The 14th season of Power Rangers, based on Mahou Sentai Magiranger. After an earthquake hits the city of Briarwood, a stranger appears and asks for help locating someone in the nearby forest. But the local townsfolk are superstitious about the woods, and the only one brave enough to volunteer is Nick, a wanderer just passing through. A group of locals join him, not wanting to be shown up by an outsider.The teens soon discover the secret of Briarwood Forest: it is home to a pocket dimension inhabited by mystical creatures, and the stranger who summoned them is a powerful sorceress. More than that, their bravery marks them as wizards destined to protect both them and the human realm from the forces of the Underworld that have been freed by the quake. They are given the power to become Rangers to give their magical powers an extra edge, but if they're going to win they'll need to find out what happened years ago when the monsters were sealed...Mystic Force isn't remembered as one of the best Rangers series, but it is serviceable. The main complaint is that the story increasingly revolves around Nick, shoving the others into the background. As with Wild Force, it's also disliked for a lack of originality, being more or less just Magiranger with a new cast. The Kalishplosions were also heavily prevalent.Succeeded by Power Rangers Operation Overdrive.Now has a character sheet.
Tomboy and Girly Girl: Vida and Madison - interestingly reversed from Magiranger; Urara has about the same personality as Madison, but is her team's Tomboy because Houka is just that girly. And appropriately enough, Vida hates the color pink.
"Strong as a tree! Green Mystic Ranger!" "Ever-changing as the wind! Pink Mystic Ranger!" "Fluid as the sea! Blue Mystic Ranger!" "Fast as lightning! Yellow Mystic Ranger!" "Forceful as fire! Red Mystic Ranger!" "Flurry of snow! White Mystic Ranger!" "Power of the sun! Solaris Knight!" "Burning heart of fire! Wolf Warrior!" "We call forth the magic! Power Rangers Mystic Force!"
This subseries contains examples of:
Acting for Two: Barnie Duncan not only played Toby but he also once reprised his role from S.P.D. as Piggy.
Actor Allusion: Mystic Mother, as a tribute to the late Machiko Soga. "Known as Rita in the dark days..." Soga played Bandora (MMPR's Rita Repulsa) in Kyoryu Sentai Zyuranger, and Magiel in Magiranger, one of her final roles before her death in 2006.
All There in the Manual: If not for the official websites, we'd have no idea what Clare and Toby's last names were.
Arbitrary Skepticism: Nick takes some time to believe in magic, given that he clearly sees people all around him using it all throughout the first episode. Additionally, when Vida is turned into a vampire and Chip realizes it, the rest of the team laughs it off. Sure, we have magic powers and fight a wolf man and a vampire on a regular basis, but there's no way that Vida could have been turned into a vampire! Wait...
Ascended Fanboy: Chip is obsessed with fairy tales and comic books, so he's the most excited to become a Ranger.
Big Badass Wolf: Koragg the Knight Wolf/Leanbow the Wolf Warrior.
Body Horror: The Master erupts from Matoombo like a demonic cephalopod chestburster.
Book Ends: Nick begins the series riding into Briarwood. The last we see of him is riding out, only now with his mother and father.
Broken Aesop: "Dark Wish". After being told all season to embrace their mystic abilities, the Rangers are given the Fantastic Aesop to not use magical shortcuts. This is enforced when the villains get Jenji and use their genie wish to strip the Rangers of their powers (a magical shortcut that totally works, by the way). And the Rangers' reward for learning not to use magic is stronger magic.
A second one is when Itassis asks why the Rangers continuously defeat the Terrors despite the latter's greater power. The answer she gets is "We're more courageous than you". This is despite the fact that Isassis personally bailed the Rangers out when four of them were down for the count and the other two couldn't morph and killed a Terror the Rangers couldn't scratch because of the 'Rules of Darkness'. Then there's the whole 'one Terror vs six Rangers' thing.
The Cameo/Continuity Nod: The Mystic Mother, played by Machiko Soga, best known for Rita Repulsa stateside before Rita encountered Zedd.
"The Mystic Mother. She was known as Rita in the Dark Times."
Jenji also shares a scene with S.P.D.'s Piggy in "Ranger Down".
