I find it really weird that their helmets have visors that look like hats. It's headgear decorated to look like a different kind of headgear. How meta.
The Patoranger's suits also emulate a policeman's suit and tie uniform. The more I look at the Patoranger's the more I'm not feeling the suits. The white area's don't look that good IMO. I like the Lupinranger's costumes more because primary color on black looks much better.
I agree. But since the white and black is good and bad, it makes sense. This concept looks really interesting. I wonder how it might translate to American Power Rangers.
Given that "our" cops don't really dress like that, and the whole "gentleman thief" thing isn't necessarily a cultural thing here, I don't think this puts it high on the potential list for adaptation. Given that it's all but certain IMO that Kyuuranger will be adapted next IMO, that Saban's could give this one a pass wouldn't surprise me at all. Mark
They don't dress like Time Force or SPD Rangers either, and that wasn't a dealbreaker. Sure it is. There's a ton of American and European fiction about heroic/charismatic thief characters, going back to Robin Hood. There have been plenty of movies and shows about charming thief/criminal protagonists, from Topkapi and The Sting to the Ocean's 11 and Fast and Furious franchises to White Collar and Leverage. Not to mention the romanticizing of real-life thieves like D.B. Cooper. Keep in mind that the whole Lupin thing is based on a famous character from early 20th-century French literature.
Fair enough, though I'd argue that police tactical gear (and especially SWAT gear) looks more akin to the Time Force / SPD motif than Patoranger here. OTOH, there are plenty of military or paramilitary sentai teams whose leotards don't evoke that sort of feeling at all. As for the Lupinrangers, I guess I was driving more at the notion that North American kids TV would not promote organized crime of any sort on the part of the heroes, even committing-crime-for-the-common-good stuff. Sure, we have hidden groups of aliens / robots / kids doing BnEs and wrecking property in the course of their adventures, but it's not like we've had good-guy gangsters or Fast & Furious types in the Saturday morning fare, right? Mark
There have been sympathetic thief characters in Saturday morning TV, even if they weren't exactly heroes. The animated version of Carmen Sandiego portrayed Carmen as an ethical thief and an antihero who sometimes worked with the heroes against greater threats. And then there are characters like Catwoman and the Black Cat. Anyway, Power Rangers often makes massive changes to the storyline and the nature of the characters -- like, say, changing a band of intergalactic space pirates into high school students. So just because they're thieves in the Sentai, they don't necessarily have to be in PR. Maybe they could be spies or something, like Will in Operation Overdrive. Or maybe even magicians, what with the top hats. Scenes of the two Ranger teams fighting each other could be de-emphasized in favor of them teaming up against the monsters.
And apparently no love for Wild Force or Operation Overdrive, huh? Interesting, since those are the 2 seasons I most commonly see for sale in retail stores around here. BTW, are any of the bonus features on the big multi-season box sets any good? Spoiler: "NewsRadio" Season 5 Who apparently turned out to be Adam West!
They were okay -- not among my favorites, but interesting. The main thing I remember about Wild Force is that it was almost a beat-for-beat adaptation of its Super Sentai counterpart Gaoranger, except for having an original Red Ranger and main villain (whose costume was a variant on Dairanger's ultimate villain) and a new storyline between them (which got incredibly dark and murdery for Power Rangers). No idea. Never seen any of them.
Magician's sounds like something new era saban would likely spin on the Lupinrangers. I can already picture an episode of the adaptation in my head. Basic character outlines for the Patoranger's and Lupinrangers
Continuing on that theme, which Sentai would you most highly recommend (particularly out of the ones that formed the basis for the first 7 seasons of Power Rangers, since those are the ones on DVD right now)? And are there any Sentai seasons that you would recommend over certain seasons of Power Rangers or vice versa?
I haven't really seen that many. I've seen Jetman (the last pre-Power Rangers season) and Go-Busters, both of which are excellent, and the four seasons available on ShoutFactory's free site. Of those, I thought Zyuranger started out really dumb but got much better as it went on, though the villains were more interesting than most of the heroes. Dairanger was kind of mediocre but had a fairly good cast (aside from the preteen boy who became the White Ranger and who sexually harassed the Pink Ranger) and really good costumes and mecha. Kakuranger, like Zyu, started out very dumb but got better as it went (though it also had some moments of pretty awful sexism); it's notable for being very, very steeped in Japanese culture and folklore, as a response to the previous two seasons which had been based in Western and Chinese mythology/culture, respectively. Ohranger was fairly good but inconsistent; it started out trying to be very serious but then lightened up in response to some real-world tragedies, and it got kind of overloaded with arbitrary and poorly conceived new mecha as a desperate attempt to compensate for sagging ratings with new toy sales. Of those four, I'd say Zyuranger was the most satisfying overall, though it takes a while to get there.
