I was excited beyond words when the first promotional images of Space Sentai Kyuranger were revealed. We’re getting nine main heroes, a female green warrior, unique suits with dynamic designs, and a space-themed show. Kyuranger has all of the elements for a successful, invigorating show that might lead Super Sentai as a franchise into a new era. The first episode of the show, unfortunately, did not successfully blend those elements. As Sparda would say, the dish just didn’t come together in the end.
I wanted to like this show so badly, and to be fair, this is only the first episode—but it feels like two episodes mashed into one. That’s my real gripe with this premiere. The episode was paced at breakneck speed, the characters barely got to show us who they are, and very little was actually explained. We know that Jark Matter is conquering the universe and we know that there’s a rebellion composed of nine chosen warriors, but the audience isn’t given anything in regards to what exactly the Kyutama are or how these people were chosen—which would seem monumentally important in a premiere episode. Regardless, starting in media res is a fair and established storytelling tool, so I can sometimes forgive its usage. The opening battle featuring the first three Kyurangers is exciting and flashy, and it’s a smart move on the showrunners’ part to feature Chameleon Green as soon as possible, but everything gets ruined when Lucky shows up.
In only one episode, Kyuranger has demonstrated that it can’t properly balance its characters. Lucky takes center stage (though that’s to be expected as he is the red warrior) and he annoyingly exemplifies shounen tropes like a walking television set that constantly plays episodes of One Piece. The other characters aren’t nearly as offensive, but they don’t give us much to work with: Sparda only speaks in cooking metaphors, Champ is a tough robot, Hammy is a girl, and Raptor appears to have no personality whatsoever. I hope that Kyuranger doesn’t tackle the difficult task of balancing nine main heroes by giving them all vocal tics or speaking patterns that define their personalities, but that’s all we get in this episode. It’s even worse for Lucky, as his defining character trait seems to be that he’s incredibly lucky—which is why he’s named Lucky! Get it? It’s okay if you don’t because the show will hammer it into you over and over again.
I watched the episode twice now and I’m frankly shocked that such a rushed concept was aired without fleshing things out a bit more. The battle sequence from the cold open is completely skipped over after Lucky just so happens to crash-land right in the middle of the invading troops, which is a total let-down. The cold open had a lot of promise and I wanted to see more, but instead, we skip right to Lucky onboard the Orion (the Kyurangers’ spaceship) who reveals that he was also chosen to be a Kyuranger—but while he owns a Seiza Blaster, he doesn’t have a Kyutama. What exactly is a Seiza Blaster and what is a Kyutama, and how did these characters obtain them? The show doesn’t bother to tell us. Instead of providing exposition, Lucky decides that he’s going to find his Kyutama and randomly travels to another planet, where he’s attacked by the wolfman Garu FOR NO REASON. Instead of explaining why he attacked Lucky, Garu reveals that he was chosen by his Kyutama but he couldn’t create a reaction to transform into a Kyuranger during his planet’s invasion. Lucky calls him a coward and they fight. This would be interesting, except WE DON’T KNOW WHO THESE CHARACTERS ARE. Without being emotionally invested in Lucky and Garu, it’s hard to care when we see them fighting on a beach just because Lucky called him a coward ONCE.
From this point on, the show remembers it’s a Sentai show and the villains show up. Lucky finds his Kyutama (again, with no explanation or with any emotional resonance—he basically finds his Kyutama because he really really wants to, which is boring) and transforms into Shishi Red, while Garu somehow finds the power to activate his Kyutama and transforms into Ookami Blue (yet he couldn’t do this earlier because of reasons). They save the day with giant robots, which is to be expected in a Sentai show, though it feels a bit too soon to be revealing the mecha.
Since I spent a lot of time detailing what I felt were the problems of this premiere, I do have to admit that I did see a lot that I liked. The show has a fantastic opening song and accompanying video sequence, and the Voyagers are such cool-looking robots that function really well as both individuals and as the combined Kyuren-Oh. This made for a particularly exciting mecha battle in which we actually got to see the heroes in their cockpits from the outside. That was fantastic. I don’t have a strong opinion about the villains besides feeling a bit underwhelmed, but I do like the designs of the foot soldiers—and of course, I love the Kyuranger suit designs. The concept itself of Kyuranger is interesting to me, and I think it’s great that Toei is getting to exercise its fantastic creature designs by having four of the nine main Kyurangers be portrayed by robots and/or aliens.
At the same time, from a storytelling perspective, I really can’t forgive this premiere for letting me down. Both halves of this premiere really needed to be their own episodes. We could have gotten to see the dynamic of Hammy, Champ, and Spada as a three-person Sentai team with Lucky learning about what exactly a Kyuranger is and what the Kyutama are. In the second episode, he would crash-land on Garu’s planet and encounter the wolfman, but we would actually experience their dynamic in a more fleshed out way besides seeing the typical shounen “fighting solves all of our problems” nonsense. Unfortunately, we got both concepts—interesting on their own—mashed together into one cool-looking but ultimately hollow and poorly detailed experience. I’m still not even sure what exactly I just watched.
I want to like this show, I really do. Hopefully the problems plaguing this premiere are limited to the premiere. I want to find out who these characters are and how they relate to one another, and maybe—in true Sentai fashion—those things will be saved for later. Premieres are for flashy battles and showing off new designs, but I wish the writers would at least take the time to explain what a Kyutama even is. Hopefully our next episode, which will feature our Gold and Silver Kyurangers, will offer up a bit more of what I’m looking for.
Also, I hate the ending song. I honestly think it’s terrible and I might just skip it from now on.
–AquaVersus