Sentai Character Talk 7: Rei Tachibana/Dyna Pink

So yeah, you may be wondering why I deleted the previous post. I kinda felt it was rushed, kind of stupid and has no grounds. I should be such judges when I actually HAVE seen even ONE episode. But yeah, rather than looking like a stupid hypocrite, I think I'd delete that previous post.

Oh well, in place of that and celebrating the old school actors/actresses of Sentai in the Gokaiger movie, let's add up with something from what I recently finished... Rei Tachibana AKA Dyna Pink from Kagaku Sentai Dynaman.



Well, again, since Dynaman is in 1983... it was kept pretty simple. Rei is a 18 years old fencer, thus she's usually pretty handy with a rapier. Despite such physical affinity, she's actually an inventor, her dream is to create a device that enables people to communicate with animals (though she really has a long way to go if her flaw is not taken care of). This makes Rei actually a prodigy of her age, since the rest of the Dynaman are older than her. Anyway, being an inventor, she got invited into the Yumeno Research Center, but along the way met up with 4 fellow inventors (including a swimmer-inventor and ninja-inventor to name a few) and some weird creatures that attacked them all. They were cornered, thrown to sea, but survived and made it to the Yumeno Research Center. The Center's director, the aptly named Prof. Yumeno, reveals that the ones attacking them are the Jashinka Empire who were bent on conquering Earth once more. Again, like her predecessor in Sentai heroine business (Miki), Rei really had no doubt in turning into an ally of justice and when appointed to be one of the Dynaman, she accepted without asking further and began fighting with the Jashinka Empire along with her fellow Dynamen. The good thing? She can resume her research in the Yumeno Research Center.

Trait

Again, Rei is an 80's heroine where development wasn't as much. She acts like a typical Sentai heroine, relying more on wits, typically kind to children (but then again so is every Dynamen since the research center is under a kindergarten). One thing that stands out is that unlike Miki, it seems that Rei's character is designed to be more action-oriented, as proven with her fencing specialty.

She cares a lot about her friends, but has quite the sense of fun and humor as shown time to time, just like that time she devised a plan to lure the Slug Shinka. She goes on a naughty taunting-spree and sticking tongues a lot. Also at one time, she agreed to play a prank on Prof Yumeno by wearing the stolen clothes of her Jashinka rival Chimera, of course that backfired when she ended up getting a voodoo curse by Jashinka which quickly accelerated to affecting her friend. She ended up having to beg for the voodoo curse to stop until Ryuu Hoshikawa/Dyna Black saved the day, but it does show that she cared a lot about her friends and wouldn't want them to suffer from the prank she played (of course Ryuu was the one who accidentally stole it, but he probably apologized off-screen). Speaking of clothes, you may remember that one episode where she and Chimera fought off and strip each other until they're only in their lowest tier of swimsuits, showing off some naughty... bits.

She also seems to be quite into history/legends too as when she deduced how to beat a Jashinka monster that petrifies people with the head of Medusa... by repeating the feats of Perseus accurately.

But of course, one glaring trait she got was her phobia towards cat. There hasn't been any explanations why she feared cats, but the mere presence of cats, even if it's a lucky cat statue, was enough to send her into frenzy. This is pretty ironic, since she wanted to create a communicate-with-animal device, because like it or not, cats ARE animals. By the end of Dynaman, there's still no signs that she got over her fear. In this case, Rei should be lucky Super Sentai hasn't gotten an annual VS tradition, otherwise perhaps Deathdark Empire or Gear Empire can find out her weakness and purposely abuse it to cow her down (Jashinka's cat creature was created without knowing Rei's fear in mind).

Arsenal

Being a fencer, Rei usually carries a fencing saber wherever she goes. When transformed into Dyna Pink, her saber gets evolved into 'Rose Saber', and she gets a flowery shield called 'Rose Shield'. Her Dyna Rod attack is called 'Pink Shocking Melody' which sends out sound waves to attack the enemy. And with said sword she has a diving technique called 'Rose Finale'. It's a potent attack.

As par of the 'female warrior' schthick, she is also the person that would more likely to go into disguises. Unfortunately for Rei, she didn't have the 'spin and change costumes in a blink of an eye' like Miki, she'd need preparation times to pull it off. But when situation demands, she can disguise herself just fine.

Pairings

I'll... get back to this later when I make a Dynaman pairing topic.

In Conclusion

Again since this is a 80's pre-Changeman Sentai, I'd say that Rei was quite typical for the heroines of the age. But Rei probably kickstarted the trend of Sentai heroines that's tough as nails (even if she's the sole female and wasn't as tough compared to her male friends) and more action-oriented (which I have to admit, pretty good). Sayoko Hagiwara also portrayed her well despite, well, IMO, her voice a bit too deep for heroines, but she pulled it off just fine. I would put her as one of my favorites this way. And there we have it with Rei. You can look forward for her appearance in Gokaiger movie! (Albeit looking older)