The second of Toho and Konami's ChouSeiShin trilogy, Gen Sei Shin Justiriser debuted in 2004.
Years ago, the evil Kaiser Hades destroyed the planet Riser and set his sights on Earth next, but was defeated and sealed away by a champion of justice named Noulan and her mystical "Justipower". Her mission complete, Noulan entrusted her Justipower to a future generation in case evil ever arose to threaten the Earth once again.
Now in the modern age, the evil alien Doctor Zora sets in motion a plan to free Kaiser Hades from his bindings. In response, the Justipower chooses three champions to defend the planet and gives the power to transform into Justiriser: Shouta Date (Riser Glen), an underachieving high-school student who finds purpose in his new role; Yuka Sanada (Riser Kagari), a popular high-school student who feels conflicted between her newfound responsibility and desire to lead a normal school life; and Shinya Hiraga (Riser Gant), a straight-faced college student who dislikes fighting and questions whether humanity is worthy of protecting. Together they are the Justiriser, the chosen champions of Earth with gaining the ability to generate powerful armor by combining Justipower and characteristic elements in their body and summon Humongous Mecha known as Phantom Star Gods.
List of Characters
The Justirisers:
- Shouta Date/ Riser Glen: The Idiot Hero; later the vessel of Riser Shirogane.
- Shinya Hiraga/Riser Gant: The Smart Guy and Ineffectual Loner.
- Yuka Sanada/Riser Kageri: An Ordinary High-School Student who wishes she was still ordinary.
Allies:
- Demon Knight: The Sixth Ranger, who first fights for Kaiser Hades and then realizes that he should fight on the Riser's side
- Mio Tendou: Heir to the family that possessed the Justi Crystal. She is able to summon Riser Shirogane by combining the powers of the other three.
- Reika Motomiya: Mio's bodyguard. She cares about Mio's wellbeing, and sometimes clashes with her when she wants to do dangerous things. Reika is also more than able to fight the enemy mooks.
- Gentarou Date: Shouta's strict, but well meaning father. First totally oblivious to his son being a hero, he later discovers this during a monster attack. Later Gentarou tries to help the Risers by offering his fatherly wisdom.
Villains:
- Kaiser Hades: An Evil Overlord who got imprisoned by Nolun. When he is freed, he seemingly only sits on his throne leaving the dirty work to his generals. After one failure to take over earth too many, he decides to blast the planet into pieces.
- Doctor Zora: A subordinate of Hades who released him from his prison. She is a mad scientist, who is able to create Cyber Knights. These are bio-mechanical creatures that serve as monsters of the week.
- General Bachuss: The Dragon of Kaiser Hadess. He is the leader of the Death Commandos, Hades's bodyguards. He was killed by Shirogane.
- Majin Daruga: Hadess Brother. He decides to invade the Earth after Hades was killed there. When he takes matters into his own hand, he absorbs Demon Knights latent powers and turns into Riser Kurogane, an evil version of Shirogane. He was killed by a greatly powered giant up Shirogane.
- Adorocs: Daruga's extremely vain general. Adorocs likes to use deception rather than force. Whenever he is cornered, he tries to run away. When he attempts this for one time too many, Daruga blocks his escape route, forcing him to fight the risers. This fight causes his death.
This show features examples of:
- All Your Powers Combined: Riser Glen transforms into Riser Shirogane through the powers of Mio's Justi Crystal and his two fellow Justirisers. In the finale, the powers of Mio, Demon Knight and the Genseishin all empower the Justirisers to transform into a giant Shirogane for the Final Battle.
- Badass Normal: Reika Motomiya, Mio Tendo's bodyguard, whose combat training makes her more than capable of handling Mooks. The only thing that keeps her from being at the same level as the Risers, is the fact she cant transform.
- By the Power of Grayskull!: Like their predecessors, the Justirisers transform by shouting "Souchaku!"
- Combining Mecha: Any of the Gen Sei Shin can combine with the Genseijuu Riseross to form multiple combinations. Though it puts an interesting twist on the trope; there are 3 (later 4) different Gen Sei Shin that Riseross can combine with, however, that Gen Sei Shin's correspond Justiriser needs to be in Riseross in order to combine. It's also worth noting that while only 1 Justiriser is necessary to pilot Riseross, all 3 are needed for it to fight at full power. As such there's more than one occasion where 1 or 2 Justiriser are fighting a normal sized enemy, while the 3rd is in Riseross
- Continuity Cameo: Several of the Gransazers make cameos in this series, confirming they take place in the same universe.
- Akira appears in episode 30 as the doctor who references Mio.
- Mika appears in episode 35 when she mistakes Shouta for a stalker and kicks him before apologizing. In that time, she references having been a "hero of justice" once.
