Super Sentai - Series Overview

Series Overview

In every Super Sentai television series, the fight between good and evil is illustrated. The protagonists consist of a team of at least five (in some cases fewer) people who gain superpowers (magical or technological), wear color coded uniforms, and use advanced weapons and martial arts skills to battle an antagonist group of evil beings threatening to take over the Earth. In most of the episodes, the team confronts and defeats an army of enemy soldiers and the "monster of the week", to thwart the antagonists plans, and in one last effort to defeat the heroes, an enlarged version of the monster appears to confront them, just to be defeated again when they call for huge robotic vehicles/animals ("mecha") that can combine to form one giant robot to fight it. Sentai Series with the giant robot element are specifically known as Super Sentai. While each Sentai Series is set in its own reality, a number of TV, video and film specials feature a teaming up between one or more Sentai including the current team.

The first Sentai Series, Himitsu Sentai Gorenger, was created by Shotaro Ishinomori, creator of Kamen Rider and Cyborg 009 in 1975. He did not create any further Sentai Series after his second, J.A.K.Q. Dengekitai, was not received well. These two series were not a part of the Super Sentai Series until 1994 when Toei decided to include them with the series that followed. Following J.A.K.Q., Toei chose to work with Marvel Comics to produce the live action adaptation of Spider-Man (1978), which included the first giant robot in a Toei Superhero show. This concept was used in Toei and Marvel's project Battle Fever J (1979) and was deemed the first Super Sentai Series. The following production of Denshi Sentai Denziman was the first production solely by Toei and written by "Saburo Yatsude".

The term sentai is also occasionally used to describe shows with similar premises, such as Voltron, or even the magical girl team in Sailor Moon, as Naoko Takeuchi deliberately used Sentai ideas. In 2003, Sailor Moon was retold in a fashion somewhat similar to Super Sentai Series shows in the form of Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon.