Let's Watch Wednesdays Week 2 Mahou Sentai Magiranger 4-6 Discussion
 

I'm enjoying the show, but I don't really think we've had the opportunity to get to know MagiBlue enough to feel any real emotion after the Cockatrice gets her. They're doing a good job of establishing the family dynamic, but I'm not feeling any real connection to the characters.

MagiPink is just a bit obnoxious. (And by a bit, I mean lots.) MagiKing is pretty darned awesome, though, and that Phantom Illusion spell was pretty snazzy. Those broomstick/bike things are heavily featured in the opening credits but they don't seem to use them much in the show yet.

We ended this run on a bit of a cliffhanger! I can't wait until next week!

From what I remember, I appreciated that they took time to build up Magiking. It's not so common to wait that long in Super Sentai anymore.

Ah yeah, MagiKing and Wolkaiser debut week. This is going to be a good LWW.

Stage Four.

For a show that is so generally goofy, the introductions of the monsters of the week is surprisingly dark. It was also kinda cool to see the legend of the Magirangers had spread. Vancuria is also awesome, although is it true her suit actor is a dude? But the boobies...

Magiking was handled a lot better The Titan Megazord, as well. Mystic Force played the whole deal as a bit of a joke, but MagiRanger actually made the cockpit a plot point. It was awesome.

It's odd then, for every good moment like this, the show seems to match it beat for beat, with a shit one. Firstly Kai is an insufferable moron, and borderline douchebag. So I'm just waiting for his inevitable transformation into a good person, for an eat my words moment. I'm just hoping it is soon.

Also, this shows treatment of mythology is terrible. "Oh yeah Blue is really good at fortune magic by the way, isn't that convenient? What we haven't established this at all? Oh yeah wear the cloak cuz....magic and stuff. Cool." "Oh yeah also red is alchemy. What does that have to do with anything? Oh well it's convenient, cool."

Plus, even by sentai standards, this show is grossly melodramatic. Seeing Kai scream gibberish, while thrashing with a toy phone until he collapsed was pathetic.

Stage Five.

Really, filler, already? This is probably the worst episode of sentai I've ever watched, I'm serious. It was so boring, so bad, I actually need a break. I'll finish the next episode of this LWW later.

Tokusatsu needs to stop trying to be funny, it never works. Seriously everyone in this team are horrible. Blue likes to burst into tantrums, Kai is a selfish moron, Pink is obtuse to dangerous levels, Yellow is an antagonistic asshat and Green gets jealous of his bloody little brother. Eurgh.

Then to top it all off, it reuses footage from last weeks MagiKing battle for this one. Just, fuck.

I definitely place Wolkaiser/Centaurus Wolf Megazord in my most favorite Megazords/Mecha list.

Think about it, an honest-to-god bad guy Megazord/Mecha! Granted, there was Dragonzord and Q-Rex 1.0 before it, but those don't really count as Tommy was under mind control and Q-Rex was under enemy control after Eric's morpher was stolen. So this makes Wolkaiser/Centaurus Wolf Megazord the first legitimate bad guy Megazord in the history of Power Rangers/Super Sentai.

I'm willing to forgive most of that since the characters are still learning how to use their powers and don't really know what they can do (except for when they do automatically know things, which really weakens my argument here).

Anyhoo, Episode 4

In which Switchblade realizes that he barely remembers Mystic Force. I remember that this episode got mostly transferred over as the first/only Madison spotlight, but that was pretty much it. I think it may have also had a ten-minute motorcycle scene, but I assume that with every Kalish era episode.

I liked this one. The characters are starting to come together and I really liked the bit with Kai and Urara after she was de-petrified. I could use less general squabbling, though, as that gets pretty annoying really fast.

Nai and Mare are still fun, although I'm kind of confused as to how they work. Do they merge together to form Vancuria or does Vancuria split herself into two to become the goth girls?

I liked the explanation behind the cockpit for Magiking. That was a nice touch considering what a weird cockpit it is. I'm pretty sure that Mystic Force never explained why the characters were suddenly chess pieces from the waist down.

I think the more i watch this the more I become sure that this show is more of the Fairy Tale theme Vs the Epic Fantasy that the US adaption tried. For this I blame harry potter's huge international success. Beyond that this week was really good the episodes story wise where a little week but they are still trying to build characters. I don't know if I have said this but I love the Mechs of this show, and seeing Both MagiKing and WolKaiser are up there as two of my Favs. The cliffhanger ending was awesome I'm really excited to see where this goes.

