Incidentally, since the final episodes of Power Rangers Cosmic Fury included an Easter-egg line setting up Power Rangers S.P.D., which is set in 2025 and is thus the chronologically last PR series, I decided to rewatch it, since I never watched the whole thing the first time. And I'm remembering why I lost interest.
Certainly it has a lot going for it. The original action/stunt sequences in the first few episodes are superb, which I assume is Koichi Sakamoto's work. And the character writing is more sophisticated than in a lot of PR seasons, with distinctly drawn personalities and real conflicts that arise from character instead of magic spells or whatnot. But my problem is that there was too much conflict. These characters are just not very likeable -- always testy and bickering and kind of mean-spirited toward each other. I'd remembered my problem being with the cast, that they just didn't click with me, but now I realize it's more to do with the characters than the actors. Hopefully they'll improve as the team grows together.
It's also surprising to see how young Kelson Henderson was then. A reminder that this was 18 years ago.
Meanwhile, I also decided I might as well check out Gridman The Hyper Agent on Shout TV, given how much I keep hearing about the anime sequel/reboot/whatever. I tried out the first episode a while back and was unimpressed, so I didn't continue. Now I'm trying again, and I'm two episodes in. I can at least say that it's not nearly as annoying as its US adaptation Superhuman Samurai Syber Squad, which was basically just a lame high school sitcom with tacked-on cyberspace action sequences that could be pretty generically inserted into any given episode, given how little they connected. So far Gridman seems to hold together better, but it feels a little simplistic, and the child actors in the lead roles aren't great. Mainly it's amusing how crude the 1993 depictions of cyberspace and computer graphics were. It's also surprising how much of an Ultraman clone it is, right down to Gridman having an Ultraman-style rise sequence.