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I gave up on sentai like 12 years ago. I liked Hurricanger for it's storytelling and Abaranger for it's ability to balance on the line between corny laughs and emotional drama. Magiranger was just too clearly aimed at children. It didn't have any of the bite that I come to expect from the Japanese series. Unless it got significantly darker further in, it looked like it could have passed as a PR show with no real changes. So with all that in mind, what should I watch?
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Jun 22, 2016 21:25
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deadly_pudding posted:I think the only 2 Power Rangers I can really recommend in good faith are Time Force, which is practically a shot-for-shot remake of TimeRanger in some cases, and RPM, which kinda did its own thing with a post-apocalyptic timeline and a Skynet situation. Lost Galaxy, motherfucker! Lost Galaxy was not just one of the two great post-MMPR series (along with Time Force for reasons mentioned) but it did so much with a sentai that was significantly different and needed a much different localization. There's some stupid poo poo, mostly involving the sixth ranger and a brief set of episodes where they were saving money for the finale and let the freaky sentai footage roll, but they did a really good job. In part because they were willing to do things like make villains with long term plans (though In Space does this as well with Darkonda) and make an episode where the first 15 minutes are Trakeena being exiled and training to be a warrior, with the actual Rangers not even showing up until the second half.
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Jun 27, 2016 21:43
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Burkion posted:Lost Galaxy suffered due to losing one of the lead actresses due to cancer which totally hosed a lot of their longer term plans, but it is still one of the best tokusatsu series ever made and has one of the all time best finales. This is true, but the result is that one of the reformed tyrants sending monsters to Earth briefly became a ranger. And not just any boss villain, but the one who basically got Zordon killed. If you're not a fan, it doesn't hurt because Karone becomes a background character in three episodes after she does the Tommy "fight your evil personified" thing. If you are a fan, it's a fantastic tail end to a redemption arc that hadn't been left in a wholly satisfying manner.
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Jun 27, 2016 23:43
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Well, most older seasons of PR were aired to people who had never watched a second of the raw programs in their lives. You can watch and enjoy those shows without needing to know anything about sentai cause, uh, many of us did. The seams only really begin to show in the third season, and that's a combination of US production issues (namely the whole cast going to Australia) and the mecha combat scenes for many episodes being dramatically cut short into combine -> sword -> done.
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Jun 28, 2016 01:11
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I'm watching Liveman, one episode a day, and enjoying it. It's still from roughly the same period production-wise as the earliest Rangers footage, so I don't feel like somebody opened a time vault the way I would with Sun Vulcan or something. Suffice it to say the production values are decent enough for someone who has never seen footage older than Zyuranger. The personal element in the story setup, that the team's friends joined the alien overlord to destroy the world rather than help it, and they obviously kill two would-be members of the team on their way out of there, has made it interesting.
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Jun 30, 2016 05:10
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The suits seemed okay. I kind of like how they designed the skirt on LiveBlue more than many series female costumes. The robot, or at least the starting one since I've watched four episodes, is a little less shiny and awesome than what I've been accustomed to in the early PR generations, but the cockpit set is relatively the same. I tried watching bits and segments of Bioman before settling on Liveman and the mech stuff in that one feels closer to BattleFeverJ or something. I have less and less affinity for stuff from Gaoranger onward. CGI mechs remove some of my fun, the boys frequently look like Host Club boys and ditto for idol competitions and the ladies, and maybe it's just me but it seems like it's becoming less risky and scary and more goofy. I can only really handle excessively goofy stuff if it's got tonal whiplash with the scary stuff. Like Abaranger had a guy gushing blood on the beach and dying, and then immediately after had dinosaur hand puppets paying tribute to him. That's such a weird tone shift that I can just sort of accept it if only because I don't know how to react.
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Jun 30, 2016 05:34
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Is Kuuga the place to start if I've never had any experience with Kamen Rider and don't mind a show being more than five years old? I'm told that the idea of a "modern" series started there, and I know from the Sega CD game somebody made out of ZO that there's a lot of old crusty production jank in the older stuff. But at the same time I have a tendency to think "these first installments must be great if they launched an ongoing series" and then find out that no, the sequels were far better received.
