Denji Sentai Megaranger

Denji Sentai Megaranger (Electromagnetic Squadron Megaranger) is the twenty-first installment in the Super Sentai series, running from 1997 to 1998. Adapted in the US as Power Rangers in Space.

Kenta Date is a high-school underachiever who enjoys two things: eating yakiniku and playing the "Megaranger" arcade video game. One day, a couple of recruiters show up. It turns out that the Megaranger game is just a simulation intended to recruit people to become actual Megarangers. Kenta is the first person to be good enough at the game to be recruited. While The Mentor Dr. Kubota tries to talk Kenta into accepting, the Earth is invaded by Nejiregia, invaders from the Twisted Dimension. Due to the emergency, the Megaranger gear is given to Kenta and four of his classmates who happened to be in the area. And the battle begins...

The heroes and their gear are themed after different pieces of digital technology. Manages to avoid being too Totally Radical given the show was made when computers were first becoming mainstream, but technology still marches on.

The Heroes (I.N.E.T. [International Network of Excel-Science and Technology]):

• Kenta Date / Mega Red: The Hero. Comes off as an Idiot Hero, but he's really Obfuscating Stupidity out of laziness. He's not the official leader, but he takes point because he's the Red, and that's just the way things are done in Sentai.
• Kouichirou Endou / Mega Black: The Big Guy. The complete opposite of Kenta, as he is an overachiever who treats everything as Serious Business. He's the official leader, but most people forget this since he's not Red, or simply like to think Red as the leader anyways.
• Shun Namiki / Mega Blue: The Smart Lancer and computer graphics artist. Aloof at first, but he gets better.
• Chisato Jogasaki / Mega Yellow: The Heart and aspiring (digital) photographer. She's basically a milder version of Kouichirou.
• Miku Imamura / Mega Pink: A bumbling and gluttonous female version of Kenta. She comes off as The Ditz, but like Kenta, she's also Obfuscating Stupidity.
• Yuusaku Hayakawa / Mega Silver: Sixth Ranger. His powers have a Weaksauce Weakness time limit at first.
• Dr. Eikichi Kubota: The Mentor.

The Villains (The Wicked Electric Kingdom Nezirejia):

• Evil Electro-King Javious I: The Big Bad. Because he's just an eye in a wall, he's more like The Man Behind the Curtain, and the other villains know this.
• Dr. Hinelar: Evil Genius In Chief. The de facto leader of Nejiregia, since the official leader is just an eye in a wall. Hinelar knows this.
• Nezirejia Mobile Commander Yugande: The Dragon and Worthy Opponent to the Megarangers. He forms a rivalry with Mega Red after he succeeds in besting him in their first fight.
• Shibolena: Dark Chick. In love with Yugande. Eventually revealed to be... the Cyborg version of Hinelar's deceased daughter, Shizuka
• Bibidebi: Evil Team Pet. Responsible for making the Monsters Of The Week grow giant by biting them and infecting them with a gigantifiction virus.
• Guirail: Evil Sixth Ranger and The Starscream. Introduced as a second Dragon, but has no loyalty to anyone or anything but Javious. His motto is to "win at any cost", which means some pretty underhanded and sadistic methods, like using children as shields or mass poisoning. This results in him getting into an Enemy Civil War with the honorable Yugande. He eventually earns the ire of Hinelar and Shibolena this way.

• The Jaden Sentai Neziranger: The Psycho Rangers.
  • Nezi Red: Big Bad and another Dragon to Hinelar.
  • Nezi Black: The Dragon
  • Nezi Blue: The Brute
  • Nezi Yellow: Evil Genius
  • Nezi Pink: Dark Chick
    • Nezi Silver: Sixth Ranger (Actually a costume worn by Mega Silver.)

