The Tower of Heaven was attacked by an unknown force, causing five angels in training to stay on Earth to protect it from this unknown force. These Guardian Angels who descended from the Guardian Realm are called Tensou Sentai Goseiger!
Over 2 years ago, I made a post about my first impressions about this series. Since it is crudely written, I decided to do a proper first episode review of the series now that I have the proper hardware (and better subs!) to do so. The opening minutes of the series introduced us to a lot of elements, that aside from the past 33 Super Sentai teams that protected Earth, there is a group of Guardian Angels protecting our world secretly. GoseiRed is one of them as he duels Dareptor after he destroyed the Tower of Heaven. The fight choreography is fantastic in this scene and gives me the feeling that this show's Red is a badass.
After the cool opening sequence, we meet Alata, who is the Red in this show. At first, I criticized Alata for his looks because he looks to cute to be considered a Red! Most of the Reds that I saw are either: hot-blooded, the stoic one, the calculated one and the militaristic one. Alata is just an airhead, how can I entrust the protection of our planet to some airhead with a Justin Bieber haircut? Even if that is the case, there is one thing that I like about Alata; he knows not to give up. This is an element that all heroes need, an attitude to not to give up. With that, I started to ignore his Justin Bieber haircut and just focus on how he will grow as a person.
Also in this episode, we meet a boy named Nozomu who accused his classmate of stealing his book only to find out he placed it in his locker. The reason why I brought this up is because this kid is the kid of the week in this series, something that most modern Super Sentai shows rarely do nowadays. Based on my experience, there are two types of kid of the week: the relevant to the plot and the irrelevant to the plot and he is the first type. He became relevant in this episode because he is the first person who saw Alata after his Invocation failed him and the first person that picked up his Change Card after he dropped it by accident! This, my friends is one of the reasons why Alata doesn't feel like your average Red hero in Super Sentai.
Meanwhile, a swarm of B.B.s is rampaging, this is when we meet GoseiBlack and GoseiYellow, and these two are the rough and tumble duo in the series. They prefer less talk and more attack. GoseiBlue then comes in who is basically the cool, calculated and cautious one based on his movements. GoseiPink is the last one who arrived in the scene and her fighting style reflects her tribe. Alata then arrives then realizes that he dropped his Change Card somewhere. Even if that is the case, the other Goseigers are done defeating all the B.B.s. Well at least the other Goseigers are dependable.
After failing to find Alata's Change Card and getting lectured of taking care of his card next time, Alata wonders what will be their next move thanks to the threat they are facing right now. Slowly, I am starting to like Alata because of the way he thinks of their current situation. While they are talking about it, Eri noticed Nozomu's presence and thanks to him, we learn more about the Goseigers. The idea of having five Angels in training as the stars of this show is really interesting. What's more, they are disconnected to the Guardian Realm thanks to the attack to the Tower of Heaven that happened 10 days prior to this scene. It gives me this feeling that they will grow more as heroes the old fashioned way and not by the books, making me root for these guys more.
Thanks to Nozomu, we also learned the reason why no one knows the existence of the Goseigers; it is all thanks to the special Memory Wash Card that can wipe a person's memories of the Goseigers. Alata protesting to let Nozomu keep his memories with the Goseigers showed us how naive he is as a Guardian Angel, but I guess his naiveté is also one of his strong points. You never know if the kid can help them later. The Goseigers leave and I guess they will continue on looking for Alata's Change Card.
Warstar's first attack on planet Earth begins after their destruction of the Tower of Heaven and the first alien they send is something that is related to first alien encounters as his name is based on the Japanese title of the classic sci-fi movie, "Close Encounters of the Third Kind"! His ability of clumping rubble into large rubble spheres is weird for a group of space aliens who want to conquer Earth. The only time it makes sense once you understand that his move is a reference to the movie his name is based upon.
The Goseigers fight the MOTW only to end up four of them getting trapped in his rubble spheres. To make matters worse is that Alata is the only one who is left standing... and he doesn't have his Change Card! But instead of giving up, he continues to fight since there is nothing wrong if he attempts to fight an enemy without any weapons or even transforming! This scene made me realize that even though he acts like a goofball, an airhead, deep down inside, he is a badass. Heck, when four rubble spheres are approaching to him, what he did is jump at them, breaking the spheres and freeing the other Goseigers!
What's more, his move inspired Nozomu to try his best to fight in his own way as his body just move on its own just to protect Alata! He then gives his Change Card and finally, he transforms into GoseiRed with the rest of the Goseigers. The transformation sequence looks really neat. The angel wings give this really unique touch to the transformation of our heroes, especially how these wings wrap their bodies, forming the crest in their chest. The team roll call is rather long and is arranged on the order of their specific tribes with Red being first and Blue being the last in the roll call. At first I have problems with it but after watching more Super Sentai shows, I am now fine with it.
After their transformation, they summoned the Gosei Headders, which kinda reminds me of the Engine Souls in Go-Onger, except it feels like it is done right in Goseiger. Their summoning scene looks fantastic, especially how the rock breaking scene was made. Instead of seeing giant floating animal heads when they arrived on Earth from their Realm, what I see are smaller versions of it that they attach on their Gosei Blaster.
The reason why I said earlier that it feels like they are the Engine Souls done right is that you can clearly see the attributes of the said animal on every shot made in the Gosei Blaster. The problem I had with the Engine Souls is that they feel like fancy colorful batteries for the Mantan Gun/Rod. The only time they include the attributes of the Engine in the Gun/Rod is when they will perform a finisher. Since I am talking about including a specific attribute, I just love the individual Gosei Blaster shot scenes. It looks really cool and puts emphasis on their specific animal.
After the Gosei Blaster comes the introduction of the Gosei Weapons, my problem with these weapons is the major emphasis of the card slot. I am fine with the card theme but I just hate that the emphasis on this theme made the weapons look too... toyetic. Until now I have no idea what Pink's weapon is supposed to look like. The fights with the weapons looked really great, especially when they started doing combo moves related to their tribe. This made me pity Hyde for obvious reasons since he is the only Goseiger without a partner from his tribe.
The team finisher, the Gosei Blaster looks really neat. I love how their cards just grow large just to fit in to the card slot that they are placed. The overall look of the Gosei Blaster is well done; what's more, the color combination of the overall weapon reminded me a bit of Zyuranger's Howling Canon due to how the weapons are placed just to form the Gosei Blaster less the throwing in the weapon formation sequence. The defeated the MOTW and as for Nozomu, he finally said sorry to the boy that he offended. After the defeat of the MOTW, Dareptor appears, causing Alata to remember the injury he had from their battle.
