Only those who have learned the power of the Super-Civilization will be able to save humanity from its greatest crisis: Baranoia, the Machine Empire, which plans to invade the Earth!
- The Opening Narration, which got retired quickly- after episode 6!
Chōriki Sentai Ohranger (Super-Powered Squadron Ohrangernote ) is the nineteenth installment in Toei Company's Super Sentai series, airing from 1995 to 1996. It saw the return and final narrating gig of Nobuo Tanaka in the series. The Title Theme Tune was sung by Kentarou Hayami.
Six hundred million years after being exiled from Earth by his creators on Pangaea, the evil robot Bacchushund has returned with his Machine Empire Baranoia in the year 1999. In order to counter the Baranoia threat, five officers of UAOH (United Airforce Overtech Hardware) must use technology from Pangaea itself to become the mighty Ohranger team.
The show commemorated the 20th anniversary of the Super Sentai Series, following the retroactive inclusion of Himitsu Sentai Gorenger and J.A.K.Q. Dengekitai two years earlier. It was also the first Sentai show to start the yearly crossover specials between the current team and previous one with Olé vs. Kakuranger. Though it began as a fairly-serious show, it was re-tooled into something lighter after the 1995 Tokyo subway sarin attack
.
Adapted into Power Rangers Zeo, continuing where Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers left off.
It is the 4th Super Sentai to see a US release in November 2016. It can be streamed for free at Shout! Factory TV.
Recurring Super Sentai tropes:
- All Your Powers Combined: The Big Bang Buster, where the weapons are held together with one of the Ohranger's King Smashers.
- By the Power of Grayskull!: "Chouriki Transformation!"
- Calling Your Attacks
- Color Character: The Five-Man Band are another "[team prefix] [English color]" Sentai. This trope, however, is averted in the case of the Sixth Ranger, the black-colored King Ranger.
- Cool Bike: The Jetter bikes. This was the last time until Zyuden Sentai Kyoryuger where each member of the main team had bikes of their own. After this point, only certain rangers (usually reds or extras) rode bikes if there were any.
- Crossover: Started the tradition of the yearly crossover movie with Olé vs. Kakuranger.
- Diegetic Soundtrack Usage: Momo sings a little of the opening theme to herself while riding a bike at the start of episode 24.
- The Ditz: Juri falls for some obviously evil traps simply because it involved cute and/or fun things.
- Empathic Weapon: Any weapon powered by Choriki is implied to be this to some extent, but Red Puncher stands out. Oh Red has to go through a Near-Death Clairvoyance sequence with the soul of its previous pilot to finally connect with it and be able to control it, by which one must understand that said previous pilot died because it was out of control, and Oh Red nearly suffered the same fate.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: The Bara Cactus Brothers in episode 5 care for each other. This piques Bacchushund's curiosity, so he threatens to scrap Cactus 2 if 1 doesn't kill the Ohrangers. Cactus 1 fails and he returns to find his brother dismantled. Cactus 1 tries to avenge his brother but Bacchushund scraps him too.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Bara Nightmare, the Monster of the Week from episode 32, was marked for death by Bacchus due to his pedophilic desires.
- Evil Will Fail: Subverted. While Baranoia goes through a series of regime changes and infighting, unlike most groups, it ends up making them stronger. The final villains, Bulldont and Maltihua, hold the honor of being the only villains in the franchise to decisively defeat the heroes and establish a long term conquest of Earth - even Jark Matter only manages the latter by doing so in the backstory. While the Ohrangers do make a comeback and defeat them for good, the two make no missteps and ensure the Ohrangers truly earn their victory.
- Finishing Move: Chōriki Dynamite Attack!
- Five-Man Band:
- The Leader: Gorō
- The Lancer: Yūji
- The Smart Girl: Momo
- The Big Guy: Shōhei
- The Heart: Juri
- Sixth Ranger: Riki
- Humongous Mecha: Ohranger is known for having the most variety when it comes to individual mecha and possible mecha formations in Super Sentai, even when compared to succeeding shows.
- A Mech by Any Other Name: The Chōriki Mobiles (the components of the Ohranger Robo) and the Blocker Robos (the components of the Oh Blocker).
- Animal Mecha: Only three this time. The Chōriki Mobiles for the male Ohrangers are based on mythological beasts, while the ones for the female members are tanks based on ancient humanoid statues.
