Trivia / Mahou Sentai Magiranger

• Actor-Shared Background: Hikaru's actor Yosuke Ichikawa had an actual teaching license and would help Nai and Mea's actresses with their homework. He later ended up retiring from the entertainment industry to become a high school teacher; cue jokes from all directions (including himself) about the magic teacher becoming an actual teacher. By a twist of fate, one of his students (whom he also served as handball club advisor for) ended up being a certain person named Yuu Inaba, who would later become known among toku fans as Gou Shijima.
  • Houka's appearance in Hero Mama League was done in light of its three leading actresses, including Houka's actress Ayumi Beppu, being married with children. Houka's child being a girl also reflects Beppu's own daughter.
• Bonus Episode: Mahou Sentai Magiranger Special DVD: Great Presentation! The Super Magic of the Gold Grip Phone was released with an issue of TV Magazine.
• The Cast Show Off: Yuuki Ito, the actor for Makito, knows and can speak English. Demonstrated in episode 37 where he directed a tourist to a train station in grammatically correct English.
• Casting Gag: Hiroshi Tsuchida, who voiced Ninja Kirikage, previously portrayed NinjaBlue Saizou years earlier.
• New Zealand Doubling: The series takes place in a fictional ward in Tokyo, but during production Toei staff saw pictures of the New Zealand scenery from Power Rangers filming and decided to film the series (or at least parts of it) there, both because they felt the scenery was suitable for the fantasy atmosphere and to facilitate filming for its corresponding sister series. This has the odd side effect of having extras hanging around crowd scenes who distinctly do not look Japanese; All There in the Manual info gives a Hand Wave that a lot of foreigners live in the area.
• Follow the Leader: While the series takes numerous inspirations from different famous Western fantasy works, its most obvious source of influence is Harry Potter, which had reached its first major explosion in popularity at the time.
• Friendship on the Set: As they were acting as a family, the actors stated they really did get as close as family members while the series was produced and would even visit each other on off-hours; after the series ended, while not to the same degree as that of their predecessor, the group continued to keep in contact even despite Asami Kai (Urara) and Yosuke Ichikawa (Hikaru) retiring from the industry. They also had a particularly good rapport with the Dekaranger cast, especially Umeko's actress Mika Kikuchi, to at least a degree that's allegedly not particularly common for cross-series casts.
• Playing Against Type: This is one of the very few toku roles where Machiko Soga does not play a villain and in fact, plays one of the Big Good in the setting.
• Reality Subtext: According to this interview, Houka's actress wanted to be MagiRed, while Kai's actor never expected to be chosen for the part. Puts the two-parter where they switch bodies into a whole new light, doesn't it?
  • Hero Mama League was based on the fact its three starring actresses, including Houka's actress Ayumi Beppu, had become mothers themselves.
• Referenced by...: Kai's actor Atsushi Hashimoto appears in episode 4 of Toei's The High School Heroes miniseries, playing a teacher who's also the Monster of the Week. One of his attacks is "Sunshine Attack"... which, visually speaking, is basically just Red Fire.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Before it was decided that the series would be about The Power of Family, there was a tentative idea to have the Red be a prince of a magical world and the other four be his attendants. This kind of idea would later show up in series like Shinkenger and Donbrothers.
  • According to this interview, Ayumi Beppu, who played Houka, tried out for the role of MagiRed, and Hiroya Matsumoto, who played Tsubasa, supported her in this. Thus, we would have gotten the first female red Ranger four years earlier. Atsushi Hashimoto, on his part, went into the audition realizing it was a Sibling Team and, due to him being young enough to be the kid brother, he thought he would wind up being Magi Green, as he thought Red as a leading figure would be better suited for an older brother type of character (funnily enough, the older brother turned out to be Green).
    • Beppu REALLY wanted the part of Red, to the point where she even suggested she could do try it with her cross dressing and playing a male character Takarazuka style but Toei didn't think the young boy demographic would be comfortable with that. To throw her a bone however they did write an episode where Houka and Kai change bodies so Beppu could try that out.
  • There was a plan for Tsubasa to be established as a talented dancer (very much The Cast Show Off due to his actor Matsumoto's own dancing skills), but this ultimately did not manifest in the show.
  • Meibi Yamanouchi was originally considered to play Yamazaki before eventually being cast as Lunagel; the Ship Tease between Lunagel and Kai could be taken as a bit of a glimpse into what that would have been like.
  • There was a scrapped idea about Hikaru being the heir to a Magitopian train company, hence explaining his use of Travelion, but it ended up unused due to there being no good place for it.
  • Furthermore, there were many different mech configurations, like SeraphKaiser, a fusion of Wolzard and Unigolon, that never made it into the show.
  • There was a 10 Years After movie in the vein of Hurricaneger and Dekaranger planned, but due to difficulties in getting the main cast back together (some of them are retired by this point), the project eventually evolved into the Gavan vs. Dekaranger movie.