How does Super Sentai compare to Power Rangers? | Other Media (2025)

Hmm, has anyone ever kept track of how many Sentais bother with secret identities compared to how many Rangers? Some Sentai roll calls have them actually giving their first names away. The secret identity rule never seemed to make much sense in the Mighty Morphin' era because the villains learn the Rangers' identities pretty much immediately thanks to their spy-scopes, so I can only imagine Zordon's concern is that the kids' own guardians would forbid them from being superheroes. And the "Never be the one to escalate a fight" rule was a nice excuse for not bringing out the Zords until the monster turns giant, but sometimes the Sentai does try bringing them early, and sometimes PR can edit that out, but I had to think that when Tommy was accepting Zordon's rules at the end of "Green With Evil," he wondered, "So how come you summoned the Dinozords to fight me when all I brought to the fight was a shiny new sword?"

Naxuul said:

... Yes it can be transliterated. Her name in English would be Bunny.

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Yep.

I would be surprised that that site is still online when Viz Media is already halfway through producing a dub with Stephanie Sheh as "Usagi," but I don't expect Nangbaby to get off that hobbyhorse for long anymore. (Basically most of those reasons for wanting "Serena" boil down to letting the perfect be the enemy of the good: Because we might not be able to convey absolutely every aspect of the Japanese names, that means we need to defer to the same shoddy old localization forevermore? Nangbaby has a lot of weird debate tactics like using accusations of racism to defend other forms of racism, and I don't recommend that you engage with them at this point due to a persecution complex I've seen.)

Cain said:

Super Sentai is basically a Japanese morality play, and I didn't think those would cross over well.

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Wow, I would have thought that Power Rangers was the more obvious morality play. Or at the very least, Bulk and Skull served to form a Goofus and Gallant routine with the Rangers early on.

Dawgstar said:

The second movie trailer is up. It has more of a sense of humor than the first, although it does obviously borrow heavily from Marvel superhero flicks still. Also has a lot of the Rangers with no faceplate in their helmets so we can see them emote I suppose.

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Maybe this means they're getting ninja powers!

Bridge the gap from Dino Charge to Ninja Steel, right?

Bag of Magic Food said:

I would be surprised that that site is still online when Viz Media is already halfway through producing a dub with Stephanie Sheh as "Usagi," but I don't expect Nangbaby to get off that hobbyhorse for long anymore. (Basically most of those reasons for wanting "Serena" boil down to letting the perfect be the enemy of the good: Because we might not be able to convey absolutely every aspect of the Japanese names, that means we need to defer to the same shoddy old localization forevermore? Nangbaby has a lot of weird debate tactics like using accusations of racism to defend other forms of racism, and I don't recommend that you engage with them at this point due to a persecution complex I've seen.)

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What an odd reversal. I know people are going to do whatever, but it wasn't that long ago people's lids were flipping that Viz was translating One Piece's Zoro as 'Zolo.' OP doesn't have a beloved original run on TV or anything of course, but that's still bizarre. The purist streak usually runs strong in manga/anime fandom.

Maybe this means they're getting ninja powers!

Bridge the gap from Dino Charge to Ninja Steel, right?

See Also

Super Sentai villains as of recently

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Ha! Well, they're apparently getting out of suit powers of some sort, which angers so many people they apparently haven't paid attention to the franchise for the last... what, twelve years?

Hmm, has anyone ever kept track of how many Sentais bother with secret identities compared to how many Rangers? Some Sentai roll calls have them actually giving their first names away.

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I'm tired, so I can't recall how many Sentai actually had secret identities as a big thing. Megaranger, for one. Timeranger kinda, because they get found out and their identities aren't a secret where they come from.

Recently? Gokaiger didn't have any secret identities at all. Go Busters were cops, so not really a secret. Kyoryuger, they were a secret, but they never did much to cover it. ToQger didn't really bother, Ninninger had too many plot holes and not enough plot, so I can't tell, and Zyuoger was only part secret.

