Super Samurai Episode 14 - "A Crack in the World" Discussion
 

After a seemingly never ending hiatus Super Samurai is back!

So where were we? Well, Deker is back in action, Serrator is about to reveal his ultimate plan and Jayden still has a secret he's keeping from the team.

Discuss!

For anyone of us who has seen Shinkenger, I think we may already know what Jayden's "secret" is.

Yes I know that, but I have to be fair to the people who haven't seen it yet :p

and to UK fans the secrates out as well

My God with the long lull between episodes I forgot how horrible this show was. usually, atleast, the MotW's VO Artist can act. But what a surprise, not this week. I actually looked forward to Deker being on screen. Because atleast you get a chuckle with how many times that man can work My Sword Uramasa into a sentence. But Dear Jesus. I think I'm going to finish the series by watching Shinkenger, and ignore Samurai's on television. I can't take it anymore.

Especailly Emily. Look, Brit, I'm sure you're a wonderful person. But before you take an acting job... shouldn't you make sure you can act?!

This, exactly, is what happens Saban when you choose Non-Union actors. There's a reason they're Non-Union. It's usually cause they suck! How about next time you make a freaking series you spend a little extra to make sure the people you hire to do a job can actually do the damn job!

... Okay.. I think I'm done.

But Sentai the series was rushed and that's why the actors suck....isn't that the excuse for anything bad about Samurai? Not sure what's rushed, its taken em 2 damn years to show what....38 episodes or so? And of that about 35% is preexisting footage

I am not accepting that as an excuse anymore. With these long lulls between 'seasons' they had more than enough time to fix what needed fixed, and become better. Instead it's actually gotten worse. How that's even remotely possible I have no idea, but they found a way.

And it's not like they needed to wait for scripts! It's an absolute direct translation! So they didn't have to wait for the writers to come up with an idea, they just needed to wait untill Kinko's was finished making copies!

I don't think I've seen anyone use that as an excuse for Samurai's bad acting.

It's hard to rush something you had two years to make, with six month lulls between 'seasons'.

While I'm not trying to defend Samurai in any way....did they actually have two years to make it? Or was the series pretty much finished ages ago and is it just Nick choosing not to schedule it.

It was posted somewhere on here that they were filming between lulls.

I see. Well in that case....oh dear.

I think Samurai will go down as the worst season ever. Worse, to me, than Ninja Storm. And I really hate Ninja Storm.

Nah, it still has a while to go to be worse than Ninja Storm and Operation Overdrive I think. At least I can find things I like about Samurai.

I was being incredibly sarcastic btw :-)
I'd imagine it was all filmed ages ago and Nick's just holding it back. Well they had to have known what they were getting into with nicks season setup, so there's no excuse why at least season 2 couldn't have had its own story

Odd because I can find things about operation overdrive that I like. The adventure and treasure hunting. And I don't mind Andrew and the butler

Be honest, are those things you like about samurai actually things from shinkenger?

Ok iadmit rick does an awesome job as deker

Mostly yes, but I like Antonio and Bulk/Spike are good when they're actually integrated into the plot. But like I say, that's still more than I liked about Ninja Storm and Operation Overdrive. At least the elements Samurai brought over from Shinkenger have stayed the same, those two made them worse.

Let us all hope that megaforce will redeem Power Rangers. MF zord lineup in my opinion looks better then the original so that might be a good omen for next season.

I love how this thread was de-railed by post #5.

Pretty standard in samurai threads

I wouldn't know; I don't watch Power Rangers. :p

You do realize production of Super Samurai was finished by around August of last year, right? Are you expecting them to go back, call the cast back in and re-film it? No way. Not going to happen.

As for the other complaining, Operation Overdrive had a handful of episodes I like to go back and re-watch and Ninja Storm is one of my favorite seasons.

Anyway, my thoughts:

I was totally expecting Bulk and Spike to find pictures of Antonio in the booth.

