Tokusatsu Review: Toku Summer Recap: Kaitou Sentai Lupinranger Vs Keisatsu Sentai Patrangers: Persona 5 the Live (Spoilers)

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Before you even ask, no this isn't a movie this is an actual series. Now I have to wonder what the crossover with Dumbluck and his gang of idiots is going to be called.

 Now that our resident genius is covered for now we're ready for a game of cops and robbers. Thankfully there isn't as much story to cover as of this article so here's the gist of 2018's Sentai. Over 100 years ago the legendary thief Arsène Lupin amassed a vast collection across his career as a Gentleman thief. Among his prizes were a group of powerful and potentially dangerous artifacts which has been dubbed the Lupin Collection. However an organization of interdiminsional criminals called the Ganglar stole the Collection and have used their powers to commit terrible crimes. 

 Their Don, Dogranio Yaboon announces on his 999th birthday that he's looking for a successor to the Ganglar crime family, thus declares that whomever conquers the earth shall be named the new Don. Naturally every Ganglar is looking to take his place and begin plotting their various schemes to earn his favor. But there are two forces that stand in their way by using their own pieces of the Lupin Collection modified by the man himself to protect humanity, the Lupinrangers charged by Lupin's estate to recover the Collection pieces in exchange for a single wish, to resurrect their loved ones who were killed by a Ganglar. The other is the Patrangers charged by the Global Police with protecting the general public from the horrible crimes committed by the Ganglar. Who will win, whose justice will prevail in the end?

 On paper this sounds like an interesting concept for a Sentai, two separate teams with opposing viewpoints and yet equal motivations to stop the Ganglar. One is a rebellious group of thieves who risk their lives to prevent anyone else from suffering the way they have. The other is a group of officers sworn to protect the safety of the general public by any means necessary. But when you see it play out, it commits the ultimate sin of team ups, the Lupinrangers are portrayed far more positively then the Patrangers. In all honestly my feeling of the Patrangers' inclusion in this show can be summed up in this meme.

I'm betting Toei originally wanted a Phantom Thief themed Sentai to take advantage of the popularity of Persona 5, but decided to just include the Patrangers just for the sake of differentiating themselves from what they're clearly trying to cash in on.

 I'll get into why I feel the Patrangers are unnecessary and why the Lupinrangers are the real heroes of the show after I talk about them. Now Toei seems to have learned their lesson from Kyuuranger (for now at least) so instead of 12 characters that get all the development and attention focused on their reprehensible Red Ranger we instead have two teams of three making my job much easier in that there's less Rangers to cover and harder in that they're distinct. But enough malarky, first is our Red Thief, Kairi.

HA, I wish. A female Red Ranger right from the start, pfft, that'd be bullshit. (sarcasm)

No no, instead of a Keyblade wielder we have Kairi Yano who became Lupin Red to resurrect his older brother.  He's sly, cunning and sympathetic to people's suffering. Though does tend to focus on the Phantom Thief business to the chagrin of Umika who winds up getting overworked at their bistro.

Next is Tooma Yoimachi, he became Lupin Blue to resurrect his fiancée. While he's the most driven of the Lupinrangers this tends to cause him to take impulsive and reckless action in regards to obtaining the collection pieces from the Ganglar or the Patrangers which Kairi and Umika have to reign him in for before he goes too far. Wait, isn't this the other way around? It's usually the Red who's impulsive and the Blue who's the calm thinker. Though he is driven like that he does care for his teammates and will go above and beyond to see his fiancée again. 

Last for the Phantom Thieves is Lupin Yellow, Umika Hayami. Her dead loved one was her childhood friend Shiho.  Though she may appear be the weakest of the team she is the most resourceful and approachable. Though she may come off as childish she does take her mission as a Lupin Ranger very seriously, though she wouldn't mind if Kairi would help out more around the Bistro.

 I love the designs of the Lupinrangers their visors are shaped like a Top hat, the color balance of black and the primary color to look like a tuxedo and best of all is the capes.

 Edna darling, shut up these capes work. They're not long long enough for an enemy to take advantage of, the black on the shoulders contribute to the tuxedo design and two triangles on the collar of the cape look like a bowtie. All in all a classy and cool design. So now we have the thieves, we then move on to the cops. 

First is Patren 1gou Keichiro Asaka or as I like to call him; Dickhead since he's a detective who seems to only think with his other head. Yep we have another dumbass Red, just with a different flavor. Instead of a god modding idiot we have an impulsive, angry hothead who has a very black and white worldview and seems to only do his job to stroke his ego against the Lupinrangers. He claims to protect the public but on multiple occasions has been willing to perform reckless actions to stop the Ganglars and Lupinrangers such as when he drew out a fight with a Ganglar just to draw out the Lupinrangers. Or that time when he nearly got himself killed with poison just to show a kid how much cooler the Patrangers are then the Lupinrangers. Oh and most recently when he tried to kidnap Goodie (aka Good Striker a sentient collection piece charged by Lupin himself to protect the collection pieces that forms the basis of both teams mechs) and forcing him to serve the Global Police as a weapon against the Ganglars. I repeat, a supposed officer of the law, wanted to enslave a sentient being as a weapon to uphold Law and Order just because he was sent to them first.

 That is YHVH from SMT levels of Lawful Evil. You know, the guy whose most powerful minions were literally designed by the guy behind Garo.

