Power Rangers as a whole

You mean later in season 1 right?

Coz thats when Tommy returns...

Burai can try but he'll never be as cool as Gai. Then again Gai never had to deal with kids on a once per episode basis.

Also you gotta love how Zordon saw through Rita's plan in like...5 seconds. "Nice try, but I've got cameras up there! Zordon watches you sleep!"

I know! I made that joke about how Zordon should just be scrying on Rita 24/7, but episodes like The Green Candle make me wonder if that's actually how he's getting his intel after all. Whenever Rita makes up a plan, she announces it to the room so all her minions can be on the same page. Problem is....

• Dr. Horrible: I also need to be a little bit more careful about what I say on this blog. Apparently, the LAPD and Captain Hammer are among our viewers. They were waiting for me at the Mayor's dedication to the Superhero Memorial Bridge, the Freeze Ray takes a few seconds to warm up, and I wasn't... Captain Hammer threw a car at my head.

Rita feels your pain, Doc.

edited 24th Oct '16 8:43:23 AM by TobiasDrake

Gai never got a Robot Godzilla mecha. Or a cool gold shield thing. He got an ass ugly bird jet instead. So, ya know, win some, lose some. :-P

Glad I'm not the only one thinking that. Dragonzord is totally Mecha-Godzilla.

Google tells me actual Mecha-Gozilla is 50 meters to Dragonzord's 38. Actual Godzilla's had some height inflation over the years and now stands at 107 meters, so he could literally pick up the Dragonzord and just bite its torso off. So, y'know, Dragonzord's on the short end of the kaiju scale. But still totally Mecha-Godzilla.

Height inflation is just what happens when Kaiju series get Westernized. What's huge in Tokyo is, like, kinda big in NYC.

edited 24th Oct '16 10:23:38 AM by TobiasDrake

It's a pretty deliberate homage. Dragonzord rises out of the ocean in Tokyo harbor (Like Godzilla does), and his missile attack mirrors Mechagodzilla's own finger missles.

Well it gets extra five with the battle mode, so gettin a bit closer.

And of course dragon megazord overtakes the mechazilla. Although it's due to the fin, but just the hat on top of megazord would bring them close.

edited 24th Oct '16 11:02:34 AM by Adannor

Yes. From what I found, Mega Dragonzord is 58 meters, beating out Mechagodzilla in size. Ultrazord brings it up to 81 meters, vastly overshadowing Mechagodzilla and getting much closer to Modern Godzilla's insane height.

In height, Ultrazord is around the low end of Pacific Rim's Kaiju and Jaegars, IIRC. It's also just slightly longer than Godzilla is tall, 110 meters to 107. It's huge. Probably has more square footage than Godzilla.

edited 24th Oct '16 11:09:35 AM by TobiasDrake

More guns per surface area, that's for sure.

You mean later in season 1 right? Coz thats when Tommy returns...

I was referring to the the magic wax thing.

Yeah. Most of the Zords and Kaiju I've seen in the show thus far, I wouldn't bet on to take the King of Monsters in a fight. Which isn't really a dig at them, mind. No shame in losing to Godzilla. It's f*cking Godzilla.

But Ultrazord might actually be able to do it.

