Hasbro's Power Rangers era and General Tokusatsu discussion

Well after in space the next few seasons were meant to move away from zordon era.

Lost galaxy to time force were self contained seasons much like super sentai seasons are. Outside of crossover episodes

They’re finished in one season and then the next and the next.

The continuity would be a nightmare trying fit them all together

 

And they were just about the best continuous run of seasons in the franchise, just as their Sentai counterparts were the best continuous run of seasons I've seen so far. They became more and more faithful adaptations over time, to the point that Time Force and Wild Force were almost beat-for-beat recreations with many or most of the characters having the same personalities and arcs as their Sentai counterparts.

 

My kids liked Lost Galaxy, but we came to Power Rangers very late in the game. Our first first-run season was Samurai, so we went back and watched the older seasons, generally not in order the first time. We found the character continuity in the earliest seasons interesting but a bit odd. We had gotten used to getting a new batch of Rangers each season, see? If they were going to carry the same Rangers, why were they changing forms? So, I guess it's a matter of perspective. Have you gone back and watched other seasons after Lost Galaxy?

 

There was some hesitation from certain power ranger fans that felt power rangers was losing its identity.

The worry was there wouldn’t be anything original. It became a beat for beat of the super sentai

But I’m glad they changed things like Eric the quantum ranger not dying

 

I think Time Force probably struck the best balance between adapting the Sentai storyline and adding innovations. The overall Timeranger story arc and many of the characters were the same, but TF added a more multilayered chief villain and deepened his relationships with the main henchwoman (now his daughter) and the Pink Ranger, as well as playing up the romance between Red and Pink a bit more. Which compensated for dropping a couple of the Timerangers' story arcs, TimeBlue's terminal illness and TimeYellow's troubled romance with a present-day photographer. Time Force is the one Power Rangers season that might be better than its Sentai counterpart, at least among the Sentai seasons I've seen. (I'd be surprised if Go-Onger was anywhere near as good as RPM.)

 

No, just the first three episodes of DinoThunder (OK and so was Tommy but him just being OK was at the same time pretty disappointing).

 

Dino Thunder was our first introduction to Tommy. So we thought he was pretty amazing. The episode where he gives the Rangers their (his) history was the episode that convinced us to go back and watch everything from the beginning in order. I hope you decide to watch the other seasons one of these days.

 

That one was a bit unexpected for me. The previous season, Ninja Storm, had been the first season produced by Disney and the first New Zealand season, with a major production-crew shakeup as well, and the first episode seemed to treat Power Rangers as a fictional concept that only the team's resident nerd had heard of, suggesting it was out of continuity with the previous seasons. So when Dino Thunder brought back Tommy and did that episode recapping the whole saga, it felt like they were retconning things back into continuity.

Of course, that's happened before in tokusatsu, particularly in Kamen Rider. The first revival in the late '70s started out as a reboot but was rethought as a sequel midway through its season, bringing back the previous Riders as guests. The second revival, Kamen Rider Black, was a standalone season with no reference to the past, but its second season brought back past Riders as guests again. In the 2000 reboot, for the first nine seasons, each show was separate and in its own reality, and the 10th-anniversary season treated them as parallel worlds, but then it did a sort of Crisis on Infinite Kamen Riders multiverse reboot, and the seasons after that treated all the previous shows as part of the same continuity, and loosely crossed over with each other from time to time, much as Power Rangers seasons did.

 

RyuGold So Cool! The character's name is Kanaro, and he debuts in episode 14.


https://natalie.mu/eiga/news/331989

https://twitter.com/specialform12/status/1130209190235004929?s=21

 

Ryusoul Needs Women? A Ranger whose actual mission is to find someone to knock up? I doubt you'll ever see that adapted on Power Rangers.

 

No, probably not!

