Sentai Review: Kaizoku Sentai Goukaiger Episode 1

Since the Goukaiger Series marks 35th anniversary of the Super Sentai franchise, I was pretty excited to see what Toei was going to do to celebrate this milestone . My hopes were high , and Toei pulled off an amazing first episode! Hit the jump to get your Sentai on!


The episode begins with the evil empire Zangyak  devastating the earth in order to take it over . At this point expect the Goukaiger to be introduced and save the day , but instead the evil empire is fought back by non other than every Super Sentai of the past 34 years , from GoRanger( the very first) to Goseiger ( to the previous) . Seeing all of the Sentai on the battlefield is , although this word is way overused but for the lack of a better word, epic!

The Super Sentai use all of their powers to defeat the empire .After using up all their powers the Super Sentai vanish into history. Then the story picks up in the future where the Gokaiger encounter the Zangyak empire and dispose of their vanguard ships using their mecha. These scenes were cool, but they use mostly CG, which feels a bit odd.

Hopefully we will be treated to more grown men in robot and moster suits beating the stuffing out of each other in later episodes.
The Goukaiger then head to earth where they are in search of its greatest treasure. Since nobody on earth seems to knows where it is , Goukai Red decides the should get some food instead. However, their meal is interrupted by the arrival of a fleet of Zangyak ships that begin the destruction of the earth once more.
The Goukaiger , who at this point make it obvious that they are pirates and not heroes, have a change of heart when they witness the destruction first hand and are reminded of the similar attacks on their home planet.
The Goukaiger make short work of the villains utilizing their Goukai Change system which allows them to use little figures/keys of the previous Sentai to obtain their suits and powers.

Shinkenger

Magiranger

Overall the production values for the first episode were amazing, from the fight scenes, to the intro, the villain design,  even the transformation scenes were some great eye-candy. Now we now why Toei was so cheap with Goseiger. They probably skimped on that series to make this one extra special. Let's just hope that the rest of the episodes are this good.

I would also like to say a special thanks to the guys at TV-Nihon fansubs for subbing the Sentai series so that we English speakers can enjoy them!