edited 24th Oct '16 1:16:59 PM by TobiasDrake

Well it did kill Satan :-P

01x37 - Clean-up Club

• We open on Bulk and Skull making a video so that they can shit on the world at large. Bulk manages to kick his own ass in the course of filming. I assume this was getting the slapstick portion out of the way early so we can focus on plot?
• Trini presents her video project about pollution, prompting Billy to start talking about deforestation, ozone depletion, and other ecological threats. He fails to mention the greatest threat to the ecosystem, however: Rita's Minotaur and the tremendous battle the Rangers had with him previously.
• Rita's feeling dickish today, so she calls in the Polluticorn to pollute the Earth for basically no reason other than that the Rangers care about the environment and she wants to mess with them. It's a pollution unicorn? Does...does it dump garbage on non-virgins?
• The Rangers set up a Clean-up Club consisting entirely of the Rangers. They all wear green shirts as a sly way of signalling Tommy that this is totally a Ranger activity he could potentially be a part of, but he wisely chooses to continue letting the show forget he exists.
• The Rangers head out to a heavily littered area of the park with so much garbage on it that I am forced to idly wonder how much of it was added by the show's producers for the sake of filming an important message about cleaning it back up.
• Billy has to take a soil sample to determine whether or not the area covered in garbage is polluted, because Billy is sometimes too smart for his own good.
• The Rangers begin cleaning up the park and I am immediately treated to Zach's hip hapcleanup techniques. They are hilarious. Then all the Rangers just start doing flips for no reason. Even Billy! Guys, you're supposed to transform before going super-camp!
• Bulk somehow emerges from the pile of trash bags the Rangers have put together and the logistics hurt my brain. He's supposed to be filming his workout session at the Youth Center. Why is he suddenly in the park, and why was he under the trash bags? Did he hide under the trash bags to stalk Kimberly? Or was he taking a nap and the Rangers just started piling the trash bags on top of him for lulz? I'm so confused.
• Bulk claims credit for picking up the trash on his video. Near as I can tell, Bulk's video is basically about how Bulk is, like, the best guy. He might have a career in politics when he grows up.
• Rita gets bored of watching the Rangers collect garbage and sends Putties to attack them. The fight choreography is beyond bizarre. The Rangers are extra dancier, extra flippier, and at one point they form a human pyramid for no f*cking reason. I shit you not. That actually happened.
• The Polluticorn arrives so the Rangers transform to fight him. They think I won't notice that they've abruptly changed locales from the Angel Grove park to a brown field with an arched building in the background. They are wrong.
• Kimberly: We've got to stop him before he pollutes everything in sight!
  • Uh, he hasn't polluted anything yet. Unless you're referring to the sudden browning of the park and are trying to pass that obvious locale switch as his doing. In which case, you should know that decaying the local flora isn't pollution, it's death. Which is much worse.
• Billy: It doesn't even feel our attacks!
  • Kimberly just laid his ass flat with a jump kick. It is clearly feeling your attacks. Everyone is stupid in this episode.
• The Rangers teleport to the Command Center, where Zordon is waiting to deliver vital advice.
• Zordon: This monster may be too difficult for you to defeat.
  • Thanks, Zordon. You're a big help.
• As Zordon explains what the Polluticorn does, Alpha gets covered in printouts and falls down. Et tu, Alpha?
• Billy discovers the Polluticorn derives its powers from its horn. No shit. Any six-year-old girl could tell you a unicorn's magic is in its horn. Kimberly, Trini, you were six-year-old girls once! Why didn't you think of that!
• The Rangers return to the battle and take on Goldar and Scorpina while Jason duels Polluticorn alone. In theory, it's stupid. If five Rangers couldn't handle him, how could one hope to do it? But really, the Polluticorn's threat is just being overinflated. Five Rangers were handling him fine.
• Polluticorn: Your friends are finished! Wait a minute! I've got to finish destroying this recycling plant first! So much to pollute, so little time!
  • You have as much to do with pollution as the Minotaur did. I don't think the Sentai episode you came from was in any way about pollution, because you have polluted nothing. The producers polluted more than you when they sprinkled trash on a city park so the Rangers could pick it up.
• Jason gets tired of getting his ass kicked by the Polluticorn and summons the Dragon Shield and Dragon Dagger. Why he doesn't just start with these things is beyond me.
• Jason cuts off the Polluticorn's horn, so Rita enlarges him. He still doesn't have his horn, though, so I'm not sure what he's expecting to do against Ultrazord. Remember how, before Ultrazord, some monsters would actually be defeated with weapons? I miss that.
• Polluticorn doesn't even warrant Ultrazord. He blows the Megazord around a bit, but then Jason calls in the Power Sword, recharges the Megazord's batteries, and oneshots Polluticorn.
• The Rangers return to the Youth Center, where the recycling drive has collected huge mountains of recyclables! But then Bulk and Skull arrive and shit on everything. It's what they do.
• Skull turns in their video and it's great! It's a best hits of all their pratfalls and cock-ups during filming. The whole class loves it, except Bulk who chases Skull off for violence. Don't know what he's so upset about; the video was great. Skull might have a future in You Tube when he grows up.