Canis Latinicus: The show is surprisingly good about using actual Latin, Greek, and Welsh words for spells (if not proper use of either grammar or Magic A Is Magic A to match), but a few stinkers got by, such as "Hilarium Shenolia".
The Charmer: Xander fancies himself as one - though trying "Plan Xander" on the monsters usually gets his ass kicked.
Chekhov M.I.A.: Nick being adopted + Udonna's search for her lost husband and missing baby = Surprise!
Chekhov's Gunman: Phineas seems to be a harmless Plucky Comic Relief character who occasionally gives advice to the Rangers at first. It isn't until later do we find out that he was the one who rescued Bowen and brought him outside the mystic realm to protect him.
Chess Motifs: The Titan Megazord cockpit is laid out like a chessboard, which the Rangers take as a sign to "think strategically". In that vein, they occasionally used "Checkmate!" as a Bond One-Liner.
Jenji also demonstrated some butt kicking moves when the Rangers were incapacitated.
Clare, ever the bumbler, managed to tap into some powers by way of ancestry, and even slapped around The Dragon during her spotlight episode.
Crossover: Very briefly with SPD when Piggy shows up in one episode and speaks with Jenji. Apparently he's been living on Earth long before aliens integrated with humans.
Despair Event Horizon: Udonna reaches the edge when she finds out Leanbow has been turned back into Koragg, realizing that either he or the Rangers will destroy the other, in addition to her son already being lost. Subverted when she finds Nick's blanket, which belonged to her lost son...
A Form You Are Comfortable With: For starters, Udonna tries to give the rangers ordinary magic wands, but concedes that wand phones are more in line with contemporary tastes.
Fusion Dance: Nick fuses with Fireheart for his Battlized mode, and the other Rangers merge to make the Mystic Lion zord.
Hollywood Genetics: Udonna looks Irish, her husband Leanbow looks Spanish, and their son Bowen/Nick looks Arabic (Firass Dirani is Aussie-Lebanese), and is much darker skinned than either parent.
Instant Runes: The Rangers, the old guard, the bad guys, and Legend Warrior Mode each have a pretty mystic seal (the Legend seal is only seen in the zord cockpit, though).
Magic A Is Magic A: Unfortunately not; the American production sadly broke Magiranger's defined spell system and were too lazy to make their own work as intended (come on, BVS: is it really that hard to re-film fingers dialing a phone?)
Magic Warrior: Clare inherited the powers of the Gatekeeper from her mother (even though she only used them in only in a lone two-parter).
Magical Security Cam: Averted; Nick and Vida have to swipe security footage of them morphing in "Fire Heart", and it's not even Stock Footage.
Obviously Evil: Inverted with Leanbow. His Ancient Mystic mode looks much more demonic than his "Koragg" armor, even though he uses the former as a hero and the latter as a villain.
Pink Means Feminine: Played with. The Pink Ranger isn't the team's Girly Girl for once and even borders on "butch". But the trope is affirmed in that Vida is not a fan of the color.
Portal Network: The Rangers travel through the forest's trees to get around.
Recursive Import: This series gets dubbed in Japan, but unlike in the case of Power Rangers SPD, the Magiranger actors don't get to voice their counterparts.
Secret Test of Character: The Tribunal of Magic sets two of them before the Rangers; one is if they're brave enough to fight without their magic and the other is a...
Timey Wimey Ball: Good luck making sense of the temporal mechanics in "Dark Wish". For some reason, neither Koragg nor the Rangers were affected by the initial wish even when Udonna was. Then when the wish was reversed, time wasn't. A battle started in the same circumstances as before. The villains remembered both timelines.
You Look Familiar: Three subverted examples here - Barnie Duncan and John Tui, previously Piggy and "Doggie" Cruger in S.P.D., are virtually unrecognizable without their heavy prosthetics in the roles of Toby and Daggeron, apart from their distinctive voices. And Kelson Henderson is completely unrecognizable under prosthetics, hideous dentures and a different voice in the role of Phineas. Mystic Mother is almost this, sharing an actress with Rita Repulsa, but it's explained they're one and the same.
Played straight with Antonia Prebble (Clare), who previously played two one-shot characters: Krista, "the tree girl" and Conner's prom date in Dino Thunder, and the unmorphed Nova Ranger in the S.P.D. finale.
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