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Superheroes, Japanese style. The word can be translated as "Task Force." Usually come in teams, with color-keyed uniforms and a range of personalities/roles that usually follows some variation on the Five Man Band. Known for their synchronized posing.
Not strictly limited to anime — there have been innumerable live action Sentai series in Japan, most notably Super Sentai, the series which was re-edited into Power Rangers in the United States, and 2003's Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon.
Not to be confused with Hentai, and god help you if you do.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- Sailor Moon is a hybrid Sentai/Magical Girl show that started the Magic Warrior trope, which is basically a hybrid of these tropes.
- Even Shugo Chara has done it with Kukai. Ore wa...GUARDIAN FIVE! That is definitely his Crowning Moment Of Awesome.
- Bubblegum Crisis has Sentai elements as well — note the individually colored hardsuits and the almost stereotyped set of personalities found among the Knight Sabers.
- Science Ninja Team Gatchaman (known in America as Battle of the Planets or G-Force) is a classic Sentai anime.
- Moldiver both parodies and pays tribute to classic Sentai elements (not to mention Magical Girls, too).
- Mahou Sensei Negima: In an obvious parody of Super Sentai/Power Rangers, the five girls from Negi's class with the lowest grades dub themselves the "Baka Rangers", complete with appropriate "hero names", like "Baka Pink" and "Baka Red".
- Keroro Gunsou does a few parodies of the Sentai genre. Episode 24 introduces Space Detective Kogoro, an explicit parody of Kenji Ooba in his role as the title character of the Toku series Space Sheriff Gavan.
- Spoofed in Mai-HiME, where Midori (the one who Jumped At The Call, thinking she's Sailor Moon) proposes teaming up into the "HiME Rangers" to fight the monsters of the week more effectively. The two HiMEs who dismiss the idea as ridiculous ( Natsuki and Nao) are tied up and dragged to the meeting place anyway.
- Lime-iro Senkitan, with its five girl Lime unit, in five colours.
- Cosprayers, an intentional parody of the genre with added Fanservice.
- Ronin Warriors had Sentai on the sides of both the good guys and the bad guys.
- School Rumble briefly featured Hatenkou Robo Dojibiron in one episode, whose five pilots (and mecha) were very much a homage to Super Sentai. For bonus points, the Dojibiron team's names were nearly the same as the five principle voice actresses, the only difference being the color-coded Theme Naming.
- Chouken Sentai Blade Braver in Bamboo Blade. Tama, the main girl in the show, considers herself an "ally of justice" like the Blade Bravers themselves, and in fact uses the motivation of fighting for right to join the kendo club. Later on, the show reveals that Braver is just one of many in the 31-year long "Battle Hero" series, making it an obvious Lawyer Friendly Cameo of Super Sentai
- The Ginyu Force of Dragon Ball Z are a parody of this trope: there are five of them (instead of the four which are traditional in villainous groups), and they constantly strike poses and throw group attacks. In fact, when recruiting new members for the team, Captain Ginyu is mostly concerned with their posing ability.
- Magical Pokaan has a singular, Sentai-based episode that becomes increasingly silly. Since the show only has four leading girls, the fifth spot is filled by no one — the green suit is an empty shell. On top of that, the team's Super Robot never forms correctly, with mishaps ranging from a missing component to five copies of the same component attempting to fuse together. The end of the episode is a stream of random gags that would take too long to explain here.
- There actually is a fifth ranger. She just happens to be invisible.
- Spoofed in God Hand with the Mad Midget Five: a squad of five characters in colour-coded outfits with high-pitched voices, none of whom even reach the main character's waist, prentending they're super heroes and pulling flashy moves. Add to that their high speed and agility, and you have one of the most annoying boss encounters in the whole game.
- Excel Saga the manga is somewhere between a Deconstruction and Parody of this genre. The anime, meanwhile, throws out the serious elements and goes into full-blown parody with Municipal Team Daikenzan (based on an Old Shame of Rikdo Koshi's).
- School Days' OVA Magical Heart Kokoro-chan has elements of this and Magical Girl in it. In this particular instance, the team of powered heroines is working for low pay, using a vacuum cleaner as a weapon and has particularly kinky outfits for their battling.
- The episode "Super Sooga Squad" of the Pucca TV series is an Affectionate Parody of Sentai series.
- Parodied in Special Duty Combat Unit Shinesman. Their suit colors are the intentionally awful Red, Moss Green, Gray, Sepia, and Salmon Pink.
