Welcome back! Here’s Part 1 if you missed it. Now get ready for some more squeezed GIFs and hopefully normal MP3s as we count it down from #17 to that coveted top spot!
#17: Choushinsei Flashman
This is so strange. The only Super Sentai opening to be filmed so extensively in a green screen vat meant to resemble some murky colored diamond caves. The vats are simultaneously unique, limiting, and uproariously funny.
Look, on a two-by-two-foot soundstage, you can’t do too much kicking and screaming. What you can do is be dragged upward and outward by rudimentary swinging cables as you “fly” from an explosion. The explosion is a bundle of sparklers and it just burned down the back wall, but you know.
In fact, let’s start with the visual roll call of every member. There’s the red one, looking like a classic Han Solo-type (also note how every member appears with a bunch of neon gridlines—grids were futuristic in the 80s despite having existed in farm and city planning for thousands of years):
The green one breaking free from bonds I am sure are very heavy, heavily bouncing around:
The yellow one, whose spinning brings back even more Star Wars memories but this time of the Holiday Special:
And the pink one, who, I gotta be honest, looks amazingly fearsome despite her odd psychic swinging:
But the blue’s my favorite. He’s got the big jump and he’s got moves.
Ain’t he a stinker?
Anyway, that’s like the first thirty seconds and the rest is more standard. Oh, yeah, wait, I haven’t mentioned the intro to the intro! After a narrator tells us what’s what, a droning doom sounds as we smash to the year…1986.
I dunno. The visuals of the theme song feel to me like a string of odd or bad ideas, or at least tacky execution.
Sonically…we’ve got an amazingly slappin’ rhythm here, but the chorus is merely fine. Flash? Flash? Flash? Flash?! That’s all you’ve got, Flashman?!
Damn, but the visuals…they’re so standoutly hilarious in places that I feel tempted to put this higher. Still, I can’t justify it. This song rocks, but for me, it’s easily a B-side to most of what’s coming.
#16: Kousoku Sentai Turboranger
Is it unfair to put this one so high? I…am conflicted.
Well, may I start by saying I saw a few episodes of this recently out of a perverse curiosity? I heard a lot of Super Sentai fans don’t like this series and I thought, “How bad can it be?” The answer: quite boring. Say what you will about the first episode of Zyuranger: it wasn’t boring. What I’ve seen of this was quite the jumbled mishmash, yet not even funny enough to be all that mockable.
I started out constantly forgetting this theme song. Then I noticed it, but only for its badness. “This is…mostly just stock footage,” I said, “taken during someone’s joyride.” Which it is. It’s really embarrassingly devoid of action compared to just about every other Super Sentai intro, and because the footage is so often of roads, we don’t even see the team much!
Yet the very fact of its badness was oddly interesting. So I plunged deeper. And I realized that the melody was not bad, just subdued. Where a Fiveman is a little peppier, and as a result a little blander to my ear, Turboranger has some ennui, and the chorus is just enough of a one-two punch to keep us revved and moving. Subtitles tell me that the lyrics are also kind of funny. “The bad guys know nothing of love, so let’s fucking murder them all!!! …send them to an eternal rest! : )”
Also it’s cool that the whole cast is wearing 80/90s windbreakers
Oddly, the theme song as a whole now reliably makes me think of a brisk and snowy winter day. There’s just something stark about it and about the day I watched it. Then there’s the next theme song on this list—its diametric opposite, or a yang to its yin…
#15: Gosei Sentai Dairanger
What a mixed bag. Alright, so we have amazing buildup and pretty cool, if limited, imagery here. A dragon with the rising-or-setting sun as its backdrop, swirling through the air. Rangers demonstrating their moves on a soundscape—not a tacky one with crystals, but a black void with dry ice. Also, biking, but limited quantities. Okay, maybe that one isn’t so cool. Okay x2, we’re getting quite a lot of this dragon and it’s gonna wear out its welcome fast over the fifty-ish episodes.
Speaking of wearing out its welcome, the music. The music! Maybe there’s a genre of traditional Chinese music this is riffing on more closely, but I only think “samba with Chinese flavor” when I hear this. Sometimes I like it and sometimes I’m not in the mood for it at all. My impromptu watch party grew tired of it very fast, and that didn’t improve our outlook on the first crop of episodes.
