Chakuso!! Kyuukyuu Sentai GoGo Five Part 1 of 2

Welcome to another CCLemon99 Super Sentai series review! This time I'm looking at a series I'm definitely more familiar with and one that I've been dying to get into for some time. Kyuukyuu Sentai GoGo Five!

This is the final series that I was *REALLY* hoping that Shout Factory would make it to, but I'm certainly thrilled that they're continuing beyond this. While Past-Me never really got too much into Megaranger or Gingaman until my recent revisits, GoGo Five's approach to Super Sentai was something that drew me back into the genre at a pretty critical point. Granted, Present-Me doesn't give a damn about new Sentai (ask this guy...he broke the news of the 2019 Sentai to me in person. I think my reaction was something like 😑) but I think I was at a point where I could have been a much more casual fan. GoGo Five brought me back in for reasons I'll likely get to in the next post.

In the meantime, the usual *SPOILER* warning is right here. Just watch the damn series at this point. We're coming up on twenty years for Pete's sake...

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Kyuukyuu Sentai GoGo Five

The Tatsumi family has a deep lineage in rescue work in Tokyo. The current-day members of the Tatsumi family carry on the tradition. Suddenly the Earth is under attack and they are faced with their missing father, Mondo, who has emerged with a program to ward of the impending Doom's Day scenario in August 1999 called Grand Cross. Armed with gadgets, rescue tactics, and infinite willpower...can GoGo Five succeed?

While the Tatsumis were employed as emergency workers in the first episode, Mondo had submitted their resignations in the second episode. In order to prevent the resurrection of Grandiene, they needed to be ready to fight the Psyma family at a moment's notice. They all lived together in a house while Mondo spent the majority of his time continuing work in Bay Area 55. Despite no longer being active-duty, the team did still carry out rescue missions and were heavily relied upon by the fire department.

The theme of family does come up constantly. While the Tatsumi family is more or less in shambles, it becomes stronger as the series progresses. First Mondo reappears, Matoi is able to pass on his determination and willpower to his siblings, and finally they are reunited with their long-lost mother.

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Matoi / Go Red

The eldest Tatsumi sibling and the one who raised his siblings after first the disappearance of their father and later their mother. As a firefighter, Matoi usually ended up leading rescue missions as GoGo Five and would often use his firefighting training as GoGo Five training for his siblings.

Matoi is great. His endless optimism usually blinded him from the fear and sadness that would hinder someone in his situation. There were a few moments where cracks kinda showed, but he never let it get the best of him. When forced to retreat from Psyma he said something along the lines of "I'm not afraid! ...but why am I shaking??". It's great when the series cheerleader is not only within the team, but it's leader. His optimism and determination annoyed his siblings when situations got tough, but it made them stronger by the end of the series.

I thought Matoi was at his best when he was being a dick to his siblings. It's what you would expect from an older brother, right?

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Nagare / Go Blue

A scientist with the fire department, Nagare at first seems like a woefully bland dude. As the series progresses, however, you we come to realize that he is certainly his father's son. He never explicitly works with Mondo, but he does create some GoGo Five tech on his own such as the Go Blasters. Some friendly competition never hurt, I suppose?

While you would expect the second-banana to be the voice of dissent, Nagare never disagreed with Matoi since he likely agreed with his sometimes harsh motivation. His nature as a scientist lead him to analyze situations rather than hopping head first into battle like his younger siblings tended to do.

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Sho / Go Green

The middle child. Sho is a skilled helicopter pilot with the fire department and tends to be an emotional dude. He not only fights back at Matoi's direction, but holds a serious grudge against Mondo for abandoning the family to prepare for Grand Cross.

As he is pretty emotional, he has a hard time destroying the Big Douser robot he helped Nagare develop once it had been taken over by Psyma. Nagare? He had no real reservations since he knew it had to be done.

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Daimon / Go Yellow

Daimon is the youngest brother and a police officer. He tends to be a little bit impulsive and is prone to making mistakes. He did attempt to diffuse some situations on his own, but usually ended needing to get bailed out. Being the youngest there is some resentment toward his older brothers as he was at the tail end of getting all of their hand-me-down clothing. He is also an avid Judoka, which lead to his re-emergence in Gaoranger vs. Super Sentai.

A quick note about Daimon's actor Kenji Shibata. He has been battling the symptoms of an inoperable brain tumor since GoGo Five. In fact, he first discovered the symptoms as the series was wrapping up. He emerged to share the story of his condition and had a reunion with his GoGo Five castmates in the Spring of 2018. I highly recommend checking it out in this video.

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Matsuri / Go Pink

Matsuri is the youngest overall and only daughter of the group. She is a paramedic which often lands her partnered with Matoi during his rescues. She tends to do the household cooking while her brothers do the other chores around the house. Of the five, she misses their Mother the most and was able to recognize the sound of her Mother's Christmas charm while they were trapped in Hell.

I kinda feel bad for Matsuri. Early on in the series she had a great presence and was a major part in keeping the series moving forward. Suddenly she just kinda ended up in the background for the remainder of the series. The last focus episode she truly had was 32. Then again, if the series continued it's focus on her it probably would have lead to Nagare being even more blah than he already was and Daimon just being bratty without ever getting into why he was.

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Mondo Tatsumi

The father of the Tatsumi sibling and creator of the GoGo Five program. Other scientists did not buy into his theory on the Grand Cross (which was a real thing, BTW) bringing destruction to Earth. Mondo quietly disappeared circa 1989 and emerged a decade later when the first Psymajuu appeared. He immediately set his children up with their GoGo Five tech and sent them into battle.

