My Shiny Toy Robots: Series REVIEW: Chouriki Sentai Ohranger

In the year 1999 the Machine Empire Baranoia, led by the ruthless Bacchus Wrath, invades Earth with the intention of wiping out all of humanity so that machines may rule. Standing in their way is UAOH (United Airforce Overtech Hardware), a special military organisation that has harnessed “Chouriki” – a super power used by the ancient civilisation of Pangaea 600 million years ago. UAOH’s Chief Counsellor Naoyuki Miura selects five of its officers – Goro Hoshino, Shohei Yokkaichi, Yuji Mita, Juri Nijo and Momo Maruo, to become imbued with Chouriki and transform into Earth’s last line of defence – the Chouriki Sentai Ohranger!

With a high tech arsenal of weaponry and mecha, the Ohrangers fight back against Baranoia’s Machine Beasts. Eventually they are joined in their fight by Riki – a legendary child-like warrior from Pangaea who previously fought Bacchus Wrath 600 million years ago as KingRanger. But as their strength grows and Baranoia become more desperate, new opponents appear eying the Machine King’s throne.

It’s hard to talk about Chouriki Sentai Ohranger without first discussing its infamous retool – arguably the most well-known and notorious in the franchise until perhaps Tokumei Sentai Go-Busters nearly two decades later. When Ohranger first arrives on the scene, it’s very quick to make its darker and more serious tone known. The first episode sees Baranoia lay waste to the Earth, with strong visuals of people running in terror as buildings explode and crumble around them. Our heroes are the presented as the best of the best, but despite being hand-picked amongst UAOH operatives are immediately being on the back foot, struggling to fight back against the legions of Barlo Soldiers until they receive their powers. Bacchus Wrath is a cruel and sadistic dictator who won’t hesitate to turn on his own soldiers should they show any sign of love or compassion, while many of the Machine Beasts are (mostly) silent robotic titans made of missiles and bombs. While the show is very much recognisable as part of Super Sentai, it’s a far cry from the wacky antics of Ninja Sentai Kakuranger just one year before. Ohranger‘s opening episodes are widely considered to be its strongest and for good reason, as they immediately gear you up for a series that doesn’t seem like it’s going to pull its punches.

However sadly that doesn’t quite turn out to be the case, as current events at the time – namely the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake and Tokyo subway sarin attack, forced the series to quickly move away from that serious tone and bring in more comedic elements. All of a sudden Baranoia stop raining fire down on the Earth with a swarm of fighters, adopting more typical monster-of-the-week schemes like making humans fall in love with household appliances or turning babies’ cries into powerful sound waves. The antics of the Ohrangers themselves become a lot more light-hearted as well, such as OhRanger Robo and Red Puncher taking part in an aerobics class – explained as part of Ohranger Robo’s rehabilitation following significant damage. It isn’t that this different tone is inherently bad, it’s the fact that it’s such a stark contrast to what came before and that the transition isn’t gradual. That said, Ohranger still manages to have some surprisingly dark and/or serious storylines following its retool – it’s just they tend to be overlooked because they become the exception rather than the norm.

The problems with the story aren’t an inconsistent tone either, as despite clearly having an obvious framework across the 48 episodes Ohranger is frustratingly vague about some of its most important aspects. While the idea of an ancient power source is enough to base a premise on without filling in too many of the details (ancient civilisations are mysterious after all), the little bits it then chooses to tease out could really do with more development. Bacchus Wrath being one the original Machine Beasts that rebelled against Pangaea and the truth behind the Chouriki Homeworld are two examples of this, the latter being rather hastily crammed into the penultimate episode. Ohranger also has the tendency to cram a lot of its most important moments in immediately one after another, leaving very little time for each one to sink in before moving onto the next big thing. This is especially apparent around two thirds of the way into the series, where it suddenly feels like every episode is debuting a new character or mecha.

