YMMV / Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • When Basco took the Final Wave for Sari in #39, was it because he needed her alive for his Pseudoroids, or did he actually show concern and care for Sari? #47 subverts any possibility of the latter, HARD!
  • Did Akudos Gill truly care about Warz Gill and mourn his death? Or was the memorial to his son and his You Have Failed Me moment just going through what was expected of a man in his position who lost his son? Or worse, did he send Warz Gill there to be killed off in the first place, to justify a war of Disproportionate Retribution?
    • As shown in Kamen Rider x Super Sentai: Super Hero Taisen, Akudos Gill does care about Warz Gill and was "terrified" when Captain Marvelous reminded Warz Gill who destroyed him.
  • This one is more of a perspective thing than anything else, but seeing as the Gokaigers call themselves "pirates" but utterly fail to live up to the moniker, it is entirely plausible that Basco, the Hate Sink of the show and the only inherently evil pirate, is, in fact, the only one who has his head on straight and knows what's really going on here. After all, as Captain Zahab demonstrated, pirates are criminals...
• Awesome Ego: Captain Marvelous, true to his name.
• Awesome Music:
  • The opening theme.
  • The ending song.
    • The "Now & Forever" version.
  • GoJuuJin's theme.
  • GokaiOh's theme.
  • Don't forget the badass Kaizokuki Wo Agero (even more awesome in full).
• Badass Decay: Damaras probably got this the worst out of any Sentai Dragon - going from a bruiser to a punching bag in one episode.
• Base-Breaking Character: Warz Gill. Some like him for being a pompous Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain and find him entertaining, others found him to be a whiny Spoiled Brat and ineffective Big Bad. Some even found Prince Vekar, his Western counterpart, to be far more entertaining due to his funny lines, and considering Super Megaforce's reputation, that's saying something.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Unless you know Goranger's attack, the Goranger Hurricane with a garbage truck really comes out of nowhere, even with the Rangers calling it out during the attack.
  • That and the fact that the Japanese loves puns. Gormin is a play on "Gomi" which means trash or garbage.
• Broken Base: Hurricane Gokai-Oh spamming in the summer episodes (ends right before the Go-onger tribute, where Machalcon took Furaimaru's stead) is either received well by some fans because of the Pirates-Ninja factor or too repetitive and spotlight-hogging for the others.
• Complete Monster:
  • Basco ta Jolokia stands out as viler than the Zangyack Empire he serves, despite having fewer resources. Once a member of the Red Pirates, Basco betrayed them to the Zangyack upon learning of Aka Red's intent to give the Ranger Keys back to the Super Sentai, desiring the Greatest Treasure in the Universe for himself. Believing "you have to sacrifice something to get something else", Basco holds an ill child hostage for the GoGoV's Greater Power, breaks Gai's arm on a whim, and threatens to bomb a school in order to obtain the Megaranger's Greater Power. Basco's cruelest act comes when he abuses his pet monkey Sally, and blows her up when she defects.
  • "At Least My Friend's Soul": Great Scientist Zaien is a scientist who specializes in experimenting on living beings in service to the Zangyack. A mad genius, Zaien loves to convert people into cyborgs, leaving them as slaves with no memories of their past and no way to return to their original forms. When Sid Bamick betrays the Zangyack, Zaien brainwashed him through torture into Barizorg, with Joe Gibken horrified and heartbroken at what his former friend has become. Arriving to assist Warz Gill's invasion of Earth, Zaien kidnaps human athletes to put his Barizorg project into mass production, before vowing to do this to the Gokaigers for freeing them.
• Continuity Lockout: As cool as all these Call Backs to previous Sentai seasons are, it's probably going to leave a few newer fans who aren't familiar with the older seasons a little confused, like the Goranger Hurricane attack.
• Crosses the Line Twice: Several monsters turning into a Twinkle in the Sky? Seen it. Said monsters smashing through the Zangyack fleet that's always in Earth's orbit? Funny. One such monster smashing into the flagship and still capable of walking up to the bridge? HILARIOUS.
• Evil Is Cool:
  • The Gormin have become some of the best Mooks ever in a Sentai series, especially after the poker game in episode 10. It helps that they're portrayed as not quite as mindless as many of the grunts before and after them.
  • Basco ta Jolokia: an effective Knight of Cerebus that can fight against the Gokaigers with or without Ranger Keys.