If there's any standard trope, it's that they pay lip service to concealing their identities, but it usually only becomes a big deal if the plot calls for it.

Bag of Magic Food said:

Wow, I would have thought that Power Rangers was the more obvious morality play. Or at the very least, Bulk and Skull served to form a Goofus and Gallant routine with the Rangers early on.

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The nature of Sentai is that Teamwork Wins. Even though the story is more about how Red wins while his team cheers him on, the other Sentai members can take credit for helping.

This is a very Japanese moral stance: You win if your team wins. Super Sentai is designed to show kids how working as a team is important, and that you don't have to be the star to be part of the victory.

Cain said:

The nature of Sentai is that Teamwork Wins. Even though the story is more about how Red wins while his team cheers him on, the other Sentai members can take credit for helping.

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Now if only we could get a Red recently in Sentai who wasn't constantly screaming. The only recent two Reds I've liked were Hiromu from Go-Busters (who is pretty much the opposite as Reds go) and Right, who was a lot more sensitive than the standard hot-blooded idiot Red. I like almost everything else about Kyuranger, but Lucky's enough to almost single-handedly turn me off the series just for my eardrum's sake (it's better than Ninninger where Takaharu's acting was off enough that his screaming just sounded fake.) I really liked Tyler in Dino Charge for being more enthusiastically dorky in his excitement.

Also finished rewatching Great Beast Squadron Liveman last night, which is a facinating series (it's admittedly the only Showa Sentai I've seen) and it's surprisingly deep for a Showa series. Has a nine episode ending arc which would be pretty long even these days, and some of the more interesting villain writing in a Showa series. They're all pretty horrible in what they do (the first episode basically has them leveling a city to the ground because they can) and it never excuses or forgets that, but it spends time exploring how all of them came to function that way more or less. Except for the big bad, Great Professor Bias (played by Joji Nakata in one of his early live action roles) who's intentionally kind of shallow (if competent and completely horrifying when he gets active) - we never get a backstory on him, and there's really nothing to him except for narcissism, a complete lack of regard for other people, and an ego the size of a planet compared to the other villains.

Also a huge fan of the team members in that show, especially Megumi (the blue ranger) who's the rare female Sentai team member who gets the standard dark blue color and plays the role of the standard Blue role usually only given to male Blues (complete with being the one with the biggest anger issues who goes off on her own a lot early on). (Gou, the yellow ranger, gets the lion share of the romance episodes anyway including the amazing one where he dates a nonhuman-looking military robot and everyone just rolls with it after a second of surprise.) She's also got my favorite version of the "family members show up and want the female Sentai team member to get married" episode as her dad shows up preparing to introduce her to a guy, apologizes when he finds out she's doing something important and it's dismissed after a moment of mutual embarassment, and then most of the episode is about her dad getting in way over his head trying to stubbornly help out the team. Also gets some flack from the fandom I've heard for crying a lot... but given how dark Liveman gets at times, pretty much all of those are situations where it's pretty understandable to cry, and Gou does it a lot too.

Cain said:

The nature of Sentai is that Teamwork Wins. Even though the story is more about how Red wins while his team cheers him on, the other Sentai members can take credit for helping.

This is a very Japanese moral stance: You win if your team wins. Super Sentai is designed to show kids how working as a team is important, and that you don't have to be the star to be part of the victory.

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That... is also a western value. If anything, it's even more so!

The most persistant complaint from western audiences about the shounen and shoujo genre, as well as the non-sentai toku (Kamen Riders, Metal Heroes, the odd Lionman) is that they are all about the main character, and nobody else gets to do anything.

And conversely, Hollywood sports movies go on about teamwork far, far more than any sentai I've ever seen.

Colapso said:

That... is also a western value. If anything, it's even more so!

