Power Rangers without Nostalgia

Never saw it as a kid, I harbor no nostalgia. Although I had a green ranger figure I either found or got at a garage sale (it spent a decade in my dad's garden, I rediscovered it last year). My only experience is that I rented the movie two years ago, and found it to be pretty dull.

When they all ended up on netflix, it seemed natural to me to sample the first and the last. I really liked RPM, despite it being really goofy at times, and I marathoned the whole show. But Mighty Morphin' was agonizing. I simply couldn't handle it.

Are things ever at RPM's level in the intervening years?

Here's my involvement:

I watched several episodes of Mighty Morphin', though I no longer remember much of it.

One day I tuned in somewhere in the middle of the "Alien Rangers" miniseries (it's a part of MM).

The recap was "The Power Rangers got turned into kids, so some aliens came to Earth to take their place until they get better!"

The Special Edition Theme Song played "Go-go Alien Rangers!"

I said lolno and turned off the TV.

Never watched Power Rangers again.

edited 18th Aug '11 8:30:04 PM by TParadox

Coming from a person who HAS watched Power Rangers for several incarnations and harbors a boatload of nostalgia:

The only reason I admit to watching it is because I know a fuckload of my generation has, too.

I like certain seasons. Even as a kid though I knew some seasons SUCKED.

Well nothing is as good as RPM, but Dinothunder is Amazing, Ninja Storm is good despite having a weak villain (but the villain is funny). In Space was an excellent conclusion to "The Zordon Era" so basically Power rangers is meh and basically good for kids, Turbo was.... well not good but I didn't hate it as a kid. Zeo was just a good sequel to the first.

Mighty Morphing is "painful" but I laugh at it's cheese (and cringe) upon re-watching. I was just happy seeing the start of a legend. Also, it picks up with the introduction of Tommy and the introduction of LORD ZED!

Have you watched Linkara's History Of The Power Rangers? That may be a good way of getting a decent overview of most of the seasons so you can decide if there's any you want to watch or not.

Maybe try starting with Power Rangers In Space? It's narmy, but at least it has a decent story.

Also, the rubber suit monsters are hilarious, particularly the more gesticularly ones.

Power Rangers Time Force is pretty kick ass, and unlike In Space requires little to no knowledge of the previous series (just skip "Time for Lightspeed"). But yes, I would never have recommended Mighty Morphin to someone who wasn't a fan.

edited 19th Aug '11 2:06:40 AM by Ghilz

I'm more of a Super Sentai "snob" myself, but I still harbor nostalgia for the older Power Rangers seasons and the fact that it served as a gateway show.

However, I find the original Mighty Morphin incarnation hard to watch nowadays after having seen the original Sentai shows (Zyuranger, Dairanger, and Kakuranger) that provided most of their materials. The first season in particular is such a watered-down version of Zyuranger, it's not even funny.

Just compare Burai's introductory story arc in Zyuranger with the "Green with Evil" saga in MMPR. Burai actually has his own motives and his own reasons for hating the Zyurangers (or more specifically, their leader Geki). He eventually does join the team, but only after he has a change of heart that allows him to see the errors of his way. In MMPR, Tommy is just some brainwashed kid who becomes good the moment his spell is broken.

Geki vs. Burai https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnu5Qd3RuXU

Jason vs. Tommy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLp0witoESA

Even if you don't understand Japanese, you have to admit there's more emotion in the Geki vs. Burai fight than in the corresponding Jason vs. Tommy fight.

edited 19th Aug '11 10:20:28 AM by PowerRider

In Space is generally agreed to be pretty good, but a large part of the appeal is from the buildup of previous, not so good seasons.

Of the stand-alone ones, a lot of people liked Time Force, though my favourite is probably Lost Galaxy. While it's true that it has problems (it builds up what would seem to be an epic plot that never really quite happens), it felt like it had the most raw emotion and stronger characters.

A necessity is to understand that both Power Rangers and Super Sentai are meant to be fun kids shows, and while they can aspire to include intelligent and mature characters and themes the core story is going to generally be nonsensical and goofy.

Of the "Mighty Morphin" seasons the episodes that hold up the best is the "Green With Evil" five-parter, the "Doomsday" two-parter (originally intended to be the Grand Finale), the introduction of Lord Zedd, the return of Tommy as the White Ranger, the "Ninja Quest" arc and even the initial Zeo Crystal arc. If you have no interest in understanding the franchise they aren't going to change your mind, but those early seasons were very much Strictly Formula.

Power Rangers In Space does ride a lot on the past seasons but mostly in how big the scope got. Zordon was very important to the PR universe at that time, we recognize all those Big Bads working together and the sense of continuity with allies like Adam, Justin and the Phantom Ranger. Bulk and Skulls Crowning Moment Of Awesome in the Grand Finale would have been fantastic if it was their only season, but because they have been mainstays of the series it was that much more impressive. But the season also works rather well as a standalone with an exploration of Andros' loner mentality and his search for his sister, Eclipter's Noble Demon status and rivalry with the Complete Monster Darkonda, and the Psycho Rangers arc was fantastic.

It sucks.

Power Rangers has always been fucking atrocious, and any claims of "scope" are, frankly, laughable.

I watched the series up until In Space, so that oughta tell you something.

