Today is my 42nd birthday. I’m not sure how I feel about that as I type this roughly a week and a half before today. The march of time, things of that nature.

Let’s instead talk about another Super Sentai, which has become tradition with these birthday threads. The 42nd edition of the franchise is a mouthful of a title: Thief Sentai Lupinranger VS Police Squadron Patranger. Any reference from here on out will be shortened, notably using the common fan shorthand of “LuPat” instead.

LuPat features two full, separate teams on one show, a franchise first, though you’ll soon find out one gets way more focus than the other. The two teams, the phantom thief-based Lupinranger and the police team Patranger, are destined to constantly conflict with one another but clearly set to unite as one team.

Long ago, legendary thief Arsène Lupin acquired a lot of notable magical (and dangerous!) McGuffins during his great adventures, these devices known collectively as The Lupin Collection. The evil Ganglers stole the collection, now utilizing its powers to presumably take over their next target, planet Earth.

The Lupinrangers, by request of a mysterious man curating the return of the Collection, are asked to track down all its missing pieces while also defeating the Ganglers. The three Lupinrangers are also united by personal fate, hoping to track down a specific Gangler who attacked and froze their loved ones solid, never to awaken unless they are defeated. 

As for the Patrangers, they have a clearer sense of justice. The Ganglers threaten public safety and must be dealt with. Additionally, these phantom thieves that are taking these items that aren’t theirs? They need to be arrested and brought to justice as well.

This is a really great premise for a show, and that’s why it hurts when the show squanders its potential hard.

Starting with good things though, I really do like the opening song/introduction. Explains the premise, lots of action and, the best aspect, two singers singing over one another in an attempt to get their “message” out. Lupinrangers will steal your heart! The Patrangers will bring those thieves to justice! I also like the action setpieces throughout the series. Though some new camera flourishes were tried last year during Kyuranger, these added tricks are definitely much more noticeable starting with LuPat. For instance, there are several drone-enabled sequences providing fun action shots.

Super Sentai is, obviously, a toy-selling franchise. I personally joke that I have strong opinions about shows which are targeted toward four-year-olds who speak a different language. The shows are essentially product, and producing the most product possible equals profit or what not. So Super Sentai shows will always be 48 to 51 episodes, because no matter if we actually like the superhero stories within, these shows are toy ads. Always have been.

So with that said, LuPat is way damn too long. There’s a monster of the week, and one of the two teams will take care of them while encountering the other team. There are a lot of episodes that push the friendships/relationships of the teams as they get along as civilians. And it’s very hard to handwave that the Patrangers take forever to realize they’ve been speaking with the Lupinrangers the whole time.

And that ice monster? One of the core reasons the Lupinrangers formed in the first place? It only occasionally appears and then leaves for several episodes, never being an official commander for the Ganglers. And yet there’s the monster’s face in the opening EVERY SINGLE WEEK.

Ultimately, the core problem with this show is that one team is exceedingly unlikable, and it’s not the police.

ACAB, of course, but the characters on the Patranger side are just far more likable humans! The leader is a fine Red, one with a dogged, if impatience sense of justice. The Patrangers’ commander is black, and they switch between English and Japanese on a whim. I imagine seeing a black actor on a Japanese children’s show, especially one who isn’t written as a joke, is progressive especially today!

The Lupinrangers are treated much more like a complete team. All the upgrades go to them, including Lupin Red getting his own personal robot. Even items originally assigned to the Patrangers are primarily used by the thieves! I don’t have any specific information concerning the production of the series to prove anything, but having a two-team show and putting so much focus on only one of them is straight entertainment malpractice.

The sixth member of the team, an agent who works with both teams and can transform for either team, doesn’t help matters. He’s just dreadfully boring with a plot twist that just doesn’t work, and ultimately the show sputters toward its ending.  

It’s a disappointing Super Sentai, and many folks online strongly dislike it because of how it ignores the Patrangers for the Lupinrangers despite them being far less interesting and having a pretty awful Red. It’s not one of my favorites either. It’s still better than Ninninger, if we’re ranking shows I’ve covered so far.

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Next year: LuPat was disappointing and miscalculated, but compared to next time it’s perfectly okay. Coming up, the most paint by numbers Super Sentai in modern history. A show, that as of this writing, I actually need to completely watch. That isn’t a good sign, right? I guess we’ll find out in a year if I liked it.

But before that, the Super Sentai franchise provides a fun fanservice battle for the ages with the four-episode Super Sentai Strongest Battle – with the return of several fan-favorite characters. We can at least look forward to that!