Hasbro's Power Rangers era and General Tokusatsu discussion

Wow, I didn't realize Super Sentai had been around that long, I thought it had started just a few years before Power Rangers.

 

Super Sentai is amongst the list of longest running franchise.

Doctor Who has been going on since 1963, but Super Sentai has had less breaks / hiatus than Doctor Who.

 

Non-union actors? I thought you weren't allowed to have a speaking role in movies or TV without being part of SAG. I remember because I watching some stuff about Star Trek: The Voyage Home, where they were talking about how the whole nuclear wessles scene was unscripted, with the actors talking to random people walking by, and they had to make all of the people in the footage members of SAG before they could use it.

 

Power Rangers wasn't even the first time a Sentai series was brought to America. The seventh series, Dynaman from 1983, had a half-dozen episodes aired with a comedy dub on the USA Network in 1987. And Power Rangers creator Haim Saban made his first attempt to adapt it in 1986 with the eighth series, Bioman. They made a pilot episode starring Mark Dacascos as the Red Ranger, with most of the same character names later used in Mighty Morphin.

Yes. Ultraman started in 1966 and Kamen Rider in 1971, but neither one has run continuously since the start as SS has.

 

That makes Super Sentai quite unique for a long running series.

 

On second thought, I guess the title "Numero Uno" for the Dino Fury premiere was a reference to Amelia being in charge at BuzzBlast.

Anyway, "The Festival" is a mediocre followup.

Spoiler

The gang celebrates a Rafkonian festival, they give Aiyon a motorcycle and Zayto a pair of "Dinochucks," Aiyon stupidly ignores Solon's caution and plays with the nunchucks indoors, which causes them to fail in battle and wrecks all the replacement parts, so Aiyon sacrifices his motorcycle to create a new weapon against the returned Wreckmate, whose resurrection is left unexplained. There's no Megazord battle, and Wreckmate flees inconclusively. It's kind of a bottle show, taking place entirely in the base aside from the fight scenes, and there's a moderately long scene of Zayto and Aiyon watching stock footage of past series searching for weapons they can use (including Samurai/Shinkenger, Ninja Storm/Hurricaneger, Mighty Morphin/Zyuranger, Wild Force/Gaoranger, and Ninja Steel/Ninninger). Not a very good one, as it relies on Aiyon being selfish and stupid and ignoring a warning he was literally just given moments before. Its main virtue is the total absence of Jane and J-Borg.

As usual, most of the fight footage was original. The first fight with Wreckmate cut between new footage (with visible English signage) and some shots that I think were from Ajinomoto Stadium. Aiyon's later fight with Wreckmate started in a small New Zealand warehouse, then cut after the commercial break to the much larger warehouse interior that's an iconic Sentai/Kamen Rider location, then cut back to new footage. The material with the Dinochucks and the Dino Fury cycle is all-new. Maybe the expense of introducing the new cycle was why they needed the bottle show/semi-clip show format to save money?

 

I didn't realize it took so many tries to bring Super Sentai to the US.

 

Two more Dino Fury reviews:

Spoiler: "Missing Pieces" and "Tiny Trouble"

"Missing Pieces" started out promisingly but fell short. It starts with Void Knight getting help from a Sporix Beast called Occulo with x-ray vision that lets it find unhatched Sporix, and Slyther using a magic amulet he randomly found (that looks more like a steering wheel) to rewrite the Rangers' memories. Then we jump to a couple of days later with Amelia having a hurt shoulder for reasons she can't remember, and when she randomly thinks it's a magic curse, Aiyon tries using the anti-magic Light Key on it.

So I expected that the Key would restore Amelia's memories or make her immune to the next wipe, so that she'd realize what had happened and try to convince the others, and we'd maybe get some kind of a psychological thriller scenario where nobody's sure what's real or if they can trust their memories. Instead, the Key does nothing, we see Sylther wipe the Rangers' memories next time, Solon makes a totally random deduction about unreliable memory that nobody listens to, and then Amelia just happens to discover what really happened through a coincidentally relevant BuzzBlast video. All very clumsy writing and much less interesting than what I imagined.

