HUBB
ARDIAN
Super Sentai periodically recycles motifs and themes from past series, sometimes even with blatant homages,
and it's fun for otaku to notice more similarities as they watch more series.
Timeranger is no different, and I've identified the series that serves as its roots.
Believe it or not, it's Carranger.
Carranger is the 20th Super Sentai series, aired in 1996.
It's one of Sentai's top gag series, and the characters, plotlines, and battles are all bonkers,
so at first glance it might seem like Timeranger's complete opposite, but they actually share many base similarities.
(None of this is based on any source and is Slava's personal interpretation.)
| WORKPLACE | |
|---|---|
| The Auto Company Pegasus | The Odd Shop Tomorrow Research |
| Carranger and Timeranger share the setting that the characters make a living working normal jobs, which is often depicted. Super Sentai teams often seem randomly grouped and its unclear how they make a living, but in these 2 series they share the realistic relationship of coworkers. They often talk about realistic financial topics, and we get to see the sad state of heroes who have to worry about money. The steel frame stairs attached to their workplaces even resemble each other. Tomorrow Research's building is called BLYUS, which is a little similar to the name of the Carranger's auto company PEGASUS. | |
| NAME ORIGIN | |
| Domon Naoki | Domon/Domon Taro |
| Time Yellow's name Domon is an obvious homage to the last name of the Blue Racer, Domon Naoki/土門直樹. When Domon used the fake full name "Domon Taro/土門太郎" in the 20th century the kanji were even the same. We could also say that his personality and looks are an homage to Green Racer, Uesugi Minoru, but that's no more than a guess. By the way, at 17 isn't Blue Racer too young to be a company employee? | |
| SIMILAR ROLES | |
| Dappu | Sion |
| To be honest, saying this was my motivation for writing this article. As you can see on the Character Influences page here, Sion was originally planned to have a more alien-like look. Extrapolating from this, I think Sion's character was actually based on Dappu. Both of their home planets were destroyed in an explosion, with Dappu losing his parents and Sion his entire race. For that reason they are both young boys alone on the Earth. Hazardians hibernate for winter while Hubbardians sleep continuously for a week every year. Both have episodes featuring these unique sleep habits, with Dappu not waking up for 3 episodes. There are other characters with similar settings, but I think Dappu and Sion are actually the two most similar characters in all of Sentai. | |
| DESTROYED PLANET | |
| Planet Hazard | Planet Hubbard |
| Dappu is from the planet Hazard (which takes it name from "hazard light"), and Sion is from the planet Hubbard. Considering the similarities mentioned in the above section, there's no doubt that the similarity is intentional. I think Sion is a variation of Dappu. Dappu from another dimension, we could say. Thinking of the origin of the planet Hubbard's name, one may think it comes from the sci-fi writer / Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, but I don't think this is the case. The sci-fi connection may make sense, but I think it's just a sound variation on Dappu's home planet Hazard (the two are more similar in katakana than they are in English: ハザードvsハバード), and we can rule out the L. Ron Hubbard connection. | |
As you can see above, there are a lot of easy-to-spot homages. There are influences from a lot of other series as well,
but I'm sure that Carranger was the one that most served as Timeranger's roots.
Kobayashi Yasuko isn't known for her gags, so her being the main scriptwriter means the series was never intended to be a gag Sentai,
so I think Timeranger is taking the base of Carranger and adapting it for the new century.
Another series with so many similarities to Carranger that anyone will notice is Go-onger, which I lined up at the top.
The previous year's Gekiranger saw, like Timeranger, disastrously low sales, so, without any room for failure,
Go-onger eliminated any Timeranger like traits as if it were a deliberate rebuttal.
If I were to point out its other roots, I would say Kakuranger and Abaranger.
It's really interesting to see 3 series from different eras and with different scriptwriters and styles have similarities while all expressing something different.
All 3 are standout seasons, and I recommend watching all of them to compare.
Lastly, I'd like to collect some examples of later series that were influenced by and have similarities to Timeranger.
- Gaoranger/2001
- It's the next series, so of course it tries to right Timeranger's faults. Whether it be the immediately recognizable motifs of the 100 Power Animals, the difference in how the characters are portrayed, or the increase in battle scenes, the 2 contrast in many ways, and watching Gaoranger reveals what was seen as a problem in the prior season.
- Dekaranger/2004
- Sharing a police theme with Timeranger while making it much more obvious, Dekaranger may not seem to have much in common with Timeranger, but it has one important similarity. The Alienizer profiles that can be seen on the Dekabase PC are extremely similar to the Londerz prisoner profiles. A small detail, but watch out for it!
- ToQger/2014
- The main scriptwriter is the same as Timeranger's, Kobayashi Yasuko, and Sion's actor Kuranuki Masahiro has a guest role, so there is some obvious influence. The strongest similarity is in the robot transformation scene, which follows the Timeranger transformation sequence. I knew I felt like I'd seen this lifeless scene that children hate before...