Fanfic / Power Rangers Zoo Keepers

Power Rangers ZOO-KEEPERS is a fanfic adaptation of Doubutsu Sentai Zyuohger written by AmericanElephant. It tells the story of Benny Washi, a zookeeper at Dolphin Coast in New Zealand who ends up embroiled in the battle between the group of Power Rangers inheriting the powers of the ancient Zooman civilisation and the Shooting Star Poachers who have come to Earth.

Standard Power Rangers tropes include:

• Animal-Themed Superbeing:
  • Noble Bird of Prey (Eagle): The Red Ranger's primary theme. Also the theme for the Hawk Ranger.
  • (Gorilla): The Red Ranger's secondary theme.
  • Threatening Shark: The Blue Ranger's theme.
  • King of Beasts: The Yellow Ranger's theme, which is appropriate considering that Zyuoh means "Beast King".
  • War Elephants: The Green Ranger's theme.
  • Panthera Awesome (Tiger): The White Ranger's theme.
  • Rhino Rampage: One of the Trino Ranger’s themes.
  • Noble Wolf: One of Trino's other themes.
  • Never Smile at a Crocodile: The last of Trino's themes.
  • Super Mode: Red's Whale Battlizer form.
• Big Bad Ensemble: Sagittar is the main threat the Rangers face, but King Kemplo of the Zoomen also serves as a threat, trying to destroy all evidence of their civilisation among humans.
• By the Power of Grayskull!: Zoo Mode, Go!
• City of Adventure: Dolphin Coast. Unique int that it’s based in New Zealand rather than California.
• Color-Coded Characters: Played straight with the main five, but taken to a new extreme with the Trino Ranger, who manages to be the first tri-colored Sixth Ranger colored in Gold, Silver, and Black.
• Humongous Mecha: The Cubimals.
  • Animal Mecha: Obvious, considering the title. Beyond the ten personal Zords corresponding to the Rangers, listed above:
    • Bears Are Bad News: The Grizzly Bear Zord, which also has an upgraded form that's a panda.
    • Bat Out of Hell: The Vampire Bat Zord
  • Combining Mecha:
    • Bald Eagle + Reef Shark + African Lion = Zoo King Megazord
    • Mountain Gorilla + Siberian Tiger + Pygmy Elephant = Wild Kong Megazord
    • Zoo King + Wild Kong + Reticulated Giraffe + Star-Nosed Mole = Zooman Fusion Megazord
    • Rhino + Timber Wolf + Saltwater Crocodile: Safari Shadow Megazord
    • Zoo King + Wild Kong + Safari Shadow + all four expansions = Nature Defender
    • Zoo King + Wild Kong + Safari Shadow + Whale Warrior + all four expansions = Animal Kingdom Ultrazord
  • Leader Forms the Head: The mecha are formed by stacking Cubimals on top of each other. The Cubes on top of the stacks and form the head, arms, and chest for both the Zoo King and Wild Kong Megazords belong to Benny. The Animal Kingdom Ultrazord uses the Whale to form the entire upper body, equipped with the auxiliary cubes on its arms and containing at least part of the Rhino Zord, while Cubes 1-8 form its legs.
  • Mecha Expansion Pack:
    • The Reef Shark and African Lion Zord can be switched with the Siberian Tiger and Pygmy Elephant Zords or the Timber Wolf and Saltwater Crocodile Zords on both the Zoo King and Wild Kong Megazords, which give different capabilities - Zoo King using Wild Kong's legs gives it extra speed and kick attacks.