Much like Nagare, he is rather dense and incredibly emotionally shallow...especially early in the series. Later on he has moments of "How could I send my children into battle??", but really this was the plan from the start. We do get a little more insight into Mondo during the episode when the scientists and Tatsumi guys became kids again. While the guys were looking for Matsuri, who they thought was lost, child Mondo was doing endless calculations on the Psymajuu eventually finding it's weakpoint.

This kinda begs the question...just how young was he when he discovered his Grand Cross theory? Did he marry Ritsuko as a utilitarian effort just to have five children in quick succession? His willingness to send them into battle early on with zero conscious would suggest that...and maybe his later regrets came only after he reconnected with them. It's kinda slimy, but as a scientist he saw it as a necessary means to conduct his experiment.

Then again, there is that time that he took a break to appear on TV in 1992...

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Mint

The annoying helper/robot of the series. She is apparently the only program on the planet affected by the Y2K bug outside of a few traffic lights.

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Kyoko

Sho's co-worker and a shuttle pilot. She pops into the series at random and has a dream of becoming a member of GoGo Five. As Mondo never anticipated a sixth member, this is something that was never realized in the series proper. Early on she was able to assist Matoi during a mission, but largely stuck around for banter.

Personally I found Kyoko pretty damn annoying. As we saw in the cracked-out New Year's episode, not only did she dream of being in GoGo Five, she dreamt of being Go Red. The nerve! She could barely fly a damn plane and she wants to replace the infinite willpower of Matoi??

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This may be the only shot in the entire series with all siblings, Pierre, and Grandiene...kinda...

Psyma Ichizoku

The protagonists of the series are also a family. Psyma is made up of a band of four siblings and their butler who are trying to revive their mother, Grandiene.

Psyma are genuinely creepy at their best, but conniving jerks toward each other at their worst. Early on they were fairly efficient even if they never managed to defeat GoGo Five. Once Grandiene and Salamandes were in the picture, however, each family member more or less acted on their own agenda. The opposite was going on with the Tatsumi clan, so this dynamic was fairly interesting to watch play out.

The end game, of course, was for Grandiene to take over the world and wipe out humanity. Despite being one family versus another, there really was no anti-theme to Psyma. It was just happenstance that Psyma was up against a family of rescue workers whose father was a brilliant scientist.

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Grandiene

The initial goal of Psyma was to revive their mother, Grandiene. She began to emerge as a spirit as the Grand Cross approached. During the ceremony to revive her on the date of Grand Cross, Mondo interferred and managed to cut the Minus Energy stream that was reviving her. This resulted in her deformed partial revival.

Grandiene is truly twisted. She doesn't give a single damn about any of her children and will sacrifice them in a heartbeat if it means achieving her goal at ruling the Earth. While Mondo's parenting may be questionable, this is truly messed up. She does eventually revive to a complete form before being wiped out by Matoi. Following this, she took on a new form as a spirit.

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Zylpheza

The older brother of Psyma. He was in command early on, but began to waver once Grandiene begins to return. He is very close with Denus and Cobolda, but does not trust the infant Drop in the slightest. After his death, he was nearly revived by Denus once and later revived for real...only to be killed...and then revived AGAIN. Predictably he died once again.

While he was a menace to GoGo Five, he put his siblings above all else. After being betrayed by his mother, he told Matoi where he could find Grandiene to defeat her.

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Cobolda

The younger brother of Zylpheza and older brother of Denus. Cobolda largely hung around in the back until aligning with Denus upon Zylpheza's death. Grandiene basically sent him to his death in a final battle against GoGo Five. Zylpheza tried to warn him that he was being used, but to no avail. In the end, Grandiene ended up dispatching him through Zylpheza.

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Denus

The younger sister of Zylpheza and Cobolda, but older sister to Drop/Salamandes. Denus was great at spying and doing undercover work against GoGo Five while being an average fighter. She developed a grudge against Nagare that never really had a resolution. In the end, she sacrificed herself to help revive Zylpheza for the first time. Her reason was that he was the only sibling that treated her decently.

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Drop

The often sleeping infant and youngest sibling of the Psyma family. He did contribute his own Psymajuu from time to time, but was largely just carried around by Pierre.

He eventually evolved into...

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Salamandes

The new Dark King following Zylpheza's death. He is immensely powerful, but over time proves to be just as ill-equipped at defeating GoGo Five as everyone else in Psyma. He evolves again as Yuumao Salamandes in order to escape Hell, but is taken out by GoGo Five. Alongside Zylpheza, Salamandes is revived by Grandiene to fight for her in the final battle as she no longer had a body of her own.

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Pierre

Psyma's butler/wizard. He summons Psymajuu from cards provided from Psyma as well as his own deck. He also uses revive cards to enlarge dead Psymajuu to continue their battle against GoGo Five's mecha fleet. Pierre has a bizzare and unwavering loyalty to Salamandes. After Salamandes is killed for the first time, Pierre is seen drunkenly wandering the streets on New Year's Eve.

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Imps

The grunts of the series. I'm not a huge fan of these guys. Their designs are kinda blah even though I totally see what they were going for. They didn't do anything particularly weird or unique during the series. Remember in Megaranger when the Kunekune piled on top of each other to form a giant Kunekune? Every series needs a memorable moment like that to give their grunts a little more to do than get elbowed and flipped.

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I hope you enjoyed the first part of my look at GoGo Five. Part two will be up soon and, as usual, will contain more of my thoughts on the series itself. Oh...and I'll have to come up with a list of Top Seven favorite episodes.

Stay tuned!

-CC

Super Sentai Series Reviews

Wins, Opportunities, and Top Seven Episodes! Kyuukyuu Sentai GoGo Five Part 2 of 2