The subplot involves Solon finding the present location of Rafkon (it's identified by its three suns, as if that were unique in the universe, when it's actually pretty common), with Zayto taking the Megazord there through a portal and finding only a beacon that provides a second part of a message they got before, but it's still incomplete. It's the only Megazord use in the episode, as Occulo gets away at the end.

The main use of Ryusoulger footage was in the climactic battle, most of which was from Ryu episode 26, and is notable as the first time we've seen Void Knight in Sentai footage, since that episode was the start of the main story arc involving the Gaisorg armor and the revelation of who was inside it. So you could tell from the way the footage was presented that this was a big, dramatic reveal, but in this context it was just another routine fight.


"Tiny Trouble" continues the Occulo arc, such as it is, but is otherwise separate. It involves the introduction of the Pacha Smash Zord, based on Kishiryu Pachygaroo, a pachycephalosaur/kangaroo hybrid with a boxing theme, and its offspring, Baby Pacha (Chibigaroo), which Aiyon initially mistakes for his old friend Pacha having shrunk somehow. Since I'd seen the original episodes, I knew right off that it was the baby. I think it's the first time that Dino Fury has treated the Zords the way Ryusoulger did, as living animals that could be personified and formed relationships with, rather than just vehicles.

Unfortunately, the plot required Aiyon to act like an irresponsible child for the second time in three episodes, which is ironic because his arc here was about being overconfident in his experience and needing to learn to listen to his teammates more.

But the big development comes at the end, when Void Knight finally gets the last Sporix he needs to power his machine and awaken his lady love Santaura, whose eyes open right at the end of the episode, which is treated as a scare beat.

Only a little Sentai fight footage aside from the big reveal of the new Kishiryu/Zord and the climactic giant battle, which featured the cityscape somehow being transformed into a boxing ring with power lines as the ropes. I don't remember if there was an explanation for how that happened in the original episode, but it was completely unexplained and unremarked on here.

Incidentally, I've noticed a welcome change now that the show is a Netflix exclusive. They're no longer doing that thing where they reran the last few moments of an act-break cliffhanger at the start of the next act.

 

And two more:

Spoiler: "Stitched Up" and "Jam Session"

"Stitched Up" is the best episode so far this season. It has a nice plot where Izzy's girlfriend Fern asks her to the prom, and Izzy's fashion designer mother insists on designing their outfits, with Izzy insisting she never wears dresses (building on the bit from season 1 where she tore off her Ranger skirt to explain why she's in a male-style costume). Her mother insists she knows her style, and when she gets a frilly dress delivered, Izzy feels betrayed and throws it out, only to learn that she and Fern got their outfits switched and her mom really made her a tuxedo.

It's nice to see this show not merely making vague references to Izzy being lesbian, but actually building a whole episode plot around her relationship with her girlfriend, her rejection of traditional gender norms, and her mother's acceptance and support thereof. It's a really good thing for a lot of kids in the audience to see (and hopefully for parents to learn from too). It's also nice that Izzy just goes to her mom and admits her mistake, though I did wonder why they couldn't just use some magic Dino Key to fix the dress (although I don't recall if they got the Fix-It Key back from Void Knight). Also, Izzy looks really good in her white-and-green tuxedo.

But the big news is Void Knight's wife Santaura finally awakening, and giving VK a real name, Tarrick. Apparently they're aliens, and Tarrick's ultimate agenda now that he's revived Santaura is just to repair their spaceship and leave Earth. But Santaura, ominously, wants revenge on the humans for something she says they took from her and Tarrick. I suspect she's going to become an even worse threat than VK.


"Jam Session" is sort of a companion piece to the previous, since it also focuses on Garcia family drama, but it's Javi's father being unsupportive of his music in contrast to Izzy's mother being supportive of her life choices. When an obnoxious musician turns out to have a Dino Key around his neck, Javi needs to miss his dad's ceremony to fill in for the band's guitarist in exchange for getting the key, and Warden Garcia thinks it's just Javi goofing around and not caring, until he realizes how good Javi is at it, and Javi realizes there may be a career in it too. So they finally reconcile the tension that's existed between them for a whole season now. Another pretty good one, at least by the standards of the season so far.