“Wo-o-o-oah” can only repeat so much.
I watched this on a summer’s day, at the end of a road of interminable car and tire shops, on what seemed the longest stretch of concrete, in one room, and the exaggerated memory of the sweat, and heat, and glowing sun, makes Dairanger seem way more summery to me. It is also blazingly and unabashedly red, and centered around the red ranger and his fiery dragon…and incidentally, I love love biking in the summer.
So there is something nostalgic about this for me. And beyond that, maybe there’s some shard of elegant visual simplicity. And y’know what, if I heard this at the club, I would boogie in a heartbeat.
#14: Gekisou Sentai Carranger
I feel so bad putting this so low. This song is solid, infectiously enthusiastic, and hits all the right notes for an opening about a season full of cars. You grin when you hear it. You watch the whole series and you don’t get tired of it. (I know, I’ve been through it.) You’ve got the strength to live again.
But I’ve gotta be frank honest and real with you: there are two big reasons I can’t put this higher. First of all, I don’t get not nary one chuckle out of it. The funny faces the rangers make when zany shit happens to them on the job? Nice try, bub. Not happening. Okay, it’s fun when they point and do the hitchhiker thumb. It’s hilarious when, after the theme song changes for the second half, they somehow write “CARRANGER” in the sky really fast. But can you give me more than crumbs here, Carranger? I thought you loved me.
Second, I just like a hard-driving Super Sentai theme song more than a straightforwardly inspiring one. Sorry, Carranger, you’re a good kid and I like your style…but I have to move on.
#13: Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger
This edges out Carranger because while I just feel good when I hear or remember either one, the feeling is stronger with Gokaiger‘s sense of melancholy. The sound of this intro would be perfect for a final season—which is fitting, since this series celebrates the history of the franchise by having its heroes use the powers of every cast before them.
It’s subdued but not sad, and it’s not afraid to fly a little higher when it comes time for that climax. Meanwhile, there are some fun visual details (even beyond the ones that just make me think of One Piece), like all the red rangers running past the hero as he metaphorically takes on their mantle. There’s not much else I can say about it, other than…I appreciate it.
I dunno who “Kaiger” is but yeah let’s all cheer for ’em
#12: Choujyuu Sentai Liveman
Okay, now we’re in Solidly Amusing Territory. You won’t see me moping and groping too much anymore.
I both enjoy and unenjoy how this opening seems to be sung by YuYu Hakusho‘s Kuwabara. Ooch! That gravel voice. It takes a bit for the tune to really get going and dive into the chorus, but the voice, the synth on our way, and at least one scream provide enough interest to carry us through.
Then we get a fun rhythmic chorus. I’m always breakin’ it down to “kirari ka-ga-ya-ke Raibuman” and the part where he says “bakuhatsu” and “sakuretsu” and “fire.” I could chant this under my breath all day. I could exercise to this all day. It’s all cool in a way that I find a subtler taste than what’s coming.
Less cool are the visual flourishes—again, comparatively subtle: there’s a skateboarding dog, a breakdancing robot, and a dolphin that performs a trick with a ball that turns out to be Earth.
Don’t say there’s not any magic in the world.
#11: Mirai Sentai Timeranger
Holy shit! I put this at only number 11?! This is not only highly comical, but also bizarre and a little, sometimes, slightly, catchy.
I suppose this is the closest to punk Super Sentai openings will ever get. The background looks like a cup of Trix yogurt. The green ranger has…green hair. “TIMERANGER” is written out in what might be yellow Times New Roman. And over pounding drums, the vocalist immediately belts out, “Beyond the future…ride on the future! Live on my dream…live on my soul!”
This is the song my high school self was most likely to download to the MP3 player I only metaphorically had. it would have slotted in nicely next to that screaming red face prog album and like three tracks from The Alfee. It’s quite over-the-top. The lyrics and soul also suggest a kind of emotional nuance that you don’t normally get from these openings.
In the end, it is still very literally about Timeranger (and not about, for instance, the singer’s tortured life), but dangit, that doesn’t make me want to go back to it any less. …Wait, do I want to go back to it? It’s kind of obnoxious, and yet, again, in a willfully abrasive “punk” way. So, um, yes! Tentatively. I can at least respect it from a distance. Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.
