Everybody walk the dinosaur!
The Deboss Legion was revived thanks to global warming and begins their plan to cause extinction to the strongest race around, in this case, us humans. A young man named Daigo Kiryu, often referred to as King by most people ends up fighting some of their foot soldiers. With the help of a strange being named Torin, he now has the weapon to fight them and learned that he is brave enough to become part of a team called Kyoryuger!
I watched the first episode of this series for at least 4 times now and every rewatch I have made me discover some minor details that I failed to notice in my previous watching. To put it simple, the first episode is so darn good. For starters, the CGI dinosaurs in the opening sequence looked really realistic that they even incorporate the idea that dinosaurs actually have feathers in their bodies, something that as far as know, science has recognized right now.
After the extinction of the dinosaurs, we are then followed to a scene wherein we see humans being attacked by hordes of monsters in different parts of the globe in the present day thanks to the revival of the Deboss Legion. To be honest, I don't feel like this is some sort of a massive invasion scene. Granted, they showed us that the attack is in a global scale thanks to some key scenes highlighting every area in the globe, but I don't feel the sense of danger. The sense of danger that I am talking about is the one I felt when I watched the first episode of Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger. Though the first wave of Zangyack attack is focused on a single area, you can feel that this is one massive alien attack thanks to space fleet we saw in the opening shot.
Somewhere in the world, Daigo ends up fighting some of these monsters. If there is one thing I can say in this scene is that Daigo knows how to give a good first impression. I mean, the guy is not yet part of a Super Sentai team and he starts naming his attacks! What's more is I like his hot-blooded attitude, which I can't believe he has considering that the first role that I saw his actor played is one creepy Goth guy in a certain drama called "Ouran High School Host Club", which I review if I have the time.
Torin appears and gives him his Gaburevolver to defeat the monsters once and for all. One thing I observed in regards to Torin is that he likes to do snap his fingers and that his "hair" can sense danger. We are then introduced to Voltasaur* Gabutyra, which much to my surprise, doesn't talk! When I first read the info that the Kyoryuger will have dinosaur partners ala Abaranger and that this show will be light-hearted, I already expected that these dinosaurs will talk but nope, the only thing Gabutyra does is to do some grunt noises. Guess it is best to wait for the actual product to be out before judging it.
With Gabutyra's appearance, it has an initial liking on Daigo for his brave display earlier, we learned that there are other Voltasaurs and they were defeated by humans to become a Kyoryuger. To put it simply, Daigo is the only one left who hasn't defeated a Voltasaur. This is then followed with a scene featuring each Kyoryuger fighting monsters somewhere in the globe, which gave me a brief idea about their fight styles. Black is kinda stylish in fights, Blue likes to use his strength, Green prefers swords and Pink likes punches and kicks. With that in mind, Daigo is determined to become a Kyoryuger.
For one month, Daigo tries his best to defeat a dinosaur. The fight between Gabutyra and Daigo is seriously fun to watch. The fact that he is fighting a freakin' dinosaur for like a month is kinda realistic, I mean, you don't know how these creatures act in the first place. So it is basically Daigo just running away from it and trying to do various tactics just to defeat it, until finally, he defeated Gabutyra in the most outrageous way possible. For crying out loud, he let himself be devoured by it just to shoot it from the inside! It's ridiculously awesome that I like it!
Now that he defeated Gabutyra, what's next? Much to Daigo's surprise, the Gaburevolver didn't change like what Torin told him. It's still the same in terms of color. To put it simply, he is not yet a Kyoryuger. This is when we learned a couple of things about the new heroes and their arsenal. His teammates came from different parts of the globe and that they are assembled in Japan by Torin. Second is that Voltasaurs are powered by Beast Batteries, items that contain an extinct dinosaur's Dino Spirit.
The concept of Beast Batteries is really neat and it reminded me of Go-Onger's Engine Souls less the talking. What made it different from the Engine Souls is that Gabutyra still functioning without a Beast Battery. The only time they will incorporate the Beast Battery is during battle as it charges up the Voltasaur, making it stronger. Without it, he is basically your average dinosaur with no special abilities. Because he is desperate to become a Kyoryuger, he ends up clinging on Torin when he leaves, causing him to land on Japan in a family restaurant called Tiger Boy. What's funny about it is that the background of the "Tiger Boy" text is color yellow, an obvious reference to Zyuranger's Tiger Ranger Boi! I will get more into the retro stuff in this series later.
