Gosei Sentai Dairanger (1993)

I watched Dairanger as study material as I am a filmmaker and have a slight interest towards Japanese film, as of writing this review Dairanger is the only sentai series I have completed and I am more than halfway through Maskman so I also have that as a reference in terms of what I have seen in regards to the Super Sentai Series.

The series starts straight to the point which is great for some people but I personally would have preferred a bit more build up in regards to plot. Dairanger has an overall really great story which would otherwise have been near perfect if it wasn't for some major flaws in regards to the unanswered questions left at the end of the series which really docked some points but the overall story was so good that I can swallow the bitterness of the ending. What I really liked about this series compared to what I have seen from other super sentai series as well as power rangers is that this series is not afraid to do an episode without the megazords and the rather than the megazords feeling like toy commercials they are integral to the plot for the most part and I cannot see this series without them. There are episodes where the rangers are not even in their suits for an entire episode which really breaks the mold when compared to other sentai and power ranger series.

The acting is really great and I was genuinely surprised how the acting complimented with the story leaving me with wet eyes at some points. The adults actors are great aside for maybe a couple and the two main child actors are also really good and when they were on screen I was not rolling my eyes but rather captivated by their performances. That being said, pretty much every other child not a part of the main two are not so great but they are few and far between so it's fine.

The music is some of the best I have heard in a live action series and I have searched the internet for the OST tracks the opening and ending tracks are a bit cheesy though but everything else is genuinely amazing.

The high octane martial arts gives this series good rewatch value if you're really into martial arts films, however as I recently just finished this series for the first time I cannot really comment that much into the rewatch value of the series.

Overall Gosei Sentai Dairanger is a really great series and I recommend it to anyone who is a sentai or power ranger fan or someone looking for a starting point as this was my starting point into the sentai series and has made my a huge fan.

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Everything the show did well:
-The core 5 members of the team are really likeable overall, especially the green ranger Daigo.
-Excellent battle choreography on the ground fights.
-Besides the cool martial arts, the team has really unique abilities for the most part.
-Mostly serialized plot structure that makes it stand out from other Super Sentai seasons.
-The main villains trio of the Gorma Tribe are heavily involved in the plot and fights.
-With the exception of the yellow ranger Kazu, all the team members have a constant rival throughout the show.
-Cool world-building for the most part.
-Good balance between lighthearted and dark tones for the most part.
-Consistently really cool monsters of the week.

Everything the show did bad:
-The yellow ranger Kazu gets considerably shafted for the most part, as he has less fights than the other 4 main members of the team, it's the only ranger that doesn't have a rival and has a whole arc that while entertaining mostly consist on him not transforming. However he still manages to be a likeable character overall in spite of this.
-The first 2 episodes of the show really suck compared to the rest of the show.
-One of, personally the worst finale in the franchise. As it cheapens most of the world-building that the show had done up to that point and pretty much ruins Kujaku's character arc. I could see some people enjoy the ending due to its philosophical implications but it just comes off as needlessly depressing and kinda dumb from the main villains' standpoint.
-The extra hero KibaRanger dissapears from the show from time to time arbitrarily without any explanation, which makes him feel like a glorified mech. While he's a likeable character overall, he's the least enjoyable since his lack of screentime hinders his development and some of the emotional weight of his scenes.
-Most mecha battles with Gosei Gattai Dairen'Oh, which is the most used mech in the show, suck due to being really short and usually just consisting of a slash and not much of a battle.
-Zydos is heavily shafted compared to the other villains/rivals in the show despite being part of the main villain trio, he's also the only one from the trio to not have a rival.
-Gorma the XV is just an OK villain.
-Daijinryuu's mini-arc feels shoe-horned in and disconnect led from the main conflict.
-While this is mostly a personal issue, I felt that the main trio of the Gorma Tribe didn't have enough charisma which was a detriment for my enjoyment of the show.

Reasons for the show's strengths:
Main producer Takeyuki Suzuki wanted the show to stand-out from previous seasons since it was the franchise 15th anniversary (at the time the first 2 seasons weren't consideres Super Sentai), taking inspiration from fighting games that were popular and because chinese culture was spreading in Japan at the time in particular Oolong tea becoming popular resulted in the show having a martial arts theme as a focus. The staff put a lot of effort on making the action great and stand-out, they also made the actors fight out of suit more often than the past few seasons. Due to the fighting game inspiration the staff wanted the team to not have a ranger leader and for every ranger to stand-out from each other resulting in every ranger getting an arc and rival dedicated to them (with the exception of Kazu who got an arc but not a rival). Main writer Noboru Sugimura wanted to surpass Jetman in uniqueness which lead to the show taking a more serialized approach.

Reasons for the show's problems:
The yellow ranger's fighting style, "the drunken fist" was too difficult to perform consistently and film which resulted in him getting shafted compared to the rest of the cast and having his arc dedicated to him obtaining a mecha so that he didn't have a proper rival to fight and they wouldn't have to film his fights as much.
Due to the whole 'surpassing Jetman' ideology the writer came up with an even more controversial ending which backfired.
Kibaranger was the second extra ranger (third, if you count Liveman) to be made. The previous one, DragonRanger was supposed to be an one-off idea inspired by Mad Gallant from Juspion and Silva from Bioman. However due to his intense popularity it was decided to try it again this season. At the time Toei wanted the extra ranger to not properly join the team as to not overshadow the core members, the DragonRanger from Zyuranger was made with this intent but KibaRanger wasn't. This resulted in the character being weirdly written out from episodes despite not making much sense unlike the DragonRanger who had a proper lore reason to not appear consistently.

Overall:
I feel that most people would give this show a 7/10 since my issues with the villains are mostly a 'me' issue rather than the show's fault. And I could see people give this show an 8 due to how cool the action is in this show. The show's biggest issue is the ending as it's really bad and honestly kind of ruined the show for me, but I feel that most people would be able to look past that and still find the show great in spite of it, and admittedly the ending is really different from anything any Sentai season has done before or since so I could even see people giving this show a 9 for its uniqueness.
Overall I would recommend this show to any Super Sentai fan or martial arts fan. Just be sure to give the show at least a 4 episode chance before deciding to go through with it since the first 2 episodes are notoriously bad and not at all representative of the quality of rest of the show and be prepared for a divisive ending.

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