Hasbro's Power Rangers era and General Tokusatsu discussion

Zi-O 44

https://www.mp4upload.com/3nbnmbbps7c2

Interesting to see that Another Drive’s global freeze attack is on par with the timejackers time freeze technique

Lol at Aqua pulling out a pair of Eijis underwear and that subtly coin sound effects

Nice to see Sougo befriend the timejackers and let them stay at his Uncles

Another Decade looks to be a major pain in the rear.

At least Schwartz remembers that with Decade based powers he can summon avatars of previous riders

Sougo hasn’t summoned a past rider to help in two weeks.....


ryusoulger 18

https://www.mp4upload.com/yxwc4ldwifm9

One of the best part of Ryusoulger is the different ways the Druidon can twist ordinary things and use it against people. A minusaur that eats wishes!

Poor Creon. He’s haunted by the past druidon general who wanted him to make 500 copies of a minusaur

Shouldn’t slicing a rock actually make the minusaur weaker?

Gigant is probably the least mobile of the formations we've seen so far, but I'll give it points over VSX still. At least there’s a suit this year and it’s not just CGI


Bonus. The Zi-O cast doing the Ryuusoulger “Que Bom” dance!

 

Zi-O: It took me a moment to recognize that the time freeze was a Roidmude-style "Heaviness" slowdown rather than the usual Timejacker freeze. They were definitely playing with the similarity there.

That's just one of the ways this episode would've been totally lost on me if I hadn't seen everything it was referencing -- particularly Aqua and his bit with Eiji-style underwear. Now that they've finished doing series-tribute episodes, they seem to be getting into the movie-exclusive Riders now, starting with Aqua now and apparently Eternal next week. And the Rider avatars Schwartz/Another Decade summoned at the end were all movie-exclusive villains -- G4 from Agito, Rey from Kiva, Dark Ghost from Ghost, and Fuma from Ex-Aid.

So Tsukuyomi's real name is Alpina (Arupina)? I can't say I like that name much.


Ryusoulger: That was a clever idea with the Minusaur's wishing power and its source, and it's interesting how this show illustrates the Shintoist notion of inanimate objects having spirits. I guess the idea is that the spiritual and emotional energy of all those human wishes feeding into the stone built up in it to give it a spirit of its own. So if it's been a really popular wishing stone for centuries, naturally it would be one hell of a spiritual battery for the Minusaur to draw on, charged up with far more energy than any human host.

Any given rock was probably a piece of a larger rock to begin with. If you cut a living creature in two, the result is zero living creatures. But if you cut a rock in two, the result is two rocks. So as Melto said, it only multiplied it rather than destroying it.

I still think the mecha these days are utterly ridiculous and ugly. The writing on both shows is as strong as it's ever been, but the gear/toy designs just keep getting more garish and cluttered.

 

Incidentally, I finally tracked down one of my favorite Sentai/KR filming locations, which I've had a strangely hard time locating in the past, even when searching for blogs and other info about such locations. It's a distinctive pedestrian bridge with white arches and a row of trees down the middle, running over a wide set of railroad tracks and adjacent to a stadium. Turns out it's the Omiya-Hokosugi Bridge in Saitama, a city just north of Tokyo, and it's next to Saitama Super Arena. I found it courtesy of this French site, which has a garish design that seems like a relic of the '90s, but is the most comprehensive collection of tokusatsu locations I've found. And I found that site courtesy of this blog, which has some interesting posts about other Sentai/KR locations. (It makes an interesting point that they were able to start filming in more interesting urban locations once they were able to fake explosions with CGI; before then, virtually all the battles were in the same damn quarry over and over again.)

I'm not sure why it mattered to me so much to know where the bridge was, since I'm never likely to go there. But I just like to know that kind of behind-the-scenes stuff -- and I had so much trouble finding info on this particular bridge, even though it's really cool and distinctive, that it became a bit of an obsession to track it down. Apparently the bridge was built in 2001, which means it starts showing up around Gaoranger and Agito. And I think I've seen it show up in the most recent shows, so it's still around (which Google Maps confirms).

 

I ran into a similar situation a while back with the Chan Center for the Performing Arts in Vancouver. For years I was constantly seeing this room:

pop up in stuff I watch filmed in Vancouver, and I was wondering what it was. Then I finally stumbled across MovieMaps.com and found it's page for the Chan Center.
Here are a few shows that have used this room:
The 4400
Legends of Tomorrow
Lucifer
the original Charmed

 

You might be interested in this site too

https://haiena.tumblr.com/post/20636529185/more-locations-blehg


It too listed the Omiya-Hokosugi Bridge.

 

Ohh, and the very first picture is that bridge underside they use all the time. Oh, and it's also in Saitama.

