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01-06-2020, 05:44 PM | #8251 |
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7 is Naruhisa Arakawa's first crack at writing the show, and he immediately reminds me why I like him by having the very first thing that happens be the narrator nearly getting killed by some stray shuriken, which I can't help but interpret as an subtle act of rebellion against the format on his part...
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01-06-2020, 08:09 PM | #8252 |
The Immortal King Tasty
Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: Every diner you've ever been to.
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Kakuranger 10-11:
The double digits kick off with... look, I don't want to call it a "clunker", it's just that, well, that's the word that comes to mind. There's an interesting enough gimmick to the monster, a Youkai who creates a "family" for himself by going around disguised as a crying baby, luring people to the stroller he's in and then stealing their souls so he can put them in his collection of dolls. That probably sounds pretty crazy and fun, and it is, but from a critical perspective, I can't ignore that there's nothing else to the episode. There aren't any exciting twists in the plot, you don't learn anything about the characters, and the action is about standard, aside from the excitement of seeing the Kakurangers pay homage to Goranger by kicking a football around, which is admittedly awesome. So, just to be clear again, the episode isn't awful, it's just I've already seen far better from this show. Things pick up a bit for episode 11, which still isn't one of the show's best, but benefits from stronger characterization. It plays off previously established traits of the Kakurangers, namely that Tsuruhime gets no respect, Seikai is a skirt chaser, and that everyone hates each other. And they're all idiots. So to see Seikai tell Tsuruhime he'll help with laundry, only to go try and pawn off everyone's clothes at the flea market as part of a scheme to get a date is both logical and hilarious. Seeing Sasuke, Saizou, and Jiraiya jump straight to trying to beat the s*** out of Seikai in public when they find out what's going on is even funnier. When the episodes go this insane, they don't need a whole lot more to them for me to have a great time. Quote:
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Also the Nezirezia tried to breed another army of sea monsters, this time with the intent of poisoning the oceans. Only after their plan to use humans as a fuel source for a laser to kill more humans failed, of course. Yikes. I don't think I've ever been rooting for the heroes in a show harder.
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01-07-2020, 07:00 PM | #8253 |
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Kakuranger 12-13:
Episode 12 starts off simply enough, with some mooks going around absorbing children into a big ball of mud, and a mysterious town where everyone is in a trance, but really this is all a formality to get the back half, a battle royale so epic, it had to be filmed in a quarry. It's the Kakurangers versus around a half dozen old Youkai led by one new one, and the episode gets to deliver by devoting so much time to a single elongated fight like this. It feels like an occasion, even before the introduction of the Jusho Fighters. They're neat and all, but considering Muteki Shogun can still defeat any enemy in 30 seconds or less just by giving them a menacing glare and then going for the finisher, I have to question how much extra help is really needed here. Maybe the Kakurangers just believe in fair play, I don't know. 13 is about a Youkai who makes people unlucky. I repeat, episode 13 is about bad luck. It could be a coincidence, but that'd only make the timing that much spookier. Anyway, this one has a lot of the issues as some of my least favorite episodes so far, like the nearly nonexistent characterization of the heroes, and a plot that's a little too "sane", for lack of a better word. However, I actually enjoyed this one a lot, which I think is mostly down to the aforementioned Youkai having such a strong personality. He borders on being obnoxious, which should be a problem in its own right, but the fact that he's the bad guy means he gets his comeuppance by the end. Said comeuppance unfortunately doesn't come from Muteki Shogun for once, which really speaks either to how pathetic a monster we're dealing with, or how shameless a toy company, considering the task is left to the Jusho Fighters for no particular reason. They even got as many clips added to the opening as some sixth Rangers do!