When I look back, I see that the whole series was crap. The stories were ludicrous, the fighting was sub-par, and the effects were cheap. At least Star Trek, which I'm indifferent to, had good writing to make up for the fact that the effects were crap. Power Rangers was a cheap Super Sentai knockoff and in my opinion represents the worst of what networks have imported from Japan and "Americanized" to fit audiences who were supposedly too dumb to tell the difference.

Not only that, but there were clear Unfortunate Implications: the yellow ranger was Asian, the blue ranger was a geek, pink was a girl, black was a Black guy, and wasn't the red one part American Indian? I really wouldn't be surprised. Hell, if there was a brown ranger he'd be every Latino stereotype in the book.

edited 21st Aug '11 4:11:50 PM by EnglishMajor

That was only in mighty morphin' and they've changed up the race-to-color formula multiple times. The "black guy as black ranger" thing only happened again once.

That's what I was referring to. I remember season 1 best out of them. The rest of the seasons were just derivative.

I wonder that you can say derivative like it's a bad thing here on TV Tropes.

Especially considering how power rangers was originally "derived" from Sentai anyway.

Learning from past mistakes is what Tropes like Growing the Beard is all about and Darker and Edgier is a change that makes a show darker.

Any season of Power Rangers is still pretty hard to recommend to non-fans.

Ah, Power Rangers...
The franchise that, had you watched it when you were five, you will always love...
If you didn't watch it...
uh...
Well, if you're open minded enough and don't mind lots and lots of cheese...

I do genuinely enjoy Power Rangers, sans nostalgia, though.
I can sit down and watch Samurai and actually find myself enjoying it. Its stupid, silly fun. Stupid, stupid, silly fun.

You will not enjoy power rangers without nostalgia.

It's a kid's show for goodness sakes. I love it, but that's 100% nostalgia, and I can look past my nostalgia and realize it's not worth watching if you didn't watch it as a kid.

edit: kind of realized my post is not the answer op was looking for.

RPM is one of the best seasons of PR, period. You'll be hard pressed to find a series matching RPM in terms of quality. RPM was going to be the last PR (if saban didn't take it back), so they really went all out with it. If you really want to watch PR, the later disney stuff is more in-line with RPM than Saban's older stuff. SPD or Mystic Force would be your best bet if you wanted to try watching PR and you liked RPM.

edited 29th Aug '11 4:11:36 PM by astroshark

Eh. I know someone that never watched it as a kid, but liked it. I blame the fact that he watched a ton of Godzilla movies as a kid.

Untrue, I enjoy RPM nostalgia free (mostly because it was recent.) and I can totally tell that Mystic Force, Operation Overdrive, and Jungle Fury sucked like no one's business. I rewatched the first triple dozen episodes of MMPR recently, and it's cheesiness is utterly painful. Some of it is nostalgia, some seasons are legitimately good.

edited 29th Aug '11 4:06:10 PM by MousaThe14

RPM is a special case, really. It was Disney's last season of Power Rangers. There wasn't going to be a new season after RPM, so they pretty much went all out and just did a lot of crazy stuff. I'm not surprised it's enjoyable without nostalgia. It's got a more serious (relative to power rangers ofc) tone and isn't as silly as regular power rangers can be.

I'd have to agree Time Force would probably the best recommendation. I stopped watching Power Rangers around that time, so I'm not as familiar with it. Lightspeed was always my personal favorite, along with Zeo. I think the reason is because their themes were the most ambiguous. Most other ranger teams are based on animals or vehicles or something else.

I know it's not Power Rangers, but I might also recommend Kamen Rider Dragon Knight. It's an Americanized toku and has a tone kind of similar to RPM's, though with a little less goofiness.

I watched Power Rangers pretty regularly through "in Space," then off and on through the next few years, pretty much ending with "Time Force". The main thing I remembered from "Time Force" was the above average acting from Erin Cahill, Jason Faunt, Edward Albert and Vernon Wells. The series was still silly in many places but they made their scenes worth watching. Cahill in particular really sold the shocked expression when Jen first saw Wes (I remembered thinking that when the series first aired, and Linkara reinforced that during his History Of Power Rangers review), I'm not surprised that post PR she has been one of the more active actors.

I like how people say cheese like its a bad thing?

I fully admit that Power Ranger is not only a showed aimed at young kids (it became uncool to watch by 3rd or 4th grade for any indication for how young the target audience is) its a TERRIBLE show aimed at yound kids, and its pure nostalgia.

I've watched RPM out of curiosity, its crap. Having more "mature writing" than past seasons doesn't make it good. Its mediocre writing with terrible characters starring a poor man's Wolverine. I'd have probably LOVED RPM if it was a PR series when I was a kid but having no nostalgic ties to it it does nothing for me.

I can watch up to Time Force because those seasons I grew up with. But I know that if I didn't grow up with the show, like most kids shows I would have had no interest in it.

On the subject of Sentai, I've watched Zyuranger it's a lot worse than MMPR. Dairanger from what I've seen (like 4 episodes) is marginally better than Zyuranger so I might give that a chance.

Carranger is all kinds of awesome though.

edited 10th Jul '13 8:23:58 PM by BrokenCondom

Lost Galaxy was pretty good. If you have an On-Demand service, you can watch it on Kabillion.

I recently watched MMPR on Netflix and I'll admit it was corny and cheesy as fuck. Was it a good show? Not at all.

However, though, it does remind me of my childhood. So on occasion I'll watch it drunkenly on Netflix and reminisce.

But yeah it was awful.