Sentai



Superheroes, Japanese style. The word can be translated as "Task Force" or "Squadron." Usually come in teams, with color-keyed uniforms and a range of personalities/roles that usually follows some variation on the Five-Man Band. Known for their synchronized posing.

Not strictly limited to anime -- there have been innumerable live action Sentai series in Japan, most notably Super Sentai, the series which was re-edited into Power Rangers in the United States, and 2003's Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon.

A very western form of Sentai is to feature five teenagers recieving powers, with a transformation, i.e. it doesn't have to involve color-coding, or full body suits.

Not to be confused with Hentai, and god help you if you do.

Anime and Manga

 * Sailor Moon is a hybrid Sentai/Magical Girl show that started the Magical Girl Warrior trope, which is basically a hybrid of these tropes.
 * Even Shugo Chara has done it with Kukai. Ore wa...GUARDIAN FIVE! That is definitely his Crowning Moment of Awesome.
 * Don't forget the Tamago Senshi!
 * Bubblegum Crisis has Sentai elements as well -- note the individually colored hardsuits and the almost stereotyped set of personalities found among the Knight Sabers.
 * Science Ninja Team Gatchaman (known in America as Battle of the Planets or G-Force) is a classic Sentai anime -- if not the Trope Namer, it's certainly the Trope Codifier.
 * Moldiver both parodies and pays tribute to classic Sentai elements (not to mention Magical Girls, too).
 * Saint Seiya is a classic anime mixing Sentai with mythological fantasy.
 * Mahou Sensei Negima: In an obvious parody of Super Sentai/Power Rangers, the five girls from Negi's class with the lowest grades dub themselves the "Baka Rangers," complete with appropriate "hero names," like "Baka Pink" and "Baka Red."
 * Keroro Gunsou does a few parodies of the Sentai genre. Episode 24 introduces Space Detective Kogoro, an explicit parody of Kenji Ooba in his role as the title character of the Toku series Space Sheriff Gavan.
 * Spoofed in Mai-HiME, where Midori (the one who Jumped At the Call, thinking she's Sailor Moon) proposes teaming up into the "HiME Rangers" to fight the monsters of the week more effectively. The two HiMEs who dismiss the idea as ridiculous are tied up and dragged to the meeting place anyway.
 * Lime-iro Senkitan, with its five girl Lime unit, in five colours.
 * Cos Prayers, an intentional parody of the genre with added Fan Service.
 * Ronin Warriors had Sentai on the sides of both the good guys and the bad guys.
 * School Rumble briefly featured the all-female team Hatenkou Robo Dojibiron in one episode, whose five pilots (and mecha) were very much a homage to Super Sentai. For bonus points, the Dojibiron team's names were nearly the same as the five principle voice actresses, the only difference being the color-coded Theme Naming. For the record, Imadori is a huge fan of them.
 * Chouken Sentai Blade Braver in Bamboo Blade. Tama, the main girl in the show, considers herself an "ally of justice" like the Blade Bravers themselves, and in fact uses the motivation of fighting for right to join the kendo club. Later on, the show reveals that Braver is just one of many in the 31-year long "Battle Hero" series, making it an obvious Lawyer-Friendly Cameo of Super Sentai.
 * The Ginyu Force of Dragonball Z are a parody of this trope: there are five of them (instead of the four which are traditional in villainous groups), and they constantly strike poses and throw group attacks. In fact, when recruiting new members for the team, Captain Ginyu is mostly concerned with their posing ability.
 * Later on Gohan and even later, Videl become a two-man sentai team as the great saiyamen and saiyawoman. One of the videogame adapations blames the sentei behavior on Gohan being traumatized by the Ginyu force.
 * Magical Pokaan has a singular, Sentai-based episode that becomes increasingly silly. Since the show only has four leading girls, the fifth spot is filled by no one -- the green suit is an empty shell. On top of that, the team's Combining Mecha never forms correctly, with mishaps ranging from a missing component to five copies of the same component attempting to fuse together. The end of the episode is a stream of random gags that would take too long to explain here.
 * There actually is a fifth ranger. She just happens to be invisible.
 * The Excel Saga manga is somewhere between a Deconstruction and Parody of this genre. The Municipal Team Daitenzin is Sentai group made up by the local government to fight the evil organization ACROSS, but it's staffed by a collection of disinterested or stupid employess who do more damage than they fix.
 * The anime, meanwhile, throws out the serious elements and goes into full-blown parody with Municipal Team Daitenzin.
 * School Days' OVA Magical Heart Kokoro-chan has elements of this and Magical Girl in it. In this particular instance, the team of powered heroines is working for low pay, using a vacuum cleaner as a weapon and has particularly kinky outfits for their battling.
