Chikyū Sentai Fiveman ("Earth Squadron Fiveman") is the fourteenth installment of the Super Sentai franchise, which aired from 1990 to 1991. Kenji Suzuki sang the Title Theme Tune.
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.
Shout! Factory released Fiveman in North America on September 2022.
Recurring Super Sentai tropes:
- All Your Powers Combined: The Brother Attack.
- BFG: The Earth Cannon. Which Arthur G6 transforms into.
- By the Power of Grayskull!: "Fiveman!" Or, for the last timenote , their individual names.
- Calling Your Attacks
- Combination Attack: Several; the Brother Attack and the Super Five Ball.
- Color Character: The codenames used the team prefix, the word "Five", as the head and the corresponding colors as the tail, the first Sentai do do so since Dynaman. Can be a bit confusing when it comes to Five Pink, whose codename is rather similar to the Bioman warrior Pink Five.
- Color-Coded Characters: Both the Fivemen and the Five-kun Dolls.
- Cool Bike: The Hawk Arrow bikes, one for each member.
- Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Did You Just Blow Up Vulgyre?
- Diegetic Soundtrack Usage: The rangers sing their opening theme to counter the music Chevalier is making in episode 28.
- Evil Will Fail: Zone begins to fall apart when it's revealed that Meadow was dead all along and merely a face for Vulgyre to realize his dreams of godhood. Doldora and Zaza are turned into a monster when the former tries to go AWOL out of disgust, while Vulgyre sends Chevalier to his death to speed up his transformation into the Galactic Super Beast. Though by that point Vulgyre didn't really have a need for armies, given how he was daikaiju-sized and on the verge of achieving godhood.
- Finishing Move: The Earth Cannon and the Brother Attacks.
- Five-Man Band: Naturally... They even literally have "Five" in their team name.
- The Leader: Gaku, the eldest sibling and the red ranger who leads his siblings into battle.
- The Lancer: Fumiya, the youngest and most immature of the siblings.
- The Smart Girl: Kazumi, the math wiz and craftiest of the siblings.
- The Big Guy: Ken, the strongest ranger who once beat a monster unmorphed.
- The Heart: Remi, the tough girl who cares a lot for her siblings.
- 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.
- A Mech by Any Other Name: The Five Machines.
- Combining Mecha: Sky Alpha (Red) + Carrier Beta (Yellow and Black) + Land Gamma (Blue and Pink) = Five Robo (robot mode) or Five Trailer (truck mode)
- Transforming Mecha: The Star Carrier space jet, which transforms into the Star Five.
- Mecha Expansion Pack: The Star Five and the Magma Base.
- Five Robo + Star Five = Super Five Robo
- Super Five Robo + Magma Base = Max Magma
- In the Name of the Moon
- Law of Chromatic Superiority:
- 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. Also one of the uncommon Super Sentai cases where the monster must still be alive; no post-explosion gigantification here.
- Mini Dress Of Power: Averted for the first time since the trope was started consistently with Maskman.
- 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.
- Mooks: The Batsuler warriors.
- "On the Next Episode of..." Catch-Phrase: "Watch next week or you'll (super) regret it!" if Galactic Merchant Dongoros narrates the next episode preview, and variations of "Cheer for us" if it's Gaku and the Five-kun Dolls, depending on who narrates that preview.
- 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.
- Robot Buddy: Arthur G6, The Mentor.
- Super Mode: First Sentai show to introduce a powered-up form for the entire team with the Fivetector armors. Coincidentally, Ryu Hoshikawa (aka Dyna Black) had one in the form of the Battletector armor.
- Supervillain Lair: The Galactic Ship Vulgyre; while mobile, it's usually plopped down in the Arctic. It's later revealed that Vulgyre is alive, and soon after, he's exposed as the true villain of the season and goes One-Winged Angel.
- Theme Music Power-Up: Not unusual for a Super Sentai series, but in one episode, the Monster of the Week attacked the Fivemen's Humongous Mecha by singing. The Fivemen countered by singing the show's theme song.
- 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.
- Villains Act, Heroes React: As is the norm for Super Sentai, we generally have Zone sending out a MOTW with an Evil Plan Once an Episode, with our heroes then arriving on the scene to stop them.
- Weapon-Based Characterization
- Swiss-Army Weapon: The Five Blasters.note
- Bifurcated Weapon: The Five Blaster's Power Grips can detach and attach to the Fivemen's individual weapons.
- Improbable Weapon User: The Super Five Ball.
- BFG: The Earth Cannon, aka Arthur G6.
