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Hasbro's Power Rangers era and General Tokusatsu discussion

Christopher said:
Happy Reiwa Era, folks!
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And with that we have the final episodes of the Heisei Era

Zi-O episode 33

https://www.mp4upload.com/m3xb6q3wr7k0

This was an alright episode. Woz is Woz with his obsession of making sure his Overlord has the best birthday ever

Did they kill off the original hibiki? Seems like pupil is trying to stand in for hibiki.

The official site suggests this week will involve a plot about Todoroki powers being handed on to Kiriya to represent the change of imperial era

Getting to see the Kuuga Armor in show was nice, a good way to see out the last Super Hero Time of the Heisei Era.

Ryuusoulger episode 7

https://www.mp4upload.com/akm5zfp5covd

For the last Sentai episode of the Heisei Era, we get a MotW that gets away, an original song, carrots in ears, and a pretty neat in battle roll call. And the LuPat cast dancing to the ending theme. Not a bad way to end the era.


Lupinranger and Patranger cast individually doing the Que Bon dance

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Zi-O: A pretty faithful continuation, right down to mentioning the way Hibiki's Oni approached their Makamou-fighting calling as a job. (Seriously, the show treated it very mundanely for the first 60% of the season before the retool, almost like an exterminator business.) Kyousuke (a character added after the show was retooled to make it less boring) shows signs of his old arrogance and condescension. It's no surprise to me that he washed out; the show basically ended with him beating out the previous teenage lead to be Hibiki's successor, but I never felt he really deserved it, and it seems like Zi-O's writers agree with me. Although his Oni form in the Hibiki finale was the same costume he has now, a white variant of Hibiki's design.

Todoroki still has his guitar and his stock guitar-riff music, but he's gotten more serious; he used to be an earnest rookie stumbling over himself in his enthusiasm. And one other thing has changed: In Hibiki, the Oni form was not armor but a transformation of the body that destroyed the wearer's clothes, so when they changed back they were naked. (I wondered why they didn't strip before transforming -- it would've saved them a lot of money on new clothes.) There were a few exceptions to this, with Oni retaining their clothes on changing back, but I think they were mostly in the out-of-canon summer movie and the alternate World of Hibiki in Decade -- maybe it happened once in the show proper.

How appropriate that Sougo's birthday corresponds the "birth" of the Reiwa era. And Woz's arc here was revealing. I never thought about it before, but celebrating/rejoicing is pretty much his whole deal, isn't it?


Samurai8472 said:
Getting to see the Kuuga Armor in show was nice, a good way to see out the last Super Hero Time of the Heisei Era.
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Yeah, I guess, since Kuuga was the first Heisei series. I didn't really get a very good look at it, though, except in one or two shots.


Ryuu: Nice to see Asuna finally getting a bit of characterization, though only in one scene. The new villain Wiseru has a clever trick, using hypnotized children as his shields. (But what's with the "showtime" line? Who does he think he is, Kamen Rider Wizard?)

I like the "ground-level" camera angles on the Minusaur and KishiRyuuOh. That did a nice job of making them feel gigantic and dangerous. Some clever fight choreography too. And that Fortress Mode seems like it might be a callback to Zyuranger, where the Megazord had an initial "tank" mode from which it changed into its humanoid mode.

Samurai8472 said:
Lupinranger and Patranger cast individually doing the Que Bon dance
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Looks like Asahi Itou (Kairi) is wearing a blond wig. He's probably changed his hairstyle since the show ended. He looks like Harpo Marx.
 
