Black Ranger Battle: Final Round! Black Condor vs Ninja Black!

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In this corner, hailing from Parts Unknown!

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Black Condor
Name: Gai Yuuki
Played By: Toshihide Wakamatsu
Suit Actor: Naoki Oufuji

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And in this corner, hailing from Los Angeles, California!

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Ninja Black
Name: Jiraiya
Played By: Kane Kosugi
Suit Actor: Tsutomu Kitagawa

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This is the final round of the Black Ranger Battle, with the title of HJU's Favorite Black Ranger on the line. This poll will be open for one week, and the victor will not be declared until the poll has closed. So that is one full week to vote, beg your friends to vote, and make your case to the undecided.

Despite coming from shows that aired within the same five-year time period, Gai and Jiraiya couldn't be more different as characters. Gai is Jetman's second-in-command, indomitably strong but irrepressibly rebellious. Jiraiya is the youngest of the male Kakurangers, an American trying to reconnect with the heritage of his ancient ninja ancestors. Gai was given his powers by accident, the result of an experimental process gone awry. Jiraiya's powers are the result of the ninja techniques he's inherited from the Kakurangers of centuries past. One character grounded in sci-fi, the other urban fantasy, yet both completely unique and memorable.

Comparing Gai and Jiraiya at all might seem intrinsically unfair, a bit like comparing apples and oranges. Still, the tournament demands that one must win and the other must lose. Now it's time to pause, think it over, and decide whether you prefer hard-drinking apples or English-speaking oranges.
 
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Signing in once again to vote for Jiraiya. Gai is a great Black Ranger and I'd vote for him over quite a few others, but Jiraiya is always amazing, in one sense or the other, any time he is on screen.
 
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[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGlIvqAJi-4"]Chojin Sentai Jetman-Honoo no Condor - YouTube[/ame]
 
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And here is the likely conclusion of the most predictable showdown ever; Black Condor wins; was there any doubt that Gai Yuuki would be the winner of any "best sentai Black ranger" poll? And frankly, despite being a Gai fan, I still think he's pretty overrated; as an anti-hero ranger, I feel Naoto/Timefire was more interesting (btw, he dies too); and I could even make a case proving that Ranru/Abareyellow (one of the least discussed female rangers ever, who would never even win a "female yellow ranger" poll) is more badass than Gai Yuuki/Black Condor.
 
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I think the majority of Gai's appeal is down to a superficial "coolness" and people basically thinking that smoking, drinking and womanizing makes him awesome. That's why I didn't vote for him (although I like the character) however TimeFire and AbareYellow cannot win this poll as they are not Black Rangers ...
 
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And here is the likely conclusion of the most predictable showdown ever;

I dunno. I would say, right now, maybe half of the vote is in. There's usually a surge of activity right before the poll closes. If that surge favored Jiraiya, it would still be very possible for him to win or tie. Gai's lead is large right now, but not mathematically insurmountable given the probable number of outstanding votes.

I don't think it's necessarily predictable for Gai to win something like this. Yes, Jetman fans love him, but I'd say that the majority of HJU users probably still haven't seen Jetman. It's an older show, and most fans stick to newer material, a pattern that clearly informs the voting turnout in the qualifying rounds.

I think that makes the final round brackets pretty interesting. While Gai in the finals is fairly predictable, I never would've expected the semifinals to be so close, nor Ninja Black to be the guy Gai was up against. I really, really wouldn't have expected a character from a largely untranslated and older series like Kakuranger to do so well.

I don't know if this is the result of Kakuranger fans being very passionate, or HJU having a fondness for the English-speaking ranger from LA, or simply people casting votes for Jiraiya as votes against Gai (since, as the thread proves, a lot of people vocally dislike him). I think just what's happened in the tournament thus far is going to cast the outcome, whatever it is, in an interesting light.
 
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gai's reputation precedes him, there are plenty of fans on here who haven't actually seen jetman or kakuranger and only know yuuki because of people talking about gai all the time and from gokaiger. hes the most talked about black ranger and got this far for mostly that reason. i would say its similar to how mammoth ranger got as far as he did due to mmpr and less on his own merit. but thats just based on my personal observation.
also thank god Hyuuga finally got kicked out, homeboy wasn't even a ranger, at least not technically.
 