I'm in a very awkaward situation with this show, I don't have any major complaints, nor do I have many good things to say, I enjoyed this last set of episodes, but thought they were very average.

4 wasn't anything to write home about, while 5 was fillerish I do enjoy Houka's character so that compensated it and 6 was overall nice, a great way to further explore Wolzard.

Yeah I actually find Houka's meddling to be her best quality. And I love her goofy transformations :lol

If nothing else it was good to have spotlight on Wolzard this week.

Episode 4
That was an odd start to an episode. I mean I get that it's a precious memory of Ka-san, but still, little dramatic over an accident.

I love how they keep learning about the monsters of the week by gossiping housewives at the market. That just tickles me pink :lol

So the mirror only reports cases related to Infershia? Okay that makes sense. But how would it know when a case is directly linked to Infershia? People could just do that magic spell/prayer for protecting or to mess about with magic. So how does it know when it's not just a regular crime?

And how does wearing a robe increase their magical powers?

It is weird though that out of nowhere we're told that Urara is the fortune teller. No build up or previous mention of it. Just "Oh yeah your special power is fortune telling." I hope not everything like this is so fast paced/rushed.

Hey look it's the inhabitants of Miranoi!

Don't worry about Urara Kai. I'm sure Andros, Karone, or Pikachu would be happy to cry on her for you.

Am I the only one who finds it weird the way Urara was frozen? Arms outstretched and all. Little martyrish don't you think?

Ahhhhhhhh yeah! Magi King is in the hizz house! Though I still don't get the chess themed cockpit.

All in all another good episode. We got to Magi King who is one of my favorite mecha designs...and that was honestly about it for me as far as cool parts go. The rest was kinda meh.

I hope she gets more transformations along the way, because Houka's crazy spells are easily my favorite things from the show. :lol

Yeah, he's cool.

MAJIN FUSION

Ah yes the advent of MagiKing and Wolkaiser, two of the best mecha designs in Sentai. Episode 4 is one of the few times I can join in on the comparing Magiranger to Mystic Force since it's one of the few episodes I remember. From what I vaguely remember from MF, Magi did the episode better. One thing I like about Magiranger is the variety of villians. With Wolzard you get the noble evil badass and with Branken you get the villian that can only come out for really serious moments or the show would end.

But yeah, MagiKing and Wolkaiser are great.

Episode 5

Ah, the "o-baka-chan-tachi" episode. One of the most infamous TV-Nihon moments. I've been wondering when this would show up.

Houka was pretty annoying this time and that bee costume was ridiculous. The mail box thing was legitimately hilarious, though.

Houka, there are a gajillion first-person pronouns in Japanese. You don't have to talk in third person. I know why you're doing it and it isn't working. You're a grown-ass woman now act like it.

Freud would have a field day with the scene where Houka turns into a cannon and shoots Kai.

Kai is a lot taller than I thought when you see the five standing together at the end. I thought he was shorter than all of the others.

Way to be a hearltess bitch, Yamazaki.

Overall, I doubt this show will ever go down as a personal favorite, but I'm kind of starting to enjoy it.

I cringed at the moment. I mean I've never had a beef with them but wow that was painful to read.

It means "fools."

:p

Wow. In complete agreement.

I generally have a pretty high tolerance for goofy Sentai shenanigans, but stage 5 was awful. Because of one thing: Houka. Now, I've found certain Sentai members excruciating before, but I've never actively hated one. I hate Houka. I think she is a terrible character. Like, totally well drawn, but awful. She is literally delusional. She has actual fantasy delusions, and she inflicts them upon her family, to devastating effect. She is a hurricane of delusional idiocy, leaving nothing but destruction in her wake. No amount of increasingly ridiculous (and hilarious) transformations can make up for how horrible she is.

And what was with that fight where the monster turns into a car? Was that Stage 5 too? Regardless: Don't do that anymore! It shatters the giant-scale illusion when the monster is clearly a normal car driving on a dirt road surrounded by shrubs. Terrible.

If it weren't for LWW, I would have given up the series at Stage 5.

Which would have been a shame because the next episode is pretty great. It's all about Wolzard, and whenever this show is about Wolzard, it's immediately compelling. It's pretty obvious where they're leading with him and the kids, but it's fun to watch it play out.

And not to mention... watching his gattai form battle Magiking is magnificent.


Magiranger, you're all over the place. Get it together. You've proven you can be good, now just be good more often.

