Sentai Anniversary Shows and Crossovers

Usually every certain years, Super Sentai would pull off Anniversary show and they have been rather different for years. Let's see how it evolved.



The first special is the Turboranger special episode which began even before Turboranger's first episode aired. It honors the Super Sentai team starting from Battle Fever J until Liveman (at that time, Goranger and JAKQ hasn't been considered) and mostly just does some clip shows of those past Super Sentai and it ends with those teams cheering for the Turborangers to fight the Bouma and carry on their legacy.



The second special is the Super Sentai World which heavily featured the 16th series Kakuranger. Rather than a clip show, it calls in the Sentai warriors from Fiveman, Jetman (Gai is probably not dead yet here), Zyuranger (back from the heavens) and Dairanger (not yet old folks) in order to fight an original enemy. While this probably used the crossover nature a lot, I think it was the beginning of it. Most the pre-Kakuranger warriors don't appear out of suit.



During the Ohranger's airing, probably due to downed ratings, they may be thinking 'Only an Anniversary show can save us now!' Thus they drafted Goranger and JAKQ into the roster and after Ohranger is done, they released Carranger, an Anniversary show which is... a parody of the Sentai genre. They don't do clip shows or crossovers, they just... run along with the show, poke fun of the genre. And it saved Sentai too to continue on.



Now the next anniversary is Gaoranger vs Super Sentai. In a way, this carries on similar elements with the Turboranger special, there were clip shows, but in it, also a new original story, and all warriors from Past Sentai also appear to give their approval for the Gaoranger to continue on their legacy (in this case the whole Red warriors). But what makes this unique is that this also gives us a crossover Sentai team, a Sentai team whose members are from different Sentai teams (in this case Big One, Red Falcon, Ginga Blue, Mega Pink and Go Yellow). I think this is where the awesome really go.



The next anniversary is Boukenger vs Super Sentai. This is really similar with the Gaoranger one, except they don't use whole clip shows and limits it to the previous shows that appears after the last anniversary (Hurricaneger to Magiranger), similar to Super Sentai World. It also introduces us... Aka Red, who'll later appear in Gokaiger. A good showing, but felt like it could be expanded further. I mean, the concept on Gaoranger vs Super Sentai is awesome, a practically crossovers that knows no era or decade, Boukenger vs Super Sentai, while good, felt like a dumbed down version. Although there are anniversary element in the Boukenger show itself, starting from fight coreography into how every single enemies are based on past Sentai robos.



Then there's Gokaiger, which also takes note from Carranger: it's a show that runs on its own and is filled with nostalgia factor and cameo from past rangers. No clip shows, no crossover teams, just an awesome story filled with shout outs to the past.

I hope you had a good read about this.

Also for bonus stuffs you can do, if you are aware of my fic, you realize I am making up my own crossover on Super Sentai which is heavily based on Gaoranger vs Super Sentai. So I'm wondering, if you guys who read here would like to make up crossover teams, which would be your team? Minimum 5 characters, maximum 7 characters! Include villains too if you can! You can put them in your comments! You can see mine in these posts of my blog:

http://supersentaivssupersentai.blogspot.com/2010/06/characters-team-1-heroes.html
http://supersentaivssupersentai.blogspot.com/2010/06/characters-team-2-heroes.html

How Super Sentai saved ChrisX

Okay, this is just a moment of outburst that would just last for the moment, but I feel like I wanna express my gratitude to the Sentai franchise for something. Just keep reading.



As I mentioned before, I'm troubled to what transpired in BlazBlue, about my favorite lady betraying the image I had for her. True, I'm slightly getting better and trying to understand. But the world of fiction isn't as merciful. It's like 'depression is the new trend'.



I lately bought the PS3 Mortal Kombat. Good game, a throwback to classic MKs. The Story Mode on the other hand... it's kind of bittersweet to the point of depression. I won't spoil you much as this is a recent game, but I will say that they really went out to make that world (Earthrealm) a crapsack one, with something horrible happening to many heroes and fan favorites, and even the God of Thunder Raiden committing mistakes after mistakes leading up to that horrible thing. It was really depressing, I never thought that 'gory fun' suddenly gets to 'gory seriousness'. Wasn't as bad as my problem with Litchi, but MK takes a new level in depression. You need to play it.