- Combining Mecha: Two again. Their first one, the Ohranger Robo, also had five interchangeable helmets, one for each member, with the default one being Oh Red's Wing Head (the other four being Green's Horn Head, Blue's Graviton Head, Yellow's Vulcan Head and Pink's Cannon Head.
- Chariot Formation (not exactly a mecha combination in the traditional sense, since it involves Green's and Blue's Chōriki Mobiles hauling Yellow's and Pink's respectively by being chained to them)
- Gran Taurus + Dogu Lander = Taulander
- Dash Leon + Moa Roader = Leoroader
- Sky Phoenix + Gran Taurus + Dash Leon + Dogu Lander + Moa Roader = Ohranger Robo
- Red Blocker + Green Blocker + Blue Blocker + Yellow Blocker + Pink Blocker = Oh Blocker
- Mecha Expansion Pack: The Red Puncher served this function to the Ohranger Robo, while the King Pyramider could work with both of them, as well as the Blocker Robos.
- Ohranger Robo + Red Puncher = Buster Ohranger Robo
- King Pyramider, the mecha of the King Ranger, has three formations: its default Pyramid Formation, where its shaped like a mobile pyramid; the Carrier Formation, where it becomes a land based warship that carries the Chōriki Mobiles and Red Puncher on top of it (Think the Freeden in Gundam X but scaled to Sentai levels); and the Battle Formation, where it becomes a giant robot after combining with the Chōriki Mobiles and Red Puncher or with the Oh Blocker.
- Robot Buddy: Tackle Boy, which transforms into a rolling wheel tossed by Oh Blocker.
- Mechanical Lifeform: Gunmazin
- Idiosyncratic Episode Naming
- In the Name of the Moon: Ohranger, Olé!Goro: "OhRed!"Shohei: "OhGreen!"Yuji: "OhBlue!"Juri: "OhYellow!"Momo: "OhPink!"Riki: "KingRanger!"All: "Chouriki Sentai... Ohranger!"
- Law of Chromatic Superiority: Even though it is tradition for the first battles in Sentai series to have the whole team, Oh Red actually gets to fight a battle and look awesome on his own at the end of episode one, as his astonished teammates watch. It is in the next episode that they assemble and fight as a team.
- Also, Gorō's the only one who managed to tame the Red Puncher robot. Furthermore, he's a Captain, while the other four are all First Lieutenants.
- Make My Monster Grow: Acha and Kocha's reason for living.
- Mini Dress Of Power: Part of the Ohranger girls' suits.
- Monster of the Week: The "Machine Monsters"
- Mooks: The Barlo Soldiers, who are Mecha-Mooks
- The Movie: Aired after Episode 7. One where the Ohrangers had to escape a movie within a movie! One of the Machine Monsters in the movie reappears as the MOTW in Episode 31.
- "On the Next Episode of..." Catch-Phrase: "Chouriki Transformation! Olé!"
- Regular Caller
- Supervillain Lair
- Theme Music Power-Up
- Transformation Trinket: Power Braces for the main five and King Brace for Riki.
- Two Girls to a Team: Makes a return after a three-year absent with the fifth Yellow and Pink duo.
- Villains Act, Heroes React: As is the norm for Super Sentai, we generally have Baranoia sending out a MOTW with an Evil Plan Once an Episode, with our heroes then arriving on the scene to stop them.
Tropes specific to Chouriki Sentai Ohranger:
- Actor Allusion: Ohranger vs. Kakuranger has a scene taking place in a Wild West-themed locale. The male rangers are cornered by cowboys with guns. And then Chief Miura shows up wearing a black leather cowboy hat, playing a certain tune on a guitar...
- A Day in the Limelight: Episode 8 could be considered this for Ohranger Robo; the episode starts with a mecha battle and has a particularly elaborate battle for the episode's climax. Considering Ohranger Robo didn't debut until episode 7 (although two of the Chouriki Mobiles appeared in episode 6), episode 8 was likely written to make up for the lack of mecha for a month and a half.
- All Men Are Perverts: Subverted. Chief Miura is unaffected by Maltihua's Charm spells because he's trained his body and heart to resist being moved against his will. The Ohranger males however are constantly taken down by it, despite knowing who she is.
- All Your Base Are Belong to Us: In the first part of the finale, Baranoia discovers the location of Ohranger's mountain base and launch an all-out attack on it.
- Back-to-Back Badasses: Buster OhrangerRobo's Gattai sequence starts with OhrangerRobo and RedPuncher standing back to back.