I'm glad that the team is addressing that their mom is dead and is still important to them after the fact.That was my main issue with a show like Go-Busters,where similarly the team is driven by their "dead" parents,but has to forcibly remind itself every 10 episodes.

The show doesn't need to have a "remember our mom died?" line every episode,but it's nice when they show how important the people or person who brought them together as a team was.

Oh, I know that very well. It's just that it has been years since I last watched Magiranger and I'm more used modern TVN subs where generally the weaboo things left is niisan or neesan or the explaining a japanese word play joke.

I like this guy.

So the next episode is good then? I'd honestly given up after stage 5, but if the next episode is good I may as well give the show one more chance. It is the last episode of this weeks that I have to suffer through.

So I took a chance and watched the final part of this weeks Magiranger segment.

Firstly, his power is over three thousand? Three thousand what? Ranken kinda sucks regardless, Wolzard has already brought him to his knees and proven the power scale, so why is Ranken here?

Either way, I dunno, I'm just not feeling it. I appreciate a good old fashioned badass general as much as the next guy, sentai could do with more Juuzos and Wolzards - although the world could do with a lot less of those annoying lolis Vancuria turns into.

And I appreciated the way the battle was captured, with them smashing into things and going flying, it felt like a proper superhero throwdown like in GARO. They even seemed to put in extra effort for the giant stuff, even if the editing was absolute crap.

But I just hate the core Rangers so much. I figured this was meant to be an emotionally poignant episode as we see Kai try and take revenge for his mother, but he's such an insufferable brat I'd rather he lost.

I can't even write off his attitude as grief, considering EVERYONE in the team are douchebags and there is no way they whole family would react to grief in the same way, unless writers get a kick out of making heroes horrible people.

At least he saved the kid, that makes a nice change, I suppose.

Sentai does this sometimes. The Kakurangers were all total assholes, too. I'm not sure what the idea is behind it, but I'm not a fan (unless they're really fun assholes, like the Kakurangers).

But yeah, I also just watched Episode 6

I liked this one. The action was really good and engaging and we didn't spend too much time getting bogged down with character drama (I realized why I thought Kai was so short - it's because his default expression is "pouting toddler"). Koragg was always my favorite part of Mystic Force (even above Vida) and I'm liking Wolzard here, too. His first transformation into Wolkaiser would have been a lot more menacing if it hadn't been cut together with footage of Mandora Boy hopping around like the horny wolf in old Tex Avery cartoons, though. Two steps forward, one step back, Magiranger.

I'm still liking Nai, but I want to duct tape Mare's mouth shut. Please tell me she's not going to spend the entire damn series parroting Nai.

Nai.

But yeah, I'm still kind of enjoying the show. It will never be my favorite Sentai or anything, but it's a reasonably harmless and reasonably entertaining way to kill ~20 minutes. I'll be back here next week for 7-9.

Episode 5
.....I liked the episode.

It makes sense that Houka would butt in to Kai's personal life. After all, they are brother and sister, she being the older one. It makes sense that she'd put herself into what he's doing, isn't that what siblings do? Also, it is nice she is helping him out with his love life. It does appear if we go by the first episode that she goes out a lot, so she probably has some knowledge about this. So why not help her brother out?

As far as her transformations go, what's so bad about it? It's obviously her special power. Plus she's using it to help her brother out. Yes it's not the most practical use of magic, but I don't get why some of you all think it's bad. It's simply what she as a magician is good at, the same way Urara is good at fortune telling. Yeah she messes up, but once again what's so bad about it? It's obviously being used for both comedic effect and some form of story/character development.

Not quite sure Tsubasa called Houka irresponsible for thinking they will find the Hades Beast. I call that optimism. Then again Tsubasa is a little prick so maybe it's just him being a prick.

Mehhh, another short ground fight. This may be my only real gripe with the series so far. I mean I know they use magic so it's expected that they'd blow through enemies like nothing. But still, kinda sucks when your ground fight is only what, 5 minutes long?

I can't believe this thing turned into a taxi during the mecha fight. The mecha fight itself was pretty lackluster to. Definitely not the best action in this episode.

Ohhhhhhh the irony of the end of the episode :lol

The episode was alright. Nothing great like the others, but it wasn't bad. It was mostly there in my opinion for a romance/comedic episode. Which isn't a bad thing. Not every episode needs to be serious and action. Though I do wish the fights this episode were longer and a bit more action thrilled, but mostly that they were longer.

