Ressha Sentai ToQger is the 38th instalment in Toei Company’s Super Sentai series. It premiered on February 16, 2014. The series has a train motif, and unlike previous series where the heroes are named after colours, the heroes in ToQger are numbered and regularly swap colours during battle.
The series’ main characters made a cameo appearance in the film Zyuden Sentai Kyoryuger vs. Go-Busters: The Great Dinosaur Battle! Farewell Our Eternal Friends, and appeared in a special meet-and-greet and press conference at Tokyo Dome City in late January 2014. In October 2014, the series was given the Japan Railway Award’s Special award by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism in its annual “Train Day” observance, recognizing the effect the superheroes had on making children enjoy trains.
Only those with a great Imagination can see the mystical railway known as the Rainbow Line, on which run massive trains known as Ressha are driven by five warriors known as the ToQgers. While it is their mission to save towns from the evil forces of the Shadow Line who are using the residents’ fear and sadness to establish their own railway to enable the coming of their leader Emperor Z, whose intention is consume light to plunge the world into darkness, the five ToQgers are also childhood friends who also fight to recover the memories of their hometown after it was consumed by the Shadow Line’s evil. After being joined by a former Shadow Line member named Zaram who now goes by the name Akira Nijino as their sixth member, the original ToQgers regain their memories of their hometown Subarugahama and discover that it is completely consumed within the Shadow Line’s railroad. The ToQgers begin a campaign to free these “Shadow Towns” from their Shadow Creep Keepers in an attempt to recover their memories and save their friends and family, all while some Shadow Line members seek to usurp Emperor Z due to his ideals going against what they stand for.
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