MISC. MANGA, *Himitsu Sentai Gorenger

Super Sentai is one of the longest running TV franchises in Japan, and the concept of there being an entire team of superheroes in a live-action show mostly began with Himitsu Sentai Gorenger. Shotaro Ishinomori had formerly created the first manga team of heroes in Cyborg 009, and got even more success with Kamen Rider where he combined the idea of a group of heroes with toyetic vehicles, despite the fact that Gatchaman had already done this a few years prior. Since Ishinomori was also an accomplished manga artist, he wrote and drew two separate manga adaptions of the TV show at the same time of its broadcast. The first one was from a weekly publication, while the second ran in four chapters of a monthly release, thus making for three distinct takes on a single plot when including the live-action series.

Tsuyoshi is the son of martial arts shrine, and is shocked to discover his father dead along with all the other students. They were targeted by the evil Black Cross Army to stop the formation of the special anti-crime organization, "EAGLE". Tsuyoshi then joins four other teenagers to create the colorful crusaders codenamed Gorenger. They engage the Black Cross Army with their super-up motorcycles and the aircraft Variblune, which was included as part of America's Shogun Warriors toyline. In both adaptations of the manga had battles of good and evil including mecha dinosaurs, samurai on robot horses, and masked menaces.

The Gorenger manga went more for character studies and the character's motivations for being heroes as opposed to generic Tokusatsu fighting poses and giant robots. Shotaro Ishinomori still did a masterful job with his retro designs largely inspired by American comic book heroes. Seven Seas Entertainment collected both manga adaptions into a single hardcover in one of their better jobs at translating Japanese. It might seem a little strange reading two seperate origin stories of the same superhero team, but if you're a die-hard Power Rangers otaku, you might want to open on this time capsule of pure nostalgia.