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Recurring 'Super Sentai tropes:

• All Your Powers Combined: The Multi-Attack Rifle. In a subversion, it is formed from all but Kenta's weapon, which can be formed into a gun mode. However, it is still somewhat played true since both weapons are usually fired at the same time.
• Brought to You by The Letter "S": "M" is for Megaranger
• By the Power of Grayskull: "Install! Megaranger!
  • Yuusaku has "Keitaizer! Install!", named from his Transformation Trinket.
• Calling Your Attacks: Of course! It is a Super Sentai series.
• Cool Bike: Mega Silver's Auto Slider, which can transform into a Hover Board much like the Cyber Sliders rode by the main team.
• Crossover: Megaranger vs. Carranger, where the Megarangers get the exclusive Megatector armors.
• Finishing Move: We have a plethora of these, particularly used by the fusion mechas. Examples include the Galaxy Mega's Mega Flying Cutter, the Super Galaxy Mega's Super Galaxy Knuckle, and the Mega Voyager's Voyager Spartan.
• Five-Man Band... or six, counting that this is Super Sentai.
  • The Hero: Kenta
  • The Big Guy: Kouichirou
  • The Smart Lancer: Shun
  • The Heart: Chisato
  • Kid Appeal Chick: Miku
  • Sixth Ranger: Yuusaku
• Home Base: I.N.E.T. Base. It also serves as their first mecha, Galaxy Mega.
• Humongous Mecha: After six straight shows that started with five-piece combinations, the Galaxy Mega was the first main robot since the Five Robo that was combined from less than five mechas. In fact, the Galaxy Mega is the first main robot since the Bio Robo that is formed from only two mechas. This was later remedied with the introduction of the Mega Voyager, in addition to support robots for both.
  • A Mech by Any Other Name: The Voyager Machines, the components of the Mega Voyager.
  • Combining Mecha:
    • Mega Ship + Mega Shuttle = Galaxy Mega
    • Ro Voyager 1 + Shuttle Voyager 2 + Rocket Voyager 3 + Saucer Voyager 4 + Tank Voyager 5 = Mega Voyager
  • Transforming Mecha:
    • Delta Mega, which has a shuttle mode
    • Mega Winger, Mega Silver's mecha, has three modes (fighter, tank and jet).
  • Mecha Expansion Pack
    • Galaxy Mega + Delta Mega = Super Galaxy Mega
    • Mega Winger doesn't actually combine with anything, but it can lend its Mega Wing attachment to the Mega Voyager, allowing it to become the Wing Mega Voyager.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: All episodes use excited episode titles.
• In the Name of the Moon: All shout their respective names, followed by Denji Sentai! Megaranger!
• Law of Chromatic Superiority: Kenta is initially the only one with the Battle Riser, which allows, amongst other things, the formation of Super Galaxy Mega. We're also told his computer-symbol allows him to program any skill into himself.
• Make My Monster Grow: Bibidebi's only reason for living. When a monster is beaten, he beams down and bites them with a growth virus.
• Monster of the Week: The animal-like Nezire Beasts, later upgraded into the more robotic - and dangerous - Psycho-Nezilars.
• Mooks: The Kunekunes.
  • King Mook: The Monster of the Week in one episode was Boss Kunekune, identical to the other Mooks except for a black head and Psychic Powers. His idea of Make My Monster Grow was having his flunkies pile on top of him, forming a giant mass of Kunekune the Rangers had to call in their mecha to deal with.
• "On the Next Episode of..." Catchphrase
• Regular Caller
• Super Mode: Miku gets one for an episode. Yugande gets one in the penultimate. The entire team gets the Megatector armor in Megaranger vs Carranger.
• Supervillain Lair: Grand Neziros, which is also a transforming base.
• Theme Music Power-Up
• Title Scream
• Transformation Name Announcement: "Electronic Combination! Complete! Galaxy Mega!
  • "Delta Mega! Install!"
  • "Advanced Electronic Combination! Complete Super Galaxy Mega!"
  • "Galactic Combination! Complete! Mega Voyager!"
  • "Blitzkrieg Transformation! Mega Winger! Ready Go!"
• Transformation Trinket: A trope applying to all Super Sentai, but notable here in that Yuusaku's Transformation Trinket is the very first use of a cell phone as such in Super Sentai, which has since become ubiquitous to the point of absurdity. Justified here given that the show's entire theme is digital technology; later shows completely lack any justification.
  • No justification except that cell phones are rapidly approaching ubiquity in real life, thus making a cell phone-shaped morpher extremely easy to hide or carry.
  • They are ubiquitous now (one of several things the show got right), but as a Transformation Trinket they would be somewhat more difficult to use mid-battle than a bracelet, with maybe only Boukenger showing otherwise.
• Two Girls to a Team: The seventh Yellow and Pink duo and the third one in a row. This was the last Sentai team with two female rangers at the same time for the next six years.
• Weapon of Choice:
  • Bifurcated Weapon: The Mega Snipers
  • Super Wrist Gadget: The Battle Riser.
  • Kenta: Drill Saber
  • Kouichirou: Mega Rod
  • Shun: Mega Tomahawk
  • Chisato: Mega Sling
  • Miku: Mega Capture
  • Yuusaku: Silver Blazer

