"Super Sentai" Stance

They wear helmets because it's hard to pull this off with a straight face.

"Pose as a team, 'cause SHIT JUST GOT REAL."

— Problem Sleuth

A type of Ass Kicking Pose performed by a team, usually involving a high degree of synchronization or symmetry and often both. As the name suggests, the Super Sentai team (and the adapted Power Rangers) are the Trope Codifier and Trope Namer. Tends to look awesome, even if it should — by all rights — look silly. Generally speaking, you usually need three to six people to pull this off.

The trope originated with Sentai and is never played straight outside of a Sentai work; examples outside Sentai works are almost always Affectionate Parodies. Even within works, it's Lampshaded sometimes. For fun, this trope is usually coupled with In the Name of the Moon.

Like many Tokusatsu tropes, the Trope Makers likely come from Kabuki Theatre, a medium filled with larger-than-life heroes who often strike distinctive stances. While earlier toku works like Kamen Rider and the Ultra Series often featured solo or duo "henshin poses", Super Sentai would codify the group version through its larger cast and emphasis on Team Spirit. It later became known to Western audiences in the '90s through Power Rangers (an American adaptation of Super Sentai), and several popular Anime of the time including Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball Z.

Arguably the inspiration for the "dab" (or "dabbing") dance move in contemporary American Hip-Hop culture.

Compare: Angels Pose, Team Power Walk, V-Formation Team Shot and Attack Pattern Alpha.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• The several victory poses Kogarasumaru pulls off in Air Gear. Parody examples of course.
• Asteroid in Love: Played for laughs in the sixteenth chapter, adopted as the second segment of the third episode. Mira attempts to play this while changing into Suzuya Bakery's uniforms, but Ao points out this trope can't played with a single person.
• Tomo gets Chiyo to strike one of these in the third supplemental chapter of Azumanga Daioh.
• Bleach:
  • Kon has to become Karakuraizer (in Ichigo's body, of course) in two Filler episodes. And he even gets a Five-Man Band to back him up consisting of Tatsuki, Chizuru, Keigo, Ururu, and Don Kanonji.
  • The Great Desert Brothers/Three Brothers/Neldonde Bandits (Nel, Pesche and Dondochakka)
• Parodied in Buso Renkin, where entrance to the LXE headquarters requires both a password and the people seeking entrance to strike a pose. When the heroes attempt to get in, they do the same thing (to Tokiko's great reluctance)... only to realize that even if they did know the password, it'd be rather stupid for the LXE to just let any random people into their secret headquarters (leading to a flustered Tokiko to just get pissed and bust the door down.)
• Parodied in Carnival Phantasm, which introduces three new Ren variants (Spotty, Calico and Striped) alongside regular (Black) Ren and White Ren just so the newly-coined Super United Cats Squadron Five Ren Cats can do a super sentai introduction. Then they immediately go through the intro again except that they're all Calico this time, and then they do it a third time with each one wearing a ludicrous costume that has nothing to do with what any of the others are wearing.
• Dragon Ball Z:
  • The Ginyu Force is a rare villainous example parody. They got pissed when they realized that the heroes had killed off too many of their numbers to pull it off anymore. And they've earned something of an Ensemble Dark Horse fandom because of it, despite (or quite possibly because of) the fact that they were supposed to look genuinely stupid. Goku mocks them for this habit and points out all they're doing is wasting energy and leaving themselves open.
  • Meanwhile, Gohan tries to pull off something similar as the Great Saiyaman, but since he only has one partner and he's a massive dork to begin with, it just ends up looking ridiculous. The only one who thinks he looks cool is his little brother.
• The ending theme of Haruhi Suzumiya ends up with the cast in such a pose, closing the Hare Hare Yukai choreography.
• Koi Koi 7 has one by the Amazon Brigade it shares its name with. Though according to Ascended Fangirl Akio, the team was formed minutes before they appeared, so how they managed to work out such a synchronized pose is another matter entirely.
• The Baka Rangers in Negima! Magister Negi Magi had a way of doing this for fun. If that weren't enough, the School Festival arc had a group of entertainers called the Mahora Sentai who did this during their shows.
• This image◊ from Pokémon the Series: Diamond and Pearl qualifies as this combined with V-Formation Team Shot. (from left to right: (Gliscor, Monferno, Ash Ketchum, Pikachu, Buizel, Staraptor and Grotle). The main Team Rocket trio also uses this trope during the recital of their motto. Case in point.◊
• In the Naruto filler episode "Gotta See! Gotta Know! Kakashi-Sensei's True Face!", the Moya Triad introduce themselves by doing these.
• Nyaruko: Crawling with Love! had a title card◊ in its second season where Nyarko, Cuuko, and Hasta do one of these. For bonus points, it's part of a Shout-Out; they're posed as Space Sheriff Gavan, Zyuden Sentai Kyoryuger's Kyoryu Red, and Kamen Rider Wizard, together forming a nod to the crossover movie Kamen Rider × Super Sentai × Space Sheriff: Super Hero Taisen Z.
• One Piece is a slightly curious case with the rather zany Heart Pirates, led by the not-at-all zany Trafalgar Law, who are often seen decked in matching boiler suits and striking sentai poses behind their captain.
  • The Vinsmoke Family makes for a rare antagonistic example. It's appropriate considering how they blatantly take inspiration from sentai shows and comics, with high-tech, colorful suits and separate elemental-themed powers.
• Pretty Cure:
  • While the stance is utilized in standard magical girl form through the series (combined with Back-to-Back Badasses when a team is made of just two), Pretty Cure All Stars DX 2 lampshaded this when five teams of Pretty Cures pose together when they're all first gathered. Cure Blossom and Cure Marine are more than a little put off by it all.
  • Smile Pretty Cure! takes it one step further — when the united five strike their first group stance... the Monster of the Week immediately hits them with a soda missile.
  • One episode of Doki Doki Pretty Cure had the team go through the entire speech and pose before realizing one of their teammates was so terrified of the dentist-themed monster, she didn't transform and hid behind a tree the entire time.
  • HappinessCharge Pretty Cure! has an episode where Iona, once the Aloof Ally, puts her new teammates through a training camp specifically to practice their stance.
  • Star★Twinkle Pretty Cure has a Halloween Episode where the team puts on a sentai guise to cover up their identities, leading to a direct parody of the more typical sentai stance — down to the color-coded explosions behind the girls as they each announce their names.
• The Children of Psychic Squad absolutely love doing this. They even include multicolored smoke in the background! Now THAT'S dedication.
• In The Red Ranger Becomes an Adventurer in Another World, Red, Idola, and the two unnamed adventurers they're partying with instinctively strike one of these poses after successfully using the Victory Kizuna Buster to defeat a powerful monster. Idola and the others are wondering why and how long they've been striking this pose when they finally realize they're doing it.
• Sailor Moon: The Sailor Guardians strike a pose whenever they transform at the start of a battle.
• In Soul Eater, Death the Kid and his twin guns Patti and Liz will often go into a symmetrical formation in which Kid will be on his knees with his arms low to the ground, Patty will be standing over him with her hands behind her head and Liz above both of them with her arms outstretched like wings. Sometimes, whenever this formation is less symmetrical (such as one point during their debut episode, when Patti was off to one side), Kid would get mad and shout at them.
  Kid: Just look, Patti! Your stance is off again!
• Yotsuba&!, Daddy and Fuuka strike one of these at the beginning of the second part of the Beach Episode
• The five dream-warriors of Yumeria did this as well, in a moment of Genre Savvy, with the Red Ranger commenting that she's always wanted to be a Bishoujo Senshi.