• Fan Nickname: "Tabasco Sauce" for Basco.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: In the western world, Gokaiger is one of the most popular Sentai series in recent history (bordering on Sacred Cow) thanks to its great cast, memorable battles and being a great tribute to Super Sentai in general. This is helped further by the negative reception of its Power Rangers adaptation due to how badly it botched adapting it.
• Hard-to-Adapt Work:
  • The fact that a lot of the fight scenes involve the Gokaigers transforming into past Sentai teams that never received a Power Rangers adaptation made adapting this series a challenge for the PR-team. One option would be to limit the Stock Footage to just that of teams that did get a Power Rangers-equivalent, but that would mean shooting a lot of new scenes to make up for the unusable ones, which would seriously strain the budget. Power Rangers Super Megaforce responded to this by...just using some the unadapted Sentai teams while leaving out others, with only the vague explanation of them having "never been seen on Earth before", which many fans decried as a lazy solution. Then there were the fleeting moments where they did bother to shoot new footage of adapted team and individual ranger suits in some episodes, sometimes also green-screening an individual suit over one in the Gokaiger footage, having the suit actor replicate the movements in the footage as best as possible, then they shot pick-up shots on location to insert in. But then there was the moment in episode 19 (which adapted episode 49 of Gokaiger), where they replaced Vul Eagle with the red ranger from Mighty Morphin/Zyuranger, but kept the other 4 suits (Blue Mask, FiveYellow, ChangeGriffon, and Green Flash), including making their own versions of those suits for no real reason for pick-up shots, it really brings up the question of how much money they had for each episode and how much of that money and effort would it take to shoot new footage of adapted teams to replace unadapted ones and what the mindset was of the producers towards budgeting and making sure production-wise if anything made any sense to people why they did or didn't do something they should've, which comes off as very inconsistent.
  • Apparently, Haim Saban didn't like the whole "pirates being good guys" thing for some reason (even though the point of it was that they become better people over the course of the series and have morals that have them protect the innocent against the Zangyack stemming from their own backstories like any other Ranger team would), so the writers were presumably told to gut that part from the series when they licensed it and began planning on how they would adapt it into Power Rangers. This left the characters in Megaforce mismatched with Pirate-themed suits and Zords, as well as not a lot of character traits to adapt that would mesh very well with their personalities or backstories (as nonexistent or unestablished as they were).
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • All those mentions about piracy in the show (I.E. "We're the pirated versions") might be a little uneasy considering most English-speaking viewers of the show are pirates in a whole different sense.
  • Not to mention the one bill everyone is focused on in 2011, the Stop Online Piracy Act. It's very ironic that it was the Pirate Sentai that was playing during the anti-piracy craze.
  • The "pirating" connotations become more unbearable when one hears stories like this.
  • The whole Villain-falls-in-love-with-Red Racer plot might sound funny, until it's reported later in the year that Yuji "Kyosuke Jinnai" Kishi goes into divorce for yet-undisclosed reasons. Worse, his wife was another Sentai alumni - Umeko/Deka Pink.
  • The way the villains are portrayed in the movies can be Played for Laughs. It can also be jarring when you compare them to what they've been doing in the series proper. For example, in Gokaiger vs. Gavan, how Basco "punishes" Sally for not helping him fight the Go-busters...
  • Gai joining the Gokaigers and becoming a wanted criminal in the process comes off as this after Junya Ikeda's arrest due to his involvement in a fraud situation.
• He's Just Hiding: After the end of episode 21, this might be true of Aka Red. The final episode has Aka Red showing up in the end, then disappearing in a flash of light. So maybe?
  • Although Super Animal War shows that Aka Red survived, said special is explicitly non-canon ^explanation in said special, Yamato was the only one who had heard about Super Sentai, but the entire team learned about all the other teams in episode 29 of Zyuohger; the special references that all 40 series (at the time) are TV series; ShiroNinger does not recognize the Zyuohgers when she and the Ninningers meet them in Message from the Future from Super Sentai; and the special references the V-Cinema, which takes place after the series, so his fate is still unknown.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • In #28, Monster of the Week Kiaido suggests that he may pick a fight with Damaras. Kiaido ends up slain by the five Gokaigers in the same episode, while Damaras later overpowers all six Gokaigers as well as Basco, who himself proved a match for them, with it taking the whole team at 100% to defeat Damaras after he is literally stabbed in the back by Basco and humiliated at being outwitted by Don. With all the evidence available, the odds are that Kiaido, as imposing as he was, would have had his ass handed to him by Damaras.