On the second page, Rockheart Castle from Kabuto -- I think that was the mansion of the alternate Oma Zi-O in the recent altered-timeline 2-parter. Although I'm pretty sure the throne room Schwartz was operating from was the same location as the Castle Doran throne room in Kiva.

 

It sounds like there is an animated Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers series in the works, possibly involving at least some of the original cast. During an interview at SDCC Austin St. John said that he's been working on one for the last three years. If Austin St. John is involved I wouldn't be surprised if Jason David Frank is too since he's also come back to the franchise quite a few times over the years too.

 

As someone who's been watching Power Rangers pretty continuously from the start and gotten used to it starting over fresh every year -- and who's become familiar with Super Sentai doing the same thing for far longer -- it's always strange to me to see people wanting to revisit or remake MMPR. I guess many people lost track of the show after the first few years, so that's what they think of it as being. But for me, it's just one of many iterations, and far from the best.

 

Yeah. The MMPR season left an indelible mark on the western world. It was insanely popular. American kids had never seen anything like it.

Here's a cool look back at SyFy Wire's look at the 90's and focusing on the phenomenon of "Power Rangers"





Also Jason David Frank is working on a crowd funded Tokusatsu type movie gathering some Power Ranger alumni such as Jason David Frank, Johnny Yong Bosch, Jason Faunt, Ciara Hannah, Yoshi Sudarso, Chrysti Ane, and Jenna Frank



There's been some trepidation since some view this as a vanity project for JDF to push his daughter as a rising star

Some are hesitant because last time they donated money for a similar movie called "The Order" they essentially got conned because it never came to fruition

There's also the goal of $500,000 which is obviously a long shot.

Some fans think the celebrities just view them as ATM's too. 10 years ago you could get an autograph and picture with them and still have change from a $20 bill. Now, you are paying more than some of us making in a full day's work.

 

I've been a Power Rangers fan since pretty much the very beginning and I really don't understand this continued obsession with MMPR; yes, it started the franchise, but if you take off the "nostalgia glasses" and actually judge its very first season objectively, it's actually a bit of a miracle that the property has lasted as long as it has because that very first MMPR season just wasn't good by any stretch of the imagination.

 

But it was terrible. The writing was lame and the production values of the American footage were bargain-basement. After all, Saban just saw this as one more cheap repackaged Japanese import -- they had no idea either how big it would be. The only things about season 1 that were any good were the quality of the imported FX and costume/mecha designs and the charisma and talent of most of the cast, especially Amy Jo Johnson and Walter Jones. Okay, the production values improved in seasons 2-3 and the writing became less dire, but it didn't start to become anywhere near what I'd call good until midway through Turbo. Although the better the writing got, the weaker the actors got, at least for the duration of the Angel Grove saga.

I'm perfectly well aware that the later seasons didn't have the phenomenal popularity of MMPR, but my point is that that's unfair, because they're so much better. It's far too typical for the mediocre stuff to be a huge success while the really good stuff remains in its shadow.

 

You know, I wonder if part of the lukewarm reception of the recent film was due to most people's only memories of the show being MMPR, which was so clearly badly and childishly written. I was a kid at the height of its popularity and trust me, even then none of my friends, much as we loved the show, were under any illusions about the quality of its writing.

 

Looks like we're about to go from one extreme to the other with last weeks episodes.

Zi-O episode 45

https://www.mp4upload.com/el9lpie1xqi6

The end is near. You can tell it's the end because things are getting tense. R.I.P Heure. I was expecting one of those death scenes where they turn into digital dust or something like. Surprised that didn't happen.

I guess Eternal counts as our Double tribute?

And damn. White Woz is back.

It was nice to see Grand Zi-O summon drive to fight another drive. Sogou's no-effects rage-change into Grand was nice

Tsukasa showed Swartz that even with out any powers that he's a force to be reckoned with. Nice use of Decade background music too.


Ryuusoulger 19

https://www.mp4upload.com/e8azgyszlgi8


Now for some lighter fare. I love the idea that Tyramigo has this whole life outside of the Ryusoulgers, even though he's a large mechanical dinosaur everyone loves him.

Turning a school into a death trap is one way to raise the stakes.

Kamen Rider build's actress who played Sawa was also the victim of the week as the school teacher. Hopefully she wasn't training a new group of sleeper agent children.

Lots fun little moments like Canalo realizing the teacher was married and the other Ryuusoulger braving the summer heat

 

^You have the links the wrong way around.

So since I watched them in reverse order...