So yeah, it was an alright episode. It isn't that bad and is no way the worst Sentai episode ever.

My problem with it was, that it was filler at episode five. Episode fucking five, we've literally JUST finished the introductory episodes and we're already on filler.

Not to mention, it wasn't even goofy fun filler, it was just shit. If you find crappy transformations and shitty physical gags funny then power to you, but I prefer my humour dryer and more mature. Or, you know, actually funny. DUUUUUUUR HE SAW PANTS DUUUUUUUR.

Not to mention that what action we got, was shittastic as well. I didn't think tokusatsu giant stuff could be less convincing than it already is, until they literally fight an actual taxi on a bit of dirt.

PLUS. I HATE the Magirangers. Kai is a brat. Green is controlling. Pink is controlling and also a horrible person. Blue is a brat with a tendency for tantrums. Yellow is an obnoxious and unnecessarily antagonistic ass.

I dunno, I've hated pretty much everything about this show up til now, I've tried my hardest to find things to enjoy as I've highlighted in my posts but overall. The production values are non existent, the characterisation is horrible, the humour makes Kyoryuger look grown up, it constantly brushes over the henshin hero aspect and yet puts no extra effort into the giant stuff and the mythology is horrible. Just eurgh.

I'm sorry, I LIKED how Mystic Force did this show. And I've tried my hardest to separate myself away from being a Mystic Force fan to just appreciate this, but my base feeling while watching Magiranger is 'I wish I was watching Mystic Force'.

Personally, what gets me about the transformations is how absolutely shit they look. It's like the show decided to give Houka this ability to turn into other things, but didn't want to spend any money on making it look good. You can practically see the guy behind the pillar waving around the pink oscillating fan.

I like my humor mature as well (if I didn't, George Carlin wouldn't be my favorite comedian). But I need goofy every now and then. Personally I thought this episode was good from the comedic point of view. I'm sure kids eat it up, and some of us adults like it as well. Once again though, this is my personal thoughts on it.

Exactly. They set everything up, they can't always give you a new bit of the story (ironic since my Sentai is all story based >-<). Filler while annoying is necessarily. Yes it may be to early, but considering they in four episodes explained the powers, gave them their weapons, and their mechas and robo, it's not really too surprising they would do some form of filler.

I agree with you on the action aspect of the episode. It just wasn't that good. As for the rangers, only one I hate is Tsubasa, mainly for what you stated.

If you don't like it you don't like it. At least you tried man. As somebody who has come into these shows after watching their Power Ranger equivalents as a kid (well not Zeo or Turbo), it is hard to not think about the PR version. You just have to block it out of your head and watch the Sentai as it's own thing. Of course we all compare the two so it is a bit hypocritical.

Sorry you didn't like it man.

Oh yeah I'm sure young children will eat it up, but then a person moving from behind their hands is hilarious for them.

Filler isn't a necessary evil though, just look at Gaim. If Magiranger hadn't crammed so much into the first four episodes 'oh yeah you're magicians lol k bai' 'oh yeah by the way this is your special power convenient huh?' 'oh yeah use the cloak it makes you more powerful or some shit' then it wouldn't have needed a filler episode. But heaven forbid it slows down for a second, the kids might get bored!

I'll agree it is too soon to have a goofball episode like 5,but that didn't keep me from enjoying it.I like episodes like these because we get to see how the team interacts within itself.I'm totally into the concept of the team being a literal family and with that comes episodes like these.I honestly would like to see more focus between the others more than just their relationships with Kai.I can see why people wouldn't care for these guys.I've endured my own unbearable Sentai teams,so they haven't placed on my "worst team ever" radar yet.

Siblings have their own issues with themselves and with each other.Forcing this kind of burden on them out of the blue isn't gonna automatically make them play nice with each other.I'm want to see them grow to become a better team and as a family.

I get it guys,I've been there.I've been patient with certain Sentai teams for their entire 50 episode runs,just waiting for them to do something to completely make my opinion of them do a 180 and completely dropping the ball.I'm very patient,I know some people need reasons for sticking around sooner rather than later and I respect that.But people stuck up for this show to get it nominated and I want to see why.

I think I might have just grown out of super sentai, honestly.

I still appreciate Rider a lot, as those shows tend to focus on the story and the characters, with action often feeling like an after thought. While sentai is the complete opposite.

