Okay, I saw the rest of the episode. While I'm not a fan of pirate fiction, I like the new costume design quite a bit. Although the whole "swapping weapons in the middle of a fight" dynamic seems problematical. I know I shouldn't expect anything resembling plausible combat tactics in Power Rangers, but this seems unusually awkward. I can see contexts where it would make sense; in a recent discussion on another board, I've learned how even in modern combat, it's often deemed preferable to use bladed weapons for close-range fighting where guns create too much risk of friendly fire or can be too easily deflected/grabbed. So it would make sense for one Ranger to switch to sabers only for close-quarters combat while another used guns only for ranged combat, although I don't think there was any such difference shown here. But the need to switch in the middle of a fight, leaving both Rangers vulnerable while they're doing it, just seems like a bad idea. Particularly in light of how many previous Ranger teams had guns that could transform into swords, or vice-versa. As for the "Legendary Mode," switching to past Ranger costumes, it's so brief that it seems like little more than a gimmick. I mean, I wasn't expecting it to be anything but a gimmick, but I would've liked them to create more of an illusion that it served a purpose. The first couple of powers -- Samurai symbol power and Mystic Force wand power or whatever that was -- seemed useful, but it's unclear what the SPD or all-Red modes accomplished that Super Mega couldn't. I think the problem is that they're compressing the story so much that it's all kind of cursory. A skyship is a neat idea, but again, the Zord sequence was too rushed to get a good sense of the individual Zords. I like the ship-wheel controls, though. Well, they can't really accomplish more than turning left and right, but they look neat. So far the villains seem like an improvement over the last batch, with more personality. Again, though, there wasn't enough detail to get a good sense.
I just finished up Megaforce. It was awful! The season had no story and no character development whatsoever. The five would morph, then fight for the rest of the episode while delivering the same empty one-liners again and again. No substance. None. What happened? The show was better under Disney. I'm still looking forward to Super Megaforce and the pirate theme though. Looks like we'll at least get a little something with the past rangers returning and the aftermath.
I dunno. While I think I'll always have a soft spot for Power Rangers, I really haven't been that engaged with the property since Dino Thunder.
ToQger premiered on Saturday. Here are some clips Opening [YT]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iDNKc6TbSo[/YT] [YT]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PESwz_lN1ec[/YT] First mecha battle [YT]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vfuyF1wj5k[/YT] Don't let the childish nature of the show fool you. Behind the veil the dark part is Spoiler: Spoiler It's revealed the rangers died
So, um, basically... trains. I know they like their seasonal themes on Super Sentai, but wow, way to ram the theme into the ground. Yes, trains, we get it already. Although some of it was cute, like the "please stay behind the line" for the villains. The CGI didn't look very good, though.
2:15 sounds obscene. Wonder if the bad guys will ever figure out to get off the tracks when the big zord is coming.
Jeff Pruitt has posted unseen footage. Or at least, some of it is unseen, from the early MMPR S2 episodes http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91BoKNRb2uY
Trains are part of everyday life in Japan, so I can see them milking tons of tropes for content in this year. It was good, silly fun, like most Sentai shows, so I don't see this as a problem. What the challenge will be is how PR will adapt it, assuming they don't milk Kyoryuger for 3+ years. Can't fault anyone, kids love dinosaurs. And with any luck, they'll still like trains like we did. The color changing was a neat idea, but how useful will it be when anyone - including EVERY OTHER SENTAI TEAM EVER - could just hand their weapons to their team mates when they had to. I'm sure there's some PLOT PLOT PLOT explanation for it (related to imagination, natch), but it's pretty limiting IMO. Still, it's good to see them in action, and it seems a logical progression of keeping it kid-friendly and mining something boys like (trains). Also, I'm happy to see them stay away from cellphone morphers for another year. That was really getting tiring. On to Episode 2, and another clue as to why the hand puppet thing is suggesting they're all undead! Mark
I like the evil train at least. I understand the whys of it all but it's too bad they couldn't air the real thing here. I enjoyed Dairanger back in the day (via VHS tape trading, long time ago) and I didn't even have subs (you can follow it pretty well without it, even the Star Wars parallels). Jetman was a lot of fun though I only saw a handful of those.
The previously unused dairanger suits are finally included [YT]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21iPZqVn_oY[/YT] They sat on the dairanger suits for 21 years and the best explanation is "Powers not seen on earth" Wow. For the next 20 episodes I don't expect any detailed explanation of ANYTHING. They didn't really explain -the legend powers -the new zords -a weak attempt at explaining for Dairanger footage -glossed over the change from green to black. Sure Power Ranger's has been lazy in the past but never this lazy.
^ Why is "these powers aren't from Earth" such a poor explanation? It would've been considered perfectly feasible for this franchise not even 10 years ago.
Well, that line wasn't that lame since the team's first morph was to SPD mode. Future rangers that they hadn't seen on Earth before. Granted, as this is an anniversary season, it would've been cool if it has been portrayed as if Legendary mode were actually something...legendary for the current team.
I don't expect detailed explanations. In fact, I like the precedent that Legendary Mode can access previously unseen Ranger powers, because it means maybe we'll get to see some of the pre-Zyuranger costumes after all. I actually didn't find the Dairanger costumes as attractive as I thought they'd be. The helmets look good in stills, but the white vests don't really do it for me. What surprises me is that, aside from Samurai last week, none of the costumes we've seen so far are from a previous Saban-produced season. We've had every Disney season except Dino Thunder represented by at least one Ranger, and we've had the Dairanger suits that Saban didn't use, but nothing from the first decade of the American series (except in Troy's Legend War premonitions). That's surprising. But apparently it's rooted in the original footage they've adapted, from episodes 1, 2, and 5 of Gokaiger. All the "Gokai Changes" in those episodes were either from recent seasons or very, very early seasons. Apparently the first Gokai Change ever was to Gorenger, the very first Sentai ever, which makes sense. I'm a little surprised, though, that Saban just cut that out rather than replacing it with a newly filmed MMPR scene. I guess they really are that cheap. Although apparently two weeks from now we'll get a Wild Force focus episode. The climax of this one was pretty striking. We hardly ever see the Rangers take direct action against the enemy forces; they just react against each monster attack and then stand down. Having them go "The hell with it" and just straight up launch the Megazord into a full-on strike against the enemy armada -- in episode 2 of all things -- was kind of amazing. Although it would've been nice to have a scene clarifying that the main villains survived and retreated for the nonce. And I loved the scene with the Rangers flying over the Earth in the Skyship. That was lovely. I wish they'd ended there instead of with the anticlimax of the mall reopening. The whole city's been trashed and all they care about is a damn mall? Priorities, people!
I was expecting the Mega War in the last two episodes of last season and when that didn't happen, I expected it to take place as the first two episodes of this season as part of the transition but that didn't happen either. Now I see that it'll happen at the end of this season. As for the first two episodes, I like the idea of a ranger team having access to all the previous ranger modes but it's little more than a gimmick and costume change. I much preferred the original Japanese version where all the rangers gave up their powers in the Legendary War to stop the invasion only to have a group of misfit kids take up the Power Rangers mantle (with a pirate theme) and have to learn to use their newfound abilities for good. We got none of that here. Just more fighting and little plot. Hopefully the gimmick will at least be semi entertaining.