There's A New Guy In Town And His Name Is... Robocop ERRRR.... SIGNALMAN?!
There's a new guy in town and it ain't Robocop!!!!
Carranger itself was a parody of Super Sentai (in some way) what may surprise (or not surprise) some Toku fans is that the show ended up parodying Metal Hero in some way. If Jiban was a Robocop-inspired hero in 1989 and Janperson (who was purely mechanical vs. his inspiration) was created in 1994, in 1997 they really ended up creating SIGNALMAN the Robocop parody.
Robocop never imagined that Toei would create a parody of him after they created Jiban and Janperson as tributes to him...
How is Signalman a Robocop parody? Well he comes as the "new guy in town", a mysterious hero that even the Carrangers don't really know him very well at first. I mean, he has intense rules for the traffic. He is also chasing the Bowzock Gang like Robocop is chasing after the gangsters in Detroit. Like Robocop, he is a law enforcer and well, you can tell by his appearance that he is OBVIOUSLY BASED ON ROBOCOP!
Well neither Robocop, Jiban nor Janperson needed a humanoid mecha...
He also drives a police car mecha which almost made me think of what if Janperson, Jiban or Robocop had a police mecha? Hmmm... Signalman is indeed a Robocop spoof!
Robocop must be shocked to find out Signalman's family are also robotic like he is...
What you may also notice is that, like Robocop, Signalman is a FAMILY MAN. Robocop has a wife and son that he left behind when he died and later returned to when he became Robocop. But in Carranger, well, the whole family is a Robocop parody! The names of Signalman's wife and son are Sigue and Sigtaro, all puns on SIGNALS. Hmmm I wonder why did the producers decide to make Signalman's wife and son both metallic like him too?
After Jetman, most series must have a 6th Sentai or a Bangai hero and Signalman was no exception!!!
ReplyDeleteLike Kakuranger, the additional hero is not a person with a henshin trinket that turns into a radder Sentai hero with only one weapon. But a robot-like life form who interact with the heroes but not involved personally!
Ninjaman and Signalman has the greatest taboo of being ignored as they are not part of the team.
And also as a comedy gimmick series, Carranger has not a 6th but 8 members as White Racer and VRV Master are part of the team.
Yeah he has basis of RoboCop no doubt but Signalman is very much in the same caliber as Jiban, Winspecter/Solbrain, and Jan Person. Then again the likelihood that Signalman would be in Jan Person is very high as he can role with Jan Person and Gun Gibson.
If a Sentai mishmash would have happened, Signalman would have been part of the Dekaranger and in Gokaigers it seems him a Doggy Krueger are well acquainted in the final episode.