The Rangers need the key to awaken a new Zord, because Void Knight has built a jammer for all their known Zord activation frequencies. The jammer device is based on the strangest Minusaur from Ryusoulger, which was a strange and beautiful CGI creature that looked like it was made of stained glass: https://powerrangers.fandom.com/wiki/Fairy_Minosaur The new Zord, meanwhile, is the Ptera Freeze Zord, based on Kishiryu Pterardon, one of the few speaking Kishiryu, who usually existed in a cute egg-like chibi (baby) form, in which he'd appeared for a couple of episodes before emerging to full size in the episode this one was adapted from.

Meanwhile, Santaura continues to be driven by revenge, while Tarrick explains how he needs to maintain the appearance of strength to control the Sporix Beasts, which I guess explains why his Void Knight voice is so loud and strident compared to his regular voice. While the others are away, Santaura is fascinated by the power of the Sporix and uses them to transform herself into a more powerful form, Void Queen, which is Madame Noir's costume from ToQger. Unlike Cosmo from Ninja Steel, the other character based on a ToQger villain, Void Queen's costume seems unaltered from Madame Noir; unlike some previous villainesses adapted to PR, they haven't even covered up her cleavage. Which is interesting, since they're unlikely to use any Sentai footage of her, since she never crossed over with the Ryusoulgers. So they could've modified the costume if they'd wanted.

 

Based on promotion/advertising the Avatar Changes for the Donbrothers at least for now are confined to the last 10 seasons.

Here's a promotional video where DonMomotaro Avatar changes into the past 10 sentai leaders

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1501364606731653127

I like that in the promotional video that Haruka is the designated historian

 

My reviews of the rest of the Dino Fury half-season:

Spoiler

“New Leaf” is the start of a 3-part arc that brings major changes, as Santaura/Void Queen takes over the villains’ operation and pursues revenge on humanity, using a pumpkin-themed Sporix Beast called Squashblight whose toxic goop can turn people into trees (based on a Minusaur that made people hyperaggressive). Void Queen convinces Tarrick/Void Knight to go along with it “if you love me,” but when he sees a father’s pain at his child being transformed, he regrets it, and urges VQ to leave Earth with him, insisting he was never in it to hurt humans as an end in itself, just single-mindedly focused on gaining Sporix energy at any cost. But VQ destroys their escape ship and attacks VK, and he ends up giving the Rangers the key to Squashblight’s weakness.

Meanwhile, Ollie is reunited with his old scientist mentor who notes his rude dismissal of Amelia’s paranormal beliefs and calls him out for being a know-it-all and never listening to others. Ollie dismisses this until his refusal to listen to Amelia’s cautions while working on an antidote for the tree venom leads to Solon getting tree-ified, so Ollie learns humility and starts listening to Amelia’s suggestions, so together they devise an antidote. I don’t care for the suggestion that Ollie should be more open-minded about Amelia’s superstitions; I’d rather see her learning more critical thinking skills. But aside from that, it’s a decent character story, and the second episode in a row where the plot has involved two characters resolving a series-long conflict when one pledges to respect the other’s viewpoint more.

I guess I should’ve anticipated Void Knight getting a redemption arc, since his armor is that of Gaisorg/Nada, who had his own redemption story in Ryusoulger. But it’s been a long time since Power Rangers has given us a sympathetic or redeemable main villain. Various supporting villains, but the last time it was done with a main villain (more or less) was Jarrod in Jungle Fury, and his character arc was pretty faithfully adapted from his Gekiranger counterpart. The last one before that – and thus the last one original to PR – was Ransik from Time Force. (I don’t count Dino Thunder’s Anton Mercer as a redeemed villain, because he was under mind control.)