Card Games

• In Yu-Gi-Oh!, the Dark Scorpions, a gang of thieves, do this on the card Mustering of the Dark Scorpions.

Fan Works

• Rise of the Minisukas: Parodied. After splitting into five, the Israfel perform a synchronized pose, complete with an explosion.
  Alright guys, let's show the Lilim what teamwork looks like!
  Israfel's two bisected halves separate into five different colored blobs that quickly take shape.
  Israfel Red! The red blob morphs into a smaller Israfel that has it's 'arms' in a cross shape.
  Israfel Blue! The blue blob morphs into a smaller Israfel with one 'hand' in front of it's 'face' and one to it's side.
  Israfel Black! The black blob morphs into a smaller Israfel that points one 'finger' forward.
  Israfel Yellow! The yellow blob morphs into a smaller Israfel that puts one 'hand' on it's 'chin' and another on the opposite 'hip'.
  Israfel Pink! The pink blob morphs into a small Israfel that crosses both 'arms' above it's 'head'.
  Together we are THE ISRAFEL RANGERS! An unexplained explosion erupts behind them.
• The Winx Club Play Dugeons and Dragons: As it is customary for the Winx Club, the seven girls pose like this in their (imagined) Playable Character forms while shouting their trademark "We are the Winx!" on the last page of the fan comic.

Films — Animation

• Kung Fu Panda:
  • In the original film, the Furious Five strike a pose at the tournament to choose the Dragon Warrior, accompanied by a gust of wind from a flap of Crane's wings.
  • In the sequel, they do this only for Po to be facing in the wrong direction.
• In Hulk Vs. Wolverine, Deadpool tries making the bad guys join him in doing one of these. It does not work.
• In Turning Red, Mei and her friends strike this kind of pose at the end of their impromptu dance on the sidewalk.