I was thinking that I've enjoyed the last few Zi-O tribute storylines a lot more than the ones in the first half of the season (even when I rewatched those after I'd seen the series they were homaging), and I realized that the reason is that they're doing them in the present,so the timeline isn't being changed anymore. Before, the conceit of the Riders losing their powers and memories in the past created much the same problem that Decade had, which was that the tributes were to alternate versions of the past Riders' stories or characters, so they couldn't really connect directly to past storylines. But with the Blade, Agito, and Hibiki tributes, and to an extent with the Ryuki tribute, they've featured past Riders and supporting characters who still remembered their seasons' storylines, and thus they're able to tie more meaningfully into the story and character threads of those seasons and work as genuine sequels (well, less so in the Agito case). The Blade tribute and the Rider Time: Ryuki spinoff miniseries have even served as conclusive finales to seasons that ended on ambiguous notes.

I guess maybe the writers/producers realized they could do better, or got a lot of criticisms from viewers who wanted better tributes, and rethought their approach.

By the way, the wiki says that the next 2-parter after Hibiki is a Kiva tribute. That's a case where it would make sense to go back to jumping between past and present time frames. Let's see, that would just leave Kabuto, Den-O, and Drive, saving several of the best for last.
 
Yes we're going back to the past with the Kiva tribute Both Jiro and Yuri Aso are Kamen Rider Ixa in 1986. Also a new Kamen Rider debuts. Ginga

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Interesting -- they keep bringing back actors who played dual roles in the franchise. Rina Akiyama, who appeared recently as Mana from Agito, is better known as Naomi from Den-O. The actor currently appearing as Kousuke from Hibiki is better-known for playing Zeronos in Den-O. And the actor who played Jiro in Kiva was also Zanki (Todoroki's mentor) in Hibiki (and one of the few repeat KR cast members I actually remembered seeing before, since I'm not great with faces).

Kamen Rider Ginga, huh? Meaning Kamen Rider Galaxy. That would make more sense in a Fourze tribute, but they've already done that. (And according to the Wiki, his costume is reworked largely from Kamen Rider Meteor, Fourze's secondary Rider.)
 
Kamen rider zi-o 34

https://www.mp4upload.com/znrxunvku3h6

So the original hibiki is dead. I think that’s the only heisei rider that they’re officially saying wont comeback.

A pupil might take the place of hibiki but they have closed the door on the original actor ever coming back for now

Kiriya briefly became Hibiki. And then gave it up immediately after so he could follow his own path. I guess they had to get the real Hibiki suit into the story somehow, even if it's not exactly in a way that pleases Hibiki fan.

it looks like they dropped geiz’s Achilles heel with using revive form too

Interesting that Sougo can manipulate Woz and geiz for trinity form without them transforming

They used hibikis opening theme which was nice
 
Wow, they captured a lovely sunset in the denouement there.

And it was marvelous to hear the Hibiki theme again. One of my favorite pieces of Kamen Rider music. The worst part about the midseason retool was losing that theme (performed instrumentally in a variety of different arrangements, with the one used here being the primary one) in favor of a more conventional title song.

This was pretty good at capturing the ideas and characters from Hibiki, except for the description of Hibiki himself. All that "strong" and "never give up" stuff was pretty generic. Hibiki was more of a laid-back, lighthearted but stoic kind of guy, a seasoned veteran, worldly but understated, and was portrayed post-retool as emotionally aloof and insecure about taking apprentices (to justify why they went through 2/3 of a season with virtually no progress in the supposedly central relationship of Hibiki and Asumu, the schoolboy who admired him). Other characters were handled better, though. Kiriya's turbulent personality and his insecurity about his worth were pretty well portrayed. Todoroki's changed a lot, but he's basically grown to be much like his late mentor Zanki, and his uncertainty about taking an apprentice does hint at the unsure novice he was in the series. At the end, he mentioned talking over an apprentice with Hinaka-san, who'd be Hinaka Tachibana, the younger sister in the family that worked for Takeshi, the human organization that supported the Oni nationwide. Hinaka was his love interest, which makes it odd that he still calls her -san; it suggests they still have a somewhat formal relationship, unless I'm misunderstanding something about honorifics. Maybe she's now the head of the local Takeshi chapter.