  • In Episode 7 of Ultraman Trigger: New Generation Tiga, Ignis (played by Basco's actor Kei Hosogai) insists that he is a "Treasure Hunter" instead of a "Space Pirate" due to negative connotation of being the latter. Considering the kind of character Basco is, you get the humorous impression that Hosogai himself want to distance himself from his previous role.
• Ho Yay:
  • Marvelous and Joe in episode 12.
  Captain Marvelous: "The one I want is you."
  • The first time Luka and Ahim slept together on the couch, it was a cute moment that came after Luka tried comforting Ahim. The second time...well, here we are. There are other moments that can be be seen as shipping, especially episode 23, their focus episode (and Gogo V tribute).
  • With the villains, Marvelous and Basco have their tension going on, while Joe and Cid act very, very close in some of their flashbacks.
  • Don and the Soccer Kid in episode 32.
  • In a flashback, Basco asks a wounded Marvelous, "Want me to feed you ... like a couple?" He's teasing, yeah, but still.
• Jerkass Woobie: Warz openly admitted that he wants to prove himself to be more than what people of his homeworld think of him and was just using his so-called "lack of competence" as a facade due to secretly listening to Akudos' conversation with Damaras over being his "babysitter". He also sees Barizorg (actually a brainwashed Sid) as his Only Friend and is royally pissed off after Barizorg is killed off.
• Love to Hate: Yes, Basco is a scumbag of the highest order who is motivated by his own greed and his willingness to hurt people in order to get his way including children and his own pet and partner won't get him any likeable points. However, he is considered the greatest villain of the season not only because of how personal of a threat he is to the Gokaigers compared to the Zangyack, but being a great foil to Captain Marvelous and being super cunning, which allows him to be one step ahead of his enemies. Kei Hosogai's performance also makes him fun to watch.
• Magnificent Bastard: Captain Marvelous/GokaiRed leads the Gokaigers. Once a member of the Red Pirate Gang that collected the Ranger Keys, after Basco betrayed the group and tried to steal them for himself, Marvelous took the Ranger Keys and formed the Gokaigers to go to Earth and find the Greatest Treasure in the Universe first. Starting out greedy and self-interested, Marvelous and his crew come to blows with the Zangyack Empire when they invade again while they are gathering the Greater Powers from various Sentai and learning about heroism from them. After pulling off a risky move to kill Basco and take the last of the Sentai Greater Powers, Marvelous finally obtains the Greatest Treasure in the Universe, but destroys it after learning it will take away the powers of the Sentai if used. Marvelous then leads the Gokaigers in a final battle to defend the Earth from Zangyack, having become a true hero in the end even if he'll never admit it.
• Memetic Badass: Marvelous, oh, so very much.
• Memetic Mutation: See this page for examples.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Basco:
    • Him threatening to kill a little kid in order to try and get a Great Power from it's owner. His actions were previously only centered on the Gokaiger, but going far enough to try and kill a child for a Great Power is going too far.
    • Basco goes even farther in episode 39 by threatening to blow up an entire high school for a Great Power.
    • And if he didn't then, he most certainly did it by blowing up Sally, the only thing that he appeared to have any semblence of morality towards, with no remorse.
  • Warz Gil:
    • He crossed this by ordering a large number of people to be converted into copies of Barizorg.
    • Some say he crossed it earlier when he had strapped a bomb to an Action Commander so that he would take a large city with him. And the only reason why that is because said Action Commander irritated him.
  • Zatsurig:
    • He crossed it long before the story began when he destroyed Ahim's home planet.
  • Zaien:
    • He crossed it via his conversion of Sid into Barizorg. While Warz was also involved, he at least cared about Barizorg, while there is no indication Zaien actually cared.
• Most Wonderful Sound: Whenever the mobirates yells out the name of the sentai that the Gokaigers are transforming into.
  • Say it with me: GoooooooooKAIGER!
• Narm Charm:
  • Sally (Sari) the Monkey, Basco's sidekick. It's clearly someone crouching in a monkey costume. But the constant antics and the suit actor's surprising devotion to really acting like a monkey make you forget how silly she looks.
