YMMV / Tokusou Sentai Dekaranger

• Abandon Shipping: A somewhat meta example: Sen/Umeko was and is still popular as an Official Couple, but after Umeko's actress Mika Kikuchi married Tomokazu Yoshida (Tetsu's actor) in 2018, a lot of fans have abandoned the ship. Amusingly, when the three actors for Umeko, Tetsu, and Sen held a livestream where they watched Episode 46 (the episode that most prominently introduced the Sen/Umeko Ship Tease) together, all three of them just thought it was Actually Pretty Funny when the chat brought up the inevitable question and continued shipping them as hard as ever (the livestream itself was even jokingly named "Officially Endorsed Love Triangle").
• Awesome Music:
  • The opening song: "1! Emergency... 2! Dekaranger... 3! Action. 4! Perfect. 5! GET ON!" Also, the live version, which is probably even more awesome.
  • Aw, hell yes, the SWAT theme; "SWAT On! Dekaranger". Just try not to bang your head to the rocking instrumental.
  • The 2nd ending, "Girls in Trouble", full stop. Also contains Fanservice galore.
  • The regular ending, Midnight Dekaranger, is pretty good, too. Bonus points for the singer being Isao Sasaki, who sang songs for Goranger and JAKQ and never sang another Super Sentai song until now.
  • Try to listen to "Dekaranger Action" without getting pumped. You can't.
  • Dekamaster Never Stop, Dekamaster's own jazzy theme song.
  • Blue Is The Sky,Hoji's character song, is pretty must the most badass character song for a blue ranger.
• Base-Breaking Character: Ban, either he's an awesome Red Ranger or an annoying screamer, though later post-series appearances have made him less of an annoyance.
• Complete Monster: Agent Abrella is a ruthless Arms Dealer who sells weapons to criminals so as to continue galaxy-destroying wars, regardless of how many lives are taken. Seven galaxies have been destroyed due to Abrella's hideous actions, with him having the blood of billions on his hands. Abrella is motivated by both his desire to increase his wealth as well as simply for fun, and treats all crime as a business opportunity and helps with the destruction of cities, selling slaves, pawning stolen merchandise, or filming obscenity. After the Dekarangers defeat most of his criminal clientele, Abrella loses it and goes on a city-wide destruction spree, planning to wipe both them as well as the Earth out and plunge the galaxy into violent lawlessness and disorder to ensure his warmongering can continue.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Doggie Kruger/Deka Master. While he's not above certain comedic moments, fans love the hell out of him since his entire character is just Rule of Cool personified. There's a good reason that whenever Dekaranger gets any post-series representation, you tend to see him over the other obvious choice, Ban/Deka Red.
• Fan-Preferred Couple: Due to the Red Oni, Blue Oni dynamic, the large amount of Ho Yay and Ship Tease they get together, Ban/Hoji is pretty much considered canon by most fans.
  • Due to their own copious amounts of shipping fuel and a similar dynamic to Ban and Hoji, Jasmine is often shipped with Umeko; to the point of completely overshadowing her canon ship.
• Friendly Fandoms: With its successor series Mahou Sentai Magiranger, due to sharing a lot of similarities in style (especially with them sharing Hideaki Tsukada as a producer) and having a very popular crossover movie. This extends to their respective casts as well, who are noticeably good friends with each other even years after both series ended and some of the actors have since retired from the industry.
• Harsher in Hindsight: If you've seen Tensou Sentai Goseiger, watching the scene in Full Blast where Deka Gold is only able to transform for a second before being on the receiving end of an attack by the villains is a lot harder to watch, considering that something very similar happened to Gosei Green, who's played by the same actor as Deka Green, except he died as a result.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Originally, the planned name for this series was "Sirenger". However, this was changed due to the fact that there was an Eroge by the name of Sirenger, and Toei wasn't able to get the copyright. The full name of the eroge, ironically enough, is Tokumei Sentai Sirenger.
  • Tetsu's use of the English word Marvelous becomes this as, in the context of Super Sentai, that refers now to the Captain of the Gokaigers.
  • In the series, Tetsu comes off as having a rather intense devotion to Ban. Fast forward to 2018, his actor married Umeko's actress. Furthermore, the scene in Dekaranger vs. Abaranger where AbareKiller flirts with Umeko and she gets annoyed at Tetsu for brushing it off as "nonsense" is even more amusing.
  • Dekablue’s Image Song, Sky is the Blue, is funny when his Power Rangers counterpart is nicknamed Sky.