I should’ve mentioned before that there’s been a change in the status quo since Santaura was awakened, since at that point the villains had collected all the Sporix and put them in VK’s machine. So the dynamic of both sides searching for Sporix or randomly emerging Sporix Beasts is over; now Void Queen just draws Sporix out of the machine and awakens them to do her bidding.

There’s very little Sentai footage here, which comes as a surprise, since the main fight with the villains was staged under a bridge across a river, reminding me of a frequent Sentai location that I assumed it was intended to match. What there is came from episode 32, the climax of the arc of Nada’s redemption.

-

“Serious Business” has Void Queen sending the monsters to hunt Void Knight/Tarrick, who’s in civilian gear for the first time, spying on the Rangers with a drone, until a Sporix Beast tracks down his scent and the Rangers intervene. When they learn the bad guys are hunting VK, they debate whether he might be on their side now, and in the climax, he helps them defeat the Beast, with Zayto guardedly saying that to earn their trust, he must return the Sporix he stole.

The other plot is a silly one with a masked bad-comedian hacker taking over the BuzzBlast feed and holding it hostage in exchange for being given her own show. Searching in the park where the video was sent from, Aiyon discovers a kid called Maya and recognizes her bad jokes (which he loves, since he’s an alien who’s never heard the old, corny jokes that she claims to have invented), and he convinces her to do the right thing and turn herself in, whereupon she even helps BuzzBlast patch the security holes she exploited. There’s more Jane slapstick silliness I won’t bother with.

In contrast to last week, most of the fight footage is from Ryusoulger, with the first fight being in one of my favorite tokusatsu locations, a plaza in Chiba City. I don’t know the location where the climactic fight was, but I’m starting to get the hang of recognizing the Ryusoulger footage by its more dynamic/shaky camera movement. There was one shot with some very swoopy drone camera work of the sort that’s become a Super Sentai/Kamen Rider trademark in recent years. The footage was from episode 30, when Gaisorg/Nada was just starting to turn toward redemption, IIRC. So it meshed pretty well with where Void Knight is at this point, though they had to give the Sporix Beast a scent-tracking ability that didn’t fit its design or its original’s powers in any way.

-

“The Hunt” opens with Void Queen building a new robot general, Snageye, whom she sends to capture the Rangers and Void Knight/Tarrick, who overhears and goes to warn the Rangers. He meets them in a warehouse and explains his backstory, but Zayto strikes a hard line and refuses to trust him. Russell Curry, whom I find a rather flat performer as Zayto, shows more passion than usual in his condemnations of Void Knight.

Meanwhile, Jane and J-Borg see a ghost that the latter captures on video apparently abducting a passerby, and Amelia jumps at the story. (There’s an Avatar: The Last Airbender homage as Jane crashes into a vegetable cart and the owner cries “My cabbages!”) Following up on two episodes ago, Ollie offers to help Amelia investigate, and I finally get what I was hoping for, as Amelia admits that a more skeptical eye would be of value. I’m picking up some definite attraction vibes between them too. (The “abductee” turns out at the end to be a magician practicing his illusions.)

When Snageye captures the other Rangers inside his medallion, Zayto resists Javi’s suggestion that they need VK’s help, insisting people don’t change that much, but Javi reminds him of Warden Garcia coming around on Javi’s music and Ollie and Amelia getting over their hostility. But Zayto isn’t fully convinced until he’s captured and Javi and VK fight Snageye side by side – and then Javi gets zapped and VK has to take the general on alone, damaging it enough to let Zayto escape. A weakened Tarrick reveals that he created his armor based on the lost Dino Knight Armor, which he reverts and gives back to Zayto, who uses its powers to destroy the brand-new general and free the others. Tarrick introduces himself properly and says there’s still much to tell, but then Void Queen captures him, giving the Rangers their first brief look at her. They resolve that they owe Tarrick and need to help him.