"New toy sales" is right. I remember when Power Rangers Zeo was on the air, my friend had all the toys, including Wonder Wheel and Auric the Conqueror. I never remembered seeing either of them on the show. (But then, I missed a lot of important stuff, including all the stuff explaining who Prince Gasket was. My friend explained it to me but I never saw it for myself.)
Auric was built up big in his first appearance but I think he only made three appearances and then just disappeared without a trace. The Wonder (actually "Warrior") Wheel wasn't great, but the Defender Wheel was beyond stupid. The DW was literally a giant tire that Tommy would jump into like it was a hamster wheel to roll at enemies. Definitely one of the goofier weapons in a PR/Sentai arsenal.
And now that I'm looking back on the history of the series, whatever happened to Ninjor and the Shogun Zords? I mean, I realize that, IRL, they just ran out of Sentai footage of them. But, in-universe, there's no reason why they wouldn't have called on them for help at some point during the events of Zeo or afterwards. I suppose you could also ask what happened to the Ninja Zords but I'm guessing that they somehow just lost their ability to call them when their power coins were destroyed. But Ninjor was still around, so he could still help (unless he was just sick of getting captured all the time). And the Shogun Zords had already been hidden for centuries and wouldn't have been tied to any particular Ranger powers since Lord Zedd tried to use them himself.
Once time was restored at the end of the Alien Ranger saga and the rangers returned as Zeo Rangers Ninjor went back into his bottle at the temple of power I would recommend watching Go-busters and taking a peek at Toqger. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnrkgR-NzbW5a4hVELlT3KOsyCDd6c7ZK Toqger is a bit childish but that's because the five ranger's are kids and were snatched from their hometown before the villains plunged their hometown into darkness.(Link at the top) Also Zyouhger since that's probably going to be skipped http://kissasian.ch/Drama/Doubutsu-Sentai-Zyuohger
Ninjor was rather the opposite of his Sentai counterpart, Ninjaman. Ninjor was a wise mentor who talked like Dudley Doright, but Ninjaman was a hotheaded apprentice of the Three God Generals (i.e. the Megazords) who Hulked out into his alternate form Samuraiman whenever an opponent hit his berserk button of calling him a novice, which for some reason they invariably did every time. And it was never explained what exactly Ninjaman was, and whether there was a person under the helmet and armor, or what. It was totally bizarre and silly and one of the less successful elements of Kakuranger.
The thing that really sucks in regards to Ninjor is that his Sentai equivalent came back for Gokaiger, but didn't show up in Super Megaforce. Now, Megaforce/Super Megaforce sucked, but having the ninja Dudley Doorite show up would have been cool.
The new show also has the same creative team as the Toqger and Zyuohger shows so it's very likely it's going to be skipped.
Out of those 7: Carranger - very funny, a comedic sentai that plays with the franchises tropes Megaranger - a high school/technology sentai Dairanger - chinese martial arts are the top 3 imo, in that order. Other recommended sentai: Maskman (martial arts themed), Jetman (birds/planes with lots of dramatic elements in the story, a favorite in the franchise), GoGo V (rescue and family themed), Timeranger (time travel/police), Abaranger (Dinos), Magiranger (magic and family), Gekiranger (another martial arts themed one with a more serialized story, my personal all time favourite sentai), Shinkenger (Samurai), Gokaiger (pirates, previous power showcase), ToQger (Trains and Imagination) I'm only picking three each: Carranger over Turbo Magiranger over Mystic Force Gekiranger over Jungle Fury MMPR over Zyuranger Zeo over Ohranger Ninja Storm over Hurricanger And of course everything Saban has produced starting with Samurai is crap with the exception of Dino Charge. The creative teams are completely irrelevant, it depends on sentai 2019 wether this one gets skipped or adapted, Saban and Bandai will pick the one with the more appealing theme and toy sale potential.