Tropes specific to Denji Sentai Megaranger:

• Acting for Two: Actually three. Asami Jo portrayed three character. Shizuka, Shibolena and Hizumina. All of whom are Replacement Goldfishes to each other.
• Arm Cannon: Delta Mega has gatling guns (actually, Gatling Blasters) on each arm.
• Avenging the Villains: Doctor Hinelar's motivation following Yugande and Shibolena's deaths. This also becomes Hizumina's motivation after Hinelar is gone..
• Badass Bookworm: Yuusaku. Designs mecha by day, beats down mooks barehanded and untransformed ...er, also by day. It helps that he works out.
• Catch Phrase: "Game Over!" and variations of the phrase (like "It's Game Over for you!"), said before destroying the Monster of the Week with Galaxy Mega or Super Galaxy Mega. Dropped when they switch to Mega Voyager.
• Cool Old Guy/Older Sidekick: Mega Silver may be the Sixth Ranger, but Yuusaku Hayakawa (age 25) is this to the rangers.
• Compressed Hair: Shibolena makes you wonder where the actress hides her hair.
• Cool Sword: In a sense. The Galaxy Mega has the second-highest number of sword finishers in Sentai history, losing only to the semi-sentient Bio Robo.
• Dancing Theme: The second ending teme, "Bomb Dancing Megaranger."
• Egg McGuffin: Komutan.
• Elemental Powers: The Neziranger's true forms each have one:
  • Playing with Fire: Nezi Red/Nezi Phantom
  • Dishing Out Dirt: Nezi Black/Nezi Vulgar
  • An Ice Person: Nezi Blue/Nezi Bizarre
  • Spider People: Nezi Yellow/Nezi Sophia
  • Green Thumb: Nezi Pink/Nezi Jealous
• Elite Mook: Boss Kunekune, a Monster of the Week.
• Enemy Civil War: Guirail and Yugande clash over Guirail's underhanded tactics vs. Yugande's more honorable methods. It hits the fan when Guirail severely injures Yugande by using him as a Human Shield against the Super Galaxy Mega's Super Galaxy Knuckle finisher. Hinelar then decides to end it by offering Guirail a power-up that's really Psycho Serum that turns Guirail into a mindless One-Winged Angel. Guirail is soon the first to be killed by the Megarangers' Mid-Season Upgrade mecha, Mega Voyager.
• Giant Mook: King Kunekune, which is Boss Kunekune surrounded by a "body" of Kunekunes.
• Girlish Pigtails: Miku. Surprisingly, she lost it when she reappears in Gaoranger vs. Super Sentai
• Gratuitous English: The opening (and the transformation sequence) gives us this garbled mess.
  • Tighten up reality gangster / Stigma through idiot hearing / Keep frustration clear / Patience open ahead / Getting away with it lead / Some distant memory drove / Get the message / Indiscipline all remains / Wish double editorials cover / Under stress new canoe / Primal tribal / [a final line which is obscured by the main text of "MEGA [insert color here] OK"].
• Hair Antennae: A robotic version instead. Shibolena bestows one on her helmet.
• High School: All the Megarangers except Yuusaku are high-school students.
• Home Base: Subverted hard - Nejirejia destroys INET's Earth base very early on, so for most of the show Megaranger's 120-man strong support team is based aboard the Mega Ship. They're in there during battles as well.
• Hypocritical Humor: With a Freudian Slip to match.