• Ho Yay: Ban gets this with both Hoji and Tetsu, especially with Hoji.
  • Jasmine also gets a fair share of this with Umeko, as well; Sen even comments on they're almost like girlfriends in Episode 39.
• Inferred Holocaust: A good number of the Alienizers faced often have rap sheets that include the decimation of entire planets, and the planet count alone can number in the hundreds. Now think about how many innocent lives alone they were responsible for.
• Moe: Umeko has endeared many fans due to her cute personality, head-turning appearance, and her love for bubble baths after completing a case.
• Narm: Hoji completely ruins a dramatic scene in one episode by whipping out the Gratuitous English at the worst possible time. "Goodbye... fo evah... and evah." Yeah.
• Never Live It Down: Counting the teamup, Tetsu crossdressed a total of three times. In the eyes of fans, he pretty much lived in drag. Even Jasmine got caught up in this perception:
  Jasmine: (looking at the camera) But, it's the same as usual, so no surprise here.
• Newer Than They Think: DekaGold is actually the very first gold ranger in the history of Sentai. This may seem strange to folks who grew up in the 90s and watched Power Rangers Zeo, which had a gold Sixth Ranger. As it turns out, KingRanger (the Gold Ranger's counterpart from Chouriki Sentai Ohranger) is actually considered to be a black ranger.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • Episode 39 is made of this, with the episode starting out with Umeko suddenly finding most of the team dead. And it only continues to get more surreal from there, placing here in increasingly bizarre situations made to kill her specifically. Then there's that blood pool surrounding her as she dies in her dream... (it's in black and white though, so it's not all bad). It's a surprisingly effective Psychological Horror-influenced episode, especially in a series mostly known for its action sequences and characters (as well as its Ho Yay).
  • During the final arc, we're shown the lovely sight of the workers of the DekaBase getting massacred by Abarella's forces.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Mika Kikuchi's (Umeko) now known for her voice acting/singing work, although people would also talk about her Dekaranger casting.
  • Ayumi Kinoshita (Jasmine) is well recognized by Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds fans, voicing Aki Izayoi. She also appears in other sentai and Kamen Rider shows as other characters.
  • Fans of the ever-popular Haikyuu!! stage plays may be able to recognize Tsuyoshi Hayashi (Hoji) as the first-generation Ukai and Ukai Sr.
  • Yūto Uemura (Hikaru) is far more well-known for his voice acting in popular anime such as Bungo Stray Dogs, Vinland Saga, and much more.
  • Tomokazu Yoshida is now known nowadays for providing acupuncture services after leaving the acting biz.
• The Scrappy: Faraway, the loud, stupid and obnoxious alien girl who the Dekarangers have to protect from Abrella in episode 30, who does nothing but winge and yell in nearly every scene she's in. Many fans were likely rooting for Abrella to chuck her into space.
• Smurfette Breakout: The Twin Cam Angels (Jasmine and Umeko) are among the most famous Sentai girls of the post-90's Heisei Era because of their badassery, good looks, and well-rounded characterization.
• Special Effects Failure: There have been many times throughout the series where the special effects are very conspicuous, such as the Dekaranger Robo (and many of the mecha that matter). Granted, it was 2004, so we can't knock them that hard.
• Tear Jerker: Episode 37. Well written and directed, this episode showed a tragic story involving Hoji, the woman he loved and her brother, who was a Alienizer.
• Too Cool to Live: Doggie, by the finale...or so it seemed.
• Values Dissonance: The judgment and execution of criminals. In Japan, police brutality is less of an issue than in other countries and the death penalty is legal (although the instant Judgment was still controversial enough to require an Author's Saving Throw revealing that they were still getting full-length trials in that period of time), but in places like the United States or Europe, seeing the Rangers casually execute criminals in a kids' show can come across as uncomfortable (although considering many of them are planet destroyers or shameless serial killers with known body counts in the billions, it's by no means unjustified) especially in regards to more sympathetic or less evil criminals. This is probably why the Power Rangers adaptation Power Rangers S.P.D. was changed with them being captured inside of cards akin to a regular arresting charge.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: The show has its cartoonish and lighthearted moments, but it also touches upon things such as suicide (or the intention of), homicide, mass murder, illegal drugs, gangs, and even going as far as Near-Rape Experience. Oh, and don't forget the times that it was willing to kill off not just one - but two of its main characters! (They did come back however though.)

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