Bulk has got to be having deja vu: http://s10.postimage.org/dgdpr0hxl/bulkofh.jpg

Kevin dodging Mike at the beginning was hilarious. I thought Mike seriously hurt himself. It did paint Mike to be an incompetent fighter, though.

When Antonio was going to take a picture of the fish, it looked like he dropped his morpher in the water, yet suddenly it was back in his pocket in the booth.

Ciara Hanna, our new Megaforce Yellow Ranger is in the iCarly episode Saturday night, and sadly wasn't in the commercial for it during this episode.

I couldn't help but notice the courtyard where they fought Serrator was the same one that's used many times in Sentai. It's used in Shinkenger a lot, it was used in Goseiger, and I remember the Gokaigers transformed into 6th rangers in Gai's debut episode there as well.

I had to lol as Serrator talked about the river flooding the Earth and the "American" sushi/food carts were being thrown down the road.

Mia and Emily using their special weapons made me think, how often do we really see them? Last time I remember them was in A Sticky Situation where we saw the Forest Spear and Hydro Bow.

That last zord fight was just an epic toy commercial. This whole episode was a toy commercial. We saw the rangers, Sky Fan, Earth Slicer, Super Mode, Bullzooka, Super Mega Red, Mega Yellow/Pink, all 3 auxiliary combinations, battlewing, claw armor, shogun and samurai artillery. This episode excelled at being a toy commercial.

Then at the end, the buildings are being destroyed. "It's a good thing those buildings had no one in them!" or "At least they're attacking the abandoned industrial district!"

In the whole episode, Serrator and Deker were more interesting than the rangers. I almost forgot Dayu was there.

The resemblance here is weird:

http://s10.postimage.org/rbk6h952x/mastermaospike.jpg

Having a chance to really go through the episode again, Serrator's flashbacks when he's going over his plan is confusing. He says he used Xandred's monsters to drive the wedges, but in his flashbacks we see Arachnator, Skarf, Duplicator, and Epoxar. There were 6 wedges shown, though. Also, Arachnator was destroyed 2 episodes before we even got a glimpse at Serrator. Serrator was in the Sanzu River when Arachnator was destroyed.

I'm confused...

My misunderstanding of the facts is no excuse for Samurai being godaweful.

This wasn't a good episode.

The acting was subpar, especially the voice acting of Serrator and the MOTW. Serrator's "plan" didn't make a ton of sense, though I didn't remember clearly what had happened previously becuase it's been like 14 years since Samurai last aired.

If you're a fan of Samurai, the episode was probably all right. But if you're critical of Samurai, it's another reason to cringe and be very fearful of what Megaforce is going to be like. Still have fingers crossed however.

You?! Have Hope for something Megaforce?! Who are you and what did you do with the real Kickback!

To be honest, I didn't think it was all that bad. Deker disappointed me though, since he kinda just lulled around in the background and at this point doesn't seem very interested in anything.

The "here are all the toys you need to buy" Megazord sequence was pretty good though.

The sporadic airing probably hasn't helped, but Serrator's plan was exactly the same as it was in Shinkenger. He's essentially just making one big crack for all the water to flood out of.

His motivation behind using Deker and driving the wedges didn't translate very well and ends up making little sense for Serrator. Akumaro made perfect sense, though.

The wedges bit I'll give you, but why he used Deker made perfect sense. For whatever reason the plan could only be finalised by a half human/half Nighlok. There isn't really much more to it than that.

Serrator's plan started 200 years ago when he turned Deker into a half Nighlok. He waited 200 years until he could begin driving the wedges into the Earth by spreading pain and suffering at each location. He did this by using Nighloks under his control and he alluded to Nighloks under Xandred's control that he used. However, Xandred has been weakened ever since the 17th Red Samurai Ranger used the incomplete sealing symbol on him. He was extra weak when he came to the human world to attack Serrator and the rangers. However, Serrator was still not a match for Xandred and left the scene once Xandred arrived.