In the restaurant, we conveniently meet the other Kyoryugers and had a better idea about their personality. Because their names are not yet revealed in the series less the opening sequence, I will refer them to their color. Blue is the old man who is basically a handyman because he knows how to repair some stuff. Black is the playboy, Green is the serious one who studies about swords and Pink is the only chick who can kick your ass once you provoke her.
The first meeting of Daigo with his teammates that he is not yet aware that they are his teammates is quite interesting. To sum it all up, the four had this rather bad impression on Daigo in a sense that he calls himself King all of a sudden and wants them to call him that. As for Daigo, he just accepts the fact that they will not call him King. Oh well, at least he tried to make new friends. For some odd reason, he saw some marker with the Kyoryuger logo and ends up getting transported to the team's official base. But we will get into it later as I will talk about the villains.
The villains in this series is based on different emotions, with their de facto leader Chaos being based on all emotions with the three generals are based on sadness, anger and joy. What made their introduction more interesting is that Chaos is defrosting one of the commanders and that he doesn't know his name. In short, for one month, he is busy defrosting his commanders. It's interesting in a sense that after the "grand invasion" scene, maybe he thought that he is not enough to defeat four Kyoryugers. So for one month, he is assembling his generals for the grand battle.
The first monster of the week, the Debo Ice Age is a creature that basically killed the dinosaurs. Well he is one interesting first opponent for the series, have the guy who killed the dinosaurs to fight the heroes in their first episode. We all know how this will turn out at the end, but what the heck; it will be interesting how they can beat this guy up! Did I mention that he is the "strongest" monster that Master Deboss created? So who is this Master Deboss? He is basically, their bigger bad in the series and he is currently in a slumber.
Back to Daigo, we saw more of the Beast Batteries being charged. What's interesting is that the battery racks are color coded, spoiling us earlier in the series that we will have a KyoryuGold thanks to the #6 gold battery rack. Another thing worth mentioning is that there are 5 racks for the #11 Beast Battery and that there is a single battery per rack. In addition, the batteries from #12-#23 only have a single Battery in the rack. Lastly, the batteries from #7-#10 have no batteries in it; is it me, or we will have new Kyoryugers in the future?
Minor stuff aside, we learned a bit of Daigo's past, that his father is a traveler and traveled the world with his son and left a memento before he disappeared. This caused me to become intrigued with his father, who is he and why did he disappear all of a sudden and leave the young Daigo behind? What's his purpose of leaving his son alone? But hey, look how it turned out, his son is quite hot-blooded and with that, I don't mind if we will not see him for most of the time. Torin then detects the presence of Gabutyra fighting Deboss alone, because of his bravery, he entrusted Daigo to fight Deboss before giving him his new jacket.
The giant fight in this scene is quite impressive. Aside from the formation of two giant monsters courtesy of the foot soldiers combining, the minor stuff in it such as the slime made it look creepy and at the same time, cool. The use of having a suit actor to wear a dinosaur costume in this scene made the series look really realistic, but because Gabutyra is not charged up for battle, the Debo Ice Age just freezes Gabutyra. Thankfully, Daigo arrives just in time to fight the Deboss Legion. This is when we learned the reason why Gabutyra hasn't "recognized" Daigo yet.
I like the exchange between Daigo and Gabutyra, even though Gabutyra did is do some grunt noises, Daigo understands his feelings. He doesn't want him to charge in battle. This concern on a human is what made Gabutyra quite admirable. But at the end, Daigo pointed out that he is the first person who defeated him, causing him to recognize his skill in battle and finally, acknowledging him to become a Kyoryuger. The Gaburevolver changed color and after receiving four Beast Batteries from Torin, it is time to transform into KyoryuRed!
The transformation sequence is kinda... interesting. I mean, doing a short samba dance to transform is kinda cool but it kinda ruins a moment, especially if our heroes are in some serious situation and they need to transform. I can't imagine how they will pull this off without losing the seriousness of the scene. Another thing that I like about the transformation scene is that it is in real time, something that Go-Busters started doing in a regular basis, and if the first episode is an indication, they will do a lot of real time transformation scenes and if there is one thing I learned from Go-Busters is that they might use some stock footage just in case they will do fillers or if they ran out of budget.
Daigo's first fight as KyoryuRed is seriously amazing. I mean, he was able to beat a horde of monsters with ease, and what's surprising is that he was able to defeat one of the giant monsters without using a finishing move! That alone is quite impressive and justified the fact that our heroes are supposed to be ridiculously strong! Daigo justified it by showing us how he can do it. As for Gabutyra, now that he is charged up, we saw how powerful he is in battle. The way the cameras are positioned made it look like I am watching a scene that came straight from a monster movie.