This was a pretty good payoff to the arc. I love a good villain redemption story, and it’s interesting how they’ve managed to echo Nada’s arc from Ryusoulger and use some of the key footage from it while still building a new story around it. The footage here came from episode 33, Nada’s one and only episode as a Ryusoulger, culminating with the Gaisorg armor passing to Koh and transforming into Max Ryusoul Red. Snageye was based on the Druidon general Uden, who was also destroyed in his debut episode, and a lot of the fight footage got used, including a fight in an alley at Toei Studios, and the climactic fight in the usual warehouse, which is so much huger than the New Zealand warehouse they use to double it in new footage.

-

“Losers Weepers” takes footage from a really big, cataclysmic Ryusoulger 2-parter introducing the final Druidon general and his horrifyingly destructive Space Dragon, but turns it into a pretty routine, underwhelming episode. It opens with Izzy and Aiyon bike-racing in the forest, when Aiyon accidentally makes Izzy crash, earning her resentment. They find an abandoned truck from Area 62 (the old military base that the villains took over), including a couple of locked containers. Izzy gets selfish about hers, which seems to have nothing in it but a spiked dog collar, so Aiyon gets similarly selfish about his, which turns out to be full of money. So Aiyon basically steals a ton of money from the US government and nobody thinks there’s anything wrong with that beyond Aiyon being greedy. Huh?

But anyway, Mucus discovers that the collar turns monsters giant (it’s actually part of the Space Dragon costume), and Void Queen uses it to gigantize a Sporix Beast, Flapnarok, and send it to trash the city. This was one of those perennial Sentai episodes where a monster basically devastates half the city but it’s all back to normal by the next episode, although IIRC, the Ryusoulgers could actually use the twin black and white Kishiryu to restore the destroyed buildings. Here, there are a few shots of massive urban destruction, but they aren’t acknowledged or commented on in the story. I also remember the Space Dragon having a really eerie, creepy, and impressive roar, but they’ve dubbed over it with your typical cheesy Sporix Beast wisecracks.

So Aiyon has gone off on a shopping spree with his ill-gotten booty, but he finds it brings him no joy, and Amelia’s Pop-Pop finds him and gives him a pep-pep talk that convinces him to give everything away and therefore be happy (although he may have gotten a lot of people in trouble when the government traces the serial numbers on those bills). I remember Pop-Pop mentioning last season that he knew something about the secrets of Area 62, so I was expecting their meeting to set up some new revelation, but there’s nothing of the sort.

Aiyon’s shopping spree keeps him from hearing the Rangers’ calls, so Izzy has to track him down when they need the Mosa Key to program a new Zord formation, one that almost killed Zayto’s original Rangers when they tried it, so they need to do some work to upgrade and stabilize it first. So she sees he’s not as greedy and selfish as she thought, and they make amends, and of course the new formation prevails in a rather over-the-top stock footage sequence that ends with the monster literally crashing into the Moon.

This was kind of a letdown, both after all the big drama of the past three episodes and in the context of my memories of the original 2-parter. We hardly see Tarrick in this one, just a glimpse of him being held captive in what used to be Santaura’s life support pod. For whatever reason, Void Queen hasn’t told her underlings she’s holding him, just as he never told them about her.

-

Well, one more advantage of the move to Netflix: No more holiday clip shows. Instead of ten main episodes and a holiday filler, we get a full eleven episodes devoted to the main story arc. Although “The Copycat” doesn’t really feel like a midseason finale, aside from introducing one big change. The redeemed Tarrick is brainwashed to be evil again, with Void Queen using the same Sporix energies that transformed her to turn Tarrick into Void King, using the costume and footage of Pricious, the fifth Druidon general and penultimate villain from Ryusoulger.

The plot involves Javi entering a BuzzBlast song contest for original songs, only for Blair, the jerky singer from “Jam Session,” to plagiarize Javi’s song before he can perform it. When Javi, Izzy, and Warden Garcia call him out as a thief, the judges (named after the show’s head writers) refuse to disallow Blair’s song but allow Javi to perform a different one the next day, though he doesn’t think he can write one in such a short time. Meanwhile, Void King attacks the Rangers, proving extra-powerful and knocking all of them but Zayto and Javi out of action, and also has the ability to copy the Dino Knight Armor’s finisher move. (In the original, Pricious had his general copy the Ryusoul Max Changer.)

