Engine Sentai Go-onger Versus Power Rangers RPM - Part 1

Here's a new segment where I take a look at stories and characters from the Super Sentai and Power Rangers franchises, and compare the two. The goal here is to see which treats its audiences with the most grace, has the most to offer multiple demographics, and just offers a better story. As such, there will be MAJOR spoilers.

In February 2009, the 32nd sentai team had its pilot episode. March the following year, Power Rangers RPM aired in the USA. Both used the same fight footage, but were wildly different. Since Go-onger aired first, let's talk about what this story was about.

Go-onger started with 3 people driving around in a camper (which, thanks to the wonders of hammer space, has enough space for a kitchen, sleeping arrangements for 5 people, and a research laboratory) fighting a few baddies here and there. Sousuke, Ren, and Saki who are Go-on Red, Go-on Blue, and Go-on Yellow respectively, met roughly 8 months before the series starts when a race Sousuke was competing in was attacked by the Gaiark. Sousuke (a race car driver), Ren (a bus driver), and Saki (a concession peddler) are the only 3 with the guts to fight off the Putties of the season. Witnessing this brave act, 3 sentient vehicles and a fat little robot (yeah, work your head around that) named Bomper decide that this trio is worthy of entrusting the fragile vehicles' bodies to. You see, these vehicles (Speedor, Buson, and BeaRV) are from a parallel world called Engine World. Coming to Human World caused their bodies start to decay, so they split themselves into souls contained in these little card things and Casts which are just mini die-cast versions of their bodies. When the Souls is Put into the cast, the engine is made whole and can grow big to do battle for 10 minutes or so. By putting the Soul into a mopher, the souls project a holographic image of their true selves to communicate with others, though this is proven useless as the Soul cards can talk and even jump about without any aid.

Early on, the trio are stalked by a former "detective" with an effed up hairhawk (who is later revealed to have just been a beat cop) and a tuktuk driving kid who is perpetually between jobs. These two freaks of nature desire nothing more, for the time being, to join the Go-onger team. So the fat little robot, Bomper, decides to let them join the team out of desperation, and their Engine partners seem to exist purely to be whimsical because...because! So, these new members are names Gunpei (Go-on Black) and Hanto (Go-on Green), and their partners are Gunphard (a German Shepard/gun themes police cruiser) and Birca (motorcycle cruiser that throws out random Italian catch phrases at inappropriate places. Whether it's a shark or dolphin, I don't remember it being explained).

So, that's the main five. They're all full of energy, have really strong desires that are barely explored. Gunpei wants to save the world because he was a lackluster cop, Hanto wants to use his powers to hit on girls, Saki wants to be an idol eventhough she has NO talent (and yes, there was an episode where she had a featured singing role), Sousuke wants to be the very best Grand Prix racer (like no one ever was), and Ren wants to be a mechanic in a pit crew.

Next, we have our baddies. They hail from Machine World, and call themselves Barbaric Machine Clan Gaiark. There are three main baddies. Earth Pollution Minister Yogostein, Water Pollution Minister Kegalesia, and Air Pollution Minister Kitaneidas. What's their goal? You guessed it! To pollute the planet. Guess what the major theme of the series is? If you guessed "pollution is bad", you'd actually be wrong. Shocker, I know. The obvious conflict is actually entirely secondary. Why? Because the show was trying to be ironic. The motivations aren't really explored. Kegaleshia is there to be sexy. Kitaneidas is there to be his own organization's foil, and Yogostein is supposed to be the serious one. Supposed to be. At the end of the day, his own confidence proves to be more of a foil than the Air Minister's own inability to function. I really wish there was ANYthing more to say about the water and air ministers...but there's nothing to say at this point. Yogostein has a bit more personality, though only just. He's seriously determined to succeed to prove to his father Yogoshimacritein and to his Vice Minister Hiramechimedes. Yogoshimacritein is the head of ALL the ministers, and their race as a whole. He's never called a king, but for all intents and purposes, he is. Hiramechimedes is Yogostein's second-in-command, and I'm guessing occasional lover. This dude is obsessed with math. His binding attack is a string of characters which are just numbers that make up Pi, and his blast attack is a big eff-off triangle that he draws in the air and explodes. This guy has more personality than Yogostein, but his only motivation is jealousy at not being made Earth Pollution Minister. One thing I will say is that he learns from each of his mistakes, and after each failure adjusts his strategy significantly to compensate. Not typical villain behavior, which is a really nice change of pace. But he's only around for a few episodes, so not much is explored with him. There's a "Cleaning Minister" somewhere in there, but it's quickly revealed that all of his accomplishments were all a lie, so he's not really worth talking about. He's there for like, 4 episodes and there aren't any major revelations so he might as well not have been created to begin with.