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I think the majority of Gai's appeal is down to a superficial "coolness" and people basically thinking that smoking, drinking and womanizing makes him awesome.

Sure, that's stuff that gives the character a shock appeal considering the type of show he's in, but there's a lot more to Gai than that that I find appealing. Even without that stuff, he's still an edgy, different kind of character for Super Sentai. Sentai had already had a couple of characters who were reluctant heroes, but Gai takes it to a whole other level and...well, he's an interesting contrast to the stock type of heroes who are always presented as flawless.

Gai screws up. He can be selfish, he can be an asshole, he can be bullheaded. But deep down, he's a good guy, he has a sense of justice, a code of honor. He shows that every hero doesn't need to be a hero who emptily spouts "Guts! Seigi! Heiwa o mamoru!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" He's a real '90s character in how he's supposed to be a hip character who comments on that tired, traditional type of hero -- by going against and hating everything Ryu, who is that type of hero, stands for. He's initially cynical and isolated, but there's a growth to the character where he's made a better person by the series' end. There's a sense of redemption for Gai. He's just a really interesting character, played by a great actor who really brings him to life and keeps him from falling into areas of unlikability. There are layers to his character, and I think he has a heck of a lot more going on for him than a character like Jiraiya.
 
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Gai screws up.

This. A thousand times this. All of the Jetman shots in the OP I pulled from my own encodes. I had no problems finding shots of Gai looking pretty cool in his civilian identity, but I ran through something like 20 episodes of footage looking for cool shots of Black Condor. In episodes that weren't about him, he tended to hang out in the background. In episodes that were about him, he gets the living **** kicked out of him once he transforms. In particular, it seems like all but the last time he fights Grey, he just gets beaten mercilessly in solo fights.

That's actually pretty interesting, and I think it may speak to what makes the character timeless. There's a contrast between the "cool guy" exterior and how Gai struggles to be effective as a superhero that I think is compelling, and has continued to be compelling long after the show's original heyday. It's just very rare that you see anybody on a Super Sentai team who's not automatically good at doing his or her job. I think letting a character like Gai struggle to improve makes what Jetman accomplishes feel more significant, and their victories more earned. It's certainly hugely gratifying when Gai has to take a turn as Jetman's interim leader toward the end of the series, and actually manages to be pretty good at it.

With Jiraiya, I found a lot more good shots online, and only had to pull about half of his OP shots myself. I think there it's telling that I pulled mostly out-of-costume shots. There's simply no shortage of imagery in Kakuranger where Ninja Black is doing cool-looking stuff, and I think that speaks to how he's a fundamentally different type of character.
 
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Hey, now -- Condor is played in-suit by Naoki friggin' Oofuji, who's pretty much always good and cool in-suit. I can think of a lot of cool screencaps you could get of Condor from the show. Condor does get into a few bad scrapes in the series, though, but I always thought that it was the way Jetman was taking to the extreme the Sentai trope of "five average people uniting" -- Jetman tried to highlight that by showing all of the non-Hawk team members messing up, but Gai always seemed more noticeable since he was not just the go-in-guns-blazing guy, but because he was only a street-fightin' man. He didn't have kendo or a high school sports background and he wasn't freakishly strong...

He was also a heavy smoker and drinker, and that takes a toll, man! :p He's just a flawed guy, and I think that appeals to people even more than just "Hey, he smokes and drinks, that's baller, man!" Because how many heroes in toku shows can you say are flawed and/or gray characters? There's been misguided heroes, there have been stubborn or misunderstood characters, but Gai was and is still pretty unique among toku heroes.

I also think Gai was supposed to be a more "realistic" tokusatsu hero. As selfless as we think a superhero should be, here's Gai who says no, a hero needs to take care of themselves or else they can't take care of anyone. Here's Gai, who wanted to hang on to what was seen as just selfish behavior because he was afraid of losing himself to the demands of being a Jetman. Here's Gai, who knows it takes more than just repeating "We're soldiers, we protect the world" to actually protect the world. That's why I think he was a character very much of the time, because that's when a lot of entertainment was starting to be self-aware and deconstruct itself. You had a real '90s character like Gai versus a very traditional '70s/'80s archetype like Ryu, and I think that's something that's interesting about what Inoue was doing with the show, and that examination is one of the parts of Jetman that makes it really seem to me like the door closing on that era of Super Sentai.
 
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