Day Ten-A bit more Sentai
When I did the big super sentai
over the past year post at the beginning of this whole thing, I was thinking
only of the current sentai series. But then I remembered there was another
sentai series that I watched weekly over the past year. It was one of the first
sentai seasons I had ever wanted to watch, but couldn’t because there were no
decent subs at the time. I was disheartened, and instead watched Boukenger, which
I still have fond feelings for even to today. But this isn’t about Boukenger.
This is about Bakuryu Sentai Abaranger.
Abaranger is about people from a
person from an alternative earth called Dino Earth where dinosaurs never died,
and humans evolved to live in harmony with the dinosaurs. But evil monsters
called Evolians try to cause a mass extinction of all life on Dino Earth. One
man, with a few dinosaurs who are left, runs to the non-dinosaur earth, called
Another Earth, in order to find help and sanctuary from the Evolians. They meet
up with a few humans who can hear the language of the Dinosaurs, who have Dino
Guts, the spirit of the dinosaur and a sort of genetic memory from their great
lizard ancestors. And with the help of their dinosaur partners, our heroes
rampage against the evils of the world and fight to protect the world against the
Evolians. There are a lot of things I want to talk about Abaranger, but I think
I am going to stick to one big thing.
The first thing I want to talk
about is the “sixth” ranger of the series, Abare Killer. I put the sixth in
quotes because Abaranger only had 5 rangers by its end, but Abare Killer
fulfills all the usual trope requirements of the sixth ranger archetype. Anyway,
Abare Killer is one of the most interesting characters in sentai I have seen in
a while. He is an unrepentant villain. He is the only straight up ranger who
can be called a villain that I can think of. He actually independently joins the
villains for a while, and has schemes against the Abarangers like any other
villain. He was evil. He was selfish and maniacal and I honestly didn’t like
him. Mind you, I mean that as a person, but not as a character. As a character
he is fantastic to watch. He is the Kamen Rider Kaixa of the sentai world. Evil
and complicated and unrepentant. But what surprises me the most about the
character was his exit. Spoiler alert, Abare Killer dies. And his death is this
huge, spectacular thing where he almost rejects his humanity, but also rejects
the things that made him evil, that set up his life that lead him to being
cruel and sociopathic. I knew that there was going to be a heel/face turn at
some point, but up until the moment it happened I thought it was going to be
shallow and ridiculous, something to be mocked and that would hurt the series.
But it worked, and it worked because he wasn’t repentant, or made excuses for
his crimes. He knew he was evil, just that the bad guys were now his enemy. It
was surprisingly great.
There are so many things I want to
talk about when it comes to Abaranger. The insanely silly episodes that would
randomly pop up is something I really want to talk about. Or how great just all
the other characters were. But Abare Killer really takes the cake. He is just a
great villain, one of the best in the franchise. We only have two days left! So
until tomorrow, have fun watching.
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