Hot Imports: Hikonin Sentai Akibaranger

Hikonin Sentai Akibaranger (非公認戦隊アキバレンジャー) is a love-letter to nerds, straight from Japan. The show is the official parody of the long-running tokusatsu series Super Sentai.  You may not immediately recognize the words tokusatsu or Super Sentai, but the odds are you know them. Tokusatsu is a term for a genre of Japanese movies and television- the term most analogously translates to 'special effects' movie, but largely is applied to series with giant monsters, giant robots, and men in spandex. Super Sentai specifically is a franchise of tokusatsu television series. Its hallmarks include a team of color-coded heroes with martial arts skill, fighting the forces of evil using giant combining robots. If this sounds familiar to you, this is because it's precisely the hallmarks of Power Rangers, and with good reason- Power Rangers is the official United States localization of Super Sentai. Heavily cut, and with much new footage, but the core is there.

So with that explanation out of the way, Hikonin Sentai Akibaranger is a comedic deconstruction and reconstruction of Super Sentai for adults. Our lead, Nobuo Akagi, is a hopeless otaku and Super Sentai fanatic. Approached with the chance to become a Sentai leader, of course he is champing at the bit- but this is both more and less real than it seems. Nobuo has been recruited by  Hiroyo Hakase to be AkibaRed and lead the Akibarangers- a team that fights battles entirely in their minds, to protect the real world from being invaded by the Delusion World- the world of illusion and fantasy. His teammates, like Nobuo himself, reflect the typical fans of any media. Yumeria Moegi, AkibaYellow, is a cosplayer and incorrigible slash fangirl. Counterbalancing her is Mitsuki Aoyagi, the most grounded of the team. Mitsuki is the archetypical closeted fan, more cynical and worldly, with a professed interest in Super Sentai only so far as its use of martial arts.

Where do things go from there? Well, I don't intend to spoil the series- which can be easily found on licensed subtitled DVD on eBay- but as the show progresses, the bounds between the Delusion World and the real world become blurred, and it becomes increasingly metafictional, with an unexpected degree of depth for a Japanese comedy show. It's rather telling that while most normal Super Sentai get only one season, Akibaranger became beloved enough to receive a second-  and at a short 13 episodes per season, watching it is no heavy task. Hikonin Sentai Akibaranger is something we are increasingly lacking- a parody with heart and a love of what it's making fun of. And that is enough to carry the humor, by and large. If you have any investment in any internet fandom, or Power Rangers, Akibaranger is definitely worth looking at.