 * The episode "Super Sooga Squad" of the Pucca TV series is an Affectionate Parody of Sentai series.
 * Parodied in Special Duty Combat Unit Shinesman. Their suit colors are the intentionally awful Red, Moss Green, Gray, Sepia, and Salmon Pink.
 * Transformers Super God Masterforce had a group of Autobots who pretty much acted as a sentai team.
 * An audio drama of Neon Genesis Evangelion of all things, set post-series and thoroughly destroying the fourth wall has the cast having to re-tool the show for new episodes; Asuka has the pilots (Rei, herself, Shinji, Toji, and Kaworu) try being super sentai. It's...special.
 * It's the audio drama on the "Addition" soundtrack (4th one, with four of them on the cover). There are plenty of translations floating about, including one with graphics.
 * Tentai Senshi Sunred, a parody of these types of shows.
 * Parodied and deconstructed in Franken Fran: Takeshi, a sprinter with a bone disorder, goes to Fran and receives surgery to rebuild his body. Unfortunately, several other sprinters received the same surgery -- when they all break the world record, he's discredited and disgraced. The others beat the crap out of him, so he gets more surgery and becomes a sentai hero named Sentinel. Then he becomes a Knight Templar, beating people up for littering, until finally
 * Most shows about Combining Mecha use the sentai style to some extent -- in fact there's even a Combining Mecha anime called Chojin Sentai Balatack, which includes the Five-Man Band with color-coded outfits. About the only thing these sorts of shows don't use is the Super Sentai Stance, since typically the heroes rarely fight outside their vehicles or robots, but even so, the combined robot will usually do plenty of posing upon combining.
 * Bleach episodes 212 and 213 parody this like there's no tomorrow.
 * One of the earliest strips in GA Geijutsuka Art Design Class has the five lead girls becoming the "Color Rangers". Keeping with the art theme, they're yellow, magenta, cyan and monochrome. Except for Tomokane, who's red, because every good Sentai team needs a red leader.
 * Another Show Within a Show example is the Star Rangers in Muteki Kanban Musume. Akihiko is a huge fan of them, to the point that when anyone so much as mentions the show, he starts to think he is Red Star. He seems equally convinced that the rest of the main cast are the other Star Rangers.
 * The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, who already shared superficial similarities to Sentai, were turned into this outright for the Japanese OVA Mutant Turtles: Legend of the Super Mutants--complete with the gigantic super-form "Turtle Saint".
 * Duklyon Clamp School Defenders was a parody of this.
 * In the Fruits Basket manga, Kakeru seems determined to turn the student council into a proper "School Defense Force" and starts assigning colors. He claims Black for himself (because he thinks it would make him seem cool and mysterious) and, after teasing Yuki about how his pretty face should make him Pink, gives him Red for being student council president. Kimi insists on being Pink and sticks Machi with Yellow (like Beat above, Kimi claims it's because Machi likes curry so much). Naohito just plain refuses to play along. And Ayame is named the Commander immediately after Kakeru meets him, much to his delight.
 * Angel Blade, once the series added enough girls, ended up becoming...a Sentai Hentai.
 * Mitsudomoe has the Show Within a Show Honki Sentai Gachiranger. As Mitsudomoe is wont to do, the show seems a little more sexually charged than usual for a Sunday morning TV show. Hitoha is a huge fan.
 * Also spoofed in Yumeria: once all the girls are active in the dream world, they look at their individually-colored outfits and their attacks, and decide they need attack names and a victory pose.
 * Shaman King has five Jiang-Si in the service of Tao Yuan who are a direct parody of this, though they don't really have the Five-Man Band dynamic; nor are they Color Coded for Your Convenience.
 * Digimon Frontier is basically this genre adapted to the Digimon franchise, right down to the team size; they even have a Five-Bad Band of Psycho Rangers.
 * Goldfish Warning, Gyoupin Sentai, episode 34.
 * Tokyo Mew Mew is another Magical Girl sentai combination.
 * The Magical Girl franchise Pretty Cure has several examples that could count as all-girl Sentais. The two that come closest are Yes Pretty Cure 5 (just look at the title) and Smile Pretty Cure.
 * G Gundam has the Shuffle Alliance, which is inspired by the second and third Sentai teams, JAKQ Dengekitai (playing card theme) and Battle Fever J (Multinational Team, though G has China in place of Kenya). The Alliance even has a Sentai backstory, stating that they've existed from ancient times to keep humanity from destroying itself with war.