01x38 - A Bad Reflection on You

• Today's plan: The Twin Man will turn Putties into exact duplicates of the Power Rangers! Then they'll wreak havoc and ruin the Rangers' reputations. And then...something something world domination.
• Each of the evil Rangers has bitchin' sunglasses to show how evil they are. Because it's the 90's.
• The evil Rangers begin their crime spree by failing to take apart a water fountain. Jason and Billy go at it with wrenches and get nowhere. It's hilarious.
• Evil Kimberly sets up a date with Skull. Even he is terribly confused about this. What passes for his romantic charms aren't supposed to work and he knows it.
• Evil Billy beats up one of Billy's friends with the terrible one-liner, "Hasta la pizza."
• The Rangers finally get the drinking fountain opened and pour f*cking cement into it. That was an awful lot of work for something this mildly stupid. You could have just rubbed your balls on the spout or something, guys.
• Rita: How lovely! It's all going exactly as I said!
  • Yes, your evil Rangers have successfully destroyed a drinking fountain. You must be so proud. Also it seems to be some kind of foam it's spraying, not cement. I'm so confused.
• Evil Jason: And this is only the beginning.
  • Ooo, you hear that guys? Who knows what awful shenanigans they have in store?! They might TP the lockers! Or spray a butt on the principal's car!
• The Rangers get blamed for the evil Rangers' shenanigans and are given detention, naturally. Bulk and Skull are also in detention because they're Bulk and Skull. The principal's given them so much detention over the years that they're liable to still be there today.
• As detention begins, Bulk assembles a sandwich from his Bag of Holding. He and Skull somehow manage to start a food fight so they can slapstick each other.
• Meanwhile, the evil Rangers begin attacking random people in uniform. Operation: Ruin Rangers' Reputations is underway! I still don't see how this benefits Rita in any way. I think she's just doing it for funsies.
• The Rangers see on the news that the evil Rangers are attacking people! Zordon finds out at the same time, because feeding time just ended and he and Alpha were thus free to scry again.
• Due to the emergency, the Rangers are stuck inside the school building and can't leave. They can't just teleport either, because of Bulk and Skull. The pointless secret ID clause is now actively undermining them, so discussion must turn to whether or not they should throw caution to the wind and just forget the rule.
• Zach comes up with a stupid idea to show Bulk and Skull a "magic trick". They have to cover their eyes and plug their ears, and then the Rangers will disappear. That's not a magic trick. That's hide and seek. Fortunately, Bulk and Skull are too stupid to not fall for it.
• The Rangers arrive and do battle with their evil counterparts! It's very confusing and hard to tell them apart, which is a problem they wrestle with themselves by attacking the wrong Rangers.
• Jason's counterpart is revealed to be the Twin Man himself! BOSS FIGHT. As if in direct response to me complaining about this last episode, the Rangers defeat the Twin Man by combining their weapons and blasting him before Rita can enlarge him. He barely puts up a fight.
• Somewhere offscreen, Tommy watches the news report on the Rangers defeating their duplicates. He sheepishly unpacks his hastily thrown-together supplies, but can't help feel a little disappointed that his plan to go talk them down from the brink of madness wasn't needed after all. For a moment, he wonders if they ever truly needed him at all or if they just needed his Dragonzord, but he shakes it off. That's just the loneliness talking.
• Bulk and Skull try to turn the Rangers in for ducking out of detention but they teleport back into class in the nick of time. That was reckless. Had the pair been in the room, they would totally be outed.

