Hikari Sentai Maskman the Movie Review

Featuring dancing!

A mermaid named Lelai is living underground and is in love with Prince Igam. Because of her love for the prince, she is willing to sing for him. But thanks to the power of the Horn Dogler, her voice is amplified, causing mass earthquakes around the country. Can the Maskmen stop this?

For starters, this movie runs for 21 minutes, just 2 minutes longer than the average running time of the series. So basically, we are just watching an episode of the series without the ending credits, featuring new opening credits that feature the Maskmen dancing. As for this new opening sequence, I find it the complete opposite of the rather serious opening sequence in the TV show. But hey, it's summer so I guess they need to do something special for their summer movie! 

More on the movie opening sequence, when me and my friends watched it a few years ago, they can't help but laugh at it because it looks cheesy even though I told them a couple of times that Maskman is a really serious TV series! Oh well, at least at the end, they have fun watching the movie as they laugh at every cheesy 80's special effects and the film making style back in the 80's. Lastly, for the remastered stock footage, much to my surprise, they did a better job when it comes to it. I mean, the stock footage cropped for the movie, it doesn't look that awkward looking compared to the Kakuranger one.

Now that I am done with the technical stuff about the movie, it is time to talk about the plot. If there is one thing that until now surprised me about the movie is the fact that there is actually someone who fell in love on Prince Igam! Granted, she, I mean, he is quite handsome but from all people, why a kind mermaid?! Guess this just proves that women prefer bad boys over the good guys. Did I mention that the mermaid wants to marry Igam that we even have a scene wherein she is wearing a wedding gown while Igam is waiting for him in the altar! 

Oh well, because of the mermaid, later named Lelai's love for Igam, she is willing to sing for him. Thanks to the power of the Horn Dogler, her voice is amphlified, causing massive earthquakes in our world. Thankfully, the Maskmen who are done doing their opening sequence dance in an empty public pool (I am not kidding), fell underground thanks to the earthquake. This is when we learned when this movie takes place; it is between episodes 13-14 or 14-15. I made this conclusion for the reasons that the Maskmen do not know where are they. ​

To those who remembered the show's 14th episode, Akira had his trip in Tube's underground empire in the show's 14th episode. Based on his reaction, it seems that he is aware on where he is after doing a quick observation of the place before he reported his location to Commander Sugata. Later in the episode, the rest of the Maskmen appeared to save him. In this movie, they are wondering where they are until Igam, the Horn Dogler and his girlfriend appeared in front of them. The fight in this scene is quite brief and the only thing to note in this fight is that the Horn Dogler can shoot laser attacks and that's about it. 

While the rest of the team is fighting the Horn Dogler, Takeru saves Lelai from Igam's clutches. Takeru found an entrance to the surface world and brought Lelai there. Because Takeru is someone she doesn't know it is expected that she will attack Takeru. Takeru then explains himself on why he saved Lelai because he thinks that Igam is just using her. For some reason, I kinda doubt Takeru about it, I mean; the guy looks like he cares for Lelai in a manner like he is love with her. But considering that he is part of the bad guys, I guess he only cared for Lelai in the outside.

Because she is a mermaid, she needed water for her to live that is why she is asking Takeru to bring her to the Ocean of Tears to regenerate her energy. Igam appears to save her from Takeru. Baraba and Oyobu also arrived just in time to attack the Maskmen. Back to Lelai and Igam, we finally see Igam's true colors in front of the woman who loved him. After draining the Ocean of Tears dry, he ordered Lelai to sing for him. By ordered, I mean he has this face that he is willing to kill Lelai if she will not follow orders. Here I was thinking that he is a gentleman when it comes to the ladies not named Ial! 

It's kinda sad to learn that he only loved Lelai because of her song and that she is useful to her. Because she is forced to sing, the song that she is singing is kinda sad but Igam doesn't care about it just as long as she sings the destruction of the surface world. The ones on the surface world heard her song and Takeru wants her to find happiness and thus, along with the rest of the team, they are determined to save her. Takeru heads back to the underground empire to save Lelai. The fight in the empire is kinda short thanks to Kenta arriving just in time inside the Masky Drill to save the two.

Instead of using the Masky Fighter so that Takeru and Lelai will arrive in the nearby ocean in a faster rate, they used the car that we barely see them use in the series. I think the last time they used the car was in the show's 4th episode. But hey, it is because of this, we have this really cool car chase scene that features one Angramon Fighter shooting Takeru's car as Takeru tries to evade every single of their shots! I think I now understand why Takeru used the car and not the jet. 

Even though they have trouble with the enemy fighter plane at first, they were able to arrive in their destination: the ocean. Finally, Takeru learned that the reason why Lelai needs to go to the Ocean of Tears, it is because she is a mermaid. Wow, it took you time to figure it out considering that this movie aired during the 80's and the show called Shinkenger doesn't exist yet, which featured monsters who needs to get wet for most of the time. The other Maskmen arrived, same goes with Igam and friends. Now that the heroes and villains are assembled, it is time for the final battle in this movie.

This movie's roll call is really amazing; it is like they made this roll call to take advantage on the movie's widescreen format. The only time it becomes a bit disappointing when they did the team call; the explosions are kinda small, which is kinda bit of a letdown considering that this movie is on widescreen. The explosions feel like it's made for TV. But considering the terrain they are right now, the beach I guess the small explosions is kinda understandable if they want to keep the ecosystem alive.

The fights in this scene is just your standard Maskman TV fights, and just like those TV fights, it's entertaining to watch them. Speaking of entertainment, when I watched this movie with my friends, they can't help but laugh on the decisions of the Maskmen in battle. Like if they have a gun, why not use it in the battle a lot of times? These guys haven't watched enough tokusatsu yet to understand that they need to sell the role playing toys in this movie. You know, for the kids! After they defeated the Horn Dogler thanks to a Shot Bomber finisher, it is time for the giant battle.

Even though the robot formation sequence is just a cropped stock footage of the TV stock footage formation sequence, the editors did a great job in making it look like this footage is made just for the movie. Since this is stock footage, you can notice its difference with the movie footage thanks to the difference when it comes to color. There is nothing worth noting about the giant fight aside from the stock footage looking beautiful in delicious HD widescreen format. At the end, they defeated the Horn Dogler.

Back to Lelai, who is still in the shore, likely watching the fights, she finally leaves and the Maskmen from afar bid their farewells to their mermaid friend. Overall, this movie feels like it is about Takeru, Igam and Lelai for 21 minutes. The other Maskmen were just there in the opening sequence and in scenes where they need the five Maskmen. Seriously, it feels like the other five are just there so that they can have a Super Sentai movie. As for the plot of the movie, it feels like the plot is made for TV but they decided to reserve it for this movie, and I think they made a wise decision to save this plot for this movie. ​

It's a wise decision in a sense that it expanded the underground world in a different manner, we learned that they have an ocean created by human tears and that there are beings aside from humans and monsters living underground. The only problem I have with the movie is that since this is a Takeru focused movie, and it has something to do with a mermaid who is in love with Igam, the writers didn't bring up Mio/Ial even for just 2-3 minutes. I mean, he keeps on talking about finding true happiness but what about his happiness with Mio/Ial? Guess it is reserved in a different episode.