As previously mentioned, one of the ways Ohranger pays homage to Gorenger (as well as several of the series that followed) is through returning the main team to the role of active soldiers working for a military organisation. The early episodes lean into the team’s military backgrounds and skills as pilots, featuring dogfight sequences in actual fighter jets against the Barlo Soldiers’ own fighters. However as the retool begins to take effect and the more militaristic elements of the series are stripped away, the team quickly begins to lose a good portion of its identity. While by no means unlikeable, there really isn’t that much to the Ohrangers themselves. There are snippets of their interests and/or personalities highlighted through focus episodes, such as Shohei (OhGreen) being a boxer or Yuji (OhBlue) being more reckless, even by the franchise’s own standards they have very little in terms of backstory or development. Goro particularly suffers from this – predominantly stuck as the more serious “leader” of the group and having very little opportunity to step away from that rather bland archetype. In contrast it’s Juri (OhYellow) and Momo (OhPink) who actually feel the most realised of the team, each with more distinct personalities as the more memorable of the focus episodes. That said there might be some sort of ulterior motive here too, because Ohranger can get surprisingly horny at times. Between episode 23’s swimsuit-related antics and something the things that go down in Ohranger vs Kakuranger, it feels like the creators really wanted to push the girls’ sex appeal as far as what’s considered acceptable in a kid’s show. Together the team have a good dynamic, but there’s nothing really standout about it either – Goro is the leader and the rest of the team largely follow without question, outside of a few healthy rivalries for comedic effect. The debut of KingRanger halfway through the series helps mix things up a bit though, with Riki neither directly part of the team or UAOH as a whole. Though this status as more of an ally results in him being more underused than he deserves to be, Riki is a great addition to the cast that helps bring the mystic element of Ohranger’s DNA on par with the military one. He’s also a very different approach to a younger ranger than Dairanger’s Kou – his youth only really factoring into his appearance rather than his personality. As a 600-million-year-old warrior that also has history with the main villain, Riki is a fascinating character that really could have benefited from more focus episodes that offered more than just the tease of backstory we got.

Ohranger also utilises a small cast of side characters with varying degrees of importance to the overall plot. The most significant of these of course being Chief Miura, played by tokusatsu legend Hiroshi Miyauchi. Miura is a presence throughout the whole of the series, commanding the Ohrangers and supplying them with their latest weapons, but much like the team itself suffers from not really having much in the way of personality. Granted Miyauchi may have been nearing 50 at the time of filming, but it feels like such a waste to have the man who played so many iconic tokusatsu heroes essentially be behind a desk for most of the show. Again we get very little in the way of backstory or focus episodes, and the little we see of Miura facing Baranoia head on comes far too late. That said, being played by Miyauchi is more than enough to make Miura both likeable and memorable. Riki’s arrival on the series also introduces Dorin, a mysterious girl from the Chouriki Homeworld that Riki is sworn to protect. Though her childlike innocence makes her a good counterpart to Riki as well as giving him that degree of separation from the Ohrangers themselves, her issues are similarly tied up in how little the story divulges about this superpower that ties the whole series together. Finally not content with just adding a sixth ranger to the mix, the final third of Ohranger also adds an “extra hero” into the mix – Gunmazin, a genie-like warrior who grants his master’s wishes with a particular degree of honour and specificity. Gunmazin is very much a spiritual successor to Kakuranger’s Ninjaman – not just in terms of design and role but also the element of fun he injects into his appearances. Despite being somewhat superfluous to the overall mythos of Ohranger, he ties into its mythology themes wonderfully and proves to be an interesting asset to the series. Other recurring civilian characters include Mikio, a young child and friend to Ohrangers who appears in multiple episodes, the unlucky Shida family who find themselves central to several Baranoia schemes and Kotaro Henna – a strange mad scientist who’s as much a nuisance to Baranoia as he is the Ohrangers. Though none of them are likely to stand out as anyone’s favourites, the presence of familiar faces over the course of the series is a nice little touch of world-building.