There are shows like Goseiger where the fights are just so well done, I can look past all the narrative and character problems but I've honestly not been all that impressed with the action of this show either. The Henshin Hero stuff feels really tacked on, but despite the show falling over itself to get to Giant Stuff it isn't even well done.

Honestly, Sentai is probably my least favorite of the big tokusatsu franchises. It seems to rely far more on recycled plots, recycled characters, and even a lot of recycled cinematography. I doubt there's been anything really unique in Super Sentai for years, just a lot of variations on the same stories over and over. Sure, some of those variations are interesting, but on the whole I just don't care for Sentai as much as I do for Rider or Ultra.

Watching these, I sort of remembered how weird it was that Vancuria's main source of company is herself (in Night and Mare form). She's really interesting.

Houka was just funny. her trying to help in kai's love, but instead making it worst was amusing. their first serious conflict and they take a major blow but come out of it still standing, in the process learning how dangerous wolzard is. although evil, he has honor. seing them gain magiking reminded me how it is one of my favorite robo designs, also I just noticed wolzard's feet look like those of a gundam.

I think I'm more entertained by the absurdity of Super Sentai than you are.

Typically, I'm very critical when it comes to fiction (it comes from the years of film school and decades of film/tv obsession).

But for some reason, Super Sentai is impervious to criticism for me. I watch these shows, and even when something shitty happens, I'm able to let it wash over me.

The badness often becomes an inseparable part of why I watch the series -- it becomes one piece of the ridiculous, relentless, everything-plus-the-kitchen-sink narrative. The more absurd, bombastic, flashy, and illogical a Sentai show becomes, the more I like it.

Which is why hating Stage 5 is so alarming! This is an episode I should have dug, but I actively disliked it.

Here's hoping there's less of that going forward. I'm committed to this LWW, but if things go that direction again... who knows what I'm capable of. :lol

Episode 6
He calls it Emperor Sword KillFang? Why not just "My sword KillFang?" What's the emperor part got to do with anything? Wolzord out powered the crap out of Branken. So why isn't he in charge? After all he's strong and is the one doing all of the magic for them. So shouldn't he be in charge?

D'awwwwwwwwwwwwww! Kai fell asleep to his mother's song. That is so adorable! Why do the others find it so odd that Kai had a vision of Wolzord? I mean come on they all have strange magical powers, you'd think if one of them said "I had a vision about our enemy. He wants us to go meet meet him" that they wouldn't blink an eye at it. But they treat him like he's delusional. Seriously what the hell guys?

Oh my God Kai is a Super Saiyan!

LMFAO That kid just being there and Kai's like "Ehhhh, Hi!"

Kai you have my permission to tell these dumb asses "I told you so" and do the Cartman laugh.

Okay those two fights were AWESOME! The fight between Kai and Wolzord was just excellent. It had great choreography, nice battle music, had a fairly good amount of back and forth, and didn't last for too short of a time or overstay it's welcome. It was just plain awesome. And the fight with Magi Dragon was plain epic as well. Like the fight before it, nice balance of back and forth and it didn't burn out too quick or last too long. So these two fights combined are just damn freaking awesome!

Huh, so it in this universe it takes more then courage or something completely different from courage to fuel black magic? That's kinda interesting. Not by a whole lot but hey it's something.

Okay so he kinda has a form of honor, though as he said it's more of a code then anything. Pretty cool that this story element is in Magiranger. I wonder how it will develop.

Oh snap! ***** just played them like a yoyo!

WolKaiser...you...look...bad...fucking...ass! And oh shit, he stole their magic? Yeah that's freaking hardcore and dastardly as all hell. First he lets them off him so he can absorb their magic to turn into WolKaiser, and now he's stole their fusion magic. All of this in one episode. Just damn.

A wild Branken has appeared!

The fight against Braken was kinda boring. I don't know, it just doesn't hold up to the two other fights we had in the episode. It wasn't bad, just kinda boring as I said.

Yay! Mare and Nare host this segment this episode!

So episode 6, fucking awesome. I'm not going to lie, this is my favorite episode so far. It had some nice drama in it, but it was just made by the fights between Magi Red and Wolzard, and Magi Dragon VS Wolzard. Those two bouts are easily some of the best I have ever seen in Sentai. Not much else to say other then AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You like Night and Mare, don't you, Winston? :lol

What makes you say that? :lol

Well...their fashion sense seems up your alley. :lol And also:

You got me skippy! :lol

Generally, I think they're more interesting separated than as Vancuria.