See, that is where I differ Locke. I care barely stand the Disney seasons due to either the super powers the rangers had to have in every season from DT on, the ridiculous villains (a Luchadore reject, Disco Skeletor, and the Miser Bros), or the explosions that could give Michael Bay an orgasm. OH, and the music of some of the series (like MF) is down right dreadful.

The rangers in Saban's era had to rely on their skills to defeat the bad guys. Astronema and Zedd put those Disney ones to shame in both looks and seriousness (honestly, Mezogog is the only Disney villain I felt was an actual threat). The music fit the show and they were not trying to pull off Matrix styled effects.

Kind of. I'm 5 episodes into the next disc and except for the third episode, the other four episodes have been either a reuse of old footage with no actual monster in it (unless you count Norman Pudgy Pig and the crystal ball as monsters, in fact, both episodes use the same Goldar/Scorpina fight sequences) or the only other two left over ZyuRanger monsters they did not use in the first 40 episodes. So far, the Goo Fish episode is the only one that uses Zyu2 footage. I think I am at the point when they do actually start using Zyu2 though.

Um okay, not sure why it double posted - DELETE

I'm not a big fan of civilian powers either, they cause more problems than they solve but I will say I think they fit in pretty well in Ninja Storm.

I also think Disney did a great job making original villains and integrating them into their shows. Although Lothor sucked. Plus I love that unlike Saban, they actually spent money on their seasons to get casts who could act, writers who could write and shoot enough new footage to really make their seasons their own. Even when sticking pretty close to the core themes of the sentai.

I'll give them the credit of shooting new footage, but story wise and acting, definitely not.

You're really saying Saban told better stories with better actors? That is hilarious man but I'm trying to be serious.

Yeah, there's a few filler eps in there. But the rationale behind the change of Doomsday is accurate. Following Crystal Nightmare, we go headlong into Zyu2 -- Fighting Flea, Jellyfish, Mantis, Dramole, etc.

What I'm saying is that Saban's actors were on the same level as the Disney ones. Neither group were better than any others. Although, the OO are probably the worst in the history of the entire series. I mean, Kimberly's acting was no worse than Syd's. Tommy's acting was no better than Sky's. Actually, I'd say Astronema's acting was probably one of the best in the entire franchise.

Story wise, I still think PRiS trumps all of the other series.

Anyway, I just finished The Return of the Green Ranger and I am calling it good for one night. Tomorrow I'll finish the last disc of Season 1, which means it took me 4 days to get through all of Season 1. Maybe getting through this entire set won't be so hard after all.

Perhaps. But as they Disney writers were better, they got much better characters to play with, who had way more to do, so it actually made the acting come off a lot better.

I tried getting back into PRiS and just couldn't, the effects and acting were just awful and it really held me back. Loved it as a kid though.

All this talk of MMPR made me go back and watch a favorite episode of mine - Second Chance, AKA Soccadillo wrecks up the place for 20 minutes. Possibly my favorite monster from the era, my only complaint about the ep is the change of how Soccadillo is defeated. Its clear from him blowing up that he was supposed to go down via the Ultrazord, but for some reason it is changed to the Power Sword. Anyway, great little memory trip for me.

Side note, the kid who played Roger would later be convicted of killing three people. Yikes.

Child actors, man ._.

Actually, to correct my earlier statement. Skylar Deleon did not play Roger, he was an uncredited extra in this episode. It was long believed that he played Roger, but that character was played by Kosmin Parker. Did a little bit of research this morning, so sorry for the incorrect statement on my part.

Kain, I'm assuming you mean "Return Of An Old Friend," where Tommy comes back and they fight Dramole after abducting the kids' parents? Only reason I mention it is that "Return Of The Green Ranger" is a 3 part season 2 episode! :)

Yeah, Return of an Old Friend.

So now that I'm done with Digimon I'm going to give Kamen Rider Dragon Knight a go (Locke you should be proud :p). I've watched and loved Ryuki, but I'm a sucker for a good adaptation that strays decently away from the source footage so I'm very intrigued by the show even if it turns out to lousy.

Not fussed on the fact they use "Kamen" in the title, but I guess a) it sounds cool and b) they wanted to stray away from any Masked Rider connotations, which is more than fair enough :lol

*Wipes tear from eye* I've never been so proud! Go in with an open mind and you'll love it, because it's a great series. I can only assume the haters went in wanting to hate it which is why they ended up hating it.

Yeah I'll be keeping an open mind. It'll be interesting to see if I end up liking the characters I hated in Ryuki and vice versa.

I've seen about half of KRDK, I really enjoyed it as an adaption. Unfortunately it was taken down off of 4KidsTV before I could finish watching it! That show made me want to buy as many Kamen Rider Gai/Thrust toys as I can!

I find that such a conflicting statement with my experience of Ryuki that I can't wait to watch! :lol

Thrust is one of the most badass characters in the show.

I've never watched Ryuki, but Thrust is one bad dude. And he has the best "villainous Rider" design since Shadow Moon as far as I am concerned.

Yeah I loved his suit as well, seems a lot of people didn't.

That damn kid.... Twice I've had people see my power rangers tattoo and bring up that story. Both times the people were misinformed and thought a power ranger himself did the killing.

