Hasbro's Power Rangers era and General Tokusatsu discussion

I'm not sure I'd like that. There were only a couple of seasons before the very late '90s that I thought were all that good. The shows have gotten much richer since then.

On the other hand, one of my favorite seasons with Naruhisa Arakawa as head writer was Dekaranger, which was basically done in the style of a '70s cop show, far more episodic than usual for Heisei-era Sentai, without even a single main villain group. So even a fairly basic formula can be done well with good character writing.

 

Zero-One episode 22

Well it was pretty obvious who the real culprit in the trial was. There was no deep seeded mystery about that

Gai's unleashed Pandora's box and he got whooped(which he deserved) While it's nice to see something finally make a dent in Thouser, it's clear that Aruto did not like what he was going through.

Aruto's transformation into Metal Cluster hopper was horrific. The data looked like eerie ghosts or specters as he was screaming in pain. The Ark looked it was squeezing the life out of him

This power-up is using some form of nano technology that can reform to almost anything.

All the metal locusts flying everywhere, making weapons and spikes and shields and eating a Raid's armor.

I loved how the show conveyed how Metal Cluster Hopper is dangerous by not having him move and yet whooping everyone's ass while showing what Aruto was going through inside the Ark.


Ryuusoulger episode 45

The endgame's shaping up pretty well here. The suitless roll call was nice, and TimeRed's actor got a lot to do. We've only got three episodes left to go, so I wonder how Ryusoul's going to wrap things up.

Master Black used the Time Ranger morph pose. Nice touch, Koichi. There was alot of Koichi's trademark fight sequences with the flying on wires and explosions

We now learn Eras temple is connected the trio’s village. When TankJou was sensing a great power inside the temple that was Eras. The sky temple that holds ryusoul caliber is above the village and Eras is sealed below it.

 

A pretty significant episode, as Aruto learns about the Ark and Gai's connection to the beginnings of MetsuboJinrai.net. And Aruto goes down a darker path than we've seen before. The trial story was almost peripheral; the attorney Bingo's role in the episode was more about the rather clever remote team-up he and Fuwa engaged in to expose the real criminal.

I'm still frustrated by Yua's submission to Gai's orders. She's better than this. I'm hoping she sabotaged the Metal Cluster key in some way to let Aruto take control over it.

Rather than digital data, it turned into kanji. I wonder what it said.

It was rather alarming, but also really visually cluttered and hard to follow. Zero-One's last couple of forms have been ridiculously overpowered. Where can they go from here, when we're less than halfway through the series?

I loved Izu cheering up Aruto at the end by requesting a "funny" joke. Izu is awesome.

From the preview and the Wiki, it looks like Arisa Komiya's character is back next week, although she's transferred her affections to a character played by her old Go-Busters co-star Ryoma Baba.

I like it when they do pre-henshin roll calls, but the roll calls in the middle of battle always strike me as unwise -- stopping to strike a pose for the camera should really leave them vulnerable to attack. Of course the roll calls are always contrived, and that's part of the fun, but these ones are pushing it.

The surprise reveal of who was inside the "Saden" suit was a neat moment. Although seeing the flashback of how Master Black started impersonating Saden, I had to wonder... did he get his disguise by skinning Saden's corpse??? Eeeegh.

Still no sign of Kureon, but the glimpse of him in next week's preview suggested he'll go through a pretty radical change.

