Sean Akizuki's Super Sentai Blog

It's Christmas Eve, and I thought of what might be a bizarre irony. Last year's Ohsama Sentai King-Ohger didn't have a Christmas special, and the episode aired on December 24, 2024 . This year's Boonboomger had a Christmas special, presumably because Santa Claus is the ultimate delivery man. Santa Claus' mythos is are status-dependent on version . Santa Claus: The Movie tells a different story from Rankin Bass' Santa Claus stories. I found it bizarre but is there a reason some Super Sentai entries have a Christmas special and some just don't? I'd like to dig into that! Historically, Modern Japan was born out of Imperial Japan's ashes. America had a temporary takeover of Japan after the Second World War ended. The result was that Japan had become more open to the world, the Japanese Emperor was no longer considered divine, and Western influence entered. Super Sentai has had several Western pop culture influences mixed into it. For example, the use of...

There's no Super Hero Time this week. There are times I felt like a Year-End special may be necessary. Take note that it's not all the time that it happens. I wrote a compilation of Super Sentai year-end specials back on December 31, 2019 . They weren't regular episodes but some kind of strange clip show. There's been Super Sentai clip shows such as an Avatar Sentai Donbrothers episode when Kamen Rider Revice ended . I felt like looking back and wondering if Ohsama Sentai King-Ohger deserves a recap or not. There were times a clip show gave the audience a review class of sorts. The last we had it was in Shuriken Sentai Ninninger . Denji Sentai Megaranger just had a strange episode where Kenta Date accidentally lost his Digitizer. Seijuu Sentai Gingaman gave a review class where the heroes recalled their adventures. Last year was the 25th anniversary of Gingaman . Why in the world didn't Toei decide to prepare a clip show for the year-end? It would've been fun if...

This Christmas we get a rap battle. Granted, the writer is Ayumi Shino so I guess Naruhisa Arakawa is on break mode once again. I'm still thinking of the luxury that Arakawa got that Yasuko Kobayashi didn't get during ToQGer . Anyway, let's proceed with this rap episode. Garza is looking for Carantula. Meanwhile, Yodonna mentions some evil plan to do something similar yet different from Shinkenger . Who can remember the insulting monster in Shinkenger that spoke the brutal truth? In this case, it's a dangerous rap that gets the evil of human hearts to be utterly tactless. So, it turns out that there's also another holiday called Crystas in Crystalia. Granted, it's another planet so they get another version of Christmas.  The recent rap battle had made brooding people out of the Kiramagers. It turns out four out of five of the primary team are affected by Carantula's rap.  Even worse, Takamichi is the NEXT ONE to get hit by Carantula's dangerous rap. This...

Granted, there's no Super Hero Time this Sunday. Old-school Super Sentai also had times that they didn't air a New Year's episode after Christmas week. I decided to do a fun, silly post on Super Sentai New Year specials that happened before January arrived. Megaranger's New Year special was more of a clip show than a regular episode. Kenta accidentally loses his digitizer and he must find it. It's a weird clip show episode. What's with Super Sentai and the occasional clip show? This was also written by Yasuko Kobayashi. Gingaman tries to commemorate the end of 1998 by remembering their adventures. For me, it's almost close to an encyclopedia. I also remembered how the anime series Yaiba: The Legendary Swordsman had an episode where they celebrated a party for Yaiba - recalling all his past adventures. This was written by Tetsuo Okita. Do you remember the Y2K scare? Well, it was the day after Christmas when this episode was aired. The GoGoFive s...

Well, it's time for a Christmas episode review. But this time, I'm not too passionate about it in contrast to Kyuranger's Christmas episode review . For me, this is kind of what I'd call just your typical passing by episode. So, I would actually do a bit of a review. Oh yeah, Koichi Sakamoto directed this episode and looks like Michael Bay didn't show up this time. Okay, it's time to go on a review. Is this really seriously one half-brained scheme or what? Wizeru wants to get rid of Christmas like the Grinch - not realizing that it's not in the decors or that it can't be bought from a store. They kidnap people dressed up as Santa Clauses. One of them is a magician which is sourced as the Menasaur's host.  There's some shipteasing between Bamba and an orphanage caretaker named Akari. Personally, the teases were nothing much but I kind of want to ship them. But like most one-shot love interests - aren't they usually destined to ...

After I decided to watch the Beast Morphers episode "Scrozzle's Revenge" (which rather turned out meh even for Hasbro's standards) - I decided to do a Go-Busters episode re-review. Now, it's time to focus on Go-Busters two-part Christmas special. It's not just a random Christmas special (like most of them) but it has something to do with the plot that happened 13 years ago leading to the present day. A lot of events in the Go-Busters two-part Christmas special bring back the past and the present. The Go-Busters lost their parents during the Christmas Eve tragedy 13 years ago. I find it way too insulting to name the virus as Messiah virus due to its malevolent nature. The Go-Busters grew up in the orphanage. A flashback shows Commander Kuroki in a Santa Claus suit - celebrating Christmas with the Go-Busters. It's only natural to hate a certain event when something traumatic happens. Thanks to Kuroki - Youko, fortunately, doesn't hate Christma...

Bonjour my readers and a Merry Christmas or should I say Joyeux Noël (and hence maybe that's why Lupin may have decided to name Noel as Noel as his human identity). Now it's time for what I'd call le mandatory Super Sentai Christmas special (which wasn't always done until Gosei Sentai Dairanger which started le yearly tradition ) which IMHO can go from weird to good. So far, this is one funny scenario which sort of touches the Japanese tradition of having friend chicken as part of le celebration.  Le series opens up with a child inviting Sakuya over to a Christmas party where they want to eat chicken. I'm just surprised we're not getting any product placements of either McDonald's Japan or KFC Japan here. Meanwhile at le Global Police headquarters -- both Keiichiro and Tsukasa (love shipping them) are now finding the list of people who have either died or gone missing. This is all part of their plan to put an end to le Ganglers. Sakuya drops ...