- Naoto appears up in episode 42 as one of the customers Shouta delivers to in his part time job. He reappears in the next episode to give Shouta pep talk, and shows up later to help the Justirisers by battling some Mooks.
- Couch Gag: The ending credits of each episode have different images from different points in the episode.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Any battle involving Shirogane usually ends with it immediately destroying their aliens.
- Degraded Boss: Bulgario starts off as a single kaiju of the week that gives the heroes quite a hassle. In the Final Battle, it gets deployed in large numbers as Giant Mooks that the heroes have little trouble dealing with individually.
- Disc-One Final Boss: Kaiser Hades is the Big Bad, but he is killed midway through and the villain afterwards is his brothera.
- The Dragon: General Bachuss is Kaiser Hades's right-hand man and the captain of his elite guards. You could arguably count Doctor Zola as a Dragon to Hades too for the time when he was sealed. Later on, Adorocs serves as one to Majin Daruga.
- The Empire: The Hades Army, an army of aliens bent on conquering the universe. Who turn out to be a subset of a much larger empire.
- Evil Counterpart: The Demon Knight, the only human among the Hades Army's ranks who possesses similar powers as theirs and transforms in a similar way to them. Later, Majin Daruga absorbs some power from Demon Knight to transform into Kurogane; an evil counterpart to Shirogane.
- The Four Gods: The basis of the Gen Sei Shin, with Enoh being Suzaku, Kouki being the Genbu, Ranga being Byakko and Ryuto being Seiryu, although interestingly the last two have their colors reversed.
- Freudian Trio
- Gotta Catch 'Em All: The villains gotta break all the Stellar Plates.
- Great Offscreen War: The war between a fleet led by the Riser hero Nolun and Kaiser Hades and his army, which ended in Hades being sealed on Earth.
- Human Aliens: Aliens from Planet Riser look almost identical to humans. It's hinted that this has something to do with Earth and Riser being linked as sibling planets.
- Kaiju: The Space Beasts, giant-sized alien creatures the villains use in blitz attacks on cities.
- Katanas Are Just Better: Riser Glen/Shouta uses one, and his mecha uses a pair of them.
- Lighter and Softer: Has overall lighter tone and more comedic moments compared to Chou Sei Shin Gransazer. Souta's relationship with his Dad is pretty much structured to resemble a Domestic Comedy. The villains plot is more a classical "conquer the Earth and destroy anything that stands in our way", in stark contrast with Belzeus's much more elaborate and manipulative villainy, they even got some humorous moments too.
- Mineral MacGuffin: The eight Stellar Plates sealing Kaiser Hades.
- Make My Monster Grow: Averted most of the time, as instead of enlarging the Monsters of the Week the villains usually just sent down an already giant-sized kaiju called a Space Beast. However, some Cyber Knights were capable of transforming into giant kaiju forms. Kaiser Hades also transformed into his true, kaiju-like form for his final battle and so did Kurogane. Ironically, in the finale this gets pulled by the Justirisers themselves when they merge into a giant Shirogane to take on Kurogane's final form.
- Monster of the Week: Unlike Gransazer, Justirisers plays this trope pretty straight. First its Cyber Knights of the Week, then Death Commandos of the Week and finally Legendars of the Week, all interspliced with Kaiju battles.
- Planet Destroyer: The Magneshielder, which works first by embedding itself in a planet and shooting out a shockwave that destroys everything on its surface, before drilling to the planet's core and imploding it.
- Quirky Miniboss Squad: The Death Commandos start out as this, being Hades's six elite bodyguards, before being sent down one-by-one as monsters of the week.
- Sealed Evil in a Can: Kaiser Hades starts the series off sealed in a metal contraption behind the eight Stellar Plates.
- Sorting Algorithm of Evil: It goes first the Cyber Knights, then Doctor Zora, then the even stronger Death Commandos, then General Bachuss and finally Kaiser Hades, the Big Bad himself. Then come the even tougher Legendars, Commander Adorocs and finally the Bigger Bad.
- Super Mode: Riser Shirogane is Riser Glen given extra power by Mio's crystal.
- Underwear of Power: Riser Kageri in her costume wears cyan panties that have a sewn patch in front of it
◊. And you can see it clearly in her transformation scene - see for yourself◊. What's more, she only wears a spandex bodysuit (inner suit)◊ during her transformation sequence. You should remember that she is a high school girl. This is her whole transformation sequence◊ - World-Healing Wave: At the end of the series, after the city has been laid to waste by Kurogane and his horde of Bulgarios, the heroes use their Justi Power to repair all the damage that they'd done.
- You Can't Thwart Stage One: The heroes fail to stop Doctor Zora from destroying a single Stellar Plate, leading to Kaiser Hades being freed.
