By Blue

Ninja Sentai Kakuranger is an odd little series that came to us in the early 90s from the producer-writer team of Suzuki Takeyuki and Noboru Sugimura, who had headed up Sentai since Zyuranger and would go on to do Ohranger. These series, particularly the trilogy of Sentai that is Zyuranger, Dairanger and Kakuranger, are often considered a curiosity within Sentai. They came about at a time when even Toei staff weren’t sure of what Sentai’s future would be, or if it even had one. The unpredictable nature of Sentai at the time is likely what lead to these three series being rather different from anything before or after.

Be aware — this article contains massive spoilers for Kakuranger.

This trilogy of Sentai are often noted for their downright bizarre contents, even by Sentai standards. The shows ranged from pretty bad to really great, but they all had their share of strange thematics, villains, and mood going on. Due to recently finishing Kakuranger at a monthly event I host at HJU, I thought it would be appropriate to do a review of the series, so without further adieu, let’s dive into the strange world that was 1994.

So first I suppose I should tell you just who the Kakurangers are, right? Well let’s begin! We’ve got Saizou, the sparsely focused on blue ranger who feels like the biggest set piece of them all. The guy is good when an episode focuses on him, but otherwise you get the feeling that he’s just there to fill out the five ranger quota since it seemed like teams with four or three rangers weren’t the biggest thing back then. Following Saizou is my favorite character in the show and probably one of my favorite rangers in all Sentai: Seikai the yellow ranger! The guy is great to watch, even when an episode doesn’t focus on him. He’s a bit of a coward and can often be the first one to just run screaming out a room, but damn if I don’t love the guy for it. You’ll be hard pressed to find a more hilarious character than Seikai in this show, and I think a lot of that has to do with his actor, who is awesome at wild movements.

Next up is the most famous of famous warriors, Jiraiya! Played by Kane Kosugi, Jiraiya was truly the first foreign ranger on a team — the guy could barely speak Japanese at first! Jiraiya (much like his actor) grew up in America and returned to Japan in his adulthood. Because the guy hasn’t always lived in Japan and English is his first language, we’re presented with a few amusing scenes involving the language and culture barrier between him and the other rangers. You’ll also notice that he carries a pretty thick accent throughout the entire series when he speaks Japanese, something I always though really drove his character.

Our next ranger is Sasuke, a rather interesting character to begin with. He isn’t interesting because of who he is, but because of who he isn’t – he isn’t the leader. Sasuke was the first red ranger not to be the leader of the team. And, unlike other series where this happens, he’s also the first red ranger not to be the main character. Kakuranger is truly an ensemble piece and even though certain characters get the bigger story beats, you never feel like anyone (sans Saizou) is being left in the dust. Sasuke, to me, feels like a very important character. It’s through him that I feel the staff realized that they could create a series where all the characters are written and presented almost on the same level of importance.

Our final ranger is Tsuruhime, the white ranger and the first female Sentai leader. Tsuruhime is a pretty middle of the road type of character. She can be girly, but more often than not, she’s the leader who brings the team together because of the situations they’re tossed in and what she’s experienced throughout her life.

Kakuranger’s premise is simple enough: ancient demons are let loose upon the world by the descendents of the ones who originally did the deed and now it’s up to them to fix the mess they’ve caused. It sounds typical on paper, but once you go into the series, you realize this is a Sentai series unlike any other before it. A lot of the story also revolves around Tsuruhime and her family history, but we’ll get to that later on.

There’s also something really neat that I’m very fond of in Kakuranger, something I wish Sentai would do more often: the team isn’t gathered up by the first episode. The first episode introduces us to Sasuke, Saizou, and Tsuruhime, the third to Seikai, and the fourth to Jiraiya. My ideal Sentai is one where it takes a good 8 episodes or so to introduce us to all the rangers, but Kakuranger’s approach is a pretty effective one as well.

From the visuals to the clothes the characters wear, you’re hit with the idea that this is not meant to be a timeless Sentai. When you watch, you will be reminded of the 90s, and that’s what the creative team was going for with this series. Despite this, the message of the series is one that just about every generation of people will be able to identify with at some point or another: Damn you kids, get off my lawn!

…

Right. Well maybe not that far, but the idea is there! Kakuranger’s hook is that the modern day has ruined the youth of Japan. Kids are lazy slobs who rely on technology and have no respect for their elders and are generally following a pretty poor lifestyle. Now here comes the fun part: it’s not just the human youth that the modern age has ruined, it’s the demon youth as well. After they’re released, the demons go about leading lives in the 90s and quickly become just as tainted by society as humans.