Ryu: I love the way this show treats the mecha as full characters. It's wild to see Tyramigo just strolling around town, accepted by the citizenry, and being the focus of an episode. It's not the first time we've had sentient mecha with personalities; I've recently begun watching Abaranger, and it's amazing how much this show copies from it, right down to a red tyrannosaur mech that ends his sentences with "-tyra." But there, the Bakuryuu are usually in more of a supporting role, and only occasionally do their personalities and agendas actually drive the story to any degree, at least in the first half of the series. The Kishiryuu are more central here -- well, at least Tyramigo, Dimevolcano, and Mosa Rex, though the others are pretty much nonentities.

And it's great to see Sawa-san again!

When the guys were trapped in the detention room with the ceiling descending, I wondered if they could've stopped it by apologizing sincerely enough. I loved how polite Tyramigo was about coming into the teachers' lounge and approaching Creon and the Minusaur.


Zi-O: Yep, you know you're getting close to the end of a season when the regular baddies start getting killed off. I'm a little unclear on why Ora thought she'd be better off if Heure were gone, though. And has she ever shown that stabby red power before? I wasn't sure if that was really her at first.

The Another World thing (not to be confused with the classic US soap opera) is a handy way for Schwarz to resurrect evil Riders that were killed off, as movie-exclusive evil Riders tend to be. We had three movie Riders here -- Eternal from W, Aqua from OOO (or actually the OOO/Fourze crossover movie), and Paradox Roidmude from Drive, though as Another Drive rather than Dark Drive.

I was puzzled when Schwarz turned into Another Decade using the visual effect of Roidmude transformation from Drive. Was that an FX error? Or did I misinterpret what I saw?

The revelation that Tsukasa's dimensional-wall ability is intrinsic to him helps paper over a continuity glitch in the Decade/Den-O crossover movie, where Tsukasa was able to summon dimensional walls before he seemed to have that ability in his show proper. It doesn't fully explain the discrepancy, but it suggests he could've instinctively summoned a wall in the movie without understanding how. Which fits in with his amnesia during the series.

 

New poster for Zero-One highlighting each era

Showa, Heisei and now Reiwa

 

Oh, that's right, they read right to left in Japan. And the poster highlights the first Rider from each era.

I've been wondering what they might do to differentiate Reiwa KR from Heisei. Heisei was distinguished from Showa by things like more serialized and dramatic plotting, regular 2-part storylines (usually), belt-endowed powers (mostly) instead of cyborg Riders, fewer evil organizations as the villains, Riders with alternate forms and frequent upgrades, multi-Rider casts, and the like. Heisei Phase 2 was differentiated from Phase 1 by things like more crossovers and a loose shared universe, the occasional use of humans-turned-monsters that needed to be cured rather than destroyed, the frequent use of mini-robot helpers (though Hibiki in Phase 1 pioneered that), and the like. So what could make the new era distinct?

Well, having a regular female Rider is certainly a big difference. That's the most obvious one up front, and hopefully it's a precedent that will stick. Beyond that, it's probably too early to say. One change I'd like to see is quieter henshin drivers. Go back to having them just make sound effects instead of these elaborate announcements and jingles. But that's probably too much to hope for.

 

Working on it for three years with nothing to show and not even a hint of an announcement from either Saban or Hasbro screams fan project.

Toei would also never approve animated PR, it's not going to happen.

 

Oh, tons of professional projects linger in development hell for far, far longer than three years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_hell

Toei has made animated spinoffs of its live-action tokusatsu shows a couple of times, with Kamen Rider SD and Imagin Anime. And they've made many, many animated shows over the decades. So I don't see why they'd object.

 

And how many of those were never announced while being worked on? If ASJ has been working on it as a voice actor for three years it means it would have been in production back then and not stuck in pre production and we haven't heard a peep, no casting calls, no trademarks, nothing. I don't believe it.

Kamen Rider SD and Imagin anime aren't proper animated Kamen Rider shows, they are a single OVA and comedic shorts respectively.
Toei already killed an animated PR when Disney wanted to do it, Tokusatsu is defined by being live action, make it animated and you lose everything that makes it special in the first place. Power Rangers is also their way to market sentai outside of asia, Toei is protective of PR as a brand and they won't let it become one animated series among countless others when it basically rules its niche in the west, it is so well known that many westerners refer to every transforming hero as Power Rangers and I'm sure Toei wants to keep it that way. Animated Power Rangers would for all intents and purposes just be Voltron.

 

Plenty. Announcements are rarely immediate in the entertainment industry. Usually, nothing is formally announced to the public until all the contracts are signed and approved, which generally takes months and can take years.

At no point did he say "voice actor." He said "There may or may not be one in the works I've been working on for three years, and I'm very careful about releasing information for." That suggests he's talking about a project he has in development and has been trying to get off the ground.

And who's to say this animated PR project wouldn't be in a similar vein, just a sidebar to the main franchise? You're making a ton of assumptions based on a single vague sentence.

Voltron was adapted from Toei's GoLion and Dairugger. Would they really see their own creations as the competition?