01x39 - Doomsday, Part I

• Today has been officially declared Power Ranger Day. That's quite a turnaround from yesterday, when everyone thought the Rangers went crazy and were murdering people. Bit of a context jump between episodes. The Mayor's hoping the Rangers will show up to a major dedication, and our Rangers are only too happy to comply.
• Bulk and Skull, meanwhile, form a plan to shit on everything. Bulk wants to steal their thunder by revealing himself as a badass superhero. This will surely end well.
• Rita is far too petty to let this holiday pass without an attack, of course. She invokes the ritual of resurrecting Burai again to activate, "your Zord, Cyclopsis". Whose Zord? Goldar's? Is he getting a Zord?
• At the Rangers' fair, Zach tries hitting on Angela again and gets rejected again, but at least he's less skeevy about it. I mean, it's still skeevy that he keeps trying after she's already said no thrice, but he's not as physically aggressive about it as previous attempts. He stays out of her bubble.
• Kimberly notices that Tommy isn't anywhere to be found.
• Trini: He probably feels bad. You know, kinda left out?
  • He might feel less left out if you guys included him in your civvie activities, but none of you has spoken a word to him since he and Kim had their kiss. It's actually a little unnerving how abruptly you dumped his ass on the curb as soon as he couldn't transform. He could at least have been your Secret Keeper. You didn't have to make a stranger of the guy.
• Bulk and Skull's costumes are ridiculous. Their supernames are also really awful. Bulkster and Super-Skull? That'll keep your identity hidden, alright.
• Rita and Goldar abduct the entire park's population! Oh noes! Except the Rangers, who get snubbed from the abduction despite the fact that they would be unable to transform if surrounded by a large group of people.
• Rita's palace flies to Earth! Somehow. And then she summons Cyclopsis!
• Alpha: We haven't seen this monster in ten thousand years!
  • Of course you haven't. Rita's been in a space dumpster for ten thousand years. Don't be dim, Alpha.
• The Rangers waste no time teleporting to the scene and activating the Megazord. For all the good it does, as Cyclopsis easily beats down on the Megazord. Jason conveniently forgets the Dragonzord and Ultrazord options available to him for the sake of getting the Megazord's ass kicked some more.
• After getting blown up several times, Jason finally remembers Dragonzord and calls for it. When Cyclopsis is still too much, they move to Dragonzord Battle Mode. Are we just going to run the gamut of robot configurations here?
• With everything else going to shit, Zordon insists on the Rangers powering up Ultrazord. Don't know why they don't just lead with this. Ultrazord hits Cyclopsis with everything it's got and, like usual, blows it the f*ck up. No biggie.
• Rita decides she's f*cking sick of the predictable Ultrazord fight scenes so she just kills it. Like, she fires a beam from her staff and it creates quicksand that consumes Titannus and then it explodes. The hell hasn't she done THAT before?!
• With Titannus gone, Rita summons Satan Lokar to recreate Cyclopsis and conquer the world.
• This battle is for the fate of everyone. If the Rangers can't beat Satan Lokar, the people of Angel Grove will be trapped in Rita's vortex FOREVER. DUN DUN cliffhanger.

Well slightly more so, since "polute" is sort f in his name.

Probably another example of the "don't escalate a battle rule"

Okay, it's been a while since I watched this episode, but was this what got Kim thrown in detention? Seriously?

edited 25th Oct '16 1:59:18 AM by windleopard

The "Doomsday" two-parter is actually the finale of Zyuranger, and the originally intended ending for MMPR, but so great was the success of the show that last minute rewrites to part 2 ensured the original ending was never used (although the UK MMPR Episode Guide Magazine would actually reference it) and additional Zyuranger monster battles would be filmed exclusively for MMPR. This is known in fandom circles as "Zyu 2"

Ah Twin Man. Another's monster played by Bryan Cranston, showing the acting chops that he would eventually put on display as Walter White.

Goldar flying Cyclopsis may be better than the alternative in Zyu, Bandora's son resurrected by Satan and a whole gaggle of...child actors.

The original ending of Zyuuranger plays pretty close to Doomsday, but with two changes, the ending, and the identity of the pilot of Rita's Mech. Spoilers for Doomsday prt 2 coming.

In the Sentai, the pilot is none other than Bandora's own son Kai, raised from the dead by Satan himself. His co-pilots are 5 kidnapped brainwashed kids, so in their first fights the rangers need to disable the mech without killing the hostages (A problem when God is made of all the guns). Following this initial win, Great Satan empowers the mech.

Titanus being swallowed by the earth is far more dramatic in the original too, as he contains the last remaining dino eggs (Remember the power Egg!). The rangers need to go to a "Island of Illusion-esque" journey to save their zords who have been banished and revive god (As opposed to Power Rangers' "The Zords are destroyed! Except not!").

The rangers kill the shit out of the mech and its now solo pilot (Who had renounced his mom, declaring himself Satan's son). Kai narrowly escapes, mortally wounded, to die in his mom's arm. The rangers also kill Satan, and the shock of her son's death makes Bandora give up on her evil. The rangers blast the moon palace (Which had come down to hover over Tokyo) to seal its inhabitants inside a bottle (Daizyujin decided to be merciful and not straight up killing them). Bandora in the bottle rages about how she hates kids, until Lamy (Scorpina) reveals she gave birth to her and Grifforzer (Goldar's) son. Bandora immediately begins doting on the baby, showing she's redeemed herself (And don't think to hard about how god just banished a newborn baby to an eternal magic prison floating in space). Queue final music and dance number (Did I mention Bandora does those?). Meanwhile, their mission complete, the Rangers ascend to heaven alongside Daizyujin. The dino eggs hatch. The End

There's also a subplot with a stupid kid of the week (Because of course there is) where this one emo kid is suffering from a deadly disease whose only cure according to science is (I am not making this up, his doctor says this), having the will to live. Which the kid doesn't, because Dinosaurs are extinct. So the rangers need to save the dino eggs to get the emo kid who can literally shrug off his medical condition any time he wants to save him. It's fucking awful.