Now, Serrator has said that he plans to flood the Earth by letting the Sanzu river just sweep through it. However, Xandred's plan was to let smaller amounts of the Sanzu river in to take over the human world so that it was more controlled. Serrator's method is chaotic and risky, and he has outlined that it is only for supreme control. The question is, why would someone who cannot defeat Xandred be flooding the Earth expecting complete control? What is his plan when Xandred comes back? That's what makes no sense.

Compare that to Akumaro's motivations, and suddenly it makes sense. Akumaro didn't want to flood the Earth with the Sanzu river for supreme control. He just wanted to flood the world, spread lamentation and suffering, and get a taste of what hell feels like. He didn't want control. He just wanted to feel the absolute worst pain and suffering possible in the chaos that would ensue by flooding the human world. That makes sense for why he did it and what he was planning to do. Serrator? No. Not really. Serrator has no backup plan for dealing with Xandred. Xandred was extremely weakened and was still able to almost kill Jayden.

I just assumed that

a) The mass flooding would give Serrator some edge in terms of power and he'd be able to take Xandred. Granted the show hasn't really conveyed that, but I've learnt that Samurai isn't the best at conveying things in general.

or

b) He's just another overconfident supervillain and hasn't really thought it through that far. Xandred's out of the picture for now and that's good enough for him. Given Serrator's come across as slightly cocky all the way through the show, this is what I'm thinking.

This came from Wikipedia. So I don't know how accurate this might be.

When Serrator asks Deker to fulfill the final piece of his destructive plans, Antonio begs Deker to reconsider his role in the battle between humans and the Nighlok.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This episode was originally scheduled to air October 20, 2012 but was pulled due to the low ratings of the previous weeks episode.

-----------------------------------------------------------

Nick, if the ratings were low? It's your fault. This is what happens when you split a single season into four parts over two years! No, seriously. You did this. You didn't advertise the new season, you broke up the episodes into 8 episode chunks with nine months inbetween. Then you sulk and bitch because ratings are low. Least when Disney put RPM on at 5am they didn't break the season up! This is why all your shows fail, Nick. You have no one to blame but yourself. So stop punishing us, punishing the kids who watch Samurai, and punishing Saban. And start taking responsability for being a pisspoor excuse for a children's network.

And Saban, if you're any kind of buisnessman I know you have some intern somewhere monitering sites like Tokunation to see what the fans are thinking.

And if, by some miracle, you are reading this: Take Power Rangers away from Nick before they torpedo your franchise! You have Vortexx now, use it! Nick as proven over the past two years they don't give a royal you-know-what. You'd be nearly through Megaforce by now if they'd given you a proper season, and gearing up for the Go-Busters adaptation. Don't let Nick ruin Power Rangers. They obviously don't care, so take it from them. Please. Before it's to late leave Nick!

Welll . . .I mean. They did such a good job promoting that it was a new episode for once, I can't imagine, after beating the reruns into the ground for months that people didn't turn out or that people who work in television would know you'd need an extended run of new episodes to get the ratings to trend up because they've got to find it, then you have to account for the people who missed it the first week but who are now aware that it's on again.

This used to be, in the days before TV networks believed in everything now now now, called building (or re-building) the audience. But then, what do I know? I don't work in television.

Standard broadcasting fare. Nick is only the distributor and thus they make very little off Power Rangers right now. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, however, is something that they bought the rights to, and they now own that property ... meaning it will get plenty of promotion and air-time.

Saban chose Nick because it was #2 behind Disney in terms of viewership. Now that Saban has The Vortex, I imagine that the Gobuster adaption will air there as opposed to any cable channel.

So what? Megaforce has to be on Nick? ... -.-

I'd imagine its too late for them to move it now.

That wikipedia entry is false. Nick pulled many shows last Saturday, and Samurai was just one of many.

You meant Nickelodeon, but yes Nick didn't show most of their shows.

Wow, I was looking a picture from a disney site as I typed that. Thanks. :D