 

Nothing but bad meaning. They're all just general "Everything is bad" kanji. Somebody on Riderwiki seems to have translated them

https://kamenrider.fandom.com/wiki/Ark#Notes

• 殺 Killing
• 邪 Evil
• 悪 Evil
• 痛 Pain
• 滅 Destruction
• 亡 Death
• 死 Death
• 恨 Grudge
• 凶 Fierce
• 愚 Stupidity
• 戦 War
• 虐 Oppression

Commercials from last weeks episodes. They contain a small preview for Kiramager

 

Now we need them to work out a way to have Fuwa sing in the show

Ryutaro Okada who plays Fuwa in Kamen Rider Zero-One sings Billy Joel's "Honesty"





Just a reminder that Beast Morphers returns this Saturday




the opening credits for Season 2:




Most interesting is that one of the scenes in the OP has them fighting a Dino Charge foot soldier

I guess with Austin St Johns appearance they're going to adapt the Dino and Go-buster teamup(excluding the Gokaiger's)

 

It was the ToQgers who made their debut in that team-up movie. https://powerrangers.fandom.com/wik...osaur_Great_Battle!_Farewell,_Eternal_Friends

 

Ryusoulger 46: Wow, things are building toward the endgame, and the story takes kind of a dark twist, as we discover the truth of why the Druidons were created to destroy the Ryusoul Tribe. It does seem like we're headed toward a detente/alliance between the Ryusoulgers and Wiseru/Kureon against the final boss. Though I wonder if what Kureon apparently experienced/learned/absorbed on being impaled by Heras will be significant.

RyusoulBrown was unexpected -- this big dramatic reveal of a new Ranger (basically a Gaisorg repaint) and then the anticlimactic comedy of the fight, which still turned out to be surprisingly effective. A "Brown" Ranger being played for comedy reminds me of Mr. Brown/"ShinkenBrown" from Shinkenger. Possibly intentional, since those are the only two Browns in Sentai history.


Zero-One 23: A very fun episode, with effective comedy balancing out the dark story arc of Aruto's inability to control the violence of MetalCluster Hopper. Several returning tokusatsu cast members here -- Go-Busters' Arisa Komiya is back as Chiharu, the fiancee from last week, now broken up with her previous honey and looking for a HumaGear matchmaker (fellow ex-Go-Buster Ryouma Baba) to find her "best match" (a Build allusion, apparently), though it's obvious that it's actually the HumaGears themselves she's smitten with.

And I love it that the matchmaker paired Ebii up with Gai because Gai was so arrogant that nobody else could possibly want him. Nice to see Gai brought down a peg, and nice to see Yua snickering at his expense, a much-appreciated act of minor rebellion against a boss she's usually far too subservient to. And we even get the standard tokusatsu trope (usually Sentai) of a fake wedding to draw out the monster-of-the-week, with the priest played by the previously seen HumaGear actor who's played in turn by a Kamen Rider Gaim veteran.

I found it implausible how easily Match was turned into an Ark Magear by Chiharu's slap. The idea is supposed to be that HumaGear get taken over by Ark when they experience pain and anger at being abused by humans, pushed past the breaking point where they can't take any more. But this was a single slap, and it was a reaction Match had wanted to evoke in Chiharu to help her get over her crush on him by making her hate him. So it doesn't make sense that he'd be upset enough about it to be taken over by Ark.

 

Purchased S.H figuart Kamen Rider Zero-One last week. The price was incredibly low! It's a rarity that high end figures like these go below 30 dollars now.

This is a barebones release though. Just some extra hands. No attache case sword or any weapons

A barebones Kamen Rider build was 38 dollars when I bought him.







Reviews have confirmed that his neon green parts can appear to "glow" if you shine a black light on him.






Zero-One episode 23- A nice episode. We got a mini Go-busters reunion and "Ready for buster" from Fuwa's shotgun

After weeks of not contributing Yua finally transforms again. She's way out of her league against the guys upgrades but at least she got some time to shine.

Hornets VS locust. Interesting visual. I like that it took Yua and Fuwa to stop Metal Cluster Hopper.

Take a drink every time the word "Match" was mentioned.

If the zero-one driver can't access other keys can't Aruto print another driver? Or is that not in his grandfathers big plans for the humagear uprising?

Now I can't wait for Izu to just drop a ton of profanity.