The most persistant complaint from western audiences about the shounen and shoujo genre, as well as the non-sentai toku (Kamen Riders, Metal Heroes, the odd Lionman) is that they are all about the main character, and nobody else gets to do anything.

And conversely, Hollywood sports movies go on about teamwork far, far more than any sentai I've ever seen.

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I'm not sure about that.

Most Hollywood hero movies are about one single hero. I mean, what superhero movies are up this year? Lego Batman, Logan, Wonder Woman, Captain Marvel, etc... the majority of them are about one person. Guardians of the Galaxy is likely to be about Starlord, with everyone else as his sidekick. As for Justice League, I'm not sure Snyder even understands what plot and character are for, so I'm less inclined to call it a movie and more his own CGI porn.

By happenstance, I was re-watching Avengers last night, which was considered to be the first real superhero ensemble movie. And yes, everyone gets a chance to be badass, which doesn't tend to happen in Sentai. But even then, the plot really depends on Tony Stark and Nick Fury, and everyone else was supporting them. Stark is even the one to save the day, by nearly sacrificing himself.

The comparable sentai trope is everyone nearly sacrificing themselves so Red can win. They don't seem to distinguish between individual and group victory. You see a similar trope in Sailor Moon, where for some reason only she can destroy the monsters. I mean, how often do the other scouts get beat up so Sailor Moon has more time to save the day? But in both, all the other members are perfectly willing to jump in the way of a blast so Red can save the day, because by doing so, the group wins. Learning to accept your role as part of the team is a very common episode plot.

Dawgstar said:

Ha! Well, they're apparently getting out of suit powers of some sort, which angers so many people they apparently haven't paid attention to the franchise for the last... what, twelve years?

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And since trailers show them breaking a sink and someone injuring themselves headbutting one of the rangers who doesn't fight back, then much like everything I saw in that parody grimdark trailer, it's not as dark as Jetman.

(To clarify, Gai Yuki discovers his powers first outside his suit, by getting caught cheating in an illegal gambling den, and then punching the person who confronted him, sending the guy flying into boxes)

Dawgstar said:

What an odd reversal. I know people are going to do whatever, but it wasn't that long ago people's lids were flipping that Viz was translating One Piece's Zoro as 'Zolo.' OP doesn't have a beloved original run on TV or anything of course,

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It sounds like the problem is matching the hated original run on TV! And maybe those localizations picked "Zolo" to keep the Zorro IP holders off their backs, just as I'd bet that the Spice and Wolf dub used "Holo" because "Horo" could sound like "whore-oh".

gourdcaptain said:

Also finished rewatching Great Beast Squadron Liveman last night, which is a facinating series (it's admittedly the only Showa Sentai I've seen) and it's surprisingly deep for a Showa series.

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I haven't watched a Showa Sentai yet myself, but I did see a review of Liveman recently. I remember some good points were that each evil commander had a different basis for their monster forms, and I'd already heard about its firsts like having the first animal-shaped mecha, but that reviewer complained about having to shove a monster-of-the-day into every single episode, and he felt that though the series needed a fourth and fifth ranger, it didn't need those fourth and fifth rangers.

I've seen better reviews for Hikari Sentai Maskman... And since I'm already most of the way through Kamen Rider Black, it occurs to me that if I also watch Maskman and Metalder, then I'll know the complete 1987 set of Toei Super Heroes in preparation for watching any recordings of the one live show that would cross them all over!

Colapso said:

That... is also a western value. If anything, it's even more so!

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I remember that being the moral of "Where There's Smoke, There's Fire", mainly because I happened to use that episode in a Youtube Poop once. I also once jumped on the bandwagon of using "Rocky Just Wants To Have Fun" in Youtube Poop, but as silly as that episode was, I appreciate that it went to the trouble of showing what pachinko is instead of pretending that Pachinkohead was something completely different.