- Bait-and-Switch Credits: A minor one. A lot of episodes start by showing a clip of something that happens later in the episode, but in the last show, the teaser shows the six rangers transforming on the beach. This didn't happen, as Riki was elsewhere the one time he changed during the episode.
- BFS: OhBlocker's Twin Blocken Crash finisher. It combines the two sabers together above its head, allowing them to project a gigantic Laser Blade that comes crashing down on the monster. Was only used twice before mostly being replaced by OhBlocker rolling Tackleboy at the monster. And the Ohrangers only used this finisher on Emperor Bacchushund, Bara Mammoth, Bara Police, and Onbu-Gear. The first three were successfully destroyed. The fourth only got tickled.
- Battle Couple: Bulldont and Maltihua. They even die together.
- Benevolent Genie: Gunmajin... Hm. In what way, you ask?
- "Punish those bullies" = Puts them on a very high branch and blows wind at them.
- "Take over/destroy the world for me!!" = "Don't wanna. Not fun." *reverts to ittybitty form* (Incidentally, it's Bomber The Great giving this order. Think about it.)
- Bond Villain Stupidity: In episode 27, the villains capture Riki. Bacchshund assumes he's dead, and decides to attack Ohranger with a robot based on him, Bara King. Instead of making sure Riki was dead, they send him into a weird dimension, that he could wake up in, escape from, and destroy the impostor robot.
- The Boxing Episode: Episode 20.
- Can't Live Without You: The Baranoia monster Bara Brain was linked to a counterpart, the giant Bara Separate, and was destroyed when Bara Separate fell to the first use of the Ohranger Robo.
- Casting Gag: Episode 5 has a teacher named Hino played by Michie Tomizawa
- Catchphrase: "Ole!" for... the whole team.
- Continuity Drift: The first episode states that the series takes place in the then-future year of 1999, but this fell by the wayside fairly quickly and subsequent appearances by the Ohrangers in the greater franchise set their adventures in 1995-96, the years the show aired. Indeed, Ohranger's near-future placement was thrown out the window in the crossover with the next series, the endgame of which explicitly took place in January 1997.
- Continuity Snarl: The Ohranger vs. Kakuranger crossover movie features the Oh Blocker, Tackle Boy and Gunmazin. This is despite the fact the movie is set when Emperor Bacchushund is still alive, whereas Oh Blocker's first battle was precisely the battle where Bacchushund died and the other two appeared afterward.
- Cruel Mercy: After he killed Buldont in a duel and succeeded in his coup, Bomber the Great was willing to spare Hysterrier...by banishing her and the remains of her son to the edge of the universe.
- Darker and Edgier: The show pulls no punches in the drama and emotion parts. Not even a Retool could fully remove these elements.
- Darkest Hour: Episode 45 was already pretty bleak, with Baranoia invading the Earth, the Ohrangers having lost their ability to transform, Oh Blocker and Red Puncher getting stolen by Baranoia, U.A.O.H HQ being destroyed and the Chief's fate being unknown while Shōhei and Yūji are captured, but Episode 46 actually makes things go From Bad to Worse as Dorin is mortally wounded, resulting in Earth losing Chouriki while the Ohrangers inside King Pyramider end up in space.
- Deus ex Machina: It takes Dorin summoning an intense bolt of energy to destroy Bara Micron, the unstoppable Machine Beast that defeated the Ohrangers and successfully conquered Earth.
- Dragon Ascendant: Bulldont, who proves to be more dangerous than his father after his upgrade.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: At the end of episode 2, the rangers end up exhausted and sweaty after demorphing. Goro explains that happened because being in morph takes a lot of stamina out of the body. This idea is never brought up again.
- Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: One of Baranoia's schemes was to have a monster amplify the sound of babies crying to destructive levels. They wanted to discourage humans from ever having babies; pity they never imagined they'd try desperately to calm them down.
- Evil Counterpart: In episode 27, Riki is captured by Baranoia. Baranoia then sends a monster called Bara King to fight the rangers, claiming they turned Riki into the mindless robot. Although the monster is based on the King Ranger's look and fighting style, it's not Riki. The real Riki escapes the other dimension he was stuck in and blows up the robot.
- Fake Defector: Juri fakes cowardice in order to get the antidote for a monster's poison. It doesn't go that well.
- Fanservice: One scene by the river during the Kakuranger team up, where we can see some talent from the Ohranger girls.