I didn't know that this episode was written by a new writer too

Looks like tonights episode from the preview will bring back alot of humagear we've



Ryuusoulger 46- Getting down to the end. One day a brown ranger will be treated with the same dignity as other rangers. For now a brown ranger is played for laughs. They also pulled the "old man schtick" like they did with "KyoryuPurple"

 

Those are green? They look yellow to me. But I guess green makes more sense for a grasshopper.

Speaking of which, it was interesting how Gai deconstructed the idea of Kamen Riders being grasshopper-based by pointing out how vicious and destructive grasshoppers/locusts can be. Although that makes sense, since the original Kamen Rider (also grasshopper-based) was created by Shocker to be one of their evil kaijin and managed to escape before he was brainwashed. (And so was the second one. Maybe next time reconstruct the brain before the body, huh, guys?)

Yeah, I hate it that the first regular female Kamen Rider isn't allowed to be on an equal footing with the male Riders. She's been overshadowed of late and rarely gets to achieve much in a fight on her own. Still, she has her impressive moments, like how she yanked out Aruto's Progrise Key to stop MetalCluster. And I love how poised and controlled she looks when she henshins. Her stance alone conveys a power and efficacy that I wish she got to display more often in her actual fights. In terms of personality, she should be the biggest badass of the three -- well, four, counting Thouser. Sure, Fuwa is angrier, but too undisciplined.

 

Tony Stark- From one CEO to another. I completely get where you're coming from when you're A.I goes out of control

 

Major announcement from the New York Toy Fair. The next Power Ranger season to be adapted is....................

Kishiryu Sentai RyuSoulger!

https://news.tokunation.com/2020/02/22/toyfair-2020-power-rangers-next-season-is-ryusoulger-65894





That's pretty soon. Ryuusoulger wraps up in two weeks. It's probably going to be a year before we'll see what they're going to do with Ryuusoulger footage

 

That's two dinosaur Ranger teams only five seasons and three series apart, as opposed to the six seasons between Kyoryuger and Rysoulger. It's rare to have two seasons of the same theme so close together, except for vehicle themes (three seasons between Turbo/Carranger and Lightspeed Rescue/GoGoV, two seasons between Operation Overdrive/Boukenger and RPM/Go-Onger).

But it's kind of going back to the way it was in the Saban and Disney eras, the adaptation being only a year or so behind the original. Though it'll lag behind again if they do their usual thing of stretching it out over two seasons. And there are still a lot of unadapted seasons in between -- ToQger, Zyuohger, Kyuranger, LvP. Will they ever go back to those?

 

I've heard some theory/suggestions that the reason Ryuusoulger was chosen was because Hasbro wanted to recoup what it spent on "Beast Morphers" A dino season will likely net them some profit.



Kyuranger - I don't know if they can do the amount of ranger figures that would have to be churned out over two years. Even in Japan the action figures were never a priority. The money maker was the deluxe mecha/zords


So toy shelves would potentially be flooded with Tenbin Gold from Kyuranger(example) that wouldn't sell because kids gravitate towards Red rangers and sixth rangers. Plus there's the lightning collection line.


An example is Beast Morphers Red. They're clogging the toy shelves.





New Beast Morphers season 2 trailer with a look at the giant Dino and Beast Morphers team-up

 

Hm, so they're just resurrecting the same villains as before -- not surprising. But they're "upgrading" their armored forms by reverting them -- Roxy's repainted version of Escape Evolve is going back to the original color scheme, and Blaze is going from Enter's Dark Buster armor (which he only wore in the last couple of episodes of Go-Busters) to the Enter Unite form he used regularly in the last 10 episodes. Plus we're getting adaptations of Powered Custom armor and Tategami Li-Oh. Which means they'd be using more footage from the last half of the series, so it makes sense that they'd want to bring Blaze and Roxy's armored forms in line with Enter and Escape's in the later episodes.

I'm surprised they'd do a reveal for the Ryusoulger adaptation without even having a name picked out yet. Any guesses what they might call it? Power Rangers Dino Knights seems the most obvious candidate.

