[Dr Kain]

My complete OhRanger Review:

I just spent the last few days rewatching OhRanger for the first time in about 9 years and OH MY GOD, what the hell happened? This show is boring. The ranger cast are some of the most bland characters out there. I know more about Jury's boobs from one episode than I do of the rangers in their entire 48 episode run. They are down right boring and have no personalities. Not just that, but there is hardly anything memorable in the show as a whole. I mean, DaiRanger has had phenomenal episodes like the ones with Father Magnet, the drunken Tofu, the Oni with the Golden Kick (Vagrant Birdcage), Jin, etc. KakuRanger had the arc when the rangers had to go their separate ways to find their new mechs, the episode where Sasuke's henshin device was being blocked by the Flower Konoichi Team, Jairaya's English speaking moments, etc. But OhRanger, OhRanger has nothing more than Baranoia conquering Earth for half an episode. Where did the show go wrong?

Correction, the OhRanger vs KakuRanger movie is the only thing where OhRanger truly stands out as far as I am conerned.

The first eight episodes are great. They gave this excellent feel, and then everything went away. I know they had to change things due to the subway attacks, but Baranoia suddenly went from a serious threat to goofballs in an episode. After that, the series just pretty much went through gags with babies crying, a wooden robot with a string and red ball for game, to a robot putting people to sleep. Was Bacchushund trying to take over the world through laughter? Or did he think that if his monsters got pathetic enough, the rangers were just feel sorry for him and let him win? And then we have King Ranger, who was kind of useless throughout the entire show because most of the time the rangers could have used his help, he was no where to be found. Instead, we got that pointless Gunmajin, who made absolutely no sense, to help the rangers out when a child asked him to.

All right, let me take a break from the negative to talk about the positives. I liked that the show had a mythological theme to the ranger powers and their first set of mecha. The designs of OhRanger Robo and the individual mechs were very well done. Even OhPuncher was not bad, but OhBLocker and Tackle Boy were completely out of left field and did not feel like they belonged in the show at all. King Pyramider made sense too and I loved how huge he was. The ranger suits are pretty cool in design, as they are simple, but effective. Never cared for the shapes on the helmets though, as that seemed rather bothersome. I mean, does Juri have any sight problems with a line in between her visor?

I liked the overall concept of Baranoia. An empire of machines trying to rule the world was a pretty cool idea. The fact that they were also done like a monarchy was also nicely done. I love how Prince Buldont becomes an adult towards the end of the series as that stuck out as pretty cool and was something I did not expect to see happen. On the other hand, they took way too long to do it. Bacchus should have been killed in the 20s so that Kaiser Buldont would be around in the mid-30s and then spend the last 10 or so episodes of the show having the rangers needing to win the Earth back instead of an episode and a half. Nevertheless, most of their standard monsters sucked. The first few had some great designs, and like I said earlier, started out looking like they were actual threats. Even some of the later monsters such as BaraGoblin and BaraNightmare were pretty damn cool. Outside of those, the majority of the monsters were an utter joke. They either looked stupid or acted stupid.

Overall, the show itself has so many great ideas, but the execution is all wrong. If I recall, this show was written by various past Sentai writers, so how the hell did they drop the ball this badly? I could have forgiven the lack of threatening villain in the middle of the show had the ranger cast not been so boring to watch. Even OhRed was a joke, and the red ranger should be the one with the most character growth of them all. Instead, he never stood out from the other rangers, and felt like the exact same person he was in the first episode. King Ranger had more growth than the main cast, and even his development stopped a few episodes after his introduction. It's like Toei had no idea what they wanted to do with the show after they toned it down, and instead of coming up with something, they just made it up as they went along, making it one of the most disappointing seasons of the series and I can understand why it had the lowest ratings until Go-Buster. Sure, I still think it is better than Go-Buster, but barely.

As I said, the first eight episodes were great. The King Ranger premier was pretty good. The episodes with BaraNightmare and the introduction to OhBlocker episodes and Bacchus' destruction were well done. And the majority of the episodes that feature Kaiser Buldont rocked, but that means that only half of the series is enjoyable, and for a 48 episode series, that is definitely NOT a good thing. Overall, I give the show a 3/10 and all of that is because of what it did do well in.