There are subtle and not so subtle criticisms of modern day Japan strewn about throughout the series. From people doing whatever it is they can to get money to the age old lesson that a team is stronger than the individual. Despite this, you never feel that one way is better than the other. The series presents viewpoints that are valid, one is just thrown at you as if it came from an old man angry at kids for making too much noise.

This is a series that wants to be subtle in some areas, but then just feels like smacking you over the head in others. When it wants to tell you how terrible and lazy the new generation is, you get subtle stories that deal with the changing characteristics of the population over time, and at times goes deeper than just the kids being horrible, terrible people Japan should be ashamed of. When it wants you to see just what sort of wahahahacky things the modern age brings, you get this:

Sounds effects, baaaaaby! No, this isn’t a screenshot from Adam West’s Batman, this was the sort of thing you would see in the early episodes of Kakuranger that would later be sprinkled throughout the series. Why? Because comics are ruining the kids! No, not really, but American comics were the inspiration for these on screen sound-effects. Some people hate them, some like them, some have no idea what to think of them. Myself? I’m not the biggest fan only for the fact that they do seem to obscure the fights at times and Kakuranger was a series that I loved watching fights in. That said, I understand their purpose, but I’m also glad that they weren’t around for the entire series, not sure how much of that I would have enjoyed.

The series also employed an on-screen narrator, a rather inventive technique that hasn’t been done since. Because Kakuranger is split into two volumes, the narrator is only around for the first half, but he’s almost always fun to watch. This is the guy who tells us the theme of the monster and the history of the demon that it’s based on, at times even going as far as joining the action himself. Though it doesn’t happen often, characters do interact with him, my favorite of these interactions probably revolves around a monster who uses sleeping gas to knock people out. The monster’s sleeping gas just so happened to make its way onto the narrator’s stage and he had to take over duties for the remainder of the episode. It was this sort of oddly meta interaction that Kakuranger wants people to remember it for.

These on screen quirks almost always come to mind when one thinks of Kakuranger, and it seems like that should make the production team very happy. More than Zyuranger and Dairanger before it, Kakuranger is a bizarre Sentai that goes to places the franchise hasn’t seen before and probably won’t go to again anytime soon. Now I know some might feel that the narrator is the sort of thing that might get too meta and take them out of the story, but he really is a pretty charming addition to the presentation. Without him, Kakuranger still has its theme, but you need this guy to remind us that you damn kids don’t know anything and need to man up.

The series goes through this evolution on screen that clearly divides into separate arcs that I almost feel could work as their own series. Volume one is the one that gained Kakuranger its notoriety, its the half of the show that just throws these messages about modern day Japan all over the place and has so many visual cues that basically tell you “proper adults get their messages across with civility, kids need to scream it at the top of their lungs,”. This first volume stretches from the very first episode to episode 24, we’re even given a nice little “Volume One – End” card at the end of that episode.

Something to be noted, this is also the last regular appearance of the narrator. The second volume is titled “The Fierce Fight of Youth” and as it suggests, Kakuranger takes a more dramatic approach to some of its story around this point. And what’s something the series didn’t need in that half? The narrator apparently! I actually sort of missed the guy because, despite the title, it’s not always grim-dark and serious business. The series has its fair share of silly episodes in that second half…albeit there are a good ten episodes before we get to that point. Oddly enough, we do get to see the narrator return in episode 39 in what is probably the strangest clip show ever. The rangers are sleeping throughout most of it while the narrator and a random film crew are doing an exposé on the team and the demons. The episode closes out with the narrator saying his goodbyes as this is the last time we see him in the series. It’s a pretty decent send off for the guy.

So what makes up this second half? Action and a lot of the overall structure of the story being set up. While the first half mostly focused on character relations, the second half drives home the plot. Junior, resident guitar playing undead skeleton and son of Daimaoh, leader of all the demons, has been plotting to bring his daddy back to the human world and finally gets this underway when he turns everyone in a city to stone and summons that city up into the air to serve as the castle for his father, who will soon revive. The Kakurangers are utterly defeated in a battle and learn that as they are at that point, they have no chance at beating Junior, let alone Daimaoh. So what’s a team of rangers to do when the world is ending around them? Go on a series of personal journeys!

Volume one ends with the team being told that there are Shinobi Scrolls scattered throughout Japan that they need to collect so they can unlock the pieces to the Kakure Daishogun, the second mecha and the final resting member of the Three Great Generals that make up their mecha. There’s a pretty nice send off to the narrator here and more than that, the episode itself feels like it’s the end of the first half, as if it could be the end of the series itself even. The team parts ways for now, knowing they’ll eventually be reunited, but for now they need to go their separate ways and find what’s important to them.