 

I see that the next Zi-O tribute arc after Kiva will be for Kabuto, and will bring back Gatack, Kickhopper, and Punchhopper, but not Kabuto himself. Too bad, since Hiro Mizushima was one of KR's most charismatic and talented leads. But I gather he's had a pretty successful career afterward, so he was probably too hard to get.

So that should just leave Den-O and Drive to go after that. I suspect they're saving fan-favorite Den-O for last.

 

I haven't seen the 2nd part of the Kiva tribute(if you can call it that) but I heard it wasn't so great.

Summer movie conference for Ryuusoulger and Zi-O

https://hobby.dengeki.com/event/765140/

https://natalie.mu/eiga/gallery/news/332400/1164977



Ryuusoulger Time Slip! Dinosaur Panic

Kamen Rider Zi-O: Over Quartzer!

It's weird the three movie riders represent series that were in the heisei but until now Toei kept stuffing them with the Showa Riders due to Ishinomori's involvement/being alive)

They're still not Heisei Riders in the eyes of the show proper or FOREVER though, just for this movie.

 

Yeah. By coincidence, I was just wondering a few hours ago what they'd do for the Zi-O summer movie, and I was hoping they'd do something more with the seasons that got short shrift, like a proper W tribute/crossover. But I guess this makes sense in a weird way.

Anyway, Decade was originally just meant to commemorate the first decade of Heisei, as is self-evident from its name, but then it ended up doing tributes to Showa seasons like Black, Black RX, and Amazon (distinct from Amazons), and its movie even revealed that the evil masterminds behind the whole series were an alliance of the heads of Showa Era evil organizations. At least here they're sticking with Heisei Era series this time, in the strict calendrical sense if not the usual Kamen Rider sense.

But I'm confused. Are these variant forms for Zi-O/Sougo, or are they other characters? If they were variant forms, they wouldn't have different Rider names. They'd just be (cue Woz's "Rejoice" speech) Kamen Rider Zi-O Black RX Armor or the like.

 

They're characters. Zi-O's opening credit's singer will be playing Balrx.

https://kamenrider.fandom.com/wiki/ISSA


https://imgur.com/g6IUR6m

 

Zi-O 36
https://www.mp4upload.com/cy2803yas7ft

It wouldn't be a Kiva episode without a wedding and a tragedy. Still it was a pretty subpar tribute episode. They bring back Yuri's actress but she played someone else

The Ginga stuff felt almost superfluous if not for the fact that it's Woz's new form, and Woz himself only used the basic form this week, saving Planet and Sun for later weeks. It does look supremely overpowered, finishing off Another Kiva with little trouble.

Theepisode had a surprisingly high body count. Yuko murdered three people as Another Kiva, murdered her ex's new girlfriend in the past (throwing a drain cover at her!) and was ultimately killed by Hora.

Ryuusoulger episode 10

https://www.mp4upload.com/dstw5v36b6c5

This season has had alot of references to death. This show is surprisingly mature underneath all the wackiness.

Rather than have “people die when druidons steal their life energy” be a simple way to raise stakes, it goes out of its way to look into the motivations, reactions, and emotions that surround death.

Instead of just copying Ui’s suicide episode, where she was presented as someone who wanted to die because she felt worthless, we have a character who wants to die because of his regret, almost as a penance.

Turning the city set into a large-scale Rube Goldberg machine was a clever sight gag that you don't see very often in Sentai.

 

I agree, this was a clumsy one. It barely had any connection to Kiva -- the most tenuous tribute we've had since the Wizard one, probably. No story links or references beyond Jiro's throwaway mention of being Kiva's servant; nothing beyond a few familiar costumes and effects and stylistic trappings. It's surprising, given that most of the recent tributes have improved on the early ones and tied more directly into their source storylines and characters. It was worth it for how gorgeous Yuuko was and how lovely her musical themes were, but other than that, it felt pointless.

And what was with that bizarre manhole-cover theme Yuuko had going? As characters' favorite/trademark weapons go, that's a pretty random one.