A couple of things were anomalous, though. Todoroki's an odd one to defend the tradition of handing down Oni name/titles, since he broke that tradition by coining the name Todoroki instead of inheriting Zanki's Oni name. I mentioned how they dropped the bit about Oni being naked when they change back; they also dropped part of the sound effect of Hibiki's transformation, a chorus of male voices rising to a crescendo. And I'm not sure it was accurate for Hibiki's Ongekibou Rekka (drumsticks) to materialize with the costume. In the show, he had to carve the handles by hand, and I think he carried them with him in human form. But maybe that's a function of using the Ridewatch to transform instead of the usual Henshin Onsa.
 
Just saw the news about Pua Magasiva's death; as someone who discovered Power Rangers before it premiered in 1994 and counted Ninja Storm as his favorite season for years, this news hits really hard.

Condolences go out to his immediate family and his Ranger family.

Once a Ranger, Always a Ranger.
 
Ryuusoulger Episode 8

https://www.mp4upload.com/stn7qk66e3or

Pretty. decent episode. It was a fun two parter, and a good start to the Reiwa Sentai. Going against the expected convention the show decided to make Asuna a bad singer.

It's nice to see Bamba start to like the others even if he doesn't join the team.
 
A pretty good Ryuusoulger, funny and clever, though the action directing wasn't as impressive as last week (Koichi Sakamoto directed both). Nice to see them outwit the bad guys, but it's still contrived the way the show's premise lets them just whip out any random superpower they need thanks to the RyuSouls. Although duplication powers are a pretty common staple of tokusatsu heroes, so I guess it's not completely random that the Ryuusoulgers have them too.

Also, the logic doesn't quite add up. It was the fake Pheeta who had the "allergic to singing" reaction, so how could they be sure the real one had the same problem? For that matter, given that it was a weakness of the real Pheeta, why did the disguised Wiseru have that reaction at all?
 
Kamen Rider 01 (Zerowan), eh? Implying a new beginning, and evoking the original 1971 Kamen Rider, often called Kamen Rider Ichigo (1st). I wonder if there will be a reboot involved, perhaps brought about by the changes to history in Zi-O.

There have been a few Riders with "Zero" in their names before -- Kamen Rider Zeronos, the secondary Rider in Den-O, and two movie-exclusive forms: Kamen Rider Zerodrive, the prototype for Kamen Rider Drive in his crossover movie with Ghost, and Kamen Rider Zero Specter, the father of Kamen Rider Specter in the Ghost summer movie. I think the only previous TV or film Rider with the English number "One" in the name was Kamen Rider Super-1 from the Showa era.

Speaking of era names and wordplays, it occurred to me recently that when Kamen Rider talks about the "Heisei Riders," there's a layer of meaning there beyond the calendar name. One translation of "Heisei" is "achieving peace," so "Heisei Riders" could be taken to refer to Riders who fight to achieve peace -- which has been a recurring theme throughout the series, that Kamen Riders fight to protect peace and freedom. So there's a nice symbolism there. (Although it works for Showa Riders too, since that means "enlightened peace" -- though that's an ironic name for the era that contained WWII.)
 
Kamen Rider Zi-O episode 35

https://www.mp4upload.com/2rz7tslajl8y

Wow. This one felt like a mixed bag.This is the most Inoue-y episode Inoue has ever written

When Inoue writes he's usually obsessed with melodrama, plots driven by characters' failure to communicate, people "falling in love" and acting like idiots over it

We've established this is Sougo's first love, but nothing in the story reflects it. Sougo isn't emotionally
moved to be reunited with her, and to her, he's nobody.

When did we learn Tsukuyomi liked spicy food?

We do get some Kiva's vampire motifs, horror themes and the welcome return of the Arms Monsters. They even brought back the time transitions

What's the deal with that one scene of Zi-O seeing through time. Is this another new power or just some
random thing that will never get explained?

Matsuda Kenji's guest appearance is sadly a bit part though.

