Engine Sentai Go-onger

Engine Sentai Go-onger Review

When I was a kid, I loved Power Rangers. I loved the action, I loved then characters, I loved the mecha fights, I loved the villains, and basically I loved everything about the show. I watched it religiously; right up instill Power Rangers SPD. I started sleeping in more, so I would miss the initial broadcast, and I just started to drift away. I would sometimes watch a random episode if I would happen to catch it, but I was no longer invested. But then college happened. It was here that I found a love of tokusatsu, and I learned where the action scenes and some of the plots for Power Rangers came from. I was ecstatic, and decided to watch some of the more recent seasons. I watch Jungle Fury, and liked it well enough, it has some problems but overall I feel it is an underrated season. And then I watched Power Rangers RPM at the insistence of a friend, and it was amazing. A post-apocalyptic Power Ranger season with little filler episodes, good acting, a great plot, and some of my favorite characters in the show since Adam and Tommy from the old seasons, made this one of the best seasons of Power Rangers since In Space. With this knowledge, I decided to watch the RPM’s Sentai equivalent, and let me tell you I am still recovering from the whiplash. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. This is Engine Sentai Go-onger. 

 Engine Sentai Go-onger is the 32^nd season of Super Sentai, following Juken Sentai Gekiranger, which I have previously reviewed. Go-onger follows the adventures of five, and later seven, young heroes of justice as they fight against the evil Giaark. The Go-ongers get their powers and equipments from the Engines, a species of sentient vehicles that come from an alternate dimension. These Engines act as the partners and the mecha for the heroes. Oh, also it is a comedy sentai. Comedy in sentai can be a strange thing. Most of the time it is never the main focus of the show, but it is also something that almost ever sentai has. There are episodes where the main characters just derp around, and use the mecha for something ridiculous. But there are not many, at least to my knowledge, that are pure comedy. The only ones that come to mind are Carranger, which had car magic, and out topic at hand, Go-onger. The secondly theme, after comedy, is strangely enough environmentalism. I say strangely, because half the speaking cast is giant cars and other vehicles. The villains want to pollute our world so that they can have a place to live, so the Go-ongers set out to stop them. 

Not the first team I would call in any given situation.

The characters in Go-onger are probably the most interesting to talk about. The show isn’t very plot or story heavy, so usually this would give time for the characters to grow and change, becoming more then they were at the beginning of the series. Instead of that the Go-ongers form idol groups and cook eggs. The Go-ongers don’t really have individual personalities, and instead have more traits that they want to pretend to try and build on. I’ll start with my personal favorite due Go-on Black and Green, Gunpei and Hanto. These two actually got their henshin devices in the second episode, starting later than the original three members who I will get to in a bit. Gunpie is an ex-cop who got fired from the force when he decided to fight some Giaark on his own; something that apparently the Japanese police force frowns upon. It makes a bit of sense, the police deals with the everyday crimes like murder and larceny, while the super powered heroes fight the super powered monsters. Gunpei wanted to continue to fight for justice and kind of muscled his way onto the team. He tries to be cool a bit too often, and gets way in over his head for the smallest of things, but he has a heart dedicated to justice. Hanto is one of the youngest members of the team. He is a young man who loves money and women, and can’t really ever get either. He is easily excitable, and is always looking for the next adventure to make his heart start racing, hence why he decided to join the Go-ongers. Hanto and Gunpei together make a really good team, with Gunpei’s wisdom through age, and being generally grounded mixing well with Hanto’s youth and rashness, while generally being a bit of a dreamer. I actually really like these two, they make a good pair and I would argue they develop the most through the series. Hanto becomes smarter and less rash, but is still willing to jump in head first to save somebody. Gunpei starts to care about others, and allows himself to let loose once in a while, a departure from his earlier stoic self. But He still retains the heart of justices he had from when he was a cop. These two really grew on me throught the series. Too bad I can’t really say that about the rest.

Best bro's in sentai history.