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01-08-2020, 08:46 PM | #8254 |
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Kakuranger 14-15:
14 continues the streak of the show really wanting you to know how totally cool and amazing the Jusho Fighters are. I don't know why this is sticking out to me so much more than usual. Obviously Sentai is all about the merch, but the sheer amount of reverence these things have been getting just feels strange to me for whatever reason. Youkai are now basing their plans entirely around their ability to defeat them, and the Kakurangers themselves talk about the things like their arsenal was totally understocked before they came along. It's just some cheap clones of the robots you already had! They don't even combine! I don't even know when you guys learned the technique to summon them because Sasuke just gave the order to use them in 12 like it was some secret weapon you always had! It probably sounds like I'm complaining, but honestly, all this weirdness jives perfectly with the kind of show Kakuranger is. A show where a visit to the doctor for a stomach ache can end with nurses storming into the room with comically oversized scalpels and syringes, and new enemy commanders are punk rockers who make their presence known by manifesting images of terrifying giant skulls in the sky. There's an energy to it all that makes it hard not to have fun with whatever the show wants to throw at me. Especially when it throws an episode as good as 15 at me! Geez, that was spectacular. I think this is the first time an episode of this show has really gotten me dramatically invested in the plight of the heroes, but that's not much of a surprise when the plot takes the training wheels off like this. So, new bad guy leader Junior launches his goon squad on a mission to destroy the Kakurangers once and for all (after warning them about how dangerous the Jusho Fighters are, of course), and he does not play around. Our intrepid gang of bumblers are lured into a forest and promptly hunted down one by one like animals, resulting in an episode that's at maximum tension nearly the entire time. I can't even really analyze much of what I saw because I was way too busy being on the edge of my seat to even process it that much. I didn't even consciously realize how much I was getting into things until almost the end. And what an ending it is! That is how you do a cliffhanger, right there. I am beyond pumped to see the back half of this.
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01-09-2020, 08:34 PM | #8255 |
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Kakuranger 16-17:
Episode 16, man. I love this stuff. Love it, love it, love it. There's nothing quite like a good superhero story where the protagonist has to succeed against impossible odds by relying on cunning and skill rather than raw power, and this is a 10/10, perfectly executed version of that. It's also the perfect use of a two-part format, since the last episode ended at the exact lowest point for the Kakurangers, making the inevitable comeback revenge here that much more satisfying. I could gush about this one for days. Seeing Sasuke fighting back huge gashes while evading his pursuers, him sneaking around in air vents, cleverly slipping his tied up teammates a file, and then deliberately attracting the bad guys' attention to give them time to escape, it's all so dang engaging. If I wanted to criticize something, it'd be the continued questionable purpose of the Jusho Fighters, but I don't want to criticize that. Like I said, the show is pushing them so hard it becomes more adorable than anything, and here, it not only leads to a good fight scene, but it's the best of both worlds, since the monsters still learn the hard way what the "Muteki" in Muteki Shogun means in the end. This is some grade-A Super Sentai right here, make no mistake. It's easily my favorite single episode of Kakuranger so far, and, while time will tell how much it sticks with me, it may very well go down as one of my favorite Sentai episodes in general. It's almost definitive in how awesome it is, if that makes any sense. Like it just perfectly encapsulates the genuine, uncomplicated glee of seeing people in colorful spandex beat up evil monsters that makes this franchise so compelling. I don't know if it's just because I'm in such a good mood from the previous episode, but 17 was a very enjoyable, standard sort of episode. A simple premise with a Youkai going after Saizou because she lost a fight to his ancestor way back, the usual little kid who learns a life lesson, nothing too crazy. Ordinarily, that'd be bad news for Kakuranger, which works wonders with crazy, but the execution of this episode is so solid I can't find much to pick apart. Saizou gets to be both fun and cool, so as a spotlight it does its job of making him seem more appealing as a character, and there's some really strong action, including some great use of the classic artificial sunset backdrop for dramatic effect. The episode keeps things so focused and trim, the Jusho Fighters don't even show up, which means the mecha action part of the episode lasts under a minute total, because once again, this is Mu~te~ki Shogun we're dealing with. There's also been some minor stylistic changes to the show in the past few episodes I might as well mention. The addition of a tease of that episode's Youkai in the opening is pretty neat (and took the spot of one of the Jusho Fighters' somewhat excessive three shots), but the quizzes at the end? Not feeling those so much. First of all, it took a few episodes for them to realize the answer should probably be displayed more prominently on-screen than the text for the credits it's surrounded by, at which point they changed it to a nice big, centered box. But the whole concept itself is a bit strange. The questions themselves so far are pretty weaksauce (guess what color Ninja Blue's underwear are!), and I'm not entirely sure why the show suddenly decided they needed a hook to entice people to stick around during the commercial break to make it to the credits. Was nobody watching that ad break and the sponsors got angry? Did Toei just want to make sure as many people as possible were grooving to Ninja Matenrou Kids? Because I can totally get behind that cause, it's just, a quarter of the show went by without this being an issue, you know?
