Chikyū Sentai Fiveman ("Earth Squadron Fiveman") is the fourteenth installment of the Super Sentai franchise, which aired from 1990 to 1991.The scientist Dr. Hoshikawa is working on ways to bring life to barren planets. Just when his labors seem to be bearing fruit, the planet he is on is attacked by the Galactic Empire Zone. His five children escape the planet safely, thanks to their robot, Arthur, but Dr. Hoshikawa and his wife do not manage to get away from the planet.Twenty years later, the children have grown up, and are now elementary school teachers when Zone comes to destroy Earth. The children use their father's inventions to fight against Zone and save Earth.
Fiveman consists of:
Gaku Hoshikawa (Five Red) The SmartHero and Team Dad. The eldest of the Hoshikawa siblings at age 27 and a kendo master. He continues his father's scientific studies and teaches science.
Ken Hoshikawa (Five Blue) The BigLancer. The second Hoshikawa child, age 25. A physical education teacher and judo master.
Empress Meadow: The Big Bad. A floating head who wishes to gain immortality by destroying 1000 planets. Earth is the 1000th. An illusion, the true Big Bad is Vulgyre, Zone's ship. The real Meadow is the woman whom Vulgyre once loved.
Captain Galois: Dragon-in-Chief, nominally subordinate to Meadow but acts in her stead. The Rival to Gaku.
Chevalier: Sixth Ranger, bored from a life of luxury, he decides to work for Empress Meadow. Is promoted to The Dragon when Galois fails one too many times.
Combination Attack: Several; the Brother Attack and the Super Five Ball.
Color-Coded for Your Convenience: The codenames used the word "Five" as the head and the corresponding colors as the tail. Can be a bit confusing when it comes to Five Pink, whose codename is rather similar to the Bioman warrior Pink Five.
Cool Bike: The Hawk Arrow bikes, one for each member.
Finishing Move: The Earth Cannon and the Combination Attacks.
Home Base: The Magma Base, another base that actually combines with the team's robots.
Humongous Mecha: After three straight teams where each hero piloted his or her own mecha, Fiveman went back to having one individual mecha for Red and two shared mecha for the rest, a format previously used in Choushinsei Flashman. This is despite the fact that the vehicles were called the "Five Machines", which combined into the "Five Robo". To make up for this, the mecha have two combined forms instead of one, a robot form and a vehicle form, a concept that would be adapted for subsequent shows.
Make My Monster Grow: Variation; When a monster is dealt the deathblow, Zone dispatches a giant Gorlin robot to absorb its life force, becoming a giant duplicate of it.
Monster of the Week: The Ginga Tōshi (Galactic Warriors), who were all anthropomorphic versions of animals from Earth, despite being aliens. Later episodes introduced hybrid warriors composed of two different monsters.
The Psycho Rangers - The team's evil counterparts were the Ginga Sentai (Galaxy Squadron) Gingaman, and they're not the heroic Super Sentai team introduced eight years later. They start off posing as a team of benevolent aliens in Episode 9 in order to gain the public's trust and brainwash them. In Episode 42, they actually became a full fledge Evil Counterpart of the Fiveman team when they temporarily stole their powers.
Transformation Trinket: The first instance of having the heroes trinkets differ among its members; the guys get the wrist worn ones, while the girls get compacts.
Two Girls to a Team: Makes a return after a two-year absent with a fourth Pink and Yellow duo.
Brought Down to Normal - One of Chevalier's Monsters can steal the Fivemen's transformation energy in order to make the Gingamen transform instead. Leads to a nice Kick the Dog line for Chevalier. "Remi, how does it feel to get killed by Five Yellow?"
Butt Monkey - Even if he's The Dragon, Galois is quite the bumbling officer, whom Chevalier makes fun of before his actual fall into a janitor, whereas everyone treats him badly. Beforehand, he's also the one being 'ordered around' the most during Zone's traditional 'Topsy Turvy Day'. Likewise, his doll is often beaten up by the Fivemen dolls.
