Samurai Sentai Shinkenger Review: Coming Full Circle

I finally decided to go back and finish the first Sentai I ever saw. I was watching it on youtube back in the day before the toku purge happened. I remember just being in awe of what I was seeing. I finally got the chance to get back to it. Back in the day I got into the late 30s before everything got hit. So lets take a look at the show that got me into Sentai. Without this show, I probably wouldn't be active in the Sentai fandom if not the toku fandom as a whole. Note: There will be spoilers for Shinkenger's final arc because I need to talk about the overall arcs of two characters. Without further adieu...To the field!

A horde of monsters appear from a gap in a wall to terrorize a child. In what is probably my favorite introduction to a red, a man appears and effortlessly cuts them down. He is the 18th head of the Shiba: Takeru Shiba. After noticing that the Gedoshu attacks are becoming more and more frequent, his advisor Hikoma suggests finally calling Takeru's 4 retainers into service.

Characters:

• Takeru Shiba/ShinkenRed: Takeru is a take on the stoic red but is also very uncomfortable with his position as Lord. Mostly because he doesn't like the idea of his team potentially sacrificing their lives for him for a very good reason: He isn't actually the Lord, he is a decoy. The man was just a kid from a regular family raised to take the Lord's place. Dude's only role in life was to fight the Gedoshu until the actual lord mastered a way to banish their leader completely. Being ShinkenRed was his entire reason for living until that point and he was so lost once the true Lord returns that he finally accepted Juuzo's offer to duel to the death because he thought he had no other purpose.
• Ryunosuke Ikenami/ShinkenBlue: I don't think I've seen a blue like Ryunosuke, ever. Dude is a serious guy but is loud, energetic, and extremely expressive while he does it. He just seems so enthusiastic and Hiroki Aiba does well in the role. He does Ryunosuke's whole schtick in a way that keeps the character from crossing into annoying territory. Ryunosuke's passion is kabuki which definitely explains his overly dramatic way of doing things. As for his arc, Ryunosuke is extremely loyal and devoted to his duty. The dude devotes himself to serving Takeru with his whole heart so naturally when he finds out Takeru isn't the Lord, he is torn between his duty to the Shiba clan and his duty to the person who has lead him into battle all this time. All of that combined makes him my favorite Shinkenger and potentially even my favorite Blue in Sentai as well as one of my favorite characters in the entire franchise.
• Mako Shiraishi/ShinkenPink: Mako's dream is just for a normal life. She wasn't allowed to have a childhood because of her samurai duties. She kind of takes on the team mom role because of that. Mostly confronting the others when she notices something wrong and lending an ear. It kinda didn't actually hit me until her last focus episode that she was hiding her own issues that went beyond her dream of a normal life. It honestly makes me think that her samurai training costing her time with her parents is probably the biggest reason for why thats her dream. That realization and seeing her crack like that honestly made me tear up a bit.
• Chiaki Tani/ShinkenGreen: Chiaki is a bit of slacker but is also pretty self-conscious and a bit frustrated about his skills since he is the least trained of the main five. Dude has to think fast and improvise because of that. He uses his frustration as the drive to improve and attempt to outdo both Ryunosuke and Takeru. The man is legitimately improving in each focus episode he gets and I love it. Heck, even when he admits to Ryunosuke that he isn't as good as him or Takeru, Ryunosuke straight up tells Chiaki that he brings something to the team that they can't: His ability to improvise and adapt. As cliche as that trope is, I dig it.
• Kotoha Hanaori/ShinkenYellow: Kotoha was not supposed to be a Shinkenger, her older sister was until she got sick. She is a sweet, kind girl who calls her self clumsy and useless early in the show to the point where she is convinced the only thing she had to offer the team was her life. That coupled with the insult monster episode really hurt more this time around. Just hearing her say "It doesn't matter because its all true anyway" hurt me because I've been in that position myself more times than I want to admit. Her episodes are fine tho episode 22 just kinda does nothing for me. Her ultimate arc is her learning to accept that she is not just her sister's replacement, she IS ShinkenYellow.
• Genta Umemori/ShinkenGold: Takeru's childhood friend. Genta is loud, energetic, and goofy. His more goofy antics work well when used to balance out Ryunosuke's serious antics. Due to not being from a samurai family, he adds a nice bit of normal guy dynamic to the team. His dream is pretty simple: He wants to own his own sushi restuarant. When Takeru was revealed to be figurehead, Genta didn't change much if at all. Yeah, he was shocked like everyone else but he wasn't blinded by or conflicted with his duty to some fancy Lord like the others were. Genta is just some regular dude loyal to his best friend. It made Takeru being sad when Genta had to leave town as a kid hit even harder in hindsight because Genta was probably one of the few people in Takeru's life that saw him as a regular person.