Then comes the PSN outage. Here and there, complains about Sony piled up, especially after the reveal that personal information have been leaked, and PSN is still down for uncertain time. I know it will return back one day, and I don't use Credit Cards, but all this time the complains have been piling up and even if Sony gets back up, it'll have to deal with the loss of reputations, now that many people dislike it for being untrustworthy on the security.

So I opened this blog of mine, looked at the top picture... and then...

OH MY GOD.

HOLY SHIT.

WTFBBQ!!!!!!!!!

Gokaiger movie info, Junichi Haruta, Sayoko Hagiwara and Kenta Satou returning for the movie... NOSTALGIA, HOOO!! (Well, not so much nostalgia when it comes to Dynaman since I just finished watching it the first time, but still it gave me a good appreciation to that show) It was such a wham announcement it made me forget the troubles I'm having in other places. You can bet your ass that when those three (ESPECIALLY Junichi Haruta) appear on screen, even if he's not I'm gonna yell in excitement, like how Nostalgia Critic reacted to 'Frying The Coke'.

I'm pretty sure Sean is psyched with the presence of Ryosuke Sakamoto since I'm pretty sure he's Filipino and Bioman is pretty big in Phillipines, kinda like Goggle V in Indonesia. I'm not quite surprised with the announcement of Naoya Makoto and Hiroshi Miyauchi, though, they're like a must-appear list so it was kind of expected, Akaranger led the Legend War, plus Big One is... well, Big One. Both of them are the biggest names of old school Sentai. Yes I do realize that there's also Keiichi Wada, Mika Kikuchi and Kenji Ohba to count but it's nostalgia we're talking about for the moment.

So yeah, I'd like to thank Sentai for keeping my optimism up. While the world of videogames seem hell bent to make the stories seem pessimistic (though not closed for future improvement), Sentai always kept the optimism, getting my hopes up. Thank you Toku and Sentai!

Fake Defecting - Sentai & Others

Okay, as far as you noticed, I've been absent for god-knows how long. Well, I'm sorta back. And I'm here to tell you the reason why and my slight comfort.

Remember the last time I made a BlazBlue intro? Well, it's a game series I've been quite into right now. And I'm pretty hooked. But it became one of my undoing. By one of my favorite characters, no less. This is the character in question... Litchi Faye-Ling.


Litchi presents herself as a thoroughly good woman. She's kind, caring, maternal and loves children, and amongst the crazy cast of BlazBlue, she is quite sane, sensible and down-to-earth, as well as being driven with her love towards a friend in need. In other words, her friend was inflicted with a really fatal disease that turns him into a monster, and being a doctor, she felt it was her responsibility to save him, but the cure is currently nonexistant, so she tried to understand the symptoms by inflicting herself with said disease, but she couldn't find a cure in time before she starts experiencing the symptoms herself, meaning her time is running short and she may succumb into that sickness. (And trust me, how I described this was the theme park version of the real story. Just... go play the game yourself to understand just how SERIOUS the problem is).

At any rate, her concentration to her problem means that she didn't pay attention to the main plot in general, so suddenly, the evil bad guy came in and invited her to join their group of antagonists since they want her knowledge. At first Litchi refused, but they offered the undiscovered cure of her friend if she joins. While at first reluctant, Litchi was refused of help by her only other capable friend, thus she made the decision to eventually join the evil group and become an antagonist, all in the name of her love to her friend and her desire to see him cured no matter what. And she doesn't seem to have a lingering loyalty to the protagonist group, either...

THIS is my problem. Love is such a powerful force that it can make people do crazy things. Litchi was no exception. With love, it is quite possible that she will disregard her morality if it means getting him cured. I looked up to her as a shining example of sanity and pillar of moral character, but she turned against it. You can imagine how I suddenly feel crushed for about 6 months. Worse, the producer said that the continuation will not be coming soon, and it'll be a looong delay. While I believed that Litchi is still good... BlazBlue is a very cynical piece of work and things may go very bad for good morality later.