Kenta *seeing Miku eating a lot*: Miku, did you just get fatter? Miku: (Beat) ...fat? Shun: Kenta, you shouldn't bemean a woman's heart with words like that! Miku: Shun, did I get fatter? Shun: Yep - I mean, just a little!

• Idiot Hero: Megaranger began this trope in Super Sentai. It's now used at least every other series, but Megaranger is one of the only ones to actually justify it with Obfuscating Stupidity.
• Mid-Season Upgrade: Mega Voyager for the heroes, Yugande's repaired form and the switch to cyborg Monsters Of The Week for the villains.
• Mr. Fanservice: Yuusaku.
• Ms. Fanservice: All main female characters.
• Nice Hat: Because of the way the Mega Shuttle combines with the Mega Ship, it looks like Galaxy Mega is wearing a nice shuttle-shaped hat. Behold.
• Noblewoman's Laugh: A frequent trait of Shibolena.
• Official Couple: Shun/Miku and Kouichirou/Chisato are both heavily implied. Even Yugande/Shibolena qualify as this.
• Panty Shot: Miku has a famous one in episode 50.
  • Shibolena's can be seen a lot. This is actually lampshaded by Yuusaku in Episode 36: after being captured by Condor Nezilar, he is tied down and Shibolena stands over him at one point. This exchange follows:

Shibolena: Mega Silver... you look good from up here. Yuusaku: (looks up her legs) ...and you don't look so bad from down here. Shibolena: Really? Well, this is the last thing you'll ever see. (raises her rapier)

• Parental Abandonment: Dr. Hinelar is Shibolena's father, but her mother never appears.
• Pac-Man Fever: Inverted; the Megaranger game at the beginning of the show had photo-realistic graphics (at least for the characters; there's not much in the way of backgrounds) due to it being actors in suits.
• Product Placement: In the first episode, if you look hard enough when Kenta is playing the Megaranger arcade, you'll see there's an X-Men vs. Street Fighter machine behind him.
• The Psycho Rangers: The US adaptation of the Neziranger team is the Trope Namer.
• Replacement Goldfish: Shibolena is actually a robot modeled after Dr. Hinelar's dead daughter, Shizuka.
  • Hizumina is a replacement of Shibolena.
• Rocket Punch: Super Galaxy Mega's finishing blow, the Super Galaxy Knuckle.
• Secret Identity: As they're just high schoolers, the Megarangers keep their identities as secret as possible - a point hammered home by the Nezirangers attacking users of a popular wireless 'net access device, just because it made the same sound as their Transformation Trinket. Yuusaku, on the other hand, has no such reservations, and frequently doesn't bother. Then again, near the end of the series, Dr. Hinelar does find out who the Rangers are, and sends a monster to attack them at school, leading to them being ostracized and having to live in an old warehouse.
• Sky Surfing: The Megarangers ride around on hoverboards called the Cyber Sliders. Mega Silver has a modified version, the Auto Slider, that also transforms into a Cool Bike.
• Spiritual Successor: To Denshi Sentai Denziman. The series' share, among other things, the light-up foreheads of the ranger's helms and the hideous, twisted, asymmetrical look of the monsters.
• Something About a Rose: One Nezire Beast was based on a rose (hence her name, Rose Nezire), and she turned people into plant people. Turning Chisato's best friend into a plant person and laughing about it in her face is not a good idea, as Shibolena found out first hand.
• Super Prototype: The Mega Silver suit, customized and fitted for actual battle, and noticeably more powerful than the Megaranger suits. Naturally, it has a 2.5 minute time limit. Becomes more of an Ace Custom later on, after Yuusaku removes the time limit, accompanied by a slight drop in power.
• Taken for Granite: Anglerfish Nezire had this power.
• Taking the Bullet: After Yugande's power is reduced and he is about to be killed by Mega Red's Drill Saber, Shibolena runs in to take the damage instead, and is mortally wounded. It's a Senseless Sacrifice, however. Yugande blindly attacks Mega Red and is then slain. Shibolena dies soon after.
• Tank Goodness: The Digitank, the first Sentai tank (that isn't just a form or component of a mecha) since the Jack Tank in JAKQ Dengekitai.
• Tech Marches On: Surprisingly averted; the writers predicted the rise of digital technology. For example, Chisato was a photographer who specialized in using digital cameras. In 1997.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: The Nezirangers get along at first... but their "The Only One Allowed To Defeat You" personalities toward the Megaranger they were programmed to defeat later make them not want to, even though it's in their best interest to do so.
• Tempting Fate: After Miku screws up for the umpteenth time...

