When the news of Chikyuu Sentai Fiveman's impending DVD release broke there was one thing I knew that I absolutely must do.
Pre-order the set.....
.....oh, and I should probably circle back and talk about it's Song Collection I guess.
I'm kinda running out of Sentai Song Collections to talk about from the Complete Song Collection series (1975-1994), so if I skipped over a series for so long it must mean that I'm avoiding it...right??
For this post I'll be listening to my copy of the Chikyuu Sentai Fiveman Complete Song Collection from 1997. I briefly talked about that disc here in the past.
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01. Chikyuu Sentai Fiveman / Kenji Suzuki
This ear-worm of a theme song is what brought Super Sentai into the 1990s.
It may not be as face-paced and in your face as the Turboranger theme song, but I like the Fiveman theme song. It's extremely of it's time and gets the job done. Given the school teacher nature of the main cast we should be grateful that we didn't get the brats instead of the regular background singers.
I like Kenji Suzuki and it's kinda of a bummer that his career doesn't stray far outside of this series. The only other work of his I'm familiar with is the Grandzort theme that he sang the year prior. It's alright. He basically moved on from singing in 1992 and returned for some live performances in the 2000s.
02. Atsui Beat de Fiveman / Kenji Suzuki
An upbeat fight song that never appeared in the series. The music is basically a wall of artificiality outside of Suzuki's singing and the guitar. It's alright...maybe a bit too on the cheery side.
03. Oretachi wa Ura Hero / Y.F ZOMBIE COMPANY
This song, to me, is trying way too hard to be like Dragonball Z's ending song Detekoi tobikiri ZENKAI Power. It's not bad, in fact I think the groove is pretty smooth. It's a bit too quirky though this early into the CD. Not a fault of the song itself.
04. JanKenJump! Fiveman / Kenji Suzuki, SHINES
Another upbeat fight song that, like Atsui Beat never made it into the series. Very catchy, but it suffers the same shortcomings of the previous Image Songs.
05. Itsutsu no kokoro de Fiverobo / Hironobu KageyamaFrom:
The CD Collection-- Gattai Tamashii ~Super Sentai Robot Song Perfect Collection~:
The third Sentai mecha theme song from Hironobu Kageyama. They finally got it right this time. It's an energetic song for one. Kageyama is definitely on-point this time. Even if this isn't my favorite mecha theme song, it's certainly one of the best that Kageyama had to offer. Really, there aren't many flaws when you listen to it. The only thing that sucks is the mecha that it's based on. Heh.
06. Kung Fu Dance / CHIEMY
Love this song. Not to get ahead of myself, but this is by far the most put together song on the Song Collection outside of the Fiverobo theme song. Whenever I've talked to anyone about Fiveman, the episode that this is associated with comes up for obvious reasons...but the song also gets a mention.
07. Super Arthur / Rika Matsumoto
Robotic plod. This is the worst thing Hirohisa Soda has ever written.
Now that that's out of the way, can I talk about Rika Matsumoto? Matsumoto has worked in just about every genre of Tokusatsu as a Seiyuu and sang theme songs in two genres (Alive a Life for Kamen Rider Ryuki...which is a great song and In Your Heart from Ultraman Neos...which is also great).
I just wanted to mention this since if you've ever seen a movie, any movie, there is a chance she dubbed a voice for the Japanese version and she voiced the main little bastard with the hat from everyone's favorite digital dogfighting series Pokemon.
What a damn career.
08. Brother Blood / Kenji Suzuki, SHINES
This song is a lot of fun. It's a good old fashioned fight song, but one that was good enough to make it into the series. One episode, but still.
The weapon calls are pretty cool, and I just like this one on a technical level. Take one listen and listen to the focus on the guitar. I love when songs are detailed like this without becoming a mess.
09. Hand in Hand / CHIEMY, SHINES
Eh, I've never been into this one at all. This and Super Arthur both get the skip from me usually. This is the only song here that makes use of 1-2-3-4-Fiveman. I should say that it's wasted on this song.
10. Fiveman, Ai no theme / Kenji Suzuki
The series ending song. It's cheesy, but I like it enough. The energy is up, which gives me vibes of
Ai no Soldier from Maskman. I also get strong vibes of
Tom Sawyer no Bouken's theme song...which is one of my all-time anime theme faves. Some people probably outright dislike this song, but I guess I like it...because it reminds me of two better songs...
11. Chikyuu wa hogara kajima / Tomota Suzuki, Morinoki jidogashoudan
Meh. Episode 23. Lame song.
13. Chikyuu Sentai Fiveman [Original Karaoke]
14. Atsui Beat de Fiveman [Original Karaoke]
15. JanKenJump! Fiveman [Original Karaoke]
16. Itsutsu no kokoro de Fiverobo [Original Karaoke]
17. Kung Fu Dance [Original Karaoke]
18. Super Arthur [Original Karaoke]
19. Brother Blood [Original Karaoke]
20. Fiveman, Ai no theme [Original Karaoke]
21. Kyodai robo da ze! Star Five [Original Karaoke]
-BONUS TRACK-
22. New Town Shogakou kouka [Piano Bansou]
This is an instrumental version of the school theme song. This would be a little more at home on the Music Collection in my opinion, but it's nice to have it somewhere.
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This is by no stretch a great song collection--by I can't help but be fond of it. For some reason this and Kamen Rider Amazon's Song Collection were really hard to find in like 2002/2003. I spent a good chunk of change to get this one and when I did it smelled like it had lived it's life in a fish market up until that point (it no longer stinks, but I do have an image of a fish monger blasting the Fiverobo theme in their stall).
I'm nostalgic for this one. It's songs aren't bad, and I do listen to most of them fairly regularly. If you told me you hate it, I'd understand. I like the Fiveman Song Collection though. It fits the series well.
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Bye for now!
-CC