    • Episode 3 reveals that smaller cubes, marked with exclamation points and turning from cubes into animals into weapons, have been scattered around the world. These include Reticualted Giraffe (forms a bazooka), Star-nosed Mole (forms a drill), Grizzly Bear ( forms an axe, and can be upgraded into its Golden Super Mode Golden Panda), and Vampire Bat (forms a boomerang).
    • Later episodes reveal that Harris is gathering up more dormant Cubimals, and shows him finding a Leopard Zord (a repaint of the bear that forms a hammer). It, along with a Zebra (repaint of Giraffe), platypus (repaint of Mole) and owl (repaint of Bat), would later be absorbed into their enemy Blockhead, though they were ultimately freed from him.
    • Late in the series, the Rangers find the Giant Pacific Octopus Zord , which is marked with a ? and, size-wise, is halfway between the main numbered Cubimals and the smaller ! ones. It makes a backpack for the Zoo King to upgrade it into the Octo-Block Megazord and spins its tentacles like a rotor to allow flight.
  • Transforming Mecha: All of the mecha transform from cubes into animals, with the exception of the Rhino. The Whale additionally has a third humanoid mode, the Whale Warrior Megazord.
• In the Name of the Moon:
  Benny: Keeper of the Skies! Red Eagle Ranger!/Keeper of the Jungle, Red Gorilla Ranger!/Keeper of the Animal Kingdom, Red Whale Battlizer!
  Jackie: Keeper of the Ocean, Blue Shark Ranger!
  Caleb: Keeper of the Savannah, Yellow Lion Ranger!
  Winston: Keeper of the Forest, Green Elephant Ranger!
  Sylvia: Keeper of the Tundra, White Tigress Ranger!
  Derrick: Keeper of the Ground, Black Trino Ranger!”
  All: Power Rangers Zoo-Keepers!
  Benny: You go ballistic, we go animalistic!
• Law of Chromatic Superiority: Benny is notably the only member of the team to have a personal weapon (the Eagle/Feather Shredder), a secondary form change (the Red Gorilla Ranger), and a second mecha (Mountain Gorilla Zord). Then again, Zoo-Killer/Black Trino Ranger outdoes him with his own multimode personal weapon and a third form change and mecha. At least until Benny gets his own third weapon/form/mecha aim the Whale.
• Make My Monster Grow: As always. This time, it's done by inserting a Medal into the slot on a monster.
• Mini Dress Of Power: Part of the girls' suits.
• Protagonist Power-Up Privileges: As mentioned above, Benny gets a disproportionate amount of power-ups compared to the rest of the team. In fact, he's the only one to receive anything beyond the basic one that the whole team has.
• Rod-and-Reel Repurposed: Black's weapon, is a fishing rod that can also be used as a gun or a spear.
• Transformation Trinket: The Keeper Cubes, which resemble a Rubik's cube that can unfold into a mobile phone.
  • Black Trino's changer is a flashlight.
  • The Whale Morpher for the Whale Battlizer, a golden cube that can fold inside out to become a Hand Cannon.
• Two Girls to a Team: Blue Shark and White Tigress. This is also the first team where there are two girls using blue and white as their ranger designations.
• Villains Act, Heroes React: As is the norm for Power Rangers, we generally get a Deathgalien Player appearing with an Evil Plan Once an Episode, with our heroes then arriving on the scene to stop them.