Chekhov's Gun - When the Fivemen's Humongous Mecha is destroyed, it seems like Galois's Humongous Mecha is unstoppable, until Arthur uses the Fiveman's base as a weapon, which hasn't been done in about 15 episodes.
Dark Action Girl - Solar, a survivor of one of the planets Zone destroyed, who comes to Earth and is in love with Billion. Also serves as the Monster of the Week, since she can transform using capsules and a Worthy Opponent to Remi's martial arts skills.
Death by Materialism: Dongorosu pays dearly for putting the safety of his cash over his own as Vulgyre is destroyed.
Despair Event Horizon - Subverted when Gaku appears to be dead. Saying that Zone can't be defeated, Kazumi defects and becomes a servant to the Monster of the Week. This is a trick to get the monster to reverse time to before Gaku was killed.
Finishing Move - In a subversion, the Five Robo uses sword-based finishers, but they aren't named. Typically, Fiveman will yell out a reason they're fighting as they pull it off.
Flaw Exploitation - Zone knows that the Fivemen won't kill their students, and is not afraid to use this.
The Hoshikawa siblings are not related to Ryū Hoshikawa/Dyna Black from Kagaku Sentai Dynaman.
Also, Five Pink is not to be confused with the similarly named ranger Pink Five from Choudenshi Bioman.
Old Shame: The Five-Kun Ningyos, puppets that popped up whenever the budget ran out to explain certain scenes, became so reviled by fans, Toei refuses to acknowledge them in any publication.
Paper-Thin Disguise - In order to search for the Monster of the Week, which is lost on Earth, Zone pretends to be the Fivemen (or more accurately, the Sibling Teachers.) Justified in that most children have never seen the sibling teachers.
Shout Out - Iwakasekigin (Galactic Rock/fossil) one of Chevalier's Monsters of the Week, can create miniture versions of itself, called Rockmen. Due to the way Japanese works, this comes out unpluralized, in other words, Rockman.
Sliding Scale of Gender Inequality: Level 4. Each member of Fiveman is ranked by his or her age (as noted by the number of stripes on their visors and the metal "V"-shaped plates on their chests) except for Five Black, who outranks both of his sisters (Pink and Yellow) despite being the youngest. Fumiya is even the third-billed characters in the opening credits.
The Starscream - Wanikaerugin (Galactic Alligator/frog) thinks he's powerful enough to turn against Zone and takeover the universe on his own. Since he's just a Monster of the Week, it doesn't work out.
Theme Naming: The given names of the Hoshikawa siblings are related to the subjects they teach in school.
Gaku's name (who is a science teacher) means "to study".
Ken's name (a phys-ed teacher) means "health".
The "Fumi" in "Fumiya" means "sentence" (he's a Japanese language teacher).
The "Kazu" in "Kazumi" means "number" (she's a math teacher).
Remi's name (who teaches music) comes from "Do ~re mi~ fa so la ti do". The song is even used in an episode.
Villain Decay - Captain Galois starts out as a legitimate Dragon but shortly after Chevalier arrives, he's reduced to a joke and eventually, a janitor. However, he becomes more competent again by the end.
Villain Song - "We Are Backstage Heroes" by the Y.F Zombie Company. Yeah it's an odd song, as evidenced by the title alone
Wham Episode - What looks like a Breather Episode is quickly subverted when Gaku is killed and Kazumi appears to join Zone. Thanks to time travel, he is saved.
Yandere - One Monster of the Week turns people's televisions into these. The kid the episode focuses on has his television in love with him.
You Killed Our Parents - What inspired the Hoshikawa siblings to take up arms against Zone in the first place. They were still alive however.
Your Princess is in Another Castle - So, the Fivemen finally managed to contact their parents on a distant planet. A teary voice communication ensues, when the Big Bad puts up a barrier around Earth, and the final battle begins.
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