Kanjani Sentai Eight Ranger - Concept and History

Concept and History

Within the Johnny & Associates managed website, "Johnny's Web", a subscription based cellphone web service in Japan, the title for Kanjani Eight's journal serialization corner is "Kanjani Sentai Eightranger". Within this section, each member has an image color (otherwise known as Ranger Color) assigned to them. Each member's journal entries are then organized with the text colored with their chosen image color.

In December 2005, member Yokoyama Yuu created a performance parodying the Super Sentai franchise for "Kanjani Eight Xmas Party 2005" concert series. He drew inspiration for the skit from his love of tokusatsu as well as from the manzai duo Downtown's own Sentai parody from the late 1980s. In creating the scripts for the skits, he mentioned that writes the scripts anticipating what the fans want. Such as writing the Green Ranger to say silly things or to make the Blue Ranger fall in love. Originally, there were two green rangers, but after the joke not catching on with audiences, Yokoyama changed his image color from dark green to black. Yokoyama admitted to the "two greens" being a joke inspired by the Downtown skit, 5 Range-i.

After the success of the skits at the Xmas Party series, the Eight Ranger skits were brought to the concert tours and a new story was weaved for each tour. Majority of the stories, or konto, are filled with jokes and a lot of dialogue is changed on the spot. Yokoyama himself uses the opportunity to ad-lib a lot in performances. Sometimes he'll change character roles on the spot, as in the case for the 2007 concert tour. Originally, the skits had the same premise; the Rangers would protect Eight City from the Kansai Juniors' group B.A.D, but after their 2006 tour the skits focused more on the Rangers themselves rather than the Rangers fighting B.A.D.

In 2008, during their Summer Tour "KANJANI8 Live Tour 2008 It's Summer! It's a Tour! Wahaha!!!", the skit was removed from the tour set list. In response to the removal of the skits from the tour at a press conference, Murakami Shingo said, "We talked about a lot of things and we have been doing it for a long time. We performed it once in all 47 prefectures, so everyone was able to see it. We wanted to tear this down once and present a new Kanjani8." Yokoyama followed up with, " It's nothing serious, there's absolute no deep meaning to it. We just said, ' Let's not do it this time ', lightheartedly. Just like he said earlier, in order for us to continue forward, let's try doing this." He later joked, " Do we really need a serious comment for something like the Eight Rangers? " This happened after 2 and a half years of performing the skits since December 2005.

Eventually the skits were brought back for the 2009 tour but were again scrubbed from the setlist in 2010 in favor for the 8Uppers skit/game, a new set of characters created by the band for the movie/album release that year. It also was not included in the 2011 concert performances. The skits eventually returned in 2012 for the "Kanjani8 Live Tour 8EST: Everyone, how are ya feeling? Our feelings are infinite!" arena and stadium portions of the concert series. The Eight Ranger image and characters were also used for many of the tour's concert goods.

In 2012, the Eight Ranger concept was brought to the big screen and was turned into a movie titled, Eightranger. The movie's premise, background story, and characters were changed from the original story performed on stage to a more grim dark scenario involving terrorists, a collapsed economy, and darker characters. The members of Kanjani Eight reprised their roles as unwilling heroes jaded with no ambitions until Yokoyama's character joins them as the new Black Ranger. The movie opened up in theaters on July 28, 2012. Mass marketing for the movie using the Eight Ranger characters and image took place in the summer of 2012 and involved collaborations between Sanrio, 7 Eleven, the candy Hi Chew, and the shampoo brand Scalabo. In addition, Kanjani Eight, as the Eight Rangers, released a single titled "ER (Eightranger)" serving as the movie's theme song.