#10: Ninpuu Sentai Hurricanger
Shoop shoop. Or, wait, is it shu shu? Whatever. It’s Hurricanger, and they’re running in at high speed over a very CG field bathed in sunset!
It’s another three-people series. And they’re starring in a theme song that finally, finally, I don’t like, or even yearn to like, for 50% ironic goofball reasons. Besides the greenscreen—though even that only happens once or twice.
This opening just tries hard and succeeds at all it tries to do. And it’s cute, man. It’s really cute. The tune is cute, the stunts the characters are pulling in between action sequences are cute (a dance with three parasols), it’s catchy, it makes the three-ness of its heroes super fun, and there’s a hamster that I am told the entire fanbase hates!
Then, as a bonus, at the end, the whole screen basically spins around as the vocals go “kaze ni naaareee…” Now, this is a unique variety of Sentai Sting. To my knowledge, only two openings have attempted such a thing: this one, and Magiranger‘s with “tobidate” or whatever that was. Magiranger‘s pales in comparison! That phrase didn’t even make the screen fly around and whatnot! Come on, people, step it up, step it UP!
This opening makes me want to learn about the heroes, the villains (introduced in a simple yet splashy series of cuts, all to the beat), the horrible awful hamster…everything. It is solid as steel.
#9: Ressha Sentai ToQger
This WOULD NOT be as high as it is if not for me having watched a bunch of it. Still, even beyond that, this is just a classy intro! I like a good anime opening, and this, like many of those greats, is another splendid pop-rock sparkle-thing.
There is cute train stuff all over these visuals. “TOQ CHANGE” on schedule LEDs. Fucking turnstiles. It’s the train series, the rangers ride on trains, it’s intentionally and willfully goofy but has a good and earnest heart and you can see and hear all of that in this intro. I’m not necessarily amazed, or gasping or in awe. I’m just impressed and clapping for a good performance.
The more I witness it, the more I go from “this is a Super Sentai theme song…eh, it’s okay” to “hold on, is this just a nice tune in its own right?”—which is ultimately what has hoisted it above the stormin’ ninjas.
Watching ToQger, with its surprisingly sharp humor and steadily developing plotline, has convinced me that tokusatsu shows from 2010 on might be up my alley after all. This might surprise you, given how much I dunked on Turboranger and Zyuranger earlier, but…I always assume I’ll like earlier seasons more than later ones. I dunno. It’s just something about the crispiness.
From this point on in my list, we’re goin’ back to the past. No more intros post 2000! Hardly any 90s!
#8: Dai Sentai Goggle-V
At first you listen to this and you think it’s a ripoff of the theme song of…of whatever series I have at #6 on this very list. And it kind of is. At first.
Partway through, you go from flyover country to the wonders of the world. You realize this song is stuffed with everything. Heart-soaring vocals, a team roll call, a syllable that kind of sounds like “durrr” (in a heart-soaring way, you have to hear it), “AAH-aah,” and “Goggle-Five” belted out with like a dropped octave midway through so it’s “Go-ggle-FIIIiiiiiiiive.”
It all becomes very…striking and disjointed. It amuses me and makes me scratch my head.
What’s even the theme of this season? Bigness? Moai and wearing goggles? …Wait, I have an exclusive update from Wikipedia: they also utilize the powers of Computer Boys and Girls (or “Comboy” for short…no, it’s not “Comboyandgirl,” what gave you that idea?) who double as the Junior Goggle-V and operate the “Comboyputer.” Never mind, this series is cohesive.
#7: Choudenshi Bioman
I find this, all around, a little disturbing. It’s got a solid start, demanding to know the hearts of its destined soldiers, and that feels fairly serious and pretty cool. Then halfway through, it starts to soar…but only starts to.
After the pre-chorus chorus comes the post-chorus normal chorus, where they pull in a tinkly little xylophone and say “chou-DE-n-shi…bi-OH-maaaaan.” I wish I had some sheet music so I could poorly illustrate how awkward that “Bioman” comes out. It’s not starting out strong and ending on a major chord. Instead, it sounds like this is Waterboy and they’re saying “Gatorade.”
