy Brush, used to draw "Mojikara" in the air that gave the Shinkenger their powers -- in the first episode, Takeru summoned a horse to ride by writing the kanji for Horse in the air, for example. And that's pretty awesome. But it doesn't redeem the rest of the suck in this category.
Fight choreograhpy: Grade A -. As mentioned before, the real highlights in this category came when Juzo and Takeru would throw down for one of their duels, which were always a treat to watch. Beyond that, the other fight scenes were above average, but not spectacular.
Special Effects and Monster Suits: Grade A -. The mojikara FX were always very cool to watch, as were all of the various beams and spells that the enemy gedoshu would use here and there. It's also worth noting that despite the Gedoshu suits looking rather bulky at times, the suit actors seemed to be able to move quite fluidly in them, a testament to a balance between form and function, which I appreciated. Pity the Shinken-Oh and other mecha suits didn't share this.
Costumes: Grade A. I really liked the Shinkenger outfits; slick and stylish while keeping the Samurai motif front and center. But even better, the Shinkenger's civilian wardrobe was *awesome* this year. They actually wore real clothing! Was it color coded? Yes, but not ridiculously so; usually, the Shinkenger's designated color would be a dominant accent to what they wore rather than trying to make everything about them conform to whichever color. They also deliberately avoided the "special team jackets" for this year, which I was happy about. Some of the jackets have been kinda cool -- Abaranger comes to mind here -- but more often than not, the costume jackets are just tacky and odd. Sadly, the show replacing Shinkenger, Tensou Sentai Goseiger, has already shown that they're returning to the Jackets, and theirs are some of the worst I've seen yet.
Themes/Writing: Grade A. I loved the story in this show. I loved the ideas, I loved the characters, I loved the conflicts, and I loved the themes of Japanese culture and Samurai motifs in particular. My only gripe is that I liked the principal five heroes so much, I wanted to see even more character pieces for them. I wanted to see Chiaki actually manage to "catch up" to Takeru in at least some way, for example, something that was at the core of Chiaki's motivations. But overall, I really can't complain. I got to know these characters, I enjoyed watching them, and I had a great time along the way.
Overall: Grade A. There were so many things that this show did well, that it more than balances out the missteps with their mecha designs or Dokoku as a lacking villain. At no point did I ever even consider *not* following this show week by week. While I doubt that Sentai fans will ever describe this as "The Best Show Ever", it's certainly earned a positive place in the franchise's history, and I hope that other fans will remember it as fondly as I do.