The next episodes, the very first ones in the second volume, make up some of my favorite from the series. I like these episodes not really because of the story they present, though a few are pretty cool, but because of what they give us in characters to follow. For most of the these episodes, you only get one ranger on screen. Outside of a shot that lets us know the others are traveling around Japan, Sasuke’s episode is him all by himself. (well, he is joined by a butterfly-turned human played by Reiko Chiba) This is something that Sentai rarely does, even when there are focus episodes, the characters are there in the background. It feels really fresh to see episodes where you know the others aren’t going to pop up, you know that the character being featured is one that’s going to get focus.

What I have always been really fond of in this series of episodes is that each ranger is clearly given a resolve, a new reason to fight. Each ranger essentially finds the strength to fight for each other and for the innocent people that the demons have dragged into the war. Tsuruhime is tested on her leadership skills, being the first female leader in a Sentai and all, her family needs to be sure that she is up to the challenge. Jiraya discovers he’s been lied to all his life by the man that raised him and in essence loses two fathers throughout his episodes. I’ve heard that these episodes aren’t everyone’s favorite, but I think they’re ones you can appreciate from a different point of view.

These episodes are not for everyone, but I love them. I think you really have to be into martial arts films in general to appreciate them for what they are – basically abbreviated martial arts films. These two episodes give us a lot of standard cliches that are in film, the dead family member, betrayal, search for a great item of power, and a pretty great fight scene. Sho and Kane have some great chemistry on screen. I’ve got to wonder whose idea it was to bring in Sho to play Gali, I’d like to thank that person because it really worked out wonderfully. (Sho and Kane Kosugi are real-life father and son, btw!) The presentation could be a bit floppy, such as the scene that shows us what happened to Gali’s daughter, but I really like it for what it is. I’m always fond of those episodes that don’t have a lot of transformation and in suit fighting for some reason, especially in Sentai, they feel a bit more special and stand out to me because of that and these episodes shine through thanks to it. You get to see how kickass Gali is supposed to be and you get a pretty viscous fight scene out of it.

In general, this was one of the more “man, sucks to be you” set of episodes I’ve seen Sentai give us. No matter what happens, someone was going to have to give up something dear to them, and in the case of Jiraiya, he had to do that and learn he was lied to all his life, all sorts of conflicted feelings going on right there.

The arc culminates in the return of Daimaoh to the living world and the death of Junior, who as it turns out, was just being used by his father all along. As we find out later on, Daimaoh really isn’t big on family.

Following this arc we’re introduced to the strange armored knight, Hakanmenrou. Who is he? None other than Tsuruhime’s long lost father! He long ago joined the demons in an attempt to figure out a way to defeat Daimaoh. In doing so, his two adopted sons were captured and turned into dogs, only having the strength to become human a finite number of times after that. The sons are lead around by a young boy named Bun, who as it turns out, is a demon himself! Not very happy with the way things are going for the demons, Bun ditches them and joins the humans. Bun isn’t exactly my favorite character and I feel the show might have worked better without him. The guy is basically an eight year old kid with a deadpan expression all the time, not exactly something that makes you feel for the plight of the character he plays.

Right, tangent aside, back to Hakamenrou! Seems daddy dearest has to fight his own daughter and her team if he’s to keep up the appearance of being on the side of the demons. This of course leads to all sorts of conflicted feelings in Tsuruhime, she has no idea he’s working on a way to defeat the demon lord, so she sees him as a traitorous father that she still loves. It’s a tough time to be her for sure.

After this arc comes to a close, we’re thrown back into a string of fillers that are neither too good nor are they terrible. We get to see the Kunoichi female ninjas again after quite some time. Seems like they weren’t quite destroyed when Junior, their creator, bit the bullet.

The Kunoichi are a pretty odd set of characters to begin with. Cats turned to female ninja meant to kick Kakuranger ass and, boy do they ever do it. It feels like the first five or so encounters the team had against them always had them losing. There’s even a pretty neat two parter that has most of the team captured by them, leaving Sasuke to find them. For as strong as these girls are, they aren’t in every episode and there were actually stretches of episodes I found myself wondering if they were ever going to reappear. It feels like we went at least ten episodes without seeing them at one point. Though, to be fair, seeing them used sparingly does portray a sense of real danger, they’re the big guns called out only when Daimaoh really needs something to go his way.

