Japanese Curry Rangers and a Weird Guy in Red

The yellow suited men in my previous post are the "Curry Rangers." I think they're a group of university students looking for extra cash. It would be scary if it were more than that... There were five of them representing chicken, pork, beef, shrimp (and one more) flavors of curry. They danced to music, posed for pictures with kids and hit up the parents for donations. That's a Curry Ranger holding a money collection box in the picture above. Among readers here, the closest guess was Oyakodon Rangers, by Jurisenpai.

You may be familiar with the Power Rangers, but did you know there are many, many other groups of Rangers in Japan? I'm not an expert, but just for a quick background, the "Goranger" were the original Ranger group("go" means five). Like the "Gorangers" every subsequent ranger group has had five people, four male and one female, all clothed in tights of the same five colors and sporting visored helmets on their heads.

No, I didn't know this. A reader referred me to referred me to this site where you can explore the world of the "Sentai." Go there to learn all about 26 groups of Rangers. How long you spend there should roughly coincide with your need to turn off the computer and go searching for life outside somewhere. My wife mentioned that she recently saw a blurb on TV saying that many small towns in Japan have their own groups of Rangers. I think the point is to add to the identity of the town, bolster tourism, etc. Makes you go, "Hm."

As far as culture goes, Rangers illustrate an obvious fascination here with dressing up in costumes and assuming alternate identities, like the anonymous hero. It amazes me is that every group of Rangers dresses essentially the same (except for these Curry Rangers, who are parodying the "real" thing), and they come with complete histories (e.g., what planet they're from, what evil they're fighting, etc).

On a separate but related note, one of these days I'll finally get to Harajuku on a Sunday afternoon and post pictures of the people doing Cos Play (dressing up in costumes).

The guy in red above was just two cents short of a nickel. He thought he was funny. He would go up to women asking loudly, "Aren't you (famous name)!?" It was sort of funny for a moment, but then he'd repeat the question over and over; the women would back away nervously; kids started crying (ok, mine did); dogs started barking; crows started cawing. He lacked that sense of timing or inflection that sets comedians apart from....well, just a nut in red tights roaming around at the park.

Posted by jw at September 27, 2004 11:09 PM