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Jul 6, 2016 03:18
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Burkion posted:What exactly do you want from a Kamen Rider series 1: Grown up stuff. I guess. I tend to think of KR as Spider-Man on a motorcycle, but I know that's wrong. If I can avoid seeing a masked hero dancing, that's probably a good sign. 2: Something to watch before I go watch 555 because everyone was talking about it in 2003 when I first started downloading stuff. You make Kuuga sound like some kind of KR version of Metal Gear what with the heavy handed morality lesson that it doesn't crack a smile once while giving.
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Jul 6, 2016 08:26
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Literally The Worst posted:It also doesn't have good subs yet I used to watch poorly translated HK subs of stuff, in fact I used to buy/rip/share that stuff once upon a time. My subtitle game is strong. My only interest in 555 was because I used to hang out in TVN's IRC downloading stuff from XDCC bots in 2003, where catchphrases and references to it were everywhere. I passed on KR completely to watch Hurricanger and Abaranger because I had never seen "Japanese Power Rangers" before and that was the big draw. Craptacular! fucked around with this message at 19:16 on Jul 6, 2016 |
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Jul 6, 2016 19:11
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Everything in just about the whole last page of posts is why I never come here. Jesus loving christ. Stop making demands of what people download/not download.
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Jul 7, 2016 03:55
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I'm just mad that people are this vehement, and I guess by people I mean LTW but whatever. I was downloading poo poo from XDCC bots in TVN's IRC when in 2003 when any outsider visiting was expected to renounce PR like a Clinton supporter at a Trump rally. I remember being concerned when that Sailor Moon thing they did was becoming popular because I was afraid I'd lose all the access to toku I had if they blew up (remember Disney was distributing PR at the time). I realize there was a whole loving Tumblr about their subs being poor. So, yknow, their reputation precedes them at this point. I'm not actually defending TVN as much as I am annoyed that you apparently can't even mention some shows without some guy saying "Don't watch that the only subs for it are garbage" often in repeated posts. Straight up directing people to avoid something because you disagree with the sub group just seems like the most classical otaku bullshit ever. My last post was just sort of a generic, "dude who cares" in hopes you could move on. Instead I got back this sort of "well you should care unless you're some kind of moron" response that... gently caress. There's nothing wrong with the message to avoid a group or whatever, but it's the irrepressibly passionate way you're approaching it that rubs me the wrong way. I'll just take a timeout and maybe it'll pass soon. Craptacular! fucked around with this message at 08:09 on Jul 7, 2016 |
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Jul 7, 2016 08:02
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ZenMasterBullshit posted:So here's the deal, Oh yeah, I sympathize. I don't need it explained to me why they're bad, I certainly know. I just think LTW treats the issue with undue importance (if people know what they're getting into and download anyway, whatever right?) and telling people to go make your own thread if they don't like his/her incessant posting on the issue just turned it into the most inane thing. There's a point where you need to shoot the messanger. Anyway, I only tried to take control because the subject began as an honest attempt to warn me in case I didn't know. I thought saying, "yup I know TVN is bad; thanks but how about going back to the shows?" would not create.... Well, this.