Javi suggests borrowing the Dino Knight Armor so Zayto can train against it and develop a countermeasure. This sequence uses footage from one of the most iconic tokusatsu locations, Mount Iwafune (though one of the most overused within the past couple of seasons, I guess because COVID has limited the number of available shooting locations). In the original, IIRC, it represented Koh undergoing a mystical trial to gain a new power, and having to fight himself to learn how to beat the attack. The climactic fight is back at that square in Chiba I mentioned above, with Zayto (Koh) defeating Void King (Pricious) and driving him away.

Javi ends up winning the contest by performing the same song (which seems iffy given the parameters the judges set before), but doing it much better than Blair, and adding the gimmick of swapping out his instruments with Zayto’s help to show how versatile he is. It’s a nice resolution for Javi’s series-long arc of liking to try out different instruments, which Warden Garcia had seen as dilettantish and pointless but now pays off with a trophy that the warden can’t get enough of.

It’s kind of underwhelming for the half-season to just stop like this. The big climax was in episode 9, and then we got two more episodes at a lower level, despite being based on footage from one of Ryusoulger’s biggest 2-parters. After all the development Tarrick got through this season, it’s disappointing to see him reduced to a brainwashed baddie again. We already got this story arc twice before in Power Rangers with Astronema and Tenaya-7. And there are still so many outstanding mysteries, like just what it is that Santaura/Void Queen wants revenge for.

Still, it’s been a pretty good half-season overall, with lots of character growth and advancement among both the heroes and the villains. The Garcia family and Tarrick have been the sources of the most engaging storylines, while Aiyon has been the most annoying character other than Jane and J-Borg, since he’s so incredibly immature for someone 65 million years old.

 

Kikai Sentai Zenkaiger VS Mashin Sentai Kirameiger VS Sempaiger trailer




Story summary

https://www.toei-video.co.jp/vcinext-zenkaiger/

Nice to see Kairi and Marvelous return. The rest of the sempaijer will probably be voice overs. We might actually get some follow up with GokaiTopia and Zox finally meeting GokaiRed

 

This would be cool to visit.

https://news.tokunation.com/2022/03/10/kamen-rider-50th-anniversary-exhibition-opens-in-japan-72974

 

Hmm. Unless I missed one, the group photo only has Black RX, not Black. They're the same guy, but they're usually treated as two separate Riders in these group gatherings. The three '90s movie Riders are also left out.

 

Any word on if it will be leaving Japan at all?

 

No one show this to Kevin Feige.........

 

First proper look at Black Sun and Shadow Moon

 

A really good interview with Shinichiro Shirakura about Donbrothers. Alot of good quotes


https://tokusatsunetwork.com/2022/03/avataro-sentai-donbrothers-breaking-down-stereotypes/

A New Drama, Free From Color-Based Archetypes

On the Similarities to This Genderless Era

Not Wanting Children Set to Molds

 

Very nice sentiments about not forcing gender roles and norms on children. And interesting comments on the analogy for social media connections between people who don't meet in reality. Works well in the pandemic age when we do so much with Zoom meetings and such. The idea of Sentai forms as player avatars made physical is interesting, and helps contextualize the very weird action in the show.

 

I just finished Kamen Rider Blade. It was a very mixed series for me. I like the main Rider pretty well, and one of the side Riders (Chalice, specifically), but most of the rest of the supporting cast was meh, and Kamen Rider Leangle outright sucked, probably my second most disliked Rider after Mitchy from Gaim. The story started slow, got going around episode 10, then sputtered in the 20s before having a pretty good ending. I liked the suits and the card gimmick, but the villains were never really interesting to me. Overall I don't regret watching the show, but its not a show I could call good.

My current Kamen Rider rankings (of shows I've completed):

Great:
OOO
Drive
Ex-Aid
Fourze

Good:
Zi-O
Decade
Build
Kabuto
Kuuga

OK:
Kiva
W

Meh:
Blade
555

Bad:
Gaim
Ryuki
Saber