Samurai Sentai Shinkenger Pilot – Not Your Average Sentai Series

I am no sentai fan. The sentai series I’ve watched are merely a handful and mostly old school like Bioman, Maskman, Jetman, Fiveman and Turboranger (mainly because they’re aired in our local TV channels). I have sporadically watched Magiranger, Gekiranger and Go-onger enough to know the story and to establish my thoughts towards the series but not enough to give conclusive and informative review of the series. So, you can say that I have next to no knowledge of sentai jargon and aesthetics. Please take this review with a grain of salt and take into consideration that I’m no expert at this genre.

Samurai Sentai Shinkenger is the first sentai series that I have actually flailed and obsessed about. I admit, I’m biased towards the series because it stars Aiba Hiroki, one of my favorite actors. It also appealed to me because the ‘samurai’ concept sounds new to me. I think ninjas have been done before, but not samurais. Still, I was planning to drop it from my watch list if I don’t like it, since my watching schedule’s already pretty crowded. I guess it is a good thing (or bad for my watch schedule) that Shinkenger is spurting with traditional yet novel ideas that are quite different from the older series (Gekiranger, Go-onger, and the likes).

From here on will contain spoilers to the series, so consider yourself warned. There will also be considerable Shinken-lingo, but most of them will be explained.