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01-12-2020, 04:56 PM | #8256 |
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Join Date: Feb 2019
Posts: 2,448
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All of Saban Era I on DVD up to Go Go V and finished Dai (Great ) Ranger on DVD.
For Jetix I watched the Jungle Fury and RPM source shows. Also Samurai and Mega Force Part 1. Last edited by wentwood; 01-13-2020 at 12:40 PM.. |
01-13-2020, 09:27 AM | #8257 |
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Join Date: Oct 2019
Posts: 462
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I just watched the Megaranger version of Five of a Kind and I must say I LOVE both Shun and Yuusaku, they are such awesome characters!
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01-13-2020, 12:36 PM | #8258 |
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Join Date: Feb 2019
Posts: 2,448
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Did the Astro Rangers fight a bee and an elephant in Power Rangers In Space? I was watching Mega Ranger on DVD recently so I wanted to ask.
Also for Mega Ranger I'm on Protect It - The Mysterious Boy's Forest. When was the Silver Ranger's entry? Also Mega Ranger's version of the Psycho Rangers leg of the series? |
01-13-2020, 05:18 PM | #8259 |
Member
Join Date: Oct 2019
Posts: 462
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The Japanese Psycho Rangers(Nejirangers) took forever to debut, it's at like episode 38! I just checked MegaSilver, it was episode 24.
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01-13-2020, 07:50 PM | #8260 |
The Immortal King Tasty
Join Date: Jan 2012
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Posts: 3,833
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Kakuranger 18-19:
18 is an instant winner for me simply for being about Jiraiya, so anything else it does right is basically extra credit. Which would make this episode a serious overachiever. Not only is the focus on my favorite character, the plot they chose to put him at the forefront of is my absolute favorite stock Sentai plot, the reluctant monster. In this case, a perfectly nice Youkai taking the form of a child, who Jiraiya becomes extraordinarily invested in befriending in a very short span of time, since he's so dang warmhearted. Which means it really stinks for him when Junior shows up to turn everything to s*** and brainwash said Youkai into going on a rampage. Junior kinda steals the spotlight in this one. Every scene he's in is just such a delight. You've seen villains teleport away from a battle before, but how many of them do it while laughing maniacally and giving the bird to the heroes? This guy is so nuts. I hate him, and I love that I hate him. Dude comes after Jiraiya, knocks him out of his transformation so he's lying helpless on the ground, and then busts out the chainsaw. He even tells Jiraiya "goodbye" in English, just to make the barely averted gruesome murder that much more personal. And all this is before he straight up roasts the Youkai to death by firing evil red lighting from the eyes of his ever-terrifying "sky skull" form. Which is naturally followed by more laughter. Yeah, suffice it to say, between this and the forest trap thing a few episodes back, Kakuranger has found itself a heck of a villain. And this is a heck of an episode. They even skip out on doing the quiz at the end so as not to kill the emotion. This is all followed up in 19, which is its own plot featuring a gross spider Youkai and something of a horror flavor, with a lot of awesome darkly-lit cinematography, but as it goes along it puts in some extra effort to connect back to the last episode, and really give the impression there's a growing animosity between the Kakurangers and Junior. There's a great back and forth right now where Junior is pretty much untouchable, and yet the Kakurangers don't come off as ineffectual. They're still stopping the monsters of the week, but that's of little long-term consequence to Junior, and even if they have the skills to get out of it, everyone but Sasuke deliberately walking into a trap because they're that desperate to get back at him says a lot about how much Junior is getting into their heads. All in all, a solid episode, which has at least one advantage over 18 in that this one features Muteki Shogun, complete with its own insert theme, slicing up the monster, which is awesome. Although it probably says something about how good 18 was that I didn't even feel the need to mention them only using the Jusho Fighters in it.
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