I GREW up in a world where bad people come from some fortress in the South Pole… where saviors of the world seem to ALWAYS come from Japan… where the idea of defeating a monster would be to form a five-piece robot and blast the goddamn thing to smithereens… Yes, I was a slave of Saturday & Sunday sentai shows.
We were the perfect team back then. My two sisters only had to choose between Yellow Four and Pink Five. There were three boys: Me, and my two cousins… I took the Green spot and let them choose between Red and Blue. I don’t why I didn’t choose Red. Perhaps I’d rather be a follower than a leader. Or I just probably like green.
The thing with Bioman didn’t last long. Back then, I lack the interest of watching my favorite heroes speak in out-of-sync english. I also lost track of the story thus forcing me to skip Sunday morning (before lunch) over church choir service. I didn’t even know that Bioman’s complete name was Super Electron Bioman. To demonstrate how early in the series I stopped watching it, I only knew a year ago that Yellow Four died and was replaced by an archer.
Enter Maskman.
The same thing happened between my sisters and cousins. Except that my sisters were fighting over the Pink Mask spot. They find Yellow too boyish. Eventually, my youngest sister got the part. I chose to be Red Mask this time, being the eldest. We would huddle in front of the TV to watch it every weekend (I forgot what day it aired), then later re-enact the events as it happened… with matching bone-crushing formations and hand gestures. We even memorized the lyrics of the opening theme (it was in Tagalog and it was much easier to understand at the time; I also had no concept of baduy yet). I handed out a copy to Blue Mask and asked him to write a copy for each member.
The love story element between Pink and Red made me feel awkward. Me and my sister? No way. I was old enough to know what incest is (though I didn’t know the word back then). We also lacked people who’ll play as villains. Even the other kids in the our place refused to be a villain because they were Maskmen of another group. I eventually grew out of it. My sisters followed soon after.
A few years later, Power Rangers became a hit. But that’s an entirely different story.
As a tribute to the concept of sentai, here are some photos courtesy of supersentai.com and japanhero.com. The person who can give me all the names (Philippine Version) of each will receive a little “sumthin-sumthin”.
Bioman. I forgot all their names.
Bioman bad guys. The easily distinguishable ones.
Maskman. The ones I’m more acquainted with.
Thoughts