Comic Books

 * Green Lantern has picked up some Sentai traits with the "New Guardians" teams, comprised of members from seven color-coded and Personality-Powered Corps. None of these people are much for striking poses, but they have the shonen speeches down cold.

Live Action TV

 * As the introduction says, both the Super Sentai and Power Rangers series are the Ur Example of this style.
 * Saban, the company that translated Super Sentai to Power Rangers, also tried its hand at translating another series, coming up with Beetleborgs, and created an original series, The Mystic Knights of Tir Na Nog.
 * Beetleborgs was adapted from Juukou B-Fighter. They also made VR Troopers, although their source footage was three earlier Metal Heroes shows, and those shows don't qualify for this trope as they only had one or two heroes.
 * Voicelugger, which was the last production by Shotaro Ishinomori, the godfather of Super Sentai, released posthumously.

Video Games

 * The Axem Rangers from Super Mario RPG are another Sentai parody.
 * "Together...we are...the PRISM RANGERS!!"
 * "But there are only three of you. That's not even enough for a rainbow."
 * The Handsome Men in Killer 7 are an antagonist version.
 * Parodied in The World Ends With You's bonus chapter, "Another Day." After everyone's pins get stolen at a Tin Pin Slammer tournament, Shooter brings Neku and his friends to his "secret base" (really Ramen Don) to form the Tin Pin Rangers and save the day. Shooter calls Red for himself as team leader, Beat gets Yellow because of his love of curry, Neku gets assigned Black and Blue, much to his annoyance, and Shiki gets Green to match her boots... but only because Joshua called dibs on Pink. Rhyme joins the team later on and becomes Black, leaving Neku with only Blue,
 * The Dragoons of Legend of Dragoon, complete with elemental alliances and color coding.
 * Star Ocean the Second Story: In a Private Action with Leon in Fun City, the "Scummy Rangers" show up in a deliberately over-the-top show where they dispatch evil monsters with the help of the kiddy audience.
 * Culture Brain intended to bring this to the US under the guise of a superhero team by converting two of their Hiryu No Ken games into one superhero-themed title on the NES, calling it Flying Warriors. They even had a fairly big marketing blitz to go with it, with a multi-issue comic book being published in Game Pro. The game itself ended up being swiftly forgotten.
 * Spoofed in God Hand with the Mad Midget Five: a squad of five characters in colour-coded outfits with high-pitched voices, none of whom even reach the main character's waist, prentending they're super heroes and pulling flashy moves. Add to that their high speed and agility, and you have one of the most annoying boss encounters in the whole game.
 * "We are... the Mad Midget FIVE!" "...Douchebags!"
 * Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness: Hexagon Brothers, sound-off! 1! 2! 3! 4! 5! "...Wait who's missing? Whatever. We'll wait till he shows up."
 * The fifth generation brought with it Pawniard and Bisharp, who combine a sentai-inspired aesthetic with a Chess Motif.
 * Digital Devil Saga can be seen as an M-rated version of this.
 * Persona 2 brings us Phoenix Ranger Featherman R. They're cliched, but not a parody.
 * Phoenix Ranger Featherman R makes a return in Persona 3. Each week you can catch the "next episode" bit on the television in the dorm's lounge.

Web Original

 * The Lightning Power Special Team, a group of color-coded heroes, are the premiere superheroes in the Global Guardians PBEM Universe.

Western Animation

 * American animators have made their own version with a twist: Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go! features a Sentai-ish team of, well, robot monkeys, complete with different colors and personalities.
 * Teen Titans also makes reference to sentai with the team colors (Beast Boy: Green, Robin: Red, etc) which are displayed at the end of its upbeat Title Sequence, then of course there's all the team poses.
 * Parodied in Megas XLR with the S-Force, then again with the "Ultra Chicks", who blend Super Sentai with Sailor Moon.
 * Transformers Animated has hints of this with their Five Bot Band main robot cast. They're not much for team poses, but they have many other team-dynamics down pat.
 * Parodied in League of Super Evil with the Force Fighters V.
 * Road Rovers was an attempt to cash in on the sentai craze.