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This year marks a glorious year for tokusatsu fans out there. Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger celebrates the 35th of Super Sentai and to celebrate 30 years of Metal Heroes, Toei decided to celebrate it with a bang starting off with the 199 Super Hero Taisen featuring all Super Sentai from past to present shown last year and opening up the year was what we have today for review: Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger vs. Uchuu Keiji Gavan.Â
Foregoing the traditional annual team-up, this year’s crossover movie was between current Super Sentai and the first ever Metal Hero, Gavan. For those not familiar, Metal Heroes like Gavan were shown during the early 80s alongside Super Sentai and Ultraman amongst others. Gavan was the first amongst many Metal Heroes that follow in his footsteps as his subordinates notably Sharivan and Shaider.
PLOT:
The film opens up with the Gokai Galleon being pursued by an unknown ship and is ultimately brought down and the Gokaigers captured afterwards except for Gai who was elsewhere buying groceries. The pursuer is revealed to be the legendary space sheriff Gavan who then proceeds to hand over the pirates to the space police for immediate punishment on charges of piracy. Just before execution Gavan reveals his true intent and the high commander is unveiled to be an imposter and a member of Zangyack.
The villain reveals himself as Ashuurada, descendant of Don Horror who was the leader of Crime Syndicate Makuu which fell by the hands of Gavan. Ashuurada reveals Gavan Bootleg, a robotic clone of Gavan and they start to battle. Gavan is defeated and is taken prisoner in the Makuu Dimension. The Gokaiger follows after a tip from Basco and they free Gavan from the impregnable Makuu Prison. The Gokaiger demolish the prison before going back to Earth where Ashuurada follows and the final battle ensues.
Gavan takes on Bootleg Gavan while the Gokaiger combat Ashuurada and the Zangyack troops. The heroes claim victory but their celebration ended abruptly when Ashuurada grows in power and becomes a giant. The heroes end Ashuurada’s rampage in a joint effort and rid the Earth of another villain. The film concludes with Gavan admiring Marvelous’ growth and the team introducing themselves to Gavan. Credits roll while DenjiBlue, Battle Kenya and Gavan transform.
The film opens with the Gokai Galleon being pursued by an unknown ship. The Gokaigers exchanged fire with the ship and right when they thought they won, a dragon appears amongst the smoke which brings down the Galleon. Captain Marvelous descends and confronts the pursuer. A being clad in armor is beamed down the pursuing ship and reveals himself to be Space Sheriff Gavan. The Gokaiger attack Gavan and are ultimately handed their asses and captured on charges of piracy to which Ahim vehemently argues that they were already cleared by the Space Police Dekaranger of said charges.
Nonetheless, they were still taken captive except for Gai who was out for some groceries. Gavan delivers the captive pirates to the High Commander of the Space Police: Weevil. The High Commander immediately ordered the execution of the pirates to which Gavan asks why. Weevil nonchalantly answers that it is the will of Zangyack to which Gavan exclaims discontent. Gavan frees the Gokaiger and reveals his mission of revealing Weevil being an impostor using the role of High Commander to perform Zangyack’s bidding. The impostor reveals himself to be Ashuurada of Zangyack and unveils his ally, Bootleg Gavan. A stupidly named replica of the space sheriff. They engage in combat alongside the Gokaigers in which Gavan lost and was taken prisoner. The Gokaigers escape with the help of Gai in the GojyuuDrill.
Before the battle, Gavan signaled to the Gokaiger to which Marvelous recalled a scene from his past. As a boy he was saved from an exploding freighter by a man who did the same signal. Back in the Galleon, Marvelous reveals more about this event and shares to the other crew that Gavan saved him when he was a child. During all this, Ashuurada reports to the Zangyack Emperor inside the Gigant Horse and tells them Emperor his origin and plan. It is revealed that he is a descendant of the Makuu Space Crime Syndicate’s leader Don Horror who fell by Gavan’s blade and his organization and the Makuu dimension sealed. Basco tips the Gokaiger about this info and the existence of the Makuu Prison inside the evil dimension where Gavan is being held captive. Marvelous asks Akebono Shirou and Oume Daigorou (who bear a strikingly similar resemblance to Gavan), Battle Kenya and DenjiBlue respectively, how to access the Makuu dimension and they tell him that their Ranger Keys can open a portal to the dimension.
Marvelous set out alone but Ahim pops out of nowhere with the crew in tow after which Joe and Don use their respectively colored keys (DenjiBlue, BattleKenya) to open up the portal. They sneak into the prison and makes their way to the holding cell/fanservice area where they meet characters from past sentais including Kegaleshiathe former JAV idol and the other Gaiark ministers from Go-onger, Kaze no Shizuka from Hurricanger and her lovely photobook, Baethe kaijin-lover from Gekiranger, Yatsudewani the pervert croc from Abarangers and a couple more characters but the one topping all of those is the infamous motherlover, Jealoushitto.
Yatsudewani is supposed to be the president of a company. Bae was last seen in the Go-onger team-up movie. Kegaleshia and the other ministers are dead (hence the white triangle n their heads).