  • In episode 14, it's painfully obvious that the monsters are dragging around a dummy dressed as Red Racer, but since it's a Carranger episode, it just adds to the funny.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • Sid's transformation into Barizorg.
    • What's worse is Warz Gil has no problem about doing that to a great many other people.
  • When Basco transforms into his 'true form' in Episode 31 and he breaks Gai's arm. You can hear the crack, followed by the sound of Gai screaming...*shudder*
    • And let's not forget that his true form scared Aka Red. There's a reason why he had a 3 million Zagin bounty on his head, and it's not because he cooked meals for the Red Pirates.
  • Basco using summoned Gokaigers! Seeing mindless puppet duplicates of our heroes serving the bad guy can be quite chilling. The dark atmosphere of commandeered Gokai Galleon and their hunt for Navi does not help. This of course was predated by the Ranger puppets created by Black Cross King in the movie.
    • Heck, this could count for all the times Basco summoned past rangers. Imagine seeing the Super Sentai powers used for good end up getting used by a sociopath who is pretty much disrespecting them.
  • Something can be said about Gokai Silver's Gold Mode. The chestplate has miniature faces of previous Sixth Rangers, making it look eerily like a Super Sentai pelt or a witch doctor's shrunken head collection.
    • Or Kamen Rider Decade's Complete Form.
    • Kinda reminds you of the old Terror Toad monster from MMPR doesn't it?
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
  • Most people's first impression on Warz Gill is that he's a pathetic excuse of Big Bad thanks to his Spoiled Brat, General Failure attitude, and temper tantrum. However, thanks to some level ups in competency, some Moral Event Horizon crossing, and especially the events at Episode 37, people started acknowledging why he's the Big Bad. Though he bites it soon. But give the guy a break anyway, he dies after developing into a competent villain!
  • Also, the Goseigers. Many fans found them to be either dull or annoying, but their more aggressive behavior during the 199 Heroes movie won a lot of viewers over. The fact that their series got Vindicated by History also helps.
• Retroactive Recognition: Yui Koike (GokaiPink) first appeared as the last Victim of the Week in Kamen Rider Double.
• Shocking Moments:
  • Clips from the 199 Heroes movie show ALL 33 Giant Robos, plus Sky Ace from JAKQ and VariBlune from Goranger. Cue massive gasps of HSQ.
  • And now the newest trailer from the Gokaiger movie show us Gokaioh vs Fake Gokaioh above the moving ghost ship and Gokaioh swingin from a rope(!).
• Special Effect Failure:
  • There's a moment in #26 where the Hurricanegers and the GokaiOh are in the same shot, and the fact that they're all standing on a model city set is really obvious due to some bad perspective.
  • The staff made a "stunt spear" for scenes where Gokai Silver gets knocked around, since obviously the plastic prongs would break easily from all the rough-and-tumble of the fight scenes. The problem is that the stunt spear has large sheets of black plastic connecting the prongs, which solves the fragility problem but sticks out like a sore thumb every time it's used.
    • Aren't those black prongs actually part of the design? You can see that the two outer tips of the spear aren't actually connected to the main body, save for the black prongs.
  • Some of the suits haven't aged well, and it's easier to spot in HD. This is more common with Extra heroes whose armors aren't as easy to restore as the fabric in Ranger suits.
    • The first major instance of this happens in episode 20 with the Black Knight suit, whose shoulder pads and chest armor are slightly peeled off in the edges and corners, a detail exposed within close-ups of the suit.
    • Another case happens in Episode 31, when Zubaan and Wolzard Fire grow to giant size. As Zubaan tries to stomp GokaiSilver flat, his lower leg looks very crinkly. This is especially noticeable because, being a giant, the stomping leg occupied half the screen.
  • In the 199 Heroes movie, ghostly versions of every previous primary giant mecha are summoned to help finish off the big bad, using their Signature Finishing Moves to boot... which is a large issue as it's mostly recycled footage from older series. For the newer ones this isn't an issue, but the Pre-HD footage is clearly more grainy when viewed in HD and hasn't aged well. The scene itself is awesome until one notices and starts cringing from the low quality footage.