Let’s move to the sixth and seventh ranger of the series, the Go-on Wings. Go-on Wings are made up of the brother-sister due of Hiroto and Miu, Go-on gold and silver respectively. They are psychic twins who traveled to the Engine home dimension, Engine World, and trained in order to defeat the Giaark. Together they are very series, and at first dislike the Go-ongers usually lol random type of personality. But they soon enough started to respect the Go-ongers for their spirit. Hiroto is the leader of the two. He acts cool under pressure, and is always thinking. He also has little in the way of the emotion department; mostly because he is too busy trying to act cool. Miu is more emotional than her brother, but cares more for people because of it. She also has a huge brother complex, basically worshiping the ground he walks on and gets insanely jealous if he befriends anyone of the female persuasion. These two can get on my nerves, but they aren’t bad. They introduced a feeling of seriousness that the show desperately needed. Too bad it only lasted about five episodes before the show reverted back to its usually formula of derp. Then there are Go-on Blue and Go-on Yellow, Renn and Saki. Renn is the brains of the group, and acts as a mother figure for the rambunctious kids that are the main cast. While intelligent, Renn still acts like a derp most of the time, and can only cook eggs. While cooking eggs is not usually a personality trait, for some reason it is here. Saki on the other hand is more like the team daughter. She is happy, and always reminding others to smile, and likes cakes. That is Saki in a nut shell. She is also suppose to represent the idea of girl power on the team, but barely does so. Hanto fits the bill better, though he does cross dress bit so it makes sense. And then there is Sosuke. 

Just another image of these two. They are really awesome.

Sosuke is Go-on Red, and technically the leader of the team. And he is my least favorite character by a mile. Sosuke is quite possibly the dumbest of the Go-ongers, not understanding basic communication and strategy. He is the first one to run in without a plan, and usually the first one to get hurt. Sometimes this can be an admirable quality, being able to jump in without a moment’s hesitation to save someone in need, but in this case, where you are functionally at war with a group, you need time to plan and time to think. It was one of the reasons the Go-on Wings didn’t trust the Go-ongers at first, because they would just run in to battle without any hint of forethought.  He is also incredibly bull headed and arrogant. Sosuke will always believe that what he is doing is the correct path, no matter what, and will never admit that he was wrong. He is a petulant child who whines when he doesn’t get his way. And all his little ticks are just so annoying. He will repeatedly flick people in the forehead while talking to them. If anybody did that to me, I would either punch them, or be too stunned to give any reaction, and then punch them. I’m honestly not sure why the rest of the Go-ongers put up with him and his bullshit. There is an episode right around the mid 30’s where really the show could have, and should have, stopped. The Go-ongers were backed into a corner. They had lost their morphing ability, and they were facing one of the big bosses. What was worse was that while they could still use their mechas, they would take damage while in the cockpit if they were unmorphed. So they do the only thing they can do, go in unmorphed, fight to the near death, and use their mechas, nearing killing themselves in the process. It was actually a really great episode, boosted for one soul reason. Sosuke was dead. He was turned to bronze. The episode itself was very we done, and the idea of avenging a comrade, especially one so intrigal to the series as a whole like a red ranger, is just wonderful. Sosuke does get better, but when the best part, of one the best episodes in your series is to have the leader die, that proves that he is an awful character. 

All of my rage!

Special attention should go to the villains of this series. The three main villains, Yogostein, Kitaneidas, and Kegaleshia are just perfect. I am a big fan of villains that are not bad people. You know how Jesse and James form Pokémon were undoubtedly the villains, the antagonists, what have you. But we see in the show they are good people, they care about each other, their Pokémon and ultimately the world. I love that kind of villain, the kind that are nice or honorable. They are still evil, but you can get along with them. The Gaiark fit this bill perfectly. They are evil; they want to turn the earth into a polluted wasteland. But they are such good people. They are nice to their underlings, they care about each other, and man can they sing. And when I say they care about each other, I really mean they care about each other. When one of Yogostein’s main underlings dies, he goes into a month long mourning processes, leaves to go on a journey to find himself, and when he returns he comes back for the worst, believing he can only rely his own strength. When this turns out to be the wrong move, his friends, Kitaneidas and Kegelashia, are there to pick him up and welcome him home with open arms. Seriously, I love these guys. Honestly, if I had to choose a group of people to hang out with in this show, I would go with the Giaark. Hell I would probably just side with them full out. All they really want is a home. Sure, they could go about it in a better way, but they can’t help the fact that they are life forms that thrive in a highly toxic environment. And who doesn’t want a home, where you can hang your hat and have a drink?

Also the best villains in sentai.

 I should probably talk about the Engines, but really their personalities are even more flat then the human characters, and end up stealing Jan from Gekiranger’s shtick of repeating a fake word twice to mean something. The mecha look ridiculous, by the end it has twelve talking animal/vehicles just stapled to each other. There is no plot really, except for derp derp comedy and lol random humor at times. Would I recommend Go-onger? Yes and no. Go-onger is, at the end of the day, funny. It is also stupid. It is brain meltingly stupid. But it is funny. If you want plot, character development, characters, intelligence, coherence, then you should go somewhere else. I would recommend Gokiager, Boukenger, Gekiranger, or Shinkenger. But if you want humor, if you want at times good comedy, if you want something to just completely relax and zone out to, and if you want good villains, then I would recommend Engine Sentai Go-onger. So until next time, have fun watching.