Chisato: Oh, great. Now we just need a Nezirejia attack to complete the day! *Digitizers ring* The Whole Team: *sigh...*

• Theme Naming
  • The surnames of the five main Megarangers (Date, Endou, Namiki, Jogasaki and Imamura) form the word "DENJI".
  • Keeping with their "twisted" theme, the monstrous residents of Nejiregia (including the dimension of Nejiregia itself) is named after either the Japanese word for "to twist" or a synonym.
• Theme Tune Cameo: Kenta hums the shows theme song while riding his bike in episode 24.
• Villain Song: Shibolena has "The Blue Devil's Smile", and Bibidebi has "Bibi! Bibidebi da Debi".
• Villainous Breakdown: Nezi Blue is particularly fixated on attacking his counterpart. When five Mega Blues and Nezi Silver show up, he attacks his own teammates to get at them. He really loses his mind when he goes One-Winged Angel, however, transforming into Nezi Bizarre.
• Wake Up, Go to School, Save the World. Hell-OOOOOOOO!
• Weaksauce Weakness: Yuusaku can only stay as Mega Silver for 2.5 minutes at a time at first, but he later fixes it, at the cost of reducing Mega Silver's overall strength by a small, but sizeable amount..
• The Worf Barrage: When fighting a losing battle against Mad Guirail, the Super Galaxy Mega is given a new finisher: the Big Bang Attack. If anything, it only manages to knock him on his ass and piss him off more. To make things worse, it makes him undergo fission to create Gigire.
• Wouldn't Hit a Girl: Averted first in episode 50 when Mega Red unintentionally kills Shibolena and later in Seijuu Sentai Gingaman vs. Megaranger, where he intentionally kills Hizumina.
• Xanatos Gambit: Dr. Hinelar pulls off one of these late in the series, when he decides that he wants to be the actual leader of Nezirejia, not just the de facto one. Thus, he creates the Nezirangers, secretly using Javious' life force as their power source. He knows full well the Megarangers may eventually kill the Nezirangers, or the Nezirangers expend a huge amount of power fighting the Megarangers, so he made sure that when the Nezirangers die - or expend enough of Javious' power - the backlash destroys Javious too. Actually, both of the above happens. When the three remaining Nezirangers unleash an extremely powerful attack against the Megaranger's mecha, Javious, unable to take the strain, is destroyed. The energy surge caused by Javious' death leaves the Nezirangers stunned, allowing the Megarangers to use the Mega Voyager's Voyager Spartan - lent extra power from Mega Winger and Super Galaxy Mega, plus energy stolen from the Neziranger's last attack - to destroy them once and for all. As a result, Hinelar succeeds, becoming the new Big Bad.
• You Gotta Have Blue Hair: Hinelar (Silver and Purple), Shibolena (Blue) and (if you count him) Bibidebi (Green)
• You Fail the IQ Test: In one episode Miku evolves into a genius with an IQ of 800.
  • Which would make her a pretty good contender to join Volt, wouldn't it?
• Zettai Ryouiki: Chisato.
  • And, if tall boots count, Shibolena, too.