 

Guess KyuRanger thus won‘t ever be adapted for Power Rangers

Thus little to no action figures of them, other what was released while they were on air.
Good thing then, that I‘ve imported the Sasori Orange one back then, even if it‘s low quality and I‘d love to have a lightning collection version for example.

 

I think the Kyuranger mecha are pretty cool, a much better design than most of the clunky and garish mecha we've had in recent years (i.e. pretty much everything else since Go-Busters, which had terrific mecha for the most part). I liked how straightforwardly and believably the pieces plugged together and how the individual spherical cockpits were the main design theme.

 

Speaking of mecha design we have our first review of the Kiramajin Mashin. A bit early since the show doesn't start for another two weeks. Odd that it's being advertised now. I guess the wheels keep rolling on in merchandise world.

 

I found Ryusoulger too boring to watch more then 4-5ish episodes of, but I like the look of the suits and mechs, so I would be interested in seeing a Power Rangers adaptation. I wish they'd waited a bit longer (I'd have preferred to see Kyuranger), but I get that Dinosaurs make a lot of money, and its not like Kyuranger is completely off the table for a future adaptation, based on how out of left field a Gobusters adaptation was.

As for Toku in general, I just finished Kamen Rider 555. It wasn't great. I liked the main character, the Rider suits are gorgeous and the fights were generally pretty good, but the overall plot was weak, and had repetitive, annoying drama tropes (that fit the style of its head writer, who I've never been a huge fan of even though i liked Kamen Rider Kiva, which he also wrote, fairly well). 90% of the personal drama in this show could be solved by the characters just talking to each other, and it gets absolutely ridiculous how everyone refuses to do the most common sense things to solve their problems. Even for this style of show, it gets frustrating. Plus, them all having cellphones as part of their gear makes the lack of communication even more ridiculous. The Rider belts also get stolen so often its basically Kamen Rider Hot Potato, it gets farcical at points how easy it is to steal these belts.

Overall I don't necessarily regret watching 555, it did have some good elements, but I'd never recommend it, unless someone was planning to watch all the various Kamen Rider series anyway. As for me, its easily the weakest Kamen Rider show I've watched so far. Speaking of, I just want to do a current ranking of the Kamen Rider shows I've finished so far from best to worst:

1. Kamen Rider OOO
2. Kamen Rider Drive
3. Kamen Rider Ex-Aid
4. Kamen Rider Zi-O
5. Kamen Rider Fourze
6. Kamen Rider Decade
7. Kamen Rider W
8. Kamen Rider Kiva
9. Kamen Rier Gaim
10. Kamen Rider 555

From Kiva on up I like the shows, while Gaim and 555 I consider mediocre to bad shows with some good elements. The list just happened to add up to 10, which is kind of cool. I'm current watching Zero-One as it airs, and I'm slowly going through Build and Kuuga (alternating between them just for variety).

 

From best to worst top to bottom. IMO

1. Kamen Rider Build
2. Kamen Rider Den-O
3. Kamen Rider Gaim
4. Kamen Rider W
5. Kamen Rider Drive
6. Kamen Rider Ex-Aid
7. Kamen Rider Kiva
8. Kamen Rider Fourze
9. Kamen Rider OOO's
10. Kamen Rider Decade
11. Kamen Rider Wizard
11. Kamen Rider Ghost
12. Kamen Rider Zi-O


EDIT; Forgot Ghost!

 

I don't know if I could make an exact list, but I'd definitely put OOO and Fourze much closer to the top, Wizard about in the middle, and Decade and Kiva at the bottom of the ones listed. But I agree your top 5 are among the very best.

Of the remaining 8 Heisei seasons not on that list, I'd say Agito and Ghost were my favorites, Ryuki, 555, and Kabuto were moderately good, Hibiki was an interesting idea that turned out disappointingly, and Kuuga and Blade were the weakest.