- There's also episode 23, in which Juri has to battle her brainwashed team-mates in first a one-piece swimsuit and then in a bikini.
- In general, Momo and Juri are two of the shapeliest Sentai heroines ever AND get a ton of panty shots.
- Fish out of Temporal Water: Averted. Riki doesn't seem to care.
- Full-Frontal Assault: Subverted in episode 23, which has the Monster of the Week zapping Juri's one-piece with its Mind Control ray (like he did with the other rangers), essentially giving her the choice between succumbing to it or taking it off and fighting him completely naked. She seems to choose the latter, but it turns out she went back to the changing area to put on a bikini under the one-piece. Juri gets the jump on the monster before it has a chance to zap one of the pieces and double subvert the assault.
- Kissing Cousins: Kaiser Bulldont and Princess Maltihua get married in episode 41 and have a child six episodes later. There's no
Squick because they're robots. - Knight in Shining Armor: Riki considers himself the knight who is responsible for protecting Dorin.
- Lady in Red: Both Juri and Momo wear Tori's red dress in #9.
- In #44, Multiwa wears a modification of the sexy red dress in her human form to seduce the Ohranger men.
- Lethal Joke Character: Bara-Snooska, a lazy, sleepy machine beast that was thought useless by Bacchushund, has a hypnotic spell so powerful that it can cause people to fall asleep while driving.
- Lost Technology: The Ohrangers get their powers from technology created on Pangaea.
- Loyal Animal Companion: The lizard Paku, to Riki and Dorin.
- Mercy Kill: Bara Revenger asks to be killed so he doesn't have to serve Bacchus Wrath, who he was actually seeking revenge against, as he was under Bacchus Wrath's control due to a remote. He got his wish, following that up he went to die peacefully in a junkyard.
- Mid-Season Upgrade: Actually has two. Red Puncher Midseason, and it has a 3/4 season upgrade with Ohblocker later on.
- Mythology Gag: The Chouriki Dynamite Attack is essentially an updated rendition of the Dynaman's (New) Super Dynamite move.
- The method of the other mecha combining with King Pyramider in Battle Formation (entering through the back into a large open area) is rather similar to how the Super Turbo Robo combined with the Turbo Builder.
- "Not So Different" Remark: When Hysteria sees her son kidnap a human baby while considering her love for her own infant grandson, she realizes that humans aren't so different from machines after all. This was foreshadowed as far back as the Cactus brothers in episode 5, and is the key element in humanity finally making peace with Baranoia.
- Off-the-Shelf FX: "Red Puncher buried itself in a valley." (cue video of what is very obviously a Red Puncher toy getting gravel poured on it)
- Older Than They Look: Riki might be a kid, but he's a Six-Hundred Million Year Old Kid!
- He was in stasis though, so he's really not that old. He is however very mature for his age.
- Pinky Swear: Happens between Momo and Gunmajin in episode 44.
- Precursors: Pangaea, again.
- Public Domain Soundtrack: Bacchushund and Hysterrier dance to the "Blue Danube" in episode 9.
- Bara-Hungry wanders around to "The Nutcracker Suite" in episode 25.
- Pun-Based Title: "Ohranger" can mean several things depending on the context. It can refer to the O.H. (Overtech Hardware) technology used by the heroes, the Japanese word for "King", the Spanish word "Olé" (which is the catchphrase of the Ohrangers), or even as a homophone for the word "Aura" (oura).
- Punny Name: Bara Ivy. The Japanese word for "rose" is bara.
- One guest character is named "Henna-jiisan", which literally means Old Man Henna. However, "henna" is also an adjective for someone who is weird, so his name ends up sounding like "weird old man".
- Also "Bara Noia" (Paranoia) whose powers can turn everyone into your enemy.
- Pyramid Power: One of these provides the Ohrangers' power.
- Robot War: The plot of entire series,
- Reunion Show: Jumpstarted the annual team ups between current and previous Super Sentai teams.
- Shirtless Scene: Several, including the end of episode 23.
- Smelly Skunk: The Bara Skunk monster in episode 36.
- Super Prototype: Red Puncher is shown to be pretty much the equal to the Ohranger Robot in fighting prowess, and it was the first robot made that used Choriki.