- Powered Armor: Five Tector
- Gaku: V-Swordnote
- Ken: Twin Array and Twin Yo-yos.note
- Fumiya: Power Cutters and Cutter Discs.note
- Kazumi: Cutie Circlenote
- Remi: Melody Tactnote
- Swiss-Army Weapon: The Five Blasters.note
Tropes Specific To Chikyuu Sentai Fiveman
- All Your Base Are Belong to Us: The villains attack and nearly destroy the Magma Base in episode 29.
- In turn, Gaku ends up aboard the Vulgyre in episode 45, exposing the truth about Vulgyre to the villains.
- And the Adventure Continues: The series ends with the Hoshikawa siblings climbing into the Star Five and heading out to space to bring their parents home.
- Badass Teacher: The Fiveman themselves are school teachers.
- Bait-and-Switch Credits: The opening shows the red and blue rangers riding around on a motorboat that is never seen in any episode.
- Big Damn Heroes: Practically Once an Episode, when anywhere between one and four of the Fivemen are seconds away from being finished off.
- Breather Episode: Zone's Opposite Day has the leaders forced to obey the every whim of the Mooks and the Monster of the Week.
- Brainwashed and Crazy: Episode 17 has Fumiya brainwashed by the Monster of the Week into attempting to kill his siblings. They can tell he's Not Himself.
- 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, Garoa is quite the bumbling officer, whom Chevalier makes fun of before his actual fall into a janitor, where 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 Fiveman's Humongous Mecha is destroyed, it seems like Garoa's Humongous Mecha is unstoppable, until Arthur uses the Fiveman's base as a weapon, which hasn't been done in about 15 episodes.
- Chick Magnet: Captain Chevalier manages to draw the attraction of just about every women he meets, including Kazumi, Remi, Doldora, Zaza and Meadow.
- Dark Action Girl:
- Doldora and her assistant Zaza are both skilled female combatants on the villains' side.
- 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.
- Dead Person Impersonation: Sorta. Vulgyre uses Meadow (Who is Only Mostly Dead) as an avatar.
- Death by Materialism: Dongoros 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.
- Drunken Boxing: When a Zone plot causes her to get drunk, Remi gets even more smashed on her own volition so she could take out the Monster of the Week with Drunken Boxing.
- Duel to the Death: Captain Garoa tries to have this against Gaku in episode 15. But once he's starting to lose, Garoa decides to escape instead.
- Gaku ends up in one of these against Chevalier in episode 47. Chevalier dies, which is what Vulgyre wanted to gain his powerful death energy.
- Earth Is the Center of the Universe: Earth has two-fold importance. 1) It's the final planet whose life Zone needs to destroy to finish their ritual and 2) It's the one place where Sidon Flowers are cultivated. These flowers hold the key to restoring life to the barren planets Zone has left behind them, and prove to be Vulgyre's weakness.
- Even Evil Has Standards: The Zone are rather disturbed when they learn that their ship/base was a Planet Eater Eldritch Abomination who was calling the shots all along, rather than the goodhood-seeking Empress they thought they were serving. Doldora especially.
- 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.
- Forgotten Superweapon: Fiveman introduced the concept of a team Super Mode with the Five Tector armor, and in a pinch revealed their mecha can combine with their base into an uber-mecha. Thanks to the disjoined storytelling, however, both hardly ever got used.
- Foreshadowing: In episode 42, Garoa is busy mopping up when he finds a passage inside the ship he hadn't seen before. Before he can investigate further, however, he gets blown out by a mysterious force; shortly afterwards, Empress Meadow appears, ticked off at the lack of progress Zone has made against the Fiveman. Gaku winds up in this room a few episodes later and winds up revealing to the villains that Vulgyre has been a living thing all along.
- "Freaky Friday" Flip: Fumiya and Kazumi end up switched in episode 36. And a lot of other people suffer from this as well thanks to the Monster of the Week.
- Genki Girl: Remi is quite a cheery girl, if she's not angsting. See
Moral Event Horizon. - Godhood Seeker: Meadow, who seeks to attain godhood by destroying 1000 inhabited planets.
- God-Mode Sue: Fumiya in his 'Fiveman doll show' makes the Five Black doll (played by himself) into one.
- Good with Numbers: Dongoros manages Zone's finances, and uses an abacus to calculate the costs of everything.
- Go-Go Enslavement: After Kazumi crossed Despair Event Horizon and defected in episode 32, she becomes the 'slave' for the Monster of the Week and gets to wear a Vapor Wear.
