This week's Ninja Steel was okay -- I appreciate the attempt to generate a conflict among the Rangers that wasn't entirely created by the monster-of-the-week, just capitalized on by it. But in this day and age, I was annoyed by a school-election episode where the candidates -- both series leads that we're supposed to find heroic and admirable -- campaigned pretty much exclusively through empty showmanship, blatantly bribing the voters with food and prizes, and vague platitudes, rather than actually having positions on the issues or anything.
Well, I finished Kakuranger. I wouldn't call it one of the best Sentai seasons I've seen overall, but it turned out mostly okay aside from its weak start. It got pretty philosophical at the end there -- the ultimate foe is the embodiment of human hate and we all must lock him away in our hearts, etc. Which would've been conveyed better if the Kakurangers had somehow rallied the public to stand with them and drawn on their positive energy or something like that, instead of just doing it themselves.
Since Kakuranger improved after its weak beginning, I decided to go back and give Zyuranger another try. As it turned out, I previously gave up on the show just a couple of episodes before the Burai/DragonRanger arc began. That's a pretty impressive story, putting Geki in a pretty complicated place emotionally, but I think it was resolved a bit too easily, with Burai switching too abruptly from "Ha-ha-ha! I will slay my hated brother and conquer the world!" to "I love my brother and will give what remains of my life to fight evil." Okay, I can buy that he realized he'd misjudged Geki and misdirected his anger, but there's that whole pesky aspiring-world-conqueror thing that kind of got swept under the rug. Although I guess having only 30 hours left to live outside of a magic room would kind of put a damper on any long-term plans for world conquest.
I am enjoying Soga Machiko's performance as Bandora. She really throws herself into it and makes Bandora seem like a villain who really enjoys being evil. It's much the same quality that Hilary Shepard-Turner brought to Divatox in Power Rangers Turbo/in Space. I guess it didn't come through in MMPR because Barbara Goodson's dubbing made Rita Repulsa seem more irritable and bitter. I mean, as written, Bandora is full of hate and bitterness, but in performance, she and her clan come off as an upbeat, bickering but close-knit sitcom family that's rather fun to watch.
I was amused that Zyuranger did a ninja-themed episode, maybe kind of a trial run for Kakuranger -- except the Zyurangers seemed to be better at being ninjas than the Kakurangers were! Or at least more authentic, in that their tactics were more about espionage, misdirection, and deceit, whereas Kakuranger went for more full-on supernatural illusion powers. And the "Dora Ninja" monster in that episode had a sickle-and-chain weapon that I gather is a more genuine shinobi weapon than fantasy-ninja things like shuriken (since real shinobi tended to hide in plain sight as farmers or laborers and needed weapons that could pass for tools).