• Spoiled by the Format: In many ways, #38 feels like a final episode. The Gokaigers recover from their Curb-Stomp Battle, learn An Aesop about seizing your dreams, earn their own grand power, and use it to kill both the Big Bad (up to this point) and his right-hand man in an epic manner. However, being a Super Sentai series, we knew that there were some 12-15 episodes still remaining, and on top of that, not all the Greater Powers were gained.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Even a show as great as this is not immune to some.
  • For some, finally having a pirate season was awesome, but it was hijacked by the anniversary aspects. Many fans feel a season could have been solely about pirates with extra swashbuckling adventure and left the anniversary season to a team with a more downplayed motif.
  • Episode 13, the absence of Ahim from the group would have made for ideal opportunity to use the four member Abaranger keys.
  • In Episode 14, they gained Carranger's Grand Power, which is traffic safety. That probably would have been useful to help contain Machalcon in episode 36.
  • At the end of the Boukenger tribute, Akashi mentions AkaRed. Some people thought that this line indicated that AkaRed would have a larger role in the story than he'd had previously, but by the end of the series it turned out that he didn't have any more of a role than being Marvelous' former mentor and the one who gave him his powers. The line was just meant to refer to AkaRed's first appearance in the Boukenger vs. Super Sentai movie.
  • Episode 27, when Luka and Don body swap, they don't modify Gokai Green's costume into a Mini Dress Of Power, thus missing the chance of having the first female Green Ranger in Super Sentai history. We'd have to wait about six more years for that. And then 4 more to see this exact variation described.
  • Episode 34, a Luka episode, would have been the perfect time to have a Yellow Charge for the Gokai Galleon Buster. Ultimately, Luka remains the one Gokaiger not to have taken the lead with the Team Cannon.
  • No explanation has been given by how the entire Ranger Key quest, Basco's mutiny, Marvelous recruiting and tightening a strong bond with his crew in the vast space in less than 1 year. All those events took place between after the 34 Rangers sacrificed their powers and the first episode of Gokaiger. Considering this series takes place right after Goseiger.
  • Of all the Gokaiger pairings, Joe and Don never an episode together despite making for a perfect contrast, between the honorable, strong warrior and the technical expert who started out as a cowardly weakling. Though they do eventually get paired together in Super Hero Taisen, the Massive Multiplayer Crossover doesn't really have time to touch on their differences. One could argue that, in spite of its many flaws, Super Megaforce had the right idea in changing Gokaiger's "Freaky Friday" Flip episode to be between Green and Blue rather than Green and Yellow.
  • The lack of a Super Mode for the five initial rangers.
  • Not even Gokaiger vs. Gavan is safe from this. Tetsu Inada confirmed in his twitter that Doggie Kruger/Dekamaster (who is close friends with Gavan in-universe) would not be appearing in this movie.
  • How did Gai's ability to merge ranger keys together not have a larger role beyond the Go-On Wings, Gold Mode and Gokai Christmas? Probably a case of Real Life Writes the Plot, since it would presumably take a lot of resources to create many mix-and-match forms.
• Tough Act to Follow: On multiple levels.
  • For Super Sentai, this season would be seen as the last truly great season for a while. From Go-Busters on, every succeeding season for nearly a decade would prove divisive, with only Zyuohger coming close to breaking the trend, to the point rumors of the franchise's cancellation went wild. It wouldn't be until Kiramager, nine seasons after this one, that a season would be compared favorably to Gokaiger and many of its predecessors in the 2000s.
  • Gokaiger is seen as the greatest Milestone Celebration season in either Super Sentai or Kamen Rider and is the bar by which all others are compared, maintaining a great balance between tributes and original stories in addition to the nigh-miraculous feat of having at least one actor from each of the previous 34 seasons reprise either in the show proper or in 199 Hero Great Battle. Toei has been unable to replicate this, with Kamen Rider Zi-O and Kikai Sentai Zenkaiger being seen as decent, but not as good as Gokaiger.
• Viewer Gender Confusion:
  • Navi is technically without gender, being a machine, but fans and even some subbers can't decide on male or female pronouns. Since Navi seemed to enjoy getting fawned over by the schoolgirls in episode 8 and uses "oira", which is generally spoken by males (there are females that do so, but it's rare), evidence leans towards Navi being a "he".
  • A small handful of fans thought Basco was a woman upon seeing the episode 15 preview, although that was soon cleared up. Sally on the other hand...
• The Woobie: Ahim gets this treatment in #41, especially in the crying scene. You just want to give her a big hug!

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