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)

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!

Guise, Guise, Wink, Wink, Know What I Mean, Know What I Mean?

When girls wink, they look really cute. These are no exceptions in the heroines of Super Sentai. They may fight evil, but they are still human ladies beneath it all. So it should come of no surprise that sometimes they'd utilize such thing during battle. This usually happened when they use their usual disguise trait, and usually when the disguise is as a Cowgirl. Sometimes, the wink serve as a finishing touch, before the enemy fall in defeat. So, here's a list of when girls wink after beating up the enemy while disguised... mostly as cowgirls.


Akira Momoi from Denziman started it when the Denziman is fighting a television-based monster, where the team got re-outfitted into cowboy/cowgirl outfits.


Later on, Miki Momozono from Goggle V does this against enemy soldiers under a monster who fights like a cowboy/marksman. She even adds up a very cute "Ufuun~" sound in the end!


In Dynaman, this doesn't happen as a cowgirl disguise, but when Rei Tachibana shed her fencer disguise, she does this for good measure.


... On second thought, I was wrong. She does eventually disguised herself as a cowgirl and winked. AGAIN.


And then in Changeman, since one girl is not enough, so two girls would suffice. So, we have both Sayaka Nagisa and Mai Tsubasa winking at the enemy. Note that Sayaka's cowgirl outfit look similar to Miki's.


I haven't watched Go Go V or Timeranger, but I heard that during their teamup movie, such event happens. In this case, just like Sayaka & Mai; Matsuri Tatsumi (GoPink) and Yuuri (TimePink) combine their wink on their cowgirl outfits.

And that's what I have gathered so far on when girls make use of winks in the middle of battle. Please do tell me more if I missed something similar. Especially when they're disguised as cowgirls since that seems to be a recurring thing in the Super Sentai series.

(And yes, the title is based on a sketch by Monty Python... Know what I mean? Know what I mean? Nudge nudge, say no more, say no more...)

Actors: From Hero To Villain - Contagious

An actor can play a hero one day, and play the villain next day. This holds true in the Super Sentai franchise as well. We've got some actors that played heroes in one installment, and next installment, they might be villains. However, I've also noticed that for Super Sentai, it may get a bit... contagious. If one installment featured a villain played by a hero of the previous installment's actor, one of the heroes of this installment's actors may play a villain in the future installment. Here's the list, or rather, the chain of this.



It started with Sayoko Hagiwara playing as Rei Tachibana/Dyna Pink in Kagaku Sentai Dynaman. Then, by Choushinsei Flashman, she played as Ley Nefel, one of the villains.




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Flashman features Kihachirou Uemura as Dai/Green Flash. Then in Chikyuu Sentai Fiveman, he plays the late-coming villain Chevalier.


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Fiveman also has Keiko Hayase who plays Remi Hoshikawa/Five Yellow. Later in Ninja Sentai Kakuranger, she ends up playing as one of the Flower Kunoichi Gang, Sakura.

(She's the center one)

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While it might ended over there, there's one more from Kakuranger that follows. Hiroshi Tsuchida plays Saizou/Ninja Blue. And later on, on the latter installments of Super Sentai, he tends to guest star as the voice behind some monsters of the week.

(This one's from Shinkenger)

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So basically, it's as if the contagiousness started out strong, but as time passed, they are used as a less 'prominent' thing. Ley Nefel was a villain that appeared from the start, Chevalier wasn't present in the initial lineup of Fiveman villains, the Flower Kunoichi Gang, while recurring, weren't such big guns in the ranks of Daimaou's army and don't have much of personalities to write home about, and... the ones voiced by Hiroshi Tsuchida are just monster of the weeks, except maybe the recurring one in Dekaranger (Hells), but he didn't last very long (though he did get one episode arc), and probably the rest of the monsters he voiced only lasts one episode. We do not know if this would mean that in future Sentai series, they may pick one of the casts of Shinkenger to be a villain or sort. Hey, it could happen.