Getting back on track, we’ve got a couple of fillers to deal with and they’re mostly character pieces. These are the episodes that make me feel the narrator still had a place in the series, they hearken back to the comedic timing and visual cues of the first volume, so it feels strange without him. Going into these fillers feels a little strange because we’ve just been through what felt like a good ten episodes of straight story, but it’s not the worst thing in the world. The string of filler in the final few episodes is what I’ve really come to dislike.

Anywho. Around episode 37 we’re introduced to who could essentially stand in as the sixth ranger, Ninjaman! Ninjaman is a jive talking, look-before-you-leap, sort of character and man do I love him for that. Even though he was introduced pretty late into the series, I love his wild and rambunctious portrayal, a lot of that has to do with his voice actor, the great Kazuki Yao.

Ninjaman was a student of the Three Great Generals long ago and tricked into fighting humans by the demons at the time. Because he was tricked, Ninjaman was punished and thrown into an urn where he was to wait for 10,000 years before being released. The urn is found in the modern day by some siblings, a brother and sister. This introduction episode is rather cute as the sister does a lot to care for the urn and Ninjaman in general. The girl is eventually captured by the demons and this isn’t the best news for Ninjaman. Tsuruhime finally breaks the seal on Ninjaman’s urn, freeing him and allowing him to fight alongside the other rangers.

Though strong, Ninjaman doesn’t really have the best temper and has a pretty nasty habit of getting ticked off whenever the demons call him “blue boy”, this causes him to transform into the much more powerful Samuraiman form, who usually seems to kick ass and take names.

After this we get a few more fillers, but they aren’t all bad, we get to see Ninjaman as a character and his interactions with the team. It’s also pretty amusing to see him think a few possessed humans are demons as he tries to strangle the life out of a woman while the other rangers beat him off of her.

We eventually entered the Daradara arc of the series. This is a set of episodes that sees the team finally learning the truth about Hakamenrou and we also learn that Daimaoh has known the truth all along himself. He’s just been using good ol’ H-man as a means of causing strife among the team and luring the Kakuranger to him. Daimaoh clones himself at the start of this arc, leading to the birth of Daradara, a demon who can absorb the energy of any fighter it defeats and send any damage he feels straight to that defeated fighter.

Now, if you’ll excuse me for a moment, I’m going to spazz about episode 44.

Oh man do I love everything about this episode, I think it might be my favorite episode of the series, and probably my favorite Sentai episode from the 90s. There’s a true sense of desperation as the heroes are pushed against the wall and seemingly have no way of escaping. Sasuke’s hurt and he can barely stand against one Kunoichi when he’s at full strength, no way he can stand against five after being beat to hell. Hakamenrou’s been outed as a traitor to the demons. The rangers are captured and the only ones left to protect the earth are the three generals, and of course stopping that monster means they kill four of the rangers and Ninjaman, it really seems like a lose-lose situation at the moment.

I love the way this episode was filmed, especially the night scenes. I can’t recall the last time I saw a real sense of terror and destruction from the monsters in a Sentai series like this episode showed us. Things are going to hell all over the place and it really feels like that. Having that night time stand-off between the three generals and Daradara just adds to the intensity of the set-up. By the time this one ends, you really have no idea what the rangers are going to do to get out of it, everything seems pretty hopeless all around.

With a few alterations on a series of events, this could have easily worked as the final episode of the series. Everything is out in the open and everyone’s basically learned all their lessons, now it’s time to defeat Daimaoh once and for all.

We’ve got a couple more fillers after the Daradara arc and these are fillers that I’m not too fond of. Not because of the content in these episodes, but because of their placement. You get a big heavy set of episodes dealing with the apparent death of Hakamenrou and the rangers all finally realizing just how much rests on their shoulders and then…we’re off to Santa World! Yeah, those were weird episodes even by my standards. Thankfully they don’t last too long and we eventually hit the final arc.

The final arc opens up with Daimaoh’s brother and sister showing up to try and lure the rangers into a trap by using copycats that look just like them. This leads to a few interesting fights and eventually ends with the death of the brother. It’s eventually revealed that Hakamenrou, whose real name we now know is Yoshi Teru, isn’t actually dead. He’s been turned to stone and Daimaoh is now controlling him, causing him to wreck cities. What I love about these episodes is that we’re shown that humans aren’t exactly the nicest creatures on Earth. Daimaoh makes it known that Hakamenrou is Tsuruhime ‘s father and that he won’t stop until she’s dead. This leads to crowds hunting her down. It’s pretty chilling to see ordinary people turned so vicious when they’re presented with something to fear.