 Though at least Dickhead is far more tolerable then Wrong, Leftovers or Dumbluck for four reasons. One, Tsukasa more often then not does call him out on his crap. (Though why their commander Hilltop hasn't is beyond me.) Second, the show doesn't over glorify his actions or make him right when everything says that he's wrong, most of the time. Third, he's not the only Red for the show, so if you don't like Dickhead we can cheer on Kairi. Lastly, the show's not over yet. We've had this type of Red before with the exact same theme, Banban Akaza aka Dekared from Dekaranger had a similar personality and temperament at the start of the show but he did grow and develop as a character. Also from little info I was able to gleam about the 6th Ranger Lupin/Patren X his whole goal is to bring the two teams together to focus on the Ganglar so part of that will hopefully involve Keichiro getting over his ego and seeing the bigger picture.

Moving on to slightly better characters we have Sakuya Hikawa, Patren 2go. He's the rookie cop who is just one step away from Umika getting him a restraining order. He has a crush on her and is not subtle about it at all. He has a much more laid back attitude which of course rattles Dickhead's cage but he does care about his duties.

Lastly is my favorite of the Patrangers, Tsukasa Myoujin. She's the mother hen of the group, routinely motivating Sakuya and occasionally reprimanding Dickhead when he crosses the line. She also has a running gag about her love of odd plushies despite not being the stereotypical girly girl.

 Before I get into my major gripes of the show I'll say that what worked for the Lupinrangers' costumes also works for the Patrangers. Design wise they're complete inversions of the Lupinrangers, Police hats instead of Top hats for the visors, white with their primary colors instead of black looking like a police uniform along with actual shoulder pads instead of the capes, overall a good design. While they're supposed to be the best of the Japanese branch of the Global Police the Lupinrangers more often then not use them to draw out the Ganglar of the week rather easily. So basically denigrating one faction of this vs series to make the other team look better by comparison. This show commits the ultimate sin of any team up to feed into Japans negative perception of their cops.

 Now occasionally the Patrangers do display their competency and manage to nearly expose the Lupinrangers, but to make up for that the Patrangers have been given some of the dumbest episodes so far. Like the aforementioned Dickhead trying to impress the random brat episode and of course they got a gender swap episode, and yes the jokes were bad and insulting why'd you expect any less? Though the second part of that two parter exposed the biggest problem with the Patrangers, when Dickhead was hospitalized for the poisoning caused by his recklessness Sakuya and Tsukasa actually managed to do much better against the Ganglar despite their injuries (again a result of Dickhead's reckless actions yet he's never held accountable, because of course.) But when Dickhead forced himself out of the hospital and defeated the Ganglar it was back to business as usual.

 This idiot even nearly caused the Lupinrangers to fall into despair when it looked like he destroyed a Ganglar before the Lupinrangers were able to retrieve his Collection Piece. Though from what I can tell its never made clear whether the Patrangers know about the collection pieces, what they can do, the Ganglars having extra powers because of them, the wish, why the Lupinrangers are so desperate to get to them first it just seems like they just focus on the Ganglar regardless of the consequences. Now because I'm me I have a suggestion that would clear up this whole ambiguous part of the show and possibly improve it, make the Patrangers know about the Collection Pieces from the start and actively try to destroy them. Have them know that the collection pieces are what gives the Ganglar extra powers as well as the wish that they can grant when all of them are brought together and try to destroy them not only because of the first reason but also to prevent a dangerous person from amassing the pieces to try to become a god, take over the world, destroy the world or something crazy like that. But even when they eventually learn about what the Lupinrangers are trying to wish for have them still go after them.

 But this is the key part, have them be sympathetic towards wanting to resurrect their loved ones but try to push a "the dead can't come back, you have to accept their deaths, tragic and pointless though it may be otherwise this desire will consume and destroy you" point of view. They can possibly relate with them by talking about some of their loved ones who were pointlessly killed and have that be a contributing factor behind why they joined the Global Police. Besides anyone who has seen any piece of fiction ever can tell you what happens when you try to resurrect someone with supernatural means.

Unless you're using the Dragonballs to resurrect someone

they tend to come back horribly, horribly wrong!!!

 This way we have a legitimate reason why these two groups are trying to reach the Ganglar first, have some understandable conflict between the two teams and make the Patrangers actually sympathetic and likable. We can both see their points of views and hope that either the Patrangers agree to help the Lupinrangers to ensure that the wish is only used for non violent means or have the Lupinrangers eventually accept the potential risk of the wish, move past their grief and join forces with the Patrangers to stop the Ganglar. Or we could just have one team outwit a pair who are stuck with a hotheaded ball and chain around their ankles. We could have Captain America Civil War, but Toei seems set on settling for being at least just above Batman V Superman, though all thats missing is for one of the characters to say "Martha" and the show will officially go down the toilet.

 I'll just naively hope that the show gives Dickhead the character development he desperately needs with the intro of Lupin/Patren X but somehow I know Toei is just going to keep the spotlight on the Lupinrangers until they eventually make the Patrangers into flat-out secondary antagonists. Or even worse have the two join up just because with no real development or camaraderie between the two. Though this is still a far better show then Kyuuranger and I do like it despite its flaws so give it a watch if you want too. Besides it's still a better adaptation of Persona 5 then Persona 5 the animation.

Special thanks to my Patreon backer Jesse for his support.

Super Sentai is owned by Ishinomori Productions, Toei Productions, and Bandai.
Kingdom Hearts 2 is owned by Square Enix, Disney Interactive Studios, Tetsuya Nomura, and Shinji Hashimoto.
The Incredibles are owned by Walt Disney Pictures, Pixar Animation Studios and Buena Vista Pictures.
Shin Megami Tensei IV Apocalypse/Final is owned by Atlus, Sega and Kazuyuki Yamai.
Solomon Grundy is owned by DC Comics, created by Alfred Bester and Paul Reinman
Fullmetal Alchemist is owned by Studio Bones, Square-Enix, Funimation, Viz Media and Hiromu Arakawa.