- It also invokes Flawed Prototype since by Chief Miura's admission, he just had learned how to synthesize Choriki and didn't get it right. In fact, it caused its first pilot's death! Captain Hoshino manages to tame it after a Near-Death Clairvoyance sequence where said first pilot, Lt. Kirino, imparts upon him the wisdom that UAOH and Ohranger are meant to fight for all life, not just mankind.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Normally in the series, whenever a Monster of the Week has a particularly strong ability, especially in a multi-part episode, they will end up defeating the heroes, who will either find a countermeasure or use sheer Heroic Willpower to come out victorious. Case in point: Bara Micron, a combination of Walking Techbane and Anti-Magic that can control or shut down any machine it wants - including the Ohrangers' equipment and giant robots - and also cut off the Ohrangers from their Choriki. As expected, it handily beats the Ohrangers and the story moves to a second episode. And the Ohrangers lose again. Turns out that, regardless of how hard you try, an enemy that can just shut down every single countermeasure you have cannot be overcome even by force of will. It takes a Deus ex Machina to destroy Bara Micron, but the damage is done and Baranoia ends up ruling Earth for six months.
- Tagalong Kid: Averted with Riki in spite of his age.
- Theme Naming:
- The Ohrangers, sans Riki, have surnames relating to their geometric symbols.
- Maruo = Round tail
- Nijo = Two Linesnote
- Mita = Three Fieldsnote
- Yokkaichi = Fourth Day Citynote
- Hoshino = Star Field
- Riki's symbol is the Kanji "Oh"/"King", matching his codename. It has six "terminals" in its shape as he's literally the Sixth Ranger of the group.
- The names of all the members of the Baranoia Royal Family have multiple meanings, at least one of which is a dog breed.
- Bacchushund - Bacchus and Dachshund. The "hund" is often wrongly translated as "wrath".
- Hysterrier - Hysteria and Terrier.
- Bulldont - Pluto and Bulldog.
- Maltihua - Maltese and Chihuaha
- The Ohrangers, sans Riki, have surnames relating to their geometric symbols.
- Time Skip: The sidetrip to the home planet of the Dorin and of chouriki in episode 47 takes what seems like a few hours to the team, but it turns out to have actually kept them out of commission for six months.
- Tinkle in the Eye: Happens to Juri in episode 12.
- Tomboy and Girly Girl: Juri and Momo. They switch based on the situation. Generally Juri is more physically competent and outspoken and confident, while Momo has a softer feminine personality and is the Distressed Damsel a few times.
- Torpedo Tits: Keris shoots lasers from her nipples in giant monster form.
- Trojan Horse: The Ohrangers use a Trojan Horse gambit (Chief Miura directly brings up the myth, even) to get themselves and the Blocker Robos inside the Baranoia moon base in "The Five Robos' Great Riot".
- 20 Minutes into the Future: This is set in the then-future year 1999. Or at least, it was intended before the teamups.
- Unexpected Genre Change: Episode 32 takes a sharp turn into horror territory. Also a call forward to Noboru Sugimura's involvement with the Resident Evil games.
- Unexpectedly Dark Episode: Episode 32. After a long streak of humorous filler episodes, we get a horror themed episode with the Monster of the Week being a pedophile who left Baranoia over a decade ago to kidnap little girls and trap them in a nightmare, unable to age as he forces them into scenarios to satisfy his desires, and when one of them calls to Momo in her dreams for help, he drags her into the nightmare and attacks her physically and mentally throughout the episode while all she can do is survive until the other Ohrangers can get her out of the dream.
- Villain Decay: A side effect of the show becoming Lighter and Softer, the Baranoia Empire, which start the show with a full fledged invasion of Japan, complete with troops, artillery, and aircraft (The first episode is even called "Invasion! 1999"), abandon their initial plan to bomb Japan and its government into submission after the first few episodes. Afterwards, they soon settle into pettier Monster of the Week style schemes. Their attitude also gradually changes from sadistic Social Darwinist to more comical. In earlier episodes, Bacchus had no qualms about destroying minions whenever they displayed any sign of weakness or sympathy towards humanity. In a later episode, he and his son are seen admiring pictures of human women in swimsuits, which they subsequently try to hide from Hysterrier.
- Weirdness Magnet: The Nittas consider themselves the unluckiest family in Japan after suffering from being hit by monsters interrupting their lives three times - in episodes 25, 31, and 43.
- Xanatos Gambit: Bulldont and Maltihua combine this with a Uriah Gambit when they reprogram Bomber the Great and have him attack the Ohrangers. The outcome of Bomber the Great being defeated has a bonus as his death would trigger a missile that would destroy the sun. Fortunately, Gunmajin manages to stop the missile.
