My Thoughts On Denziman Halfway

Well, I've reached half of Denziman. Rather than do a batch review of episodes -- I decided to do this kind of rant because I'm currently trying to focus on Kamen Rider Zi-O (trying to wrap it up) and Ryusoulger (weekly episodes though I may soon focus on other newer stuff soon). So here's my thoughts on Denziman which is pretty much from the pre-Hirohisa Soda and pre-Takeyuki Suzuki era.


The main characters

If you're watching some old school then learn to cut some slack. If not, you might as well not watch every old school Tokusatsu series if you feel you have a generation gap. In my case, shows from the 80s can still click with me in contrast to the way older shows. So, what's with the characters? It's obvious that everyone has their colors written over their names. The names are Ippei AKAgi (red), Daigoro Oume (blue), June KIyama (yellow), Tatsuya MIDOrikawa (green), and Akira MOMOi (pink). What's more interesting is that the red ranger's surname is Akagi which is almost similar to Nobuo Akagi from Akibaranger -- though both surnames have a slight difference in kanji so there!

I think about how low budget things are especially when Kenji Ohba started off as a ranger before he got his iconic role as Space Sheriff Gavan. Ohba was previously Shou Akebono the first Super Sentai black ranger (Battle Kenya) before he became Daigorou. Pretty much, it's still the basics and Super Sentai was still in a struggle. It's also the first Super Sentai team to get their powers from an alien source -- something that was repeated in Bioman, Flashman, Carranger, Gingaman (though it's not space-themed) and later we have Kyuranger.


Giant mecha

It's still in primitive times. Yet, we can't deny that Denziman actually introduced the first transforming robot with Daidenzin. I admit, the mecha fight scenes here aren't exactly improvised. There are some episodes where the Vader monster shrinks again forcing the Denzimen to exit the robot and finish it human-sized. Other episodes, Daidenzin finishes the battle. I guess the concept drove Toei dizzy and I hope this concept never gets revisited again. Then again what's innovation without some failed experiments before you do something better later on, right?


The villains

Before the late Soga Machiko became Pandora for Spielban and Witch Bandora for Zyuranger -- she already made her first major villainous role as Queen Hedrian. The campiness of the Vader Clan is something. They hate our definition of beauty and seek to destroy our world's beauty and fit it to their own image. They carry out those typical stupid Super Sentai villain schemes such as making someone's teeth rot because some of Hedrian's teeth fell off or just anything to get rid of our defition of beauty.

What would be interesting is that Shinji Todo who appeared as the Japanese Spiderman (and somehow, I still wonder if I'd want to watch it) is now the villain General Hedder. Keller and Mirror would dress up in attires that would somehow inspire the Fuuma female spies from Shaider. What's weird IMHO is that for a villain team that's composed of mostly women while their enemy team has only one female member. Then again it's not like as if Keller and Mirror aren't capable of hurting the male rangers of the Denziman team either so it's a fair match, right?