The same complaints can’t be said of Baranoia though, who not only shine as Ohranger’s most well-rounded characters but also might have actually benefited from the change in tone. The Empire’s royal family is made up of the aforementioned Bacchus Wrath, his wife Hysteria and their son Buldont, as well as self-serving butler duo Acha and Kocha. As well as all having fantastic character designs (the same can be said of nearly all of Baranoia’s soldiers as well), they all have distinct personalities and schemes for taking over the Earth. It’s here that the lighter tone often works well, for example Buldont coming up with more childlike schemes to defeat the Ohrangers. The machines claim to despise any form of human emotion and see it as a weakness, but as much as they try to deny it their strength also comes from the love they clearly have for one another. Even when he’s at his most ruthless in those early episodes Bacchus Wrath still shows fondness for his wife and child, before going into full-on dad mode in some of the more light-hearted episodes. There’s far more fun to be had in this family dynamic than there is simply portraying them as cold-hearted machines, on top of providing their strongest moments in the show. Following the defeat of Bacchus Wrath around two thirds of the way into the show, a power vacuum brings interloper Bomber the Great into the fray as a contender for the throne, and its only through the love Bacchus Wrath and Hysteria have for their child that Buldont is able to rise up and take his rightful place as heir to the empire. Then as Kaiser Buldont, he in turn shows affection towards his new wife Multiwa. Even in defeat Bomber the Great acknowledges that he shouldn’t have tried to take over, remarking that he’s “always been a loner”. Despite their repeated proclamations that love is a human weakness, the ultimate irony of Baranoia is that they repeatedly show their capacity for love and it’s their denial of it that leads to their downfall, rather than them lacking it outright. Together with them being just generally great characters to watch who are constantly an active part in their schemes rather than simply watching afar from the moon, it’s no wonder that stand out as by far and away the best part of the show.

Another element Ohranger repeatedly manages to excel at is style. While to some extent any opinion on the designs themselves is purely subjective, there’s no denying that the show was able to take some rather ambiguous themes and run with them to great effect. The suits themselves are simple in design but emphasise the detailing into concentrated areas, such as the ancient (yet also technological) markings in the gold collar sections and glove/boot cuffs. Meanwhile the shaped visors are the main focal point – immediately drawing your eyes to the helmet and making each ranger stand out individually. Then of course you have the KingRanger suit further emphasising those traits (as well as living up to the name) with its enlarged chest shield and regal black and gold colour scheme. This strong sense of design carries over to the mecha as well, which despite having a rather eclectic mix of influences still blend together brilliantly. There’s not many places outside of Super Sentai that you’d see a giant Pyramid robot pulled off so well, let alone ones based on Dogu and Moai statues. There are moments where you question why both boxing and American football-themed robots are standing alongside mythological and shape-themed ones, but even with these strange additions to the group the strong design coherence between them all means you don’t think about it for too long. But as well as just making for great toys, the evolution to the mecha within the show works – Ohranger Robo relies heavily on its combination, while Red Puncher is a standalone robot. This eventually paves the way for OhBlocker, consisting of five standalone robots than can also come together for greater power. While Kakuranger perhaps did more in terms of showing off and defining different mecha types within the franchise, Ohranger follows in its footsteps whilst also taking their place in the story into account as well.

That same visual flair also translates to the action, which is something Ohranger certainly didn’t start to struggle with following the retool. The show’s end credits treats us to a montage of the team training in various ways, emphasising them as soldiers in peak physical condition. In-show we see this repeatedly, with the team ready to put up a good fight even without the assistance of their changers. The show offers a good mix of fight sequences, with a wide selection of weapons to keep the fight choreography varied. The special effects are equally impressive, with explosions aplenty alongside miniature work and composite shots to give the series an epic sci-fi feel. Combine all that with a brilliant orchestral score from Seiji Yokohama and blistering vocal tracks from Kentarou Hayami (who would later go on to also provide insert tracks for Gekisou Sentai Carranger), and you have all the components of a series that never feels like a chore to watch even its flaws are most apparent.

Chouriki Sentai Ohranger certainly isn’t without its problems, but sometimes it feels like there’s so much lamenting of what it could have been that there isn’t a real appreciation of what it is. Despite the somewhat bland main cast and uneven storytelling (both in tone and development), it nevertheless remains an immensely enjoyable watch from start to finish – bolstered by an impeccable design sense, great visuals and arguably one of the best villain factions to ever grace the franchise. Even following its retool the lighter tone manages to produce plenty of memorable episodes, and while it never fully returns to the boldness of those early episodes the key points in the story still have that same sense of urgency. Though perhaps ultimately the show isn’t what both the creators and fans truly wanted it to be, it still holds a special place in Super Sentai history.