- Transformers Super God Masterforce had a group of Autobots who pretty much acted as a sentai team.
- An audio drama of Neon Genesis Evangelion of all things, set post-series and thoroughly destroying the fourth wall has the cast having to re-tool the show for new episodes; Asuka has the pilots (Rei, herself, Shinji, Toji, and Kaworu) try being super sentai. It's...special.
- It's the audio drama on the "Addition" soundtrack (4th one, with four of them on the cover). There are plenty of translations floating about, including one with graphics.
- Astro Fighter Sunred, a parody of these types of shows.
- Parodied and deconstructed in Franken Fran: Takeshi, a sprinter with a bone disorder, goes to Fran and receives surgery to rebuild his body. Unfortunately, several other sprinters received the same surgery — when they all break the world record, he's discredited and disgraced. The others beat the crap out of him, so he gets more surgery and becomes a sentai hero named Sentinel. Then he becomes a Knight Templar, beating people up for littering, until finally his victim's family members gun him down. He receives one more surgery, leaving him monstrous... and in his new form he is attacked and killed by more sentai. The end of the chapter shows the city in a riot of Lets You And Him Fight battles, while Fran is complaining that everyone wants superpowers but nobody wants to pay for them.
- Most shows about Combining Mecha use the sentai style to some extent — in fact there's even a Combining Mecha anime called Chojin Sentai Balatack, which includes the Five Man Band with color-coded outfits. About the only thing these sorts of shows don't use is the Super Sentai Stance, since typically the heroes rarely fight outside their vehicles or robots, but even so, the combined robot will usually do plenty of posing upon combining.
- Bleach episodes 212 and 213 parody this like there's no tomorrow.
- One of the earliest strips in GA Geijutsuka Art Design Class has the five lead girls becoming the "Color Rangers". Keeping with the art theme, they're yellow, magenta, cyan and monochrome. Except for Tomokane, who's red, because every good Sentai team needs a red leader.
- Another Show Within A Show example is the Star Rangers in Muteki Kanban Musume. Akihito is a huge fan of them, to the point that when anyone so much as mentions the show, he starts to think he is Red Star. He seems equally convinced that the rest of the main cast are the other Star Rangers.
- The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, who already shared superficial similarities to Sentai, were turned into this outright for the Japanese OVA "Mutant Turtles: Superman Legend"—complete with the gigantic super-form "Turtle Saint".
- Duklyon Clamp School Defenders was a parody of this.
- In the Fruits Basket manga, Kakeru seems determined to turn the student council into a proper "School Defense Force" and starts assigning colors. He claims Black for himself (because he thinks it would make him seem cool and mysterious) and, after teasing Yuki about how his pretty face should make him Pink, gives him Red for being student council president. Kimi insists on being Pink and sticks Machi with Yellow (like Beat above, Kimi claims it's because Machi likes curry so much). Naohito just plain refuses to play along. And Ayame is named the Commander immediately after Kakeru meets him, much to his delight.
Comic Books
Video Games
- Also spoofed in Yumeria: once all the girls are active in the dream world, they look at their individually-colored outfits and their attacks, and decide they need attack names and a victory pose.
- The Axem Rangers from Super Mario RPG are another Sentai parody.
- "Together...we are...the PRISM RANGERS!!"
- The Handsome Men in killer7 are an antagonist version.
- Parodied in The World Ends With You's bonus chapter, "Another Day." After everyone's pins get stolen at a Tin Pin Slammer tournament, Shooter brings Neku and his friends to his "secret base" (really Ramen Don) to form the Tin Pin Rangers and save the day. Shooter calls Red for himself as team leader, Beat gets Yellow because of his love of curry, Neku gets assigned Black and Blue, much to his annoyance, and Shiki gets Green to match her boots... but only because Joshua called dibs on Pink. Rhyme joins the team later on and becomes Black, leaving Neku with only Blue, until she leads them all into a trap and reveals herself as the Sixth Column.
Western Animation
- American animators have made their own version with a twist: Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go! features a Sentai-ish team of, well, robot monkeys, complete with different colors and personalities.
- TeenTitans also makes reference to sentai with the team colors (Beast Boy: Green, Robin: Red, etc) which are displayed at the end of its upbeat opening sequence, then of course there's all the team poses.
- Parodied in Megas XLR with the S-Force.
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