She did? Wow. Come to think of it, I guess she had to, since Yuri had died by 2008. It was nice to see her again, though, even briefly. The actress doesn't seem to have aged a day.

So were we supposed to conclude that Yuuko wasn't "Sailor-san" after all and pretending to be was just one more of her lies? That it was really Not-Yuri after all?

Yes. That's incredibly cursory, contrived plotting. They wanted to give Woz a new power so they just invented a random Rider with no personality or motivation for him to fight and defeat. It's as lazy as when DC invented the mindless Doomsday to kill Superman.

Since next week starts the Kabuto tribute, involving alien invaders that come in meteorites from space, I hope they at least make some connection between that and Ginga's arrival here, so it doesn't feel quite so random.

True of a lot of the best Sentai/KR seasons.

Yeah -- as you've mentioned before, it's taking a common pattern from Kamen Rider and applying it to SS.

Yeah, that was terrific physical comedy -- and it looked like they did much of it practically, which suggests they've learned something from their overuse of garish, cluttered CGI last season.

I'm really starting to like Asuna. The actress is impressive when she's given something to work with, and she got to show various sides of Asuna's character, including quirks like her uncanny luck and her love of meat. Although for a moment there, I thought they'd forgotten that she was freakishly strong.

 

"I can do this all day"


Can't wait for Kabuto. Kagami's time to shine! Also yikes Punch Hopper's actor aged alot




I like that they paid attention to Shun Kageyama having a scar across his face. It will interesting to find out how he's alive since he died in "Kabuto"

From the preview Decade is coming back to set the time line straight

 

Apropos of nothing, it just randomly occurred to me to wonder what the closest Sentai title equivalent to Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers would be. My first guess was Tsuyoi Sentai Chikaranger (from chikara, meaning power or strength). Of course, the best translation for Morphin' would surely be Henshin, but that doesn't fit the naming convention. Then again, it's a bit redundant to have two words for might/power in the same title, so maybe it would be better to read "Mighty" more in the sense of "extremely," which suggests something like Kyokuhenshin Sentai Chikaranger. But that's a bit unwieldy.

Anyway, what got me thinking about this was that I was realizing how both American adaptations of Kamen Rider went with exact translations of the original names -- Masked Rider is the literal translation of Kamen Rider, and Kamen Rider Dragon Knight is a literal translation of Kamen Rider Ryuki. So I was thinking of how different it was that Power Rangers titles were not literal translations, and that got me wondering, if it had been literal, what would it have been translated from?

 

Kamen Rider Zi-O episode 37

https://www.mp4upload.com/1ssqx749fitv

Much better than the Kiva tribute.

I'm glad they at least tried to explain Ginga's random appearance. He came due to the meteors coming. It's weak but alright.

Zi-O's characters are also starting to wonder about the differences in Another Riders.

I was hoping they'd do their own version of "Next Level" Kabuto's opening when they started with that insect wing.

Tsukuyomi' s role is finally emerging. Kamen Rider loves to put their main actress at the center of the entire shows conflict or premise. I guess otherwise they wouldn't really have a purpose. Some of the main female roles have been supporters/cheerleaders like Akari in "Kamen Rider Ghost"


Ryuusoulger episode 11

https://www.mp4upload.com/lhikfftl2tdi

Puns! Who doesn't love puns. Aside from a new armor debut it was pretty low key(bon!)

Kureon has a lot of potential, we've seen him come up with at least two plans that could have killed the Ryusoulgers, but they always end up interrupted by the other general.

Wizeru overshadows Kureon due to the writers, but they aren't really having Wizeru... do anything. And it's really showing.

I mean, he literally knows where the Ryusoulger's base is from when he masqueraded as one of the sisters, and he hasn't acted on that? He knows they are friends with Ui and Tatsui, and he hasn't kidnapped them yet? Etc. There's so much potential and they're just really lazy writing for him.

No mecha battle this week. They're going to debut KishiRyuOh DimeVolcano this week.

And yes! Gaisorg returns