I had to take a week off unexpectedly due to a crazy work load at work and school last week, but rest assured, I haven’t forgotten you, loyal readers.
Today, we take a pause from our still continuing “Hunt for American Toku” mini-series on Toku Tuesday to bring you my first impressions of the new Super Sentai series:
Tensou Sentai Goseiger, Epic 01
I suppose I’ll start with a summary of the basic story. The Earth is protected by angels and has been for thousands of years unbeknown to humankind. These angels reside in Heavenly realm beyond our own and the gateway to it is the Tower of Heaven. A conqueror of worlds arrives in Earth orbit from the far reaches of space with plans to subjugate our home, his first order of business is to destroy the Tower of Heaven, severing the connection between the Heavenly realm and Earth. Thing is, five guardian angels in training happen to be on Earth when the Tower is attacked, so they find themselves stranded on the planet has its only guardians.
I must say, I like the concept and I think it will work. Mostly. There are some design choices I’m not comfortable with yet – namely the henshin device. It’s a “Tiki-head” that accepts Change Cards a la Kamen Rider Ryuki. Seriously Toei, I know you guys have been cranking out Rider and Sentai shows on the regular for a long time now, but reusing like this is starting to get old; you just gave us a card-based Rider only a year ago…
As far as the costuming, I actually like the Goseiger uniforms and I especially like the designs of the three main villains introduced in this first episode, in particular Suisei no Puredoran and Mons Drake. I like the incorparation of the Goseigers’ animal spirits on their helmets as well as the combination of their respective set of “wings” (the logo on their chests – together these make up the crests on their helmets). The lips we could all probably do without, but this might just be because it’s been so long since a Sentai team had any.
I don’t want to get into the characters just now as this one episode does little to establish them all. The team falls in line with general Sentai team archetypes though, so this isn’t a very original bunch of heroes. They are much younger (in spirit I guess) than other teams. They overall come across to me as naive and whimsical, though all but the GoseiRed seem to have the ability to be “serious” and then be “not-so-serious,” if that makes any sense. I suppose, if you were to take the cast of Magiranger and fuse them with the casts of Gekiranger and Go-Onger, you might get close to the team dynamic present here. Or it could be that I watch too much Sentai…
So far, I approve, but there are still many more Epics to go. I can’t wait to see the gattai in action for real. It looks promising, indeed. And as far as the rest of the series? I recommend that you give it a shot and give it time to develop, this could tern out to be a another Gekiranger (starts out weak then gets crazy awesome).
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I'm an otaku, avid gamer, and electronic "musician." I'm forever indulging in the amazingness that is Japanese tokusatsu.
A Tokin 4 Your Thoughts 
They’re using cards BECAUSE they did a card-based Rider a year ago. Ganbaride did well enough for Decade, so they wanted to do it again. IMO, they should have switched Goseiger and Shinkenger. I think a Decade/Goseiger team up would have been neater, seeing them swap cards and what not.
I generally agree. I like the costumes, not the morpher. So far, I don’t care for the red ranger. He seems like the runt of the litter and have yet to see an element on how he unifies the team around him. I think if the whole card dropping were on purpose to get the kid to learn to do what he has to, I would have liked it better.