The prisoners ask the pirates to set them free when a Goumin patrol walks and sounds the alarm sending a large wave of Goumin troopers attacking. During this battle, Basco happily strolls towards the Galleon intending to steal it alongside the greatest treasure in the universe but he is stopped by the new Super Sentai, the Gobusters. The Gobuster team easily shuts Basco up and his companion, with the pair of Basco and Sally walking off to avoid further confrontation. Back in the prison, Joe and Gai stay behind the holding cells while the crew proceeded to deal with the next level-boss, a sibling of a previously defeated kaijin. Doc stayed behind alongside a reluctant Luka to deal with this threat whilst Ahim and Marvelous continue onwards. The latter pair deal with several more kaijins until Marvelous spots the last door leaving Ahim. Marvelous confronts Ashuurada as he sends Bootleg Gavan after him. Marvelous and Bootleg Gavan duke it out with Marvelous freeing Gavan in the scramble by ricocheting bullets of his and Bootleg Gavan’s saber. Gavan leaps onto Marvelous’ open arms. Ashuurada makes sure no unmanly moment occurs in front of him and spoils the moment for the pair to which Marvelous responds by shooting the floor. The other Gokaiger telepathically performs the same floor-shooting action and they all jump to the basement from which they made their entrance in, Gavan in tow.
In true action film fashion, the Gokaiger demolishes the prison and escapes back to Earth. Ashuurada gives chase with Bootleg Gavan and a shipload of Goumin in tow.The climactic battle ensues with both teams transforming and respectively getting a time-demo of their henshin sequences. Gavan pits himself against Bootleg Gavan while the Gokaiger deal with the Zangyack threat. Gavan takes his time flashily murdering Bootleg Gavan after delivering his finishing blow. Everything wasn’t so peachy on the Gokaiger fight with Ashuurada as they battle his many, many arms. The pirates feign weakness and assault the unsuspecting dog-faced villain using a flurry of all-pink, -white and –red transformations to ultimately finish him off with a Final Wave Scramble.
Enjoying a short moment of victory, the Gokaiger and Gavan are confronted by a revived Ashuurada now in giant form. They summon their respective mechas and the Gokaiger form Gojyuu Gokai-oh while Gavan advances with his mechanical dragon, Doru. Ashuurada initially gives them a hard time manipulating the Makuu energy and immobilizes the Gokaiger when Machalcon arrives and combines with Gojyuu Gokai-oh to form Kanzen Gokai-oh. The pirate mecha breaks free and rides Doru while Ashuurada intercepts them with his shoulder weapons but to no avail. Gavan calls forth Marvelous to deliver the finishing blow, decimating Ashuurada with a Gavan Marvelous Dynamic along with the Kanzen Gokai-oh.
Gavan mentions how Marvelous has grown and the team are seen happily conversing with Gavan when Shirou and Daigorou arrive. A moment of lulz follows when a mysterious voice asks the three to henshin into their respective characters sending Gai into a fanboy frenzy.
Overall the plot is nothing more than just pure fan-service. It gets exciting from time to time but does nothing but provide nostalgia to the grown viewer. Much of the younger audience will have varied reception to Gavan as he’s really not that known anymore but considering that this is a commemorative movie, Toei has managed to provided parents and children a nice film to both share their interest with.
There are plenty of holes in the overall plot like the prisoners in the Makuu Dimension and so on so forth but these things are best taken as fan service and non-canon. I appreciate Toei towing back Nao Oikawa and the others even though they really could’ve exploited the scene further.
The movie had plenty of opportunities to have made a better impact on the audience with its plentiful cast but decided to go with number rather than quality. Still, its nice to have things like this to bring back memories of the past and as a fan of Gavan, locally known as Sky Ranger, I am very happy to see him back in action.
VISUAL AND AUDIO:
Typical of recent Super Sentai films have been the usage of 3D mechas, with this movie still fitting the mold having Doru which was formerly prop-animated now rendered in full 3D. Contrary to other attempts at 3D depiction, Doru was poorly rendered and the bright colors gave it a pre-2000 CGI look. The Crysis Fortress in the Kamen Rider Movie War was excellently rendered leaving me wondering how come Toei did not invest in this grand occasion. Also disappointing was the amount of pyro used in this film compared to other previous efforts with the film relying heavily on CG lighting and studio effects.
Equally so was the lack of new music material, with the original recording of the Gavan samples used all throughout the film interspersed with Gokaiger material. We wonder how come the Kamen Rider department can afford to have Gackt sing numerous times but the Sentai team not even have a reprisal of Akira Kushida nor Kageyama Hironobu for a newer theme. Sad to say the only redeeming quality here is again, the nostalgia factor that the Gavan theme provides with the entire visual and audio presentation totally failing to drive up excitement even to children.
CONCLUSION:
All in all, its hard to critique what many would claim to be a children’s show but after all, parents for these things and its all just a big marketing gig. Irregardless, Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger vs. Space Sheriff Gavan: The Movie was a pleasing flick worthy of a watch for tokusatsu fans. Anyone who grew up watching metal heroes like Gavan and Shaider alongside Maskman and Bioman should consider giving the movie a try.
If could’ve been more exciting but we expect more from Toei in the upcoming Super Hero Taisen: Kamen Rider X Super Sentai.
The DVD and Blu-ray comes in two variants: a normal and a collector’s edition. The collector edition features bonus material such as behind the scenes and cast discussions. The film is in HD and has 5.1ch audio. Language is in Japanese of course.
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 Kenji Ohba is the excessively manry alternate universe version of George Takei.