Of interest for the coming Zyu 2 footage: All the monsters are repaints of existing season 1 monsters. Also some of the footage was changed to better match Power Rangers. Besides the return of the Green ranger, In Zyuranger, Green and Pink are not an item, so Saban asked Toei to film scenes with the two interacting. Similarly, in the Sentai, the Black Ranger is The Smart Guy, so Saban asked Toei to film scenes where the Blue ranger was the one doing smart stuff and whipping out gadgets.

Zyu 2 also marks the appearance of the North American Goldar Costume, which has no wings (Season 2 would retcon Goldar ever having wings away when Lord Zedd mentions he took them from Goldar and now is returning them). This costume has also better facial animations than its Sentai counterpart.

edited 25th Oct '16 5:04:09 AM by Ghilz

No, the cement/foam in the drinking fountain is what got her thrown in. Evil Kim didn't really participate and hung over by the lockers, accepting Skull's sexual advances when he offered them, but they were all together in laughing at the principal and taking credit for it when the fountain started spraying foam in his face.

This whole drinking fountain endeavor was clearly a wonderful use of Rita's time. But the funniest part is still Evil Jason and Billy struggling with wrenches and crowbars and shit for, like, five minutes to try and get the top off it. Really set the stage for how horribly they get curbstomped by the actual Rangers later in the episode. This was not Rita's best plan.

Congratulations, Sentai. You actually beat "We need the Power Sword to recharge the Megazord's batteries!" in stupid.

There's a character in Magic The Gathering who strips sanity from people just by looking at her. To even gaze upon her is to lose your faith in a rational world, submit to the Eldritch Abomination's telepathic madness, and become one with the hivemind.

This plot point is like that, but instead of insanity, it's for stupid. The more I try to process it mentally, the more my mind becomes lost to the infinite depths of stupidity.

edited 25th Oct '16 7:10:51 AM by TobiasDrake

The full exchange is that Geki tells the kid to be strong "Like the Dinosaurs", to which the emo kid (Who literally can shrug off his own disease at any time!) declares that being strong didn't stop the Dinosaurs from going extinct.

From there on it becomes a race to save the eggs (and Earth I guess), Coz the return of Dinosaurs would un-emo the kid. IIRC there's even a scene where the kid relapses after Brachion is zapped by Bandora.

edited 25th Oct '16 7:23:54 AM by Ghilz

Also, to make you feel better, enjoy the lyrical stylings of Witch Bandora

That is glorious. Also, I keep forgetting that the spikes coming off her head are her hair. I mistake it for a hat all the time.

Judging by Linkara's review of Zyuranger, not only is Bandora more competent than Rita but she's nicer to her minions too.

That's not hard to do. Rita's....

Well, she's not awful to her minions in the sense that on the Bad Boss scale, all she does is constantly verbally degrade them. But she's still a pretty shitty boss.

Pretty she much is. Heck, IIRC, Bandora is the first Super Sentai main villain to actually live at the end of her series, so that also puts her all things considered on the mellow scale of Sentai villains.

Honestly though, Zyuranger is REALLY not that great a Sentai series. The Burai arc is good, and there's a reason that even in the Sentai, he's all that's memorable about it, being one of the more distinct sixth ranger, the first sixth ranger with a Mecha who combines with the main one, and one of the first rangers to die in the line of duty (As opposed to a mugging).

It's the cool thing to go "They did it so much better in the Sentai", but I gotta say, Power Rangers did good things too, despite its stumbling and not having 16 years of experience making those. Having the Megazord not be sentient makes the Rangers responsible their victories, while in the Sentai it feels like Daizyujin could handle 90% of the threats themselves, and the rangers are just there for when he gets defeated to bring him back, and interact with the kid of the week. Again the Burai arc is one of the few where things got personal for one of them.

edited 25th Oct '16 7:59:38 AM by Ghilz

I could see that being an issue with a sentient Megazord. It's the Captain Planet principle. Captain Planet is invincible and awesome and can do f*cking anything, so what's the point of the kids? Why not just summon Captain Planet at the beginning and let him solve everything like they eventually wind up doing later in the episode anyway?

As much as I like to take the piss out of Zordon's "Do not escalate" rule, at least it provides some understanding of why the Rangers can't whip out the Zords left and right. I'm not clear on what, if anything, is stopping Daizyujin from just stepping on every monster.

edited 25th Oct '16 9:07:42 AM by TobiasDrake