Villains:

The villains are fine though I wish Doukoku did more. He spends most of his time drinking and being angry. I get his whole deal is that he is a heavy hitter who can't leave the boat, I'm just more used to this type of villain being a background fixture or springboard for other villains to do their thing instead of being constantly hyped up as a major threat. Granted when he does finally do something, it feels like an earth-shattering moment. Shitari is interesting in that he basically plays the same advisory role for Doukoku that Hikoma (called Ji by the Shinkengers) does for Takeru. The main difference being that Takeru cares about the people under him while the only one Doukoku seems to have a soft spot for is Dayuu to the point where he can tell her mood by the subtle difference in that one tune she plays. Dayuu was betrayed in life by the man she loved who took another woman as his wife, then she burned the entire family alive and fell to the Sanzu River, taking his soul with her. Her story is actually pretty damn chilling to the point where went I wide-eyed at her accepting her situation and finally letting go of everything: Her regrets, her anger, her past, and her very humanity. Thats probably the biggest "Oh shit!" moment in the show for me. So...uhh...yeah, Dayuu is my favorite villain in the show. She is pain, regret, anger, and every other negative emotion all wrapped up in a big ol' box of denial.

If you had asked me which Shinkenger villain was my favorite way back when I started the show back in the day, I would've said it was Juuzo. Juuzo is a man who lives for battle and I mean that literally. He wants nothing more to find an opponent that can satisfy his bloodlust to the point where he decided to become a monster instead of letting a disease kill him. All he wants in the world is to find that one opponent who can potentially kill him so he can feel the joy of fighting for his life. The man got so engrossed in his final duel with Takeru that he forgot his sword (Uramasa) was sentient and thats the only reason Takeru didn't die. Villains who live solely for battle are usually hit or miss for me but Juuzo is definitely a hit. The man is arguably more of a monster than Doukoku to the point where its kinda terrifying. His duels with Takeru were definitely the most tense moments in the show.

Mecha: The origami are fine but the ones outside of the main five kinda fees like they lack any impact outside of the "Oh hey, we got a new mecha!" aspect of their debuts. Maybe I'd feel different about Squid and Lobster if they interacted with Genta like the main five's do with them. I find it amusing that the only thing Kyoryu Origama adds to ShinkenOh's arsenal is a new sword and hat. I don't like Samurai Ha-Oh and its probably one of my least favorite final mechs in Sentai. The robot itself is fine but the other half of the combo is just a platform for it to stand on. Ideally since it can't move that well, it should be used solely for the beam finisher instead of trying to choreograph around its bulk.

Music: The opening theme goes hard, a bit harder than it needs to but its still an amazing song and the opening sequence just gives me chills to this day. Its a fantastic hype machine and I always end up singing along with it. The ending theme is a great tune to close the show on and I've caught myself humming it more than the opening theme. The battle theme "Example" is a banger of a song even if its not one of my favorite battle themes and I wish it had shown up more than twice. However, my favorite piece of music in the entire show is easily that tune Dayuu plays on the shamisen. It perfectly captures her sadness and its a fairly haunting tune. 

Final Thoughts: I feel a bit like I've come full circle with this show in more ways than one. Not only did I finish the show that got me into Sentai but I finished it in the same place I started it. It was good to go back and finally finish the show. I've changed so much over the years and grown in regards to being a reviewer and how I analyze and talk about these shows. Back in the day when I first saw Shinkenger, I thought "Oh, I'll just watch this show to see what its like", I never expected to end up having seen at least 799 episodes of Sentai and thats only counting the Sentai I've finished. It just blows my mind to think about all the shows I've seen since that day. I'm a sucker for sword fights so naturally Shinkenger's action was and still is my jam. I knew the reveal with Takeru was coming ahead of time since I've been in the fandom for so long but it still hit like a truck regardless. Shinkenger is fantastic and while I don't do top 10s anymore due to stuff after fluctuating pretty frequently after number 5, for now Shinkenger is my number 6. It occurred to me while writing this post that Shinkenger is now technically both my 1st and 16th Sentai.