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Jul 7, 2016 08:42
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So, I watched a lot of Saturday morning TV and knew how to read a TV Guide in 1985 even though I was three years old. (I actually remember the first season of Gummi Bears on NBC and have a stuffed Kissyfur somewhere at my Mom's). Never heard of Photon, it was definitely not on the OTA networks nor 1987+ Nickelodeon. Looking at the production etc, it seems like the kind of thing that air on USA Network at an odd time or something. USA used to be a far-out-there network that would run something stupid like that. (And they also ran Tattooed Teenage Alien Fighters From Beverly Hills during the MMPR craze, as if you needed any more proof.) Tetsuo Katayama has a credit in the first episode, so it was made before DIC had a huge boardroom struggle between it's US and EU executives, made worse by Saban walking in and buying the whole DIC catalog to turn it over to the European guys who were wrestled out of the company. That outfit eventually sold it back to Saban to build up the smorgasbord of nonsense that Rupert Murdoch could own by buying the studio and renaming it Fox Kids Worldwide. That means it's another one of those things Disney probably doesn't know that they own. Craptacular! fucked around with this message at 10:07 on Jul 12, 2016 |
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Jul 12, 2016 09:53
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TTAF has YouTube memes from the usual "abridged comedy anime" sources because Americans under 30 can remember it. I don't think 33 in today's days is old enough to remember Photon. Okay what the gently caress I just watched the Robert Palmer space escape. Did you just show me a shot of an old rear end HP That is even funnier than "Addicted To Love." That's like, they needed a special effect and one of the engineers was like "hey, I have this box that makes lights." Craptacular! fucked around with this message at 10:17 on Jul 12, 2016 |
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Jul 12, 2016 10:08
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Ultraman memories time! I discovered Ultraman through his video game, which thankfully I only rented because it was one of those licensed old school video games that thought difficulty through weird hitboxes and cheap hits made a better video game. Then I discovered his old, original, dubbed show (not Syber Squad but some dubbing of the Japanese actors) was being shown on KBHK, which before it became a UPN affiliate and put on big-boy pants was a station that ran some weird stuff. I remember being excited when the Degola episode came on, hoping it would teach me something to beat it in the video game.  Also it took me about thirty episodes of Syber Squad before I finally recognized that Sam's alter-ego sure looked awfully familiar. Craptacular! fucked around with this message at 20:47 on Jul 13, 2016 |
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Jul 13, 2016 20:44
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This guy looks like a mascot for Super Soakers or TurboGrafx in 1993's America. I am immediately interested in this.
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Jul 15, 2016 20:56
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Meanwhile, floating above the rabble, the sophisticated toku fans who have elevated to liking both Japanese and culturally whitewashed toku so long as the stories wrapped around the men in rubber and plastic are actually good stories. Well made PR stories just make me wonder what the source material is like. Poorly made PR stories do the same, maybe even stronger. The only really sad thing is when a bad PR story is basically just a duplicate copy of new actors reading the same poo poo. (hey, Gao/WF) My interest in Megaranger is basically, "hey, that source material looked great!" My interest in Kakuranger is, "WTF was that show supposed to be before they chopped it all away." Craptacular! fucked around with this message at 02:51 on Jul 18, 2016 |
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Jul 18, 2016 02:42
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Burkion posted:I think I'm kind of in love with season 2 because holy poo poo it should have gotten the show cancelled. Every single possible thing that could have gone wrong did and it was pretty wonderful. Aside from actors leaving, which I simply accepted because most of them were 22-23 (their ages were listed in the TV Guide feature for season 2) and weren't going to look vaguely like teens for long, I guess I never noticed. What I remember about season 2 is how my first ever 'god, I wish I could watch raw stock footage' moment came when they started making Serpentera a semi-regular thing. It's first appearance was clipped all to hell so obviously that a 13 year old (yes I was too old for the show when it launched, who cares) who could easily buy into the silly action and repetitive footage could tell. (steps on turtle containing "Jason") (eyes go out for no reason) "Go ahead and SHIVER IN YOUR SHELL, RED RENJA!" (foot comes off turtle in reverse play of previous footage, turtle walks away) If the Gold Ranger never happened that would have been everyone's last memory of Jason. I still want to sit down and watch Dairanger for the ridiculously enormous mega-dragon who walks among the tiniest cities and whose foot is apparently the size of the Dairanger robo. That was a seriously impressive model.