So, there are two more Rangers that pop up occasionally right before the middle of the series, but they don't really become regulars until after Hiramechimedes bites the dust. They seriously dislike the Go-ongers because they aren't that bright, act like children, and are poor as dirt. These two call themselves Go-on Wings, and want to upstage the Go-ongers so much that they'll even tell civilians they rescue to only call them the Go-on Wings. Go-on Gold is a Nancy rich boy named Hiroto with gold streaks in his hair. For some reason, he never looks anyone in the eyes for longer than a second; he always looks around at his surroundings with a look on his face like whatever he's doing isn't worth his time. Go-on Silver is Hiroto's little sister named Miu. She's basically the exact same as her brother, but after several encounters with the Go-ongers (and after letting her Engine combine with the others), she proves willing to at least try to get to know them. They end up having a few mini-arcs that never amount to anything. I really wish they did, because these characters had so much potential. Miu showed the most personality, and it was so gradual that it made her seem perfectly organic. It really took her over a dozen episodes to do a full 180, and it was one of the few things that kept me engaged.

Next we have the Engines themselves. We've got Speedor, Buson, BeaRV, Gunphard, Birca, Carrigator, Toripter, Jetras, Jumbowhale, Kisamoth, T-Line, and K-Line. That's right, 12 more "central" characters, each with their own personality (well, to be fair T-Line and K-Line are just extensions of Kisamoth). Their personalities are really just extensions of their partners. Carrigator and Kisamoth (and their conflicts) are kinda the same. They're ancient, and insecure about their role in modern day. One episode is spent on each of their spotlight episodes, so you can tell how important they are to the overall story. That's the twelve in a nutshell.

As for plot...well, that's the difficult part. We have 5 baddies, 7 rangers, and 12 Engines, each of which have at least one spotlight episode. There's 50 episodes, 31 of which are spotlight episodes with little to no plot development (Miu and Ren's are the only ones with actual analytical character development), with another 2 being spin-off episodes from the movie, a clip show, and a holiday episode where Santa must be saved. That leaves 15 episodes for actual plot, but the plot moves so slowly, that the show quickly devolves into the "watch our wacky adventures" kind of show, where it just moves one episode at a time and everything is pretty self-contained. It really boils down to this (which is so sad):

The Gaiark are invading the world to create enough pollution for their race to be able to survive the atmosphere. The Go-ongers and Go-on Wings stop them at every turn because they are the only ones with the power to do so.

While that sounds extremely boring, there are a couple of episodes that actually stand out. One I mentioned before, where Saki sings. However, she's not alone. Kegaleshia and Miu join her. This monster from another world threatens to destroy the entire planet (leaving nothing for the Gaiark to inhabit) just by growing too large. It turns out that he can only be shrunk by the right music. Enter the Pollution Ministers singing Rock n Roll! So that fails and the monster grows. Hiroto sings a surprisingly lovely ballad (seriously, it's fantastic), but that's not quite right either. So the girls join together to form an idol band called "G3 Princess". It's nifty seeing Kegaleshia actually morph from her princess dress into her usual get-up in the exact same way the the Go-ongers morph into their costumes. The producers immediately released a G3 Princess album and set up an idol tour. This episode was so successful that the girls actually did encore shows and were included in an encore album towards the end of the series. They even tried to capitalize on the success with a G5 Prince  show, which was awful.

