My Favorite Sentai opening theme songs

The one thing I haven't done a whole lot of is focus on the music of Sentai and Power Rangers. I'll start here with a list of some of my favorite Sentai intros and opening themes. As you can tell, I'm not much of a fan of pre-2000's Sentai music, but 3 90's theme songs still manage to make my list. Enjoy.

Jetman's theme song is pretty cool. The song fits well with both the intro and the fighting songs.

I like Zyuranger's opening theme song, a lot better than its ending theme. It's not quite as cool as Go Go Power Rangers or some of Sentai's other theme songs, but it's still a pretty descent song.

Megaranger's opening theme is by