Films — Live-Action

• Street Fighter uses it as a Mythology Gag at the end, by having the heroes pull their Victory Poses from the game together in the final shot.

Live-Action TV

• Spoofed with "Biouman", a sketch from French comedic trio Les Inconnus parodying Choudenshi Bioman. Their three-man, final Sentai Stance results in an accidental Groin Attack.
• Lampshaded in Hikonin Sentai Akibaranger. Every time the characters try to do their pose, it goes wrong in some way (somebody trips, explosions go off at the wrong time, etc...).
• Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon does this alot once all the scouts were introduced. Each one in a group would start their In the Name of the Moon speech and pose, and then cut away to a group shot with them all finishing it in sync.
• Trope Namer: Super Sentai, its American adaptation Power Rangers and all their countless variants, of course. At least Once per Episode. ^note Although in Real Life, such stances are never used by those that know what they're doing.
  • At the end of several Super Sentai series, the last episode inevitably involves the rangers having one last pose together out of uniform for one reason or another, (sometimes their powers are completely lost, sometimes they just feel like doing it out of uniform, sometimes they do it helmetless, etc.) and then finishing the Big Bad off for good. The feeling of Screw Destiny and True Companions in some of these cases is so powerful it's downright moving.
  • Interestingly, when different teams of Rangers team up, they do their roll call poses but the final team shot is of all 10-12 with their arms at their sides (as there's a big explosion in the background, followed by Ranger-colorcoded smoke clouds. Well, PR gets the smoke clouds.)
  • Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger arguably pokes fun at this with Gokai Green, who (as the Plucky Comic Relief) tends to do very odd poses like giving himself bunny ears. Even this was lampshaded in one episode where the team fought Evil Twins and, upon seeing his own role call pose, Green complains that it looks like he's wiping his hands on his pants after peeing; Yellow and Silver say that it's always looked like that. Don also has a hard time pulling off some of the more complex poses; look closely when the team is doing another Sentai's pose and you can often see him stumbling around.
  • Ressha Sentai ToQger even once had all of their Humongous Mecha do the pose!
  • While other teams tend to look cool in group posing, Mashin Sentai Kiramager, a series with primary themes of jewelry and being faaaaabulous in general, bordered on Self-Parody with their signature team pose looking more like the ending shot of an over-the-top musical number◊ than any kind of martial arts formation.
  • Kikai Sentai Zenkaiger has a Running Gag of the stance sequence being altered in some humorous way as a result of whatever the Monster of the Week did to them that episode, such as having one member be invisible, the leader being stuck in the body of one of the villains, or the team logo that appears behind them when they do the stance falling on them.

Music

• Michael Jackson incorporated these with his backup dancers in his live shows. It looks cool, and it's a good time for him to catch his breath.
• Sometimes used◊ by K-Pop girl group Crayon Pop.

Professional Wrestling

• The Power Raiders of AAA and the Hustle Kamen Rangers of Fighting Opera HUSTLE, being Super Sentai send ups, performed such poses before and after matches.
• Billie Kay and Peyton Royce do this◊ as The Iiconics, designed to be as over-the-top as possible. Doing said pose has informally been called "IIconicing".

Theater

• In circuses, at the beginning and the end, the members of an act usually come up and make a pose. (And if their act IS a difficult pose, then their starting pose is often a simple one, not related to the pose that is actually their act.)