Yeah, for years that false story persisted... do a Google search on it, and you will find multiple pages on Yahoo Questions, or Ask.com, or whatnot asking "What color Power Ranger was the guy who murdered those people?"

Cmon people, it was just some random extra! He didn't even have any lines!

I think they have the whole show on their website. They actually dropped the show 2 episodes before the end of the series.

Otherwise you can just torrent it. I have no qualms with torrenting stuff like this since they make it practically impossible to watch half of this stuff in the UK.

I was watching it on the website; last time I went there it was gone. A totally "Buh?" moment for me.

I will have to eventually get back to it either via torrent or stream. I enjoyed the show enough to make the effort to track it down, for sure.

I'm glad to hear that it has fans, it was my first proper Kamen Rider show after...Masked Rider *shudder* and I just adore the series, I've watched it through a handful of times and I was starting to think I was the only fan despite how well the show did in the US and Japan.

It seems so many people dislike it simply because it's an adaptation just like they do with Power Rangers and I just think those people and their prejudices are missing out.

And thus has my journey through the first season of MMPR come to an end. It was an enjoyable 4 days and shows to me that I can still just sit down and marathon a series all day long if I truly desire to.

WIth that said, I'll be watching Season 2 the Monday after we get back from AX.

Oh yeah, never mind the poor acting, the lack of sound effects and music (you know, the thing these shows ARE made for!!), and the mcguffin at the end of the series to make everything all right.

Anyway what is this about some kid off the PR being a killer?

I don't remember KRDK not having music... It had a really cool battle theme IIRC. And didn't Ryuki have a similar deus ex machina at the end to "fix" everything as well?

Most of the actors in the show weren't actors but martial artists and so they really had to relax into their roles. The acting improves dramatically over the course of the series as they become more comfortable in their roles. I never really noticed the lack of sound effects and music, they don't really make much of a difference to my experience.

And yeah the ending was a bit of a cop out admittedly but you have to remember that American and Japanese censorship is very different and we were lucky to have the Rider's deal with death and the weight of that at all.

I'm not saying that that makes it okay but coming into an American show expecting all the gore, swearing and general adult content from a Japanese show is just a fool's errand from the beginning.

It's not that the music and effects weren't there, it's just that they were so quiet you could barely hear them over the dialog. Locke, you might not say it doesn't make a difference, but for me, it does. I am an audiophile. Music and sound effects can make or break something for me. If it has music that does not fit the scene, or no music at all, I have a hard time getting into it. It's also one of the reasons I consider Samurai Jack to be one of the top 10 greatest American cartoons of all time. That show was just amazing in what it did in sound design.

I'm not expecting it to have gore and stuff, I just want it to not feel like a cop out. Had it been well written, I might have felt it worked. However, it was not, so it did not work for me. They were using the term vented and making it sound like that was it. Having it turn out to just be a hospital was lame and makes the threat of doom pointless. Pretty much it meant any rider was immortal because if they got hurt, they would just go to the hospital to recover. There was no death involved EVER.

It really wasn't that far removed from many religions concept of the after life really so yeah it was a bit of a cop out but I think given what they were battling against every step of the way (seriously if you read any interviews these guys went through hell to try and tell the story they wanted to tell) it could have been a whole lot worse.

And Japanese shows are just as likely to cop out of death. Godai died but then they basically retconned it by near enough saying 'he is just sleeping' and Gen was brought back literally by the power of friendship and neither of these shows had soccer mum's banging down the doors so they actually thought this was good storytelling.

Man, child actors...
I didn't expect that.

But those were instances when it was written well enough to be believable.

Speak for yourself, I thought both instances were absolute shit. Godai's death was brilliantly handled, his return...wasn't. And the fact that Fourze was written in response to a terrible disaster a message like 'if you care enough you can bring people back from the dead' is disgustingly insulting considering kids watching this had probably lost their families.

Um... okay. THis is the first I have heard of this.

And that is why I have a problem with that scene in its entirety.

Fourze was intentionally written to be lighthearted and fun after the 2011 earthquake and typhoon that struck Japan months earlier.

So I watched episode 3 of Mighty Morphin, I thought Kimberly was meant to be a douche why does she now care about saving the environment? And I knew Megaforce had a lot of obvious nods to the series that I could pick up for nostalgia reasons but I didn't realise it lifted entire plots.

Also Zordon is a fucking douche, I get why he tells them not to immediately use their Power Morphers but they take that rule so literally and so to heart they are literally getting kicked around the floor before they decide to morph. But then in other scenes they just morph immediately. I'm going to assume this is 100% sentai limitations but it just makes Zordon look like an ass and like the Rangers cant take any initiative.

The footage was really badly handled anyway. Zordon said something about Power Weapons then suddenly they were all fighting in their Zords, Jason commands them go use the full power Megazord then Alpha says they have no options left before they've even transformed the Megazord into full power mode and Zordon pulls them back to base to which the Rangers don't argue. Also Billy's weapon is a power of 'great rage'...err...? And Trini's is 'as true as arrows'...the fuck?

Btw Zack is awesome, sure he is a caricature of a black person but it's gloriously bad as he teaches the robot the laws of swag. And repeatedly facepalms as if he knows just how shit this all is.

And thus, Alpha 6 was programmed. :lolol