Before KyoryuRed can finish Debo Ice Age, the rest of the Kyoryugers arrived just in time and thus begins their team roll call. For two Super Sentai shows, the roll calls are too short, which is understandable considering that the Gokaigers are pirates who doesn't give a crap about Super Sentai that much while the Go-Busters are a special ops unit, which means they need to finish the job as fast as possible. With the Kyoryugers, they are the "warriors of the strong lizards", which means they can do whatever crap they want when it comes to introductions. To put it simply, it's the return of the long individual roll calls.
The roll call scene is really well done, though it lacks explosions but hey, at least we have this cool jungle background with their partner Voltasaur in their side. Their individual titles basically tell us their fight styles and their preferred choice of weapon. The individual fights of each Kyoryuger are really great. Black's attitude in battle is really cool, Blue being quite bumbling and even mutters how the heck he can insert X to Y is fun to watch. Green's swordplay is really great and showed us how disciplined he is as a fighter as for Pink, she is one fun female warrior to watch as her fight style is kinda varied depending on the situation.
Watching these fights for at least 4 times now made me notice that overuse of explosions. I know the chief director of this series is Koichi Sakamoto so it is kinda expected but I can't help but notice that in Black's fight scene, there are random explosions in his back! I mean, the foot soldiers didn't shoot any lasers or something! Also the close-ups every time there is an explosion felt like I am watching some of Koichi Sakamoto's earlier director work in Power Rangers.
Back to Gabutyra, I just love how he defeated one of the giant monsters, I mean seriously, he just jumped on the guy and spin on his head with his sharp mouth! Also, don't get me started with his landing. It's so realistic that I am worried with the ones living beside the spot where Gabutyra jumped! Back to KyoryuRed, it is time to finish the Debo Ice Age but to do that, he needs Gabutyra's help and boy that was one heck of a finisher! It's so cool that it is hard to find the perfect words to explain what I feel about it!
Now that we are done with the monster of the week, KyoryuRed suggests that they should do some introductions. Much to my surprise, his teammates want to keep this hero business in a professional manner. By professional manner, they do not want others to discover their secret identities so that they can have their normal and private lives. It's one of those rare ideas that Super Sentai rarely does, a team of heroes who only assemble if it is needed. They don't meet until it is time to fight the bad guys. I like it and hopefully, they will not drop this concept of heroes having ordinary lives after 2 or 3 episodes.
But for Daigo aka KyoryuRed, he just introduced himself in front of his teammates! Much to their surprise, their "leader" is that idiot in the family restaurant! Guess this show is off with a good start. Because the first episode has too much focus on Daigo, I will reserve my in-depth thoughts about the other Kyoryugers in another episode review.
Now for the specifics, one thing that surprised me in the first episode of this show is the return of some of the elements I missed in Super Sentai, the name labels that appeared at the screen once they will introduce a new character or mecha. Go-Busters did it for the Buster Machines and that's about it. Kyoryuger basically revived it in its white text with black outline glory. To continue to modern retro feel in this series, they returned the eye catches, something that Gokaiger dropped and Go-Busters continued it. I was expecting that I will not see it and boy, I was quite surprised with its return!
More on the retro Super Sentai stuff, it feels like I am watching an old Super Sentai series just filmed in HD with some new effects. If there is one thing that I liked about Go-Busters is that it feels like an 80's Super Sentai series when it comes to the fights and some of its elements such as the machines and the science stuff. If Go-Busters represent the 80's, then Kyoryuger represents the 90's with some elements of the zany 70's. For starters, they have a Pink hero with an English name and a Japanese family name, the opening invasion scene and lastly, the zany fantasy elements of the 90's.
The opening and ending themes are catchy and that the ending theme basically spoiled that we will have a KyoryuGold. So yeah, final thoughts about the first episode, it's great way to open the series. The fights are great and that the return of the use of manual effects with a dash of CGI in some scenes is something the show continued from Go-Busters and I like that they keep it. Hopefully, they will continue with the use of the models till the very end. Lastly, Daigo is one engaging Red and I can't wait on what crazy stunt he will pull off next!
* Zyuden literally means Electro Beast, Zyudenryu literally means Electro Beast Dragon. Over-Time translated both terms as Voltasaur, which basically conveys the meaning of both Japanese made-up words. I will use Voltasaur in all of my Kyoryuger related posts from now on.