Does this namedrop work? Is it an abomination? Well…I’d say it doesn’t work, but it is so memorable for this reason as well as confounding that I had to put it up this high.
Let me spare a few words for the visuals. This is one of several Super Sentai openings that gives a lot of screentime to outwardly realistic 80s adult people engaging in their awesome-looking day jobs. Come on, guys. Settle down. Is this tokusatsu or The Love Boat? It really just makes me wish I could watch a version of the show without them transforming and using a robot for the last 5-8 minutes. Come to think of it, I would also love to see a Flashman that’s just about five color-crystal space rogues using laser blasters and telekinesis.
But then not only do these shows not get greenlit, they also don’t reach my conscious awareness because I know pretty much nothing about Japanese TV as a whole. It just had to be this way. Ah well…
#6: Taiyou Sentai Sun Vulcan
This is the epitome of classic. Just the right amount of beeps and blips, solid solid chorus and rousing ending, kinda-strange idea to start with an essay about what would happen if the sun melted the earth or something. SO SOLID!
And just look at the way that image of a hawk moves despite not seeming like it should move. Were the layers in 70s and 80s compositing devices just constantly jittering or what? We may never know.
Sun Vulcan is the first Super Sentai I watched and loved…or at least heartily enjoyed. I would watch episodes now and then in college when Toei was releasing them on YouTube weekly. Now, it was a bunch of stuff and nonsense, but for me, it was an enjoyable bunch of it, mostly because I liked the battles. I mean, when they break out the bouncy ball as subtle pro-gymnasium propaganda for the kids at home, and act like that ball is an epic attack, you’ve gotta get excited. Not only that, but the shark ranger’s “epic pose” before every battle is turning sideways to the enemies, standing on one leg, and air-planking. That’s what’s up.
(note: his foot is what’s up)
#5: Choujin Sentai Jetman
Okay, Sun Vulcan‘s opening may be a classic, but Jetman‘s is the classics as we all want to remember them. This is spotless and immaculate. It’s beautiful. According to the lyrics, THEY WERE BORN FROM A DREAM! And we all believe in them! They’re our Jetman!!! The whole world looks on with a gasp as they cruise through a radiant, blinding sky. A lady salutes them! And there is a tear in our eye as they pass.
This is elite. The only reason it’s not higher is because I’m not exactly jamming to it. This list is really about my favorites, not the “objectively” greatest of all time (if that even exists). But yeah, if I were writing for SuperSentaiStuffDotCom, and had to put on airs of objectivity, this would be at the top no question. It is just so hard to argue with.
Sun Vulcan is Mega Man, Jetman is Mega Man X, come fight me
#4: Dengeki Sentai Changeman
I have to get this out of my system: THEY ARE IN A REALISTIC MILITARY SETTING WITH REALISTIC GRENADES, KNIVES, AND GUNS. There is no silly coat of paint on their fatigues, there are no wacky lightning bolts on that man’s helicopter…they just…spend a majority of their time in this theme song doing gray brown military training. Phew. Yeah, I would also prefer to watch this series without any transforming at all, provided they have, like, cool powers of some kind like heat vision.
Anyway, this is such a rockin’, boppin’ tune. It actually doesn’t sound very fitting for the military theme. It’s more streetwise. It’s practically tapping its toes. There is a chance it would fit for an A-Team knockoff of misfit outcasts, so maybe that’s what they were going for…who knows. For all of that, though, it does still sound badass, outside of perhaps the “oh! yes!” and the desperate, very innuendo-able “change, change, CHANGE!”—then again, say pretty much anything with confidence and it works.
I was introduced to this tune long before I cared about Super Sentai at all, and it really caught me by surprise. “Wow! How is this random 90s song so rockin’?” I thought, mislabeling the ditty as more futuristic than it really was. How’s THAT for (vaguely) ahead of its time (in my own head)?
There’s only one word…change, change, change.
#3: Denshi Sentai Denjiman
For me, this is peak 70s.
It was released in 1980…meaning it was IN DEVELOPMENT IN THE 70S! YES, WE MADE IT!! BEAT THAT!!!
