Power Rangers General Discussion Thread

[Steevy Maximus]

Hey, over here...

Yes, hi, I'm kind of a card game-illiterate guy. I know Magic is one, and Pokemon is one, and Yu-Gi-Oh is one, and there are a bunch for other licensed properties, and it all just kinda falls apart from there.

What was their other HUGE effing property?

I’m assuming Duel Masters, which barely blipped here in the states in the saturated CCG market of 2004. And I’m not even sure the revamp Kaijudo, even saw much released in the US aside from the cartoon on The Hub.
(Duel Masters was a cooperative project between WotC and Takara, akin to the relationship Hasbro and TakaraTomy have in regards to Transformers)

But I hear it did well in Japan, and was/is still being produced by Tomy.

 

[Tm_Silverclaw]

Yep, other parts of the country, Duel Masters was HUGE. Easily eclipsing Magic in other Regions.

But they tried numerous times to pull Duel Masters, and often times places like Tomy basically said "Eff no, if you don't want to do it anymore, we'll do it as per contract."

Basically WotC WHOLE thing is focus on Magic.

With some of the stuff with D&D, you could say "they are trying to piss off D&D players in hoping they'll move to Magic" I would honestly find it believable.

As for the over-complication of Transformers Card game and Card types... Isn't that exactly WotC fault?

WotC could have had a card game designed for the whole Hasbro Multi/Universe... but instead they try hard to only have crossovers with Magic.

 

[Sabrblade]

Wait, so how big is Duel Masters in Japan compared to the likes of Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh!?

 

[Tm_Silverclaw]

Wait, so how big is Duel Masters in Japan compared to the likes of Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh!?

Dunno the actual numbers. Us getting numbers is most likely unlikely, but it's got an online game in Japan. And APPARENTLY *again.. getting info is hard* has been in the top 3 for years now. Including constantly outselling... Magic the Gathering.

 

[LBD "Nytetrayn"]

Oh yeeeeeeah... Duel Masters...

 

[King Mondo]

My favorites are MMPR, Zeo, Dino Thunder, Megaforce, Lightspeed, SPD to name a few but zeo with mondo really caught my attention---how the machine empire made lord zedd one of the best if not the best vilians flee. I knew it then that mondo was the most feared and by far the coolest.

 

[LBD "Nytetrayn"]

Oh, I was just talking to my wife about this the other day for some reason.

I think my very, very favorites would be Space, Lost Galaxy, Lightspeed Rescue, and RPM. I could probably throw others like Time Force in there, too, but those are like the very tippy-top.

SPD is one of my most-wanted to see. I've only seen bits and pieces, but love everything I've seen. (Yes, I know about the official channel, but haven't had time.)

On the Super Sentai side, Mega Ranger would probably be the one I most want to see.

 

[Sabrblade]

SPD is one of my most-wanted to see. I've only seen bits and pieces, but love everything I've seen. (Yes, I know about the official channel, but haven't had time.)

Fair warning, the official YouTube channel's uploads of SPD uploaded the first six episodes incorrectly, with the video and audio sped up ever so slightly, which makes the runtime for those six episodes about a minute shorter than the rest, and the audio pitched up slightly higher to make everything sound squeakier and faster.

A free and legal alternative to this that does not have this problem for any of the episodes is Pluto TV, which has every episode available to stream on demand.

 

[LBD "Nytetrayn"]

How are the DVDs? That would be my first choice, TBQH.

 

[Sabrblade]

How are the DVDs? That would be my first choice, TBQH.

The DVDs are what Pluto and YouTube sourced their uploads from. It's just YouTube messed up their uploads of the first six episodes.

 

[LBD "Nytetrayn"]

From yon front page:

GameSpark News – Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers: Rita’s Rewind Release Date Revealed

Now we know what time is Morphin' Time. While things have been looking rather grim for fans of

www.allspark.com

 

[Shadhausen]

Looks like a cross between the TMNT Arcade games, the G.I.Joe Arcade game, and Punch-Out.

 

[King Mondo]

Random Thought;

To this day i can't understand why megaforce doesn't get enough attention; sure there are plenty of better seasons but Vrak was an underrated villain, and metal alice who hooked me into her appearence and character---i could never forget the moment.

 

[Shadewing]

Random Thought;

To this day i can't understand why megaforce doesn't get enough attention; sure there are plenty of better seasons but Vrak was an underrated villain, and metal alice who hooked me into her appearence and character---i could never forget the moment.

I largely agree. I think Megaforce had some strong villians in both halves of it series. I also feel Noah is one of the best blue ranger's we've gotten since between the two series he got a really strong character, even if its only 4 or 5 episodes spread throughout both.

Its easy to hate on Megaforce, I get why over all; but at the same time that series had just about everything against it. They wanted to only do Gokaiger, but at the time Toei refused to let them skip any series; Bandai wouldn't let them skip anything to intro'd new toys to sell, and Nickeloden only gave them 42 episodes to work with. 2 52 episode series, having to be filtered down into less then half but keep all the weapon and zord introductions? It works when they're only adapting one season; on average Power Rangers is between 35-40 episode, and you're only losing around 12, but when you have to cut out essentually an entire series worth of episodes, you're going to end up with a product thats less then the sum of its parts. It doesn't help that the EP on that series, Johnathan Tzachor is kinda a sentai-purist so very little gets changed, which is why we got the random "new" powers in a legacy series rather then changing them to be power sets we knew. It did happen occasionally, but not often. Considering all that, Hating on Megaforce is like kicking someone when they're already down.

So I prefer to focus on the stuff that I like, becuase honestly the stuff that they did manage to do well or do right SHOULD be praised when they were behind the 8 ball with literally every aspect of this series.

 

[Sabrblade]

They wanted to only do Gokaiger, but at the time Toei refused to let them skip any series; Bandai wouldn't let them skip anything to intro'd new toys to sell, and Nickeloden only gave them 42 episodes to work with. 2 52 episode series, having to be filtered down into less then half but keep all the weapon and zord introductions? It works when they're only adapting one season; on average Power Rangers is between 35-40 episode, and you're only losing around 12, but when you have to cut out essentually an entire series worth of episodes, you're going to end up with a product thats less then the sum of its parts.

I think there's a little more to it than that. In addition to Toei and Bandai not letting Power Rangers skip any Sentai seasons at the time, Haim Saban himself was also a factor. He wanted to use Gokaiger's gimmick for the anniversary, but not Gokaiger's motif because Haim Saban had a personal dislike of pirates. In other words, it seems he wanted to use the Goseiger suits to represent the special ranger team that would get to turn into any previous rangers for the anniversary, rather than using the Gokaiger suits for that team since Haim Saban did not want to portray pirates as any kind of heroic role models for children. But because the readily-available Sentai footage had the pirate-themed suits be the ones who had the "turn into any ranger" power, and because it would have been too costly for the already-low PR budget to film completely new footage of the Goseiger suits using that power instead of the Gokaiger suits, and because Tzachor was such a Sentai purist (as you said), they ultimately went with the compromise of using both the Goseiger and Gokaiger suits with the latter being an upgrade for the former, and just simply never ever ever ever acknowledging all the super obvious pirate-themed designs in order to appease Haim Saban's IRL disdain for pirates.

 

[Shadewing]

I think there's a little more to it than that. In addition to Toei and Bandai not letting Power Rangers skip any Sentai seasons at the time, Haim Saban himself was also a factor. He wanted to use Gokaiger's gimmick for the anniversary, but not Gokaiger's motif because Haim Saban had a personal dislike of pirates. In other words, it seems he wanted to use the Goseiger suits to represent the special ranger team that would get to turn into any previous rangers for the anniversary, rather than using the Gokaiger suits for that team since Haim Saban did not want to portray pirates as any kind of heroic role models for children. But because the readily-available Sentai footage had the pirate-themed suits be the ones who had the "turn into any ranger" power, and because it would have been too costly for the already-low PR budget to film completely new footage of the Goseiger suits using that power instead of the Gokaiger suits, and because Tzachor was such a Sentai purist (as you said), they ultimately went with the compromise of using both the Goseiger and Gokaiger suits with the latter being an upgrade for the former, and just simply never ever ever ever acknowledging all the super obvious pirate-themed designs in order to appease Haim Saban's IRL disdain for pirates.

Honestly didn't know of his Anti-Pirate agenda. I just figured they didn't mention the pirate theming, because some series don't draw as much attention to there themes as others.

In a write up I did for adapting LuPat, I did similar of just dropping or playing down the majority of the cop vs robber elements, and just made it two rival teams in a ranger school attempting to become the top rangers. Taking some inspiration from the hero courses in MHA. Why do some look like cops? "SPD helps fund the place, so we use some of their tech to reduce funding". I think I went with the others being more magic based since the top hat look reminds me of the classic stage magician look. And the "retrieving items from a safe" ended up being the villians breaking into the ranger vault stealing stuff from it and both teams trying to get it back; considering most of them were references to past ranger stuff that was one the easiest changes to make.

 

[Sabrblade]

Honestly didn't know of his Anti-Pirate agenda. I just figured they didn't mention the pirate theming, because some series don't draw as much attention to there themes as others.

Yeah, Simon Bennett revealed Saban's dislike of pirates on Twitter, but the original tweet has disappeared. A screencap of it can be found at the 02:04 mark in this video:

 

[Sabrblade]

ConorTheWaffle storms headlong into the Disney Era with his retrospective on Ninja Storm:

And, unlike previous seasons, he's going into this one completely blind, have a never seen Ninja Storm before, offering a fresh perspective this time around.

 

[Onyx Minor]

Anybody here into the ThreeZero 1/6 scale rangers? I have all the MMPR figures minus Zack with the Dargon Shield (may pick up later), and I see BBTS has listed the Zeo figures. If they get to S.P.D. or Dino Thunder, I will likely get all of those, but I fear the line won't last that long...