Cain said:

The comparable sentai trope is everyone nearly sacrificing themselves so Red can win. They don't seem to distinguish between individual and group victory. You see a similar trope in Sailor Moon, where for some reason only she can destroy the monsters. I mean, how often do the other scouts get beat up so Sailor Moon has more time to save the day?

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I think the plot formula for the Sailor Moon anime got warped around needing to see Sailor Moon's one stock-footage finisher every episode... But I recall the climax arcs would often have the rest of the team sacrifice themselves or otherwise get kicked aside so that Sailor Moon would have to buckle down and get over her worries and share power with her future family in order to solve the crisis. It's just that in the monthly manga, that climax would take up the whole second half of the year, so the first half would let all the teammates score one victory each.

Cain said:

I'm not sure about that.

Most Hollywood hero movies are about one single hero. I mean, what superhero movies are up this year? Lego Batman, Logan, Wonder Woman, Captain Marvel, etc... the majority of them are about one person. Guardians of the Galaxy is likely to be about Starlord, with everyone else as his sidekick. As for Justice League, I'm not sure Snyder even understands what plot and character are for, so I'm less inclined to call it a movie and more his own CGI porn.

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... and as I pointed out, the overwhelming majority of japanese movies, comics, and animation are about a single hero.

And, again, to a level that makes western viewers uncomfortable, and often wanting the non-hero people to do something.

You can't compare Sentai - a niche out of a niche out of a niche (a small slice of toku [of which all the other types focus on a single protagonist - Metal Heroes, Kamen Riders, etc.], which is a small slice of their live-action TV) - to Hollywood, because the comparison to that - japanese movies - also often focus on a single protagonist. The comparison there would be a similar super-niche, hollywood sports movies, which are also ensemble pieces about teamwork.

Colapso said:

... and as I pointed out, the overwhelming majority of japanese movies, comics, and animation are about a single hero.

And, again, to a level that makes western viewers uncomfortable, and often wanting the non-hero people to do something.

You can't compare Sentai - a niche out of a niche out of a niche (a small slice of toku [of which all the other types focus on a single protagonist - Metal Heroes, Kamen Riders, etc.], which is a small slice of their live-action TV) - to Hollywood, because the comparison to that - japanese movies - also often focus on a single protagonist. The comparison there would be a similar super-niche, hollywood sports movies, which are also ensemble pieces about teamwork.

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It's not just Sentai. Kamen Rider Ghost had an episode where he died again, and his entire team got ready to sacrifice themselves because they believed. Sailor Moon also made it a trope. Dragonball Z had several shows where the Z fighters were basically just delaying things until Goku got there.

Even the single hero stuff has the hero learning to work with/for a group. Lone Wolf and Cub is about a man fighting for his family. Gundam is about soldiers in war (mostly), and deals with being part of a military unit (usually). Zato Ichi is about a blind man looking for a community to call home. A person without a community is supposed to be a terrible fate. Even going back to the classic samurai tropes, the reason being a ronin means one is worthless is because they don't belong.

Kamen Rider, in particular, strives to emulate the classic Japanese dramas. It centers on one hero, but his group is important, and a victory by the hero is one for his group as well.

But to focus in a bit further, I think the best comparison would be to Hollywood superhero movies, particularly the ensemble pieces like Avengers. Toku has been doing ensemble pieces for decades, while superhero groups are new to the US-- Avengers is pretty much the first successful one. And in these type of movies, usually one hero will try and sacrifice themself for the good of everyone else. This happened in both Avengers and Batman v Superman. In toku, the trope is for everyone else to sacrifice themselves so Red can save the day.

You also have to consider that Super Sentai is a kids show, and as such, they are deliberately trying to instill moral values with it. Kind of like how G I Joe tried to teach kids to have the knowhow to stay away from drugs. "And knowing is half the battle!" So, Sentai in particular is trying to teach kids teamwork, and to bury their egos within the group. This is a rather important thing in Japanese culture-- in school, frequently kids are graded by the group, so they all succeed or fail as a group.