That cool bass riff. That forward-movin’ beat. The really overboard, probably-too-loud 80s(70s) bleats. The unbelievably awesome guitar riff that swoops in. These are all joined by the mighty “Denji…Denjiman” chant from a deep-voiced, apparently muscular choir. All while the red ranger of this season (or, uh…red…man) performs the ultimate boxing feat: defeating a black guy. (This actually happens in two separate Super Sentai theme songs.) Oh, and he also does fifty thousand kicks and screams.
His friends all just have awesome jobs, including the green man, whose job is to not get hit by cars. You know, despite the mismatch and unmeetable expectations, I do still love it when these openings just show a bunch of adults with cool jobs who are living exciting lives. On that front, Denjiman is undoubtedly my favorite.
But it’s all tied together by those vocals, which rise with the admittedly off-putting bleats into some very soulfully sung words about savin’ lives. Then when we see the giant robot at the end, they go just a little bit berserk and are cemented in my memory forever.
Howling…macho…still 70s enough to be crusty and brown…how can anything be both cornier and cooler than that? We’re about to find out.
#2: Ninja Sentai Kakuranger
Five figures appear in the night. Five stoic, colorful ninjas. They pose, don even more colorful Halloween costumes, and then dart toward you with the geriatric run. The I’ve-gotta-hold-my-back-in-place-before-it-pops run.
This is Kakuranger, and as they jump, they manifest as the Jazz paper cup design. They will further transform into a folding split screen and a flying, very slow paper crane. Also, they can create clones, and run across water but again not in an extremely cool or fast way. At the end, they turn into animal robots (which transform into robots) and back before running away into the night…again geriatrically.
This song is so smooth. And the first time I heard that chorus, I thought, “That’s the most epic, simplistic, get-out-of-town Japanese wordplay I’ve heard and understood in my life.” All you need to know to get it is Japanese 101. Roughly translated, the chorus says, “What’s that? …It’s ninjas.” Or in other words, “What, what’s that, what’s that, what’s that? …It’s ninjas. Ninjas. Ninjas. Kakuranger, ninjas, ninjas. Ninja Sentai Kakuranger.” This is said with a dignity it never deserved.
How can Ninninger even PRETEND to hold a candle to this? By insisting that not only are those ninjas, but they’re also in Japan? Yeah. Nice try, buster.
Melodically, this is without a doubt the suavest Super Sentai theme song to date. But are you bumpin’ to this at the club? Well…you might surprise yourself. I know I have.
And now for my favorite theme song of them all.
#1: Hikari Sentai Maskman
Can anyone explain this GIF of the first 16 seconds to me without context? I didn’t think so. It’s five young men and women born from a block of ice exploded with fire by Mister Universe after he unlocked his inner eye through cyborg technology…we think.
Another question: who is THIS guy? Why is he all up in my face? Is he a ranger? Or, um…a mask? Do we root for him?
And this yellow mask. Why is she so cool? How can any one ranger be this cool WITHOUT gripping a knife in either fist?
What about this, then? This guy…HE’S FLOATING! SOME UNRELATED GUY IS FLOATING! HALLELUJAH! HE’S USING KI…KI…AURA POWER! NO WONDER THE MUSIC CRESCENDOES WHEN THIS PART HAPPENS!!!
This is an intense, constantly revving hype-song. Now, some may believe—not without reason—that I have no appreciation for anything erotic, but they are wrong. I greatly appreciate the erotic, and all the appreciation I have, I got from this. It taught me. It filled me with the ki, ki, and aura power I have lacked in twenty-eight-plus years of life. (Luckily, this is an older season of Super Sentai, so it’s filled with consenting adults and I don’t feel too bad about it.)
From the first time I laid eyes on this, and set ears on the screeching pipes of that singer, I thought it was unfathomably intense. I mean, come on. A Baki grappler in the intro? A song with this many surprising, stuttering moments? There was never any question it would top this list. This is truly the most muscular Super Sentai opening as well as the juiciest.
Thus ends the list. Thank you for joining me on this quest, and Patrons, thank you for Patreonning!
If you like reading my reactions to goofy art you may or may not have heard of, you may enjoy my posts on Harry Potter cover art around the world, including special editions. Some are just too weird to ignore. Alternatively, learn about cats, or the magic of cinema!