Now the comfort part? Thanks to Super Sentai, I find quite comfort and possible scenarios to look forward, revealing that Litchi might've gone antagonist just temporarily and will not be intoxicated! This is the term we call

FAKE DEFECTION

Basically, it is quite common in Super Sentai that the heroes suddenly betrayed the team and they've gone to the enemy side, earning the ire of their allies, but suddenly, in the very same episode, they would suddenly turn their backs to the enemy and reveal that they're just in the enemy side for something they wanted... not because they've had it being goody-two-shoes. In fact, amongst the Sentai shows I've watched, we got 3 shows in a row with scenario like this.

It starts with... Turboranger.


In the 19th episode, the Bouma attacked with a monster that inflicts fatal poison. In that attack, the monster tried targeting Haruna (Pink Turbo), but Youhei (Blue Turbo) ended up taking the attack and poison. Thinking that it was completely her fault that Youhei is poisoned, Haruna tried demanding the cure herself, but was refused and ended up taking a blow on her head and taken to the Bouma base. The next time she reappears, she looked as if she completely defected to the Bouma and attacked her friends (complete with an evil laugh on her own). Then at one point she got attacked and injected by the poison, which made her beg for her chief (at this point, the buffoon Zulten) for the antidote, in which she is given. Afterwards she retreated from the battlefield and quickly returned... and attacked Zulten and the monster instead. Turns out she just pretended being amnesiac, her defection just serves as a mean to get the antidote she needs to save Youhei, whom she brought along to kick some ass to make up for his absence.

The next series to feature this is Fiveman.



In the 32nd episode, a monster with time manipulation ability caused Gaku (Five Red) to get killed. Kazumi (Five Pink) fell into despair and thought without Gaku they'd never win against Zone. Thus she surrendered to Zone and attacked her siblings, it went so bad as Fumiya (Five Black) condemned her saying that he'll never consider her his sister again. As a reward for her 'betrayal', Kazumi got close with the monster and persuaded the monster to go back in time before he killed Gaku, and find a present for him. And... he did. Because the time is reversed, he tried finding the present rather than dealing the fatal blow to Gaku, thus all went according to Kazumi's plan about falling into despair and defecting. Gaku lives and she sticks with the team, as she never really had the intention to defect...

And then it ends with the feature being included in... Jetman.



In the 34th episode, Ryuu (Red Hawk) finally couldn't let go of his anxiety being separated with Rie, thus he handed down plans for Tetra Boy to the Vyram. Of course, his teammates didn't take it well and think he completely became a sell out in the name of love. Ryuu however trounced the Jetman while being aided with the Vyram. However, the Vyram turned on his back and shot him down, leaving his friends in anguish... only to find out that they shot a cyborg. In fact, while all of these happens, Ryuu was sneaking into the Vyram base to hamper their method of transportation and even called in his friends to help in the end. Turns out these were all staged by him and even quotes the saying "To deceive your enemy, you must deceive your friends first!" His overall plan ultimately failed, though. However, it shows that the Jetman has developed in terms of cunningness to be able to trick the sadistic Vyrams like that.

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, the difference between Super Sentai and BlazBlue in handling these scenarios was that Sentai usually wrapped this kind of scenario in one episode, and be done with it, while BlazBlue stops this in the middle for the sake of cliff hanger. Of course, this may turn out otherwise in the future, whether Litchi either was really desperate, or finally turned towards evilness completely. However, her scenario has a lot of similarities to the Sentai scenarios above. She fell into despair that she couldn't find a cure and it's catching up to her (kind of like Kazumi's that Gaku died), she did it to save another person with a cure (like how Haruna attempts to save Youhei with an antidote), and that person is the one she loved (like how Ryuu tries justifying his betrayal to save his love Rie (at that time being Maria)). Also I may be wrong, but Ryuu's quote about deceiving the enemy might originate from China, while Litchi's design has a lot of Chinese feel in it, so she might end up saying that in the end, if she really is just faking. But other than that, who knows what the future will hold for her, I can only hope for the best (in which, she was only faking joining the organization).

I'll talk more about BlazBlue later (in addition of Sentai). And apologies with all this absence. For now, even though I'm still rather butthurt on the events, I'll try my best to update this blog. Also, yes, I do realize that Ohranger and Abaranger have similar scenarios, but I didn't include them because I haven't watched them. Are we cool now? Good.