The final two episodes were pretty good too. I was given a nice shock when Yogostein's father actually KILLED Gunpei and Hanto onscreen. You saw their engine die, and you saw them die. BAM! To Be Continued. Holy hell, that was powerful. It wasn't even a quick explodie death either. You saw them suffer for a minute first. This was downplayed in the following episode when Miu, Hiroto, their Engines, Jumbowhale, Kisamoth, T-Line, and K-Line were also killed and almost immediately revealed not to ACTUALLY be dead, but "transported to another frequency", and only dumb-as-a-brick Sousuke can save them, which he does. After all, we can't let children know what death is, right? No, that'd be bad.

The Idol Debut episode wasn't the first or the last time Saki and Miu would have to team up to save the boys, which is kinda how Miu grew into her own person. She started off as the female analog of her older brother, and was forced to cooperate with someone else in order to save him more than once. Because of this, she became exposed not only to an outside force, but another example of feminine strength. This let her step out of her brother's shadow and become her own loveable and quirky person. Saki develops only in the sense that we see her revert back into a weak child twice, only to over come that part of her past and forget all about it for the rest of the series. Once was when her older sister who's basically the worst sibling ever created for a TV show, who was manipulating her and everyone around her because...because! Saki's sister was a freaking master of manipulation, going so far to have planned out her con from before we ever saw her enter frame. She even sold the Go-onger Mobile Ops to a used car dealership! And at this point Hiroto and Miu were still big enough douches that they wouldn't help out. The other time was when we saw her flashback to getting lost in the woods and a little boy taught her her current catchphrase "Smile, smile!" to cheer her up until her parents found her. Whadyaknow? She ends up in that forest again, surrounded by ghosts, and finds a little boy who reminds her of her flashback. Lo and behold, it's the same boy. Turns out he's the spirit of the forest. Big surprise. Her character doesn't really develop as much as it is revealed, but unfortunately, it doesn't make us like her any more or less.

Ren strangely enough doesn't develop through his spotlight episodes, but rather in the background. He sees everyone else's strengths and wants to be a better and less shy person because of it. Like Miu, this makes him more organic and likeable...even if his facination with Hanto's eyes are a little off putting. Ren's spotlight episodes really just serve the purpose of showing us the "new Ren". Whenever she makes a big enough change in the background, we see him use his new traits in the spotlight. I found this a nice change from the usual "Focus on this character, and make them change this way" formula. Sousuke doesn't change at all. He doesn't really learn any lessons, gain patience, tolerance or understanding. He's the perfect example of the person you'd hate to know in real life. He doesn't think about the consequences of his actions and get praised for his gumption. From the supposed leader of the group, I had really hoped for some character revelations.

Hanto, like Saki, doesn't really change as much as become revealed. And Like Sousuke, doesn't learn from his mistakes. At all. He just keeps ogling girls older than him and lives the life of a goofy sidekick. I was disappointed in this especially since he had a spotlight episode where it seemed like he was picking up bad habits, and was taught responsibility, only to have the entire episode neeeever mentioned again. It's like it never happened. He didn't change at all from how he was before the episode aired. I was really expecting him to form bad habits that he would need to battle off and on to teach both him and his teammates new lessons. Gunpei is similar. He starts off as a stern father-type with a cocky attitude and bad hair. through the series, he starts to act the same age as everyone else, pals around more (though this just comes out of the blue) and takes the stick out of his ass. It's not so much as he develops, so much as he just gets used to the presence of these new people.

All in all, this series is good for one-liners and a mile of Kegaleshia's cleavage. There isn't really much substance to it. It's really unfortunate since it seems like they started to care more about introducing new Engines and weapons to make toys of, but decided that kids would eat up the shiny colors any way, so who cares about story, right? Shove a few more toys at them to buy!

Stay tuned for Part 2 of this review where shit gets real, in Power Rangers RPM

Candy Toy Reviews

Here, I unbox and review a series of japanese candy toys from Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger. This is my first video review posted (after many issues hardware and software issues). The figurine sculpts I showed are from a series called HD Alpha, no clue why I didn't say it in the review, the name was in English right on the freaking box.

All of these were purchased from Uwajimaya in Seattle, WA
http://uwajimaya.com

Next, I'll be getting GoJyuJin candy toy set (maybe Machalchon, too), more keys, and maybe another few HD Alpha figures.