Tropes unique to ZOO KEEPERS include:

• Abusive Parents: Deconstructed with Derrick. Though his mother treated him horribly and his father was complicit, news of her being put on life support shakes him into pondering whether to visit her or not, and her death shakes him because while there was little love between them, she was his mother and was responsible for his existence. He eventually makes his peace with his father in the finale.
• Action Mom: Benny’s mother Martha is an ally to the Rangers who proves capable in a fight, even becoming an 11th-Hour Ranger in the third to last chapter.
• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul:
  • Whereas Ginis and Naria’s relationship was described best as “master and servant”, Sagittar and Midaria are a case of Unholy Matrimony and her death in the finale enrages Sagittar into destroying the Ranger personally.
  • Bangray and the unnamed Turtle Zyuman never met in Zyuohger, whereas Captain Psycholapod is King Kemplo’s dragon.
• Adaptation Species Change: The 4 main Zyumans from the source material are regular humans here.
• Adaptational Villainy: The entire Zooman population. In Zyuohger, the worst they showed towards humans was Fantastic Racism, that went away when their worlds merged. Here, the Zooman civilisation seeks to disassociate from Earth to the point of being willing to murder the Rangers simply for using their technology. But it gets subverted, as a heroic faction arises to overthrow them and reconnect with humanity.
  • Frickin’ Gosei is revealed to be Emperor Mavro’s brother, having set up the Rangers to allow him the opportunity to seize control of the Armada.
• Ascended Extra: Huntoceros’ Sentai counterpart was a Monster of the Week., while he himself is a Sixth Ranger Traitor for the villains in Season 1.
• Bad Boss: Sagittar has Insidion and Blockhead mind-wiped to force their loyalty.
• Canon Welding: The last few chapters link the plot to Power Rangers Jungle Fury, revealing that the Masters were disguised Zoomans and Sagittar is the origin of Rinzin Power.
• Cast as a Mask: Implied, with the voice assigned for Zoo-Killer being different to the one for Derrick, his civilian identity.
• Comic-Book Fantasy Casting: Every new character has the voice the writer has in his head for them listed underneath their first lines of dialogue.
• Composite Character: The two characters of the day from Leo’s first two solo focus episodes are merged into one here, who becomes Caleb’s Love Interest.
  • In the crossover with Power Rangers Ninja Steel, Emma from that series starts out with Yoshiharu’s Red Ranger costume (which was recycled from the one used for Dane Romero in the series proper), before later receiving the Green Ranger costume used by Luna Kokonoe.
  • Decomposite Character: Mantle gets demoted to extra, with his role in Zyuohger’s Myth Arc given to Hunterji’s counterpart.
• Creator Provincialism: While the fic sets itself in New Zealand, the dialogue is full of American English spellings and the Zoo is based off one in the author’s home city. The only one who talks like a native New Zealander is Caleb, who is ironically British.
• Darker and Edgier:
  • Than most regular Power Rangers series, with more graphic violence, depiction of realistic firearms and explicit human death.
  • Benny in particularly has a much darker backstory than even Andros, Scott or Brody. His dog died because he got careless, his father vanished on an expedition shortly after Benny yelled at him to go away and never come back and he mentally blocked out the fact his father had died.
• Foreshadowing: Near the end of Season 1, Sagittar’s body begins to flicker at intermittent moments, which he never comments on. Once he turns out to be a Hive Mind, the author reveals that those moments were members of the hive rebelling to try and take control.
• Freudian Excuse: Sagittar’s hatred towards Earth stems from being persecuted by humans and Zoomans alike for being a Hive Mind entity.
  • Harris’ contempt towards Zanakanda and the Zoomans stems from seeing them murder Benny’s dad Caleb just for stepping foot in their dimension.
• Gratuitous Japanese: Tons. Benny and Martha’s surname is “Washi” (eagle), the Ranger’s teleport command is “Doubutsu” (animal) and Harris’s power activation command is “Honno Kakusei” (Instincts, Awaken).
• Informed Species: Played for Laughs. The monsters are all said to be created from mutated animal DNA (something unique to this story), but the Rangers note twice that the monster doesn’t look like the animal it claims to be.
• Mad Libs Catchphrase: Every monster growth has Midaria saying some variant of “Let’s see how you do on the macro scale” to the monster.
• Mythology Gag: Harris’s power command is the transformation phrase from Zyuohger.
  • While the Zyuman forms for blue, green, yellow and white were adapted out, they appear in Harris’s flashbacks as King Kemplo’s henchmen.
  • The Rangers keep the Link Cube safe using a field powered by Morph-X provided by Grid Battleforce.
  • Martha and Randall were able to fund the expeditions to recover the Link Cube with the help of Andrew Hartford.
• Relationship Upgrade: By the finale, Everyone except for Derrick and Sylvia has ended up in a relationship, with Benny and Jackie being the one in the team.
• Retcon: Early in season 2, it’s revealed that the reason the Rangers never think to attack Midaria when she goes to grow the monster is because the monsters’ bodies send out a signal that dissuades them from attacking as long as they’re intact. The author felt this was a bit too ridiculous, so later chapters instead establish that the monster’s body simply teleports away to where Midaria can grow it safely.