Video Games

• The Meatball Brigade does this in .hack//ROOTS.
• All over the place in Chroma Squad, which makes sense considering it's a game about running a Sentai studio. Not only will your actors pose when they change to Sentai mode, but while in costume they will randomly pose during battle while idle, or whenever they speak during a cutscene. Each role has its own unique pose when they pose solo.
• The Prism Rangers of Disgaea, being a straight (except for Prism Violet) Super Sentai parody, made good use of this trope.
• One optional Quest in Divinity II: The Dragon Knight Saga has a group of people in rags approaching the PC, instantly switching into armor and weapons and striking such a pose. By the way the camera focuses on each one as their armor appears in a beam of light and they shout their names, you know it's a parody of this trope.
  • Behold! The Dragon Terror Patrol!
• The Super Sentai Stance Shenanigans continue in Dragon Ball Fighterz, as both grown-up Gohan and the Ginyu Force are in. For Gohan, it's mostly something he finds fun (calling "the Great Saiyaman" lame is a good way to piss him off), but the Ginyus are taking it as seriously as ever: Captain Ginyu heaps honors on Gohan over his knowledge and appreciation of proper asskicking poses, and the Force itself will try to challenge their own clones to a pose-off and be absurdly offended that they don't actually pose.
• As Ryuuseitai from Ensemble Stars! is a Sentai themed, they naturally have a few cards of the unit members doing this. However, as Ryuuseitai is also a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits, the expressions are generally a little atypical, with Midori looking awkward and tired, or Kanata grinning like a child.
• The YuRiPa team of Final Fantasy X-2 engage in this a few times during the course of the game, most notably in the intro sequence, and often involving the Angels Pose.
• Parodied in God Hand with the Mad Midget Five (a parody of sentai teams, of course). Their pose is to lie on the ground in a V-shaped formation... with their legs sticking up in the air in a V-shape. When defeated, they go into "Formation... C!" Which is turning to the side and grabbing each other's hips.
  Gene: ... douchebags!
• A song in Just Dance 3 is an affectionate parody of sentai theme songs, complete with all four members dancing pulling off stances!
• In Katamari Damacy, cousin Kuro regularly attempts a solo version of this. He's a huge Sentai fan and an Ineffectual Loner.
• killer7: "D-did you see that? A real Handsome Pose!"
• Among the many, many Shout-Outs to classic Japanese series, Ralf and Clark from The King of Fighters used to have a special intro pose mirroring the Cross Changer from Choujin Sentai Jetman.
• The opening of Mega Man 5 shows the game's 8 Robot Masters performing this behind Proto Man. They strike the same poses in the corresponding manga chapter, as well.
• Even in the Metal Slug franchise parodying Super Sentai elements, Mars People Rangers from Metal Slug Attack took a spot of this trope in this artwork. Yes, alien example, but the "Rangers" is in the team name.
• Mother 3 has the Barrier Trio, whose weakness depends on WHICH "Super Sentai" Stance they're in and which of the Trio is leading the Stance. When they're defeated, exhaused, they strike one last Barrier Pose. It is spectacular.
• Pokémon:
  • In Pokémon X and Y, members of Team Flare occasionally strike such a pose when preparing to do battle.
  • In Pokémon Sun and Moon, using a Z-Move apparently requires you to do this, starting with a short dance based on hula movements before striking a dramatic pose.
  • Buzzwole in a nutshell. The Pokedex even guesses they communicate exclusively through posing.
• The main character of Suisei Tenshi Primaveil Zwei, the captain of a parody super sentai team, exults in the first ever defeat of the Magical Girl senshi parody, unconsciously strikes a Victory Pose as he cheers. His subordinates enthusiastically join him in turn. They never speak of this again.

Web Animation

• Happens in Bravest Warriors when the Memory Donk attacks
  [everyone poses]
  Danny: What do we do now?!?
  Chris: I don't know! It just felt right to pose like this!

Webcomics

• Housepets!: The Wolf Family Pose, prior to attacking Jata as a team. Some members put more effort into it than others.
• Problem Sleuth: "Pose as a team, 'cause SHIT JUST GOT REAL."

Web Original

• France Five, naturally, being an Affectionate Parody of the Sentai genre, features this. Most notably in an animated Eye Catch starting episode 2. Although for the second part of the Eye Catch, the France Five screw up the Sentai Stance, and most of them end up sprawled while Red Fromage face-palms.
• For The Nostalgia Critic's review of Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie, the Nostalgia Ranger is soon doing a one-man version of this once he suits up. Though he spices it up a bit with some hands-on-knees Charleston moves and a crotch grab.

Western Animation

• The acclaimed Futurama episode "Godfellas" has a sect of four unassuming astronomy monks suddenly take on a Sentai Stance when Fry threatens to use their telescope without permission.
• The Loud House: In "Kernel of Truth", when Lincoln and his friends decide to start up the middle school news show again, they come up with a action news team pose.
• Done in a decidedly non-battle context at the end of the opening to My Little Pony Tales, with the ponies in the back of the formation waving to make the whole thing look more friendly.
• A 5-minute webisode for Nexo Knights shows the Knights going into one of these poses when they're supposed to be saving a village. Lampshaded in-universe by the following conversation:
  Lance: Uh, what are we doing?
  Clay: We're posing. Heroically.
  Macy: Shouldn't we be getting on with the saving-the-town part?
  Clay: *clears throat* Right. Let's go!
• Early episodes of Transformers: Prime had the Autobots doing this almost every time they came through a ground bridge portal. They've since (mostly) gotten over it.
• Winx Club: The six main girls (occasionally plus Roxy or Daphne) pose like this either while calling for their powers or after going through their fairy Transformation Sequence. Additionally, they always form a V with their fingers. This is Played for Laughs in one episode where the girls are too sleepy to get their habitual positions right the first time — so they shift places around and it's only then that the sequence truly starts. Although the music doesn't quite wait for them.
• Xiaolin Showdown uses this trope, in the form of "Dragon Ex Kumai Formation" (and later, "Wudai Orion Formation").

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