- Heel–Face Turn: Meadow. Although technically she isn't really evil at all.
- Hollywood Voodoo: In episode 23, the villains turn puppets of the rangers into voodoo dolls.
- Greek Chorus: Afterwards, the dolls somehow come to life and will sometimes comment on Fiveman's current battle.
- Homage: In Episode 30, the Fiveman team gains a new finishing move inspired by the Goranger Hurricane ball, in which they kick around a dodgeball.
- I'm a Humanitarian: Chevalier tries to can people, let them ferment for three days, then eat them in episode 34 (Although it's debatable if Chevalier is actually a human...).
- Man Behind the Man: Meadow was really an illusion created by none other than the ship, Vulgyre.
- Mundane Made Awesome: Ken's almost bliztball-esque way of playing dodgeball. They don't call him the Dodge Emperor for nothing.
- Near-Villain Victory: Somewhat. By the time the Zone come to Earth they've already achieved 99.9% of their goal, with Earth the only planet standing between their leader and godhood.
- Offscreen Villain Dark Matter: Sort of — this is one of the few, if not the only, Sentai shows where the villains have somebody who manages their financial assets (Dongoros). Since Zone is an empire, it has its' own currency, the Dolyun, and they have to pay for a lot of their assets. One of the Gorlin used to make the monsters grow cost 100,000 Dolyen, for instance.
- Omnicidal Maniac: The Galactic Imperial Army Zone are working to complete a ritual which will give their leader godlike power and eternal life. This ritual entails wiping all life out on 1000 planets. Earth's the thousandth.
- Our Monsters Are Different: Starting in episode 29, the Monster of the Week tends to be a split down the middle combination of two different animals.
- Vulgyre's seemingly just a spaceship, but it turns out to be a sentient one. His Galactic Super Beast form is, unusually, plant-like (with thorns, leaves, and giant roots for legs).
- Paper-Thin Disguise: In order to search for the Monster of the Week, which is lost on Earth, Zone pretends to be the Fiveman team (or more accurately, the Sibling Teachers). Justified in that most children have never seen the sibling teachers.
- Raised by Robots: The five Hoshikawa siblings, who were raised by their robot helper Arthur G6 in their parents' stead.
- Say My Name: The members of Fiveman often call out their full name to announce themselves to the enemy, or prior to transforming. Makes sense given that one of their main motivations to fight Zone is out of revenge for the attack on their family which cost them their parents and nearly killed them all—their family name is a defiant battle cry.
- Scary Stitches: Some of the Combined Galactic Warriors have these holding their two halves together. It makes them even more unnerving to look at.
- Shirtless Scene: Gaku's training in episode 15.
- Sibling Team: The Hoshikawa siblings naturally. This concept would be put to use again in Sentai with Rescue Sentai GoGoFive and Mahou Sentai Magiranger.
- Shout-Out: Iwakasekigin (Galactic Rock/fossil) one of Chevalier's Monsters of the Week, can create miniature versions of itself, called Rockmen. Due to the way Japanese works, this comes out unpluralized, in other words, Rockman.
- Show Within a Show: Episode 43 has a kid watching Denshi Sentai Denziman on his TV, coincidentally on the same episode where the Monster of the Week is a TV-Pteranodon monster.
- You can also see footage from Battle Fever J on his TV.
- 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.
- Tomboy and Girly Girl: Remi and Kazumi, the former being an athletic ninja girl while the latter is a prim and proper Team Mom.
- Villainous Breakdown: When the villains find out the truth about Vulgyre, Doldora doesn't take it well, asking how a monster like Vulgyre could possibly become a god, and that not only does she regret having been deceived and working all her life for an illusion, she doesn't even know what to live for anymore. Vulgyre ends up turning her and Zaza into a monster.
- Villain Decay: Captain Garoa 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.
- Whack-a-Monster: The Fivemen defeat Mogurarugin this way.
- Wham Episode: Episode 32. 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.
- Episode 46. When it's discovered that Meadow is an illusion — the villain's ship has been the true villain all along! The villains learn the truth when Five Red infiltrates the base and ends up exposing and injuring Vulgyre's organic innards.
- Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: When Doldora finds out that Gaku is scared of ghosts, she has the Monster of the Week create ghostly illusions of former monsters.
- Womb Level: The Fiveman force the Super Five Robo down Vulgyre's throat in the finale, and exit by way of his gut.
- 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 Fiveman team finally managed to contact their parents on a distant planet. A teary voice communication ensues, when the Big Bad starts molting, and the final battle begins.