Tsuruhime tracks down her father and we soon learn that she’s going to try and kill him using a demon sword Daimaoh’s sister conviently gave her, telling her that only this sword can kill him now. Tsuruhime is conflicted as heck about what she should do, but the other rangers are scrambling to find her now. They’ve been told by the Three Great Generals that if that sword is used to kill Hakakmenrou, a terrible disaster will befall the planet.

Eventually Taro and Jiro, the two adopted sons turned dogs, appear and turn human for the final time. They fight off Hakamenrou and die in the process of saving their father, but they both die at peace by his side and at least get a decent close to their story. Soon after this, Daimaoh’s sister bites it and we’re left with Daimaoh as the last demon standing, along with the Kunoichi, though they aren’t exactly demons, just a whole lot of pussy. (I went there!)

The series comes to an end in a surprising battle between Daimaoh and the others. The rangers are ready to face Daimaoh head on but are stopped by the Three Great Generals, who tell them that killing Daimaoh will actually cause him to envelope the heart of every human on earth. Here’s where we learn something neat about big D. He’s basically the incarnation of fear and hate itself. He’s going to be around as long as humans have something to fear and hate, and as long as humans exist, so will hate, so there’s no destroying him.

This, of course, causes the rangers a lot of trouble as they set about tracking him down against their generals’ orders. They track him to a city and we get some interesting conversations between Daimaoh and the team about whether or not humans are really worth protecting. After all, greed, fear and hate are made much stronger by humans than they could have ever been out in nature. It’s a really unique take on a final Sentai battle that doesn’t resort to fighting the enemy straight on. Of course, Sasuke comes through with a speech about all the good humans have done and pure emotions like love, hope and dreams that cause us all to aspire to greater things in life. We’re all flowers just waiting to bloom and make this planet into something truly beautiful. (or something like that)

We eventually come to the close of the current battle between good and evil. The Kunochi are turned back into cats and the final battle isn’t so much a battle as it is one final desperate struggle for survival on both sides. The Kakuranger discover that, rather than defeat Daimaoh, they can seal him away into the same door their ancestors used on the previous generation of demons. What we’re left with is the rangers pushing Daimaoh into the sealing door with all their might as he struggles against them with all his. The rangers do of course win and seal him away, but he leaves them with these words: I will returns! So long as humans are around, I will live on and I will definitely return!

So what do the rangers do? They’re off to go spread the good word to humanity, to tell them to be good to each other, to love each other and not give into fear and hate, for that will bring a greater destruction than anyone could ever imagine. And with that, the series draws to its final close.

So Kakuranger is over and what do I think of it? If you haven’t guessed yet, I love it. I often find it hard to differentiate between Flashman and Kakuranger as my favorite Sentai, but I think I might go with Kakuranger just because it feels a bit more vibrant and I find myself liking the characters a lot more. Kakuranger overall just seems like the culmination and avoidance of the problems that plagued Dairanger and Zyuranger. We’ve got a strong story with really likable characters and a rather unique message presented to us. Though it feels like the final evolution of what Zyuranger and Dairanger were trying to go for, there are so many unique aspects to Kakuranger that really do make it a wonderful watch.

I’ve always been incredibly enamored by the visual presentation of the series. The ninja aesthetics are fun to watch, from the random changes to their ninja outfits to the actual Kakuranger suits, some of the lowest key Sentai suits I’ve ever seen. I’ve got to wonder if anyone really had to fight for these designs to get off the ground because they just don’t scream typical Sentai, but Kakuranger is not your typical Sentai.

The show sends home a pretty unique message, sometimes in your face, sometimes in a subtle manner that I can’t help but love. It’s as if the show itself is presenting us two different views of the same issues: whether or not the youth of today are being ruined by the modern era. In the end, the show basically takes the high road and gives the viewer hope. Yeah, there are a LOT of things wrong with the modern world, not least of which is the fear mongering attitude that has become rather prevalent, but there’s always hope. This series tells us that, despite our problems, humans are good natured and want to be able to live in peace with one another.

It’s not everyone’s favorite series, and I can imagine it might be a pretty difficult one to get into, but Kakuranger was the necessary Sentai. This is the show that allowed the franchise to move out of bizarre comedy back to strong stories with a tighter sense of pacing and tone. I personally don’t think it’s the most difficult show to get into, but I’ve heard people have had issues with that, I’ll just say that if you can get into it, you are in for one hell of a 53 episode ride.

– Aoi Kurenai, http://risingsuntokusatsu.com