Ginga just dropping in and putting everything to a halt was "WTH?" Ginga arriving should have been a separate arc

I don't think we'll even get Kiva teaming up with Zi-O this weekend. Woz is getting a power up called Woz Ginga as the focus

I wonder if we'll even get Yuri Aso cameo from Kiva
 
Yeah, it's surprising how little Kiva content there is in this one. It's like some of the early episodes where the connection was minimal, and a letdown after the past few which have felt like real continuations. Why, they never even mentioned Fangires, or Kiva as anything but a name. The stylistic nods are there, but little substance.

Still, it was a pretty entertaining episode. The actress playing Yuuko is gorgeous and very talented. The music in her scenes is different from the usual Zi-O stock cues and sounds quite good. The story's a bit unfocused, but it's well-made. The sudden swerve to a supervillain literally falling out of the sky was weird, though.

And finally, someone other than Woz brings Junichiro an actual timepiece to repair! I'm surprised he took it so much in stride rather than celebrating the event.
 
Ryuusoulger episode 9

https://www.mp4upload.com/q5uinghh1rmu

I think this is our first true filler episode. We do learn inanimate objects can be hosts to create a minusaur

We also got a previous master appearing which leads to doubts they’re actually dead

Its nice that the previous generation of Ryusoulgers can be involved in some way, living on in the current one's memories and desires, with Melto thinking that way for guidance when he wanted a logical answer.
 
I quit watching PR after the first two episodes of Lost Galaxy, which I then rewatched this February, as a kid I was disappointed that none of the in Space cast returned (except I think I thought Kendrix was Karone, I had forgotten her exact name and that she hadn't worn glasses after two months) and Bulk and Skull unpleasantly briefly returned just to be separated and I think that was also the first time I, at 9, was disappointed by lack of continuity. From my rewatch yeah it again feels very, very inconsistent to both the story and tone of in Space.
 
Samurai8472 said:
I think this is our first true filler episode.
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I wouldn't say that, because it was important for character-building, with Melto and his relationship to the others. One of the things I liked best about LvP last season was how character-driven it was, developing all the Rangers' personalities and relationships -- in contrast to some earlier Sentai seasons where only 2-3 of the team members really stood out as distinct characters. So if this season is focusing on character work too, I'd hardly call it filler.

I was surprised that Master Blue was apparently real, though. The whole thing seemed very much like Melto's wish being fulfilled. I thought the Minusaur was giving him his wish -- to see Master Blue, to gain confidence, to have problems to solve. I expected him to be trapped by a succession of puzzles until he realized it was just another trick and stepped away.

And hey, Banba finally got his wish to defeat a Minusaur by "killing" its host. The idea that an inanimate object can have its own spirit and emotion, particularly if it's been around a long time, is very Shintoist. And it's interesting that human hosts create humanoid Minusaurs but a wooden-chest host creates a wooden-chest Minusaur.

Amusing that Asuna's only wish was yakiniku/grilled meat. She and MegaRed would get along.


suarezguy said:
I quit watching PR after the first two episodes of Lost Galaxy, which I then rewatched this February, as a kid I was disappointed that none of the in Space cast returned (except I think I thought Kendrix was Karone, I had forgotten her exact name and that she hadn't worn glasses after two months)
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That's ironic, given that Karone did replace Kendrix for a time when Valerie Vernon had to leave the show for medical treatment.


I think that was also the first time I, at 9, was disappointed by lack of continuity. From my rewatch yeah it again feels very, very inconsistent to both the story and tone of in Space.
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The continuity between Lost Galaxy and previous shows was pretty good by tokusatsu standards. They changed the focus and characters, but meshed it pretty well with the world of the previous seasons, as long as you allow for a few years to have passed between them (something that subsequent seasons ignored). It was a pretty good season overall, a good start to the era of doing separate casts each season. It diverged quite a bit from its source material Gingaman, but the main arc with the Red Ranger and his brother was very close to the original.
 
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