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Jul 20, 2016 05:43
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Huh, I forgot the movie poo poo happened during the second season. I thought it was the extended pre-Zeo "hey, let's turn everybody into kids for two weeks and introduce a whole different team of heroes who ARE NOT EVEN CREDITED IN THE OPENING THEME." I'm just getting old. The Wedding was okay because it had more Serpentera plus also FINALLY using more than one monster at a time. The fact that it all ended in a flurry of generic sword swipes at nothing in particular and Tiger Hadoukens fired into nowhere followed by hard cuts to monsters exploding was not that big a deal. v  v I knew what they were doing, but I didn't care.Season 2 started at the peak of the show's fad status, debuting in prime time immediately after The Simpsons (a repeat, but still.) Even all the weird poo poo they were doing wasn't going to get it cancelled. Craptacular! fucked around with this message at 06:18 on Jul 20, 2016 |
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Jul 20, 2016 06:06
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Burkion posted:Oh I agree. Again, I love Season 2. I really wish we could have gotten the season 2 they seemed to have wanted to make. The season 2 that featured insane time travel plots every other episode and Evil Rangers galore while a horde of monsters invaded every five episodes. Those first few episodes were really weird to watch when they first aired because you're up at 8:30 at night and Zedd is covered in slime and turning the room red and disposing of season 1 mainstays left and right, seemingly able to do everything by simply pointing at the mural of the world on the wall and getting as close to a win with one episode as Rita needed three. Combined with the late hour it seemed for about the first 20 minutes that someone had hijacked your favorite campy show and was going into Roland Emmerich territory with it. Everything blows up and people look sad, while a guy that looked like Darth Vader laughs a lot. A friend phoned me after just to say, "I can't imagine what that guy is going to be like when he loses." Craptacular! fucked around with this message at 06:26 on Jul 20, 2016 |
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Jul 20, 2016 06:24
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I really wanted the old crew gone by the time they were riding a camper van around a rock quarry, but what they did in King For A Day was so outstanding that I forgave the directors. I actually was digging Ohranger's weird designs, and the machine family voices were so funny that it gave them personality (aye, a Scottish robot?) Then this old stuff from previous seasons showed up and I didn't know how I felt. But then that old stuff led to things like Zedd helping the rangers and the silliest monster of the season casually defeating the Ultrazord (I think this is still the only time that's happened?) and then being warped away out of the plot for being too powerful. And then I was back into it again. My history of PR was like seven years of "I think this sucks now, hey wait, it still rules." I followed all the way for 300-some odd epsiodes until Lightspeed Rescue when I finally walked away. And even then I didn't walk away because I was now seventeen years old, but because the idea of rangers being a matter of public knowledge thing on earth and the garbage look of the GoGoV footage seemed like such a downer after Journey's End. You just gave me a season that doubled the size of the known universe, added CGI spaceship battles, and threw in the last season villain who got Zordon killed becoming a ranger herself as a last minute casting idea... And now I've got ParaMedic and Sea World Guy turning a fire truck into a robot? Did the Turbo people come back? Good grief. EDIT: To keep it more on topic, Ohranger was the second time I wished I could watch a sentai show. Mostly because somebody told me that the rangers took Mondo's head and stored it somewhere. That turned out to not be quite correct, but it seemed amazing at the time that one of these shows would have the good guys do something kind of scummy, or make a bad guy the viewer should feel sympathetic for (this was before Astronema.) Craptacular! fucked around with this message at 07:04 on Jul 20, 2016 |
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Jul 20, 2016 06:47
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They're under poor LED lighting that looks neither like soft room lighting or like daylight, so I'll hold my reservations. It does seem like the movie costumes were made to be as close to the toys as possible instead of vice versa.
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Jul 21, 2016 04:58
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This just in: New viewer discovers that old sentai shows are... Old. I can't imagine, if I hadn't been a PR viewer since the beginning, watching anything older than, say, Megaranger. And even that show is kind of rough (and even at the time you could tell as stock footage looked fuzzier and more washed out than the western shoots.) It really seems like Gaoranger was the start of some kind of revolution where somebody said, "you know what, 80s cameras won't do it anymore." Still, I maintained that I would watch a couple seasons from before the PR era, and it is enjoyable. It's just weird how you can have one episode about a wacky plot to take over the world, a somber episode memorializing a dead character, and then another wacky episode with the goofiest monster costume possible.
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Aug 29, 2016 12:50
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I'm new to KR, but isn't he supposed to have, uhh, a motorcycle? Also man oh man that pink latex leaves nothing to the imagination.
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Sep 1, 2016 16:39
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I haven't watched Zyuohger and don't have any intentions to. Is it deliberately going for that "unlicensed Minecraft game" look or what? I guess I could just go watch an episode or three but I can't even be bothered to watch the old stuff I told myself I was going to watch right now. The suits look okay, but then I see the mecha and I feel like they should have named that show Minecranger.
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Sep 5, 2016 23:38
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So, I take it from the fact that they're making Gokaiger trinkets of ranger teams that happened after Gokaiger that it must have been a popular show? Or at least a very marketable one. Usually anniversary series are looked back on poorly, and the KR version of "guy that goes retro" was viewed so poorly that a joke used to be part of this thread's title. So that's a change. I guess I should really watch something from the 2010s, cringeworthy CGI be damned.
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Sep 13, 2016 03:43
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It's more like only a very small number of people who remember the MMPR phenomenon are aware that Thuy Trang is dead. The show does not hire big names nor did "where are they now?" too often before the Disney handover.
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Sep 22, 2016 02:22
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It's not impossible for there to be cameos or other little details like that hidden in there, if they do it's not likely to be part of the film's marketing campaign. But the old show is almost blindly 90s now. You could sneak some old actors in here and there if they're willing, but I wouldn't expect a smoothie to pour on Bulk's head to an electronic tuba, or transitions accompanied by power rock riffs, or Mr Caplan's wig to go flying off his head as the height of comedy.
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Sep 22, 2016 02:28
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If there's just a brief appearance by the original Bulk & Skull actors (because those guys have endured everything and are almost a pillar of the brand now) and the ending credits theme is composed by Ron Wasserman, then I'm sold. Even if the rest of the movie can be an 80 minute long toy commercial of CGI actors that ends with Rita telling Jason that she's his sister (might as well throw in the Astronema story since it's one of the better localization plots.)
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Sep 22, 2016 02:37
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I didn't have any issue with the translation, but I've always thought a translation should be fit to it's audience. If you're targeting someone who wants to learn Japanese, a whole bunch of definitions and cultural lectures in the margins of the picture is fine. However, most audiences don't want to actually learn Japanese. Likewise, if you're producing a cable network show for American children who will assume the cast is American, then characters talking about hamburgers instead of gyoza is fine, etc. The only thing that bothered me about this episode is the foley department. Jesus the sounds were ear grating. First there was the sound the lovely meatball monster was making which was the worst, and then the sounds our hero made when he was striking things with his... hammer doodad? The CGI was at times so corny as to be a step back from the ten year old sentai that I'm used to, but I figure it was likely intentional. Anyway, the finisher made me laugh out loud so I'm down for more, just hoping the sound guys will not play irritating sounds over and over once the newness wears off.
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Oct 4, 2016 19:35
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I just watched Liveman 31.  I guess drugs were really strong in the 80s, huh? I've seen a couple episodes that feel like they were written during a coke binge ("let's put a guy in a giant bug suit and have him die making him take a heroic suicidal rescue leap!"); but this time they were snorting the rails off some Christian missionary's anti-abortion propaganda.
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Oct 7, 2016 09:52
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It's like a Star Wars trailer that was all Mark Hamill and Carrie Fischer, with zero Alec Guinness and James Earl Jones. Or, perhaps more appropriately, all Hayden Christensen and no Christopher Lee. They're doing the Lucas thing of hiring a bunch of pretty faces nobody's heard of and adding a select few People Who Can Act That You Know From Previous Movies in some important but limited roles, and they showed a combined one second of the latter. You got a second of Banks, no Cranston, no Hader, etc. Part of this is because Lionsgate will boil any project down to a "Teens Go In The Woods And Finds Paranormal Object" story. I think it's dumb that they're super strong in their everyday street attire, but I guess it's better than the old concept where literally everybody couldn't get enough of martial arts. And it's happened before; I remember when DinoThunder gave JDF the "superpower" of disappearing. 
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Oct 8, 2016 18:33
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It's MMPRTM with modern YA story beats replacing inexplicable skydiving sequences and a fat guy dancing the swim. There will be fewer one liners because it'll be taking itself more seriously, but whether or not that's actually progress is debatable since it's generally better when campy movies are self-aware. At least this time you know going in that it's a totally odd canon of it's own, and won't be confused like you were in PR96 when Goldar hung out with a pigman or they busted out radar visors and whips.
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Oct 8, 2016 18:48
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Waffleman_ posted:I think Power Rangers just kinda came along at the right time for America to accept something like that. Yeah, like four years after TMNT was the right time for a team of color-coordinated dudes to save the city with live acting and fights that smash buildings. MMPR worked but it also worked because TMNT seeded the soil and fans of the CBS cartoon wanted something edgier that wasn't as edgy as the actual Eastman & Laird comic. MMPR almost failed if Fox hadn't marketed the poo poo out of Green With Evil (which also had a pretty good adaption on top of it). You couldn't go a single commercial break on Animaniacs without a masked green ranger introducing himself and threatening to wipe the team out with campy Evil Tommy moowahhahhah laughter.
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Oct 9, 2016 04:10
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Parallax posted:I'm watching Dekaranger and why does Ban have to scream all the time Red rangers scream a lot, at least half of them in modern shows anyway. Has been the case since Gaoranger.
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Oct 12, 2016 06:35
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drrockso20 posted:There's probably a universe out there where Bioman ended up as the first Super Sentai to be adapted as Power Rangers, as that was the first one Saban tried to bring over back in the 80's(and similarly Marvel had been trying since Sun Vulcan) I have the feeling if Saban could get it on the air as early as he could that the show would have been very different, and basically something like that comedy dub taken seriously. Think voices dubbed over Japanese actors with butt rock riffs like early Rita's Castle sequences. The year long seasons and deluge of one-note monster episodes where nothing happens would allow them to filter out the stuff that's just too cornball. On that note, I just want to say: I love drama in sentai and dig it when enemy generals are turning against each other, the good guys mentors get killed off in battle, etc; and while there are some early shows that do that kind of drama well like the Queen Hedrian story in Sun Vulcan or the soap opera aspects of Liveman, they also have episodes that cause me to double over laughing at the poo poo effects right after the ones that make me feel.
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Oct 24, 2016 14:35
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I'm kind of surprised there even are toys, since that implies this thing is looking for children in the audience; when all the footage of it seems that Lionsgate decided that the Hunger Games Fan Club that their releases has targeted in the past few years had toys back when they were children.
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Oct 28, 2016 21:59
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Poison Mushroom posted:It feels like they're ashamed of the source material. I mean, yeah? The show has had a few moments of acceptable TV storytelling (Astronema, Time Force, certain parts of Lost Galaxy) but they were never the most successful parts of it's history. The most popular, money-making episodes were corny as hell. The episodes of the show they're trying to adapt are the episodes that have the principal's hairpiece, Bulk and Skull getting pantsed on a daily basis, and the lady screaming about her headache. Episodes like "Kimberly's father is drugged while flying a plane" or "Squatt and Babboo kidnap a cheerleader and then get sick of her constant cheering" don't make great movies. The best you can hope for is some kind of Metal Gear style deconstruction where the story is taken as some sort of grim action tale that keeps diving into lunacy. And that's really, really hard to do. Craptacular! fucked around with this message at 00:25 on Oct 29, 2016 |
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Oct 29, 2016 00:23
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I think I can see each person's cockpit on that Megazord. That's kind of cool. Makes more sense than everyone converging in one room. That's all I got.
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Nov 6, 2016 09:39
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Burkion posted:They take the brief moment to show how they get from their individual cockpits, to the main control room within the Megazord. Ohranger's first robo shows little action figure people riding chairs down a chain lift hill into a cockpit. It's a stupid visual for something that I didn't need to know. And I'm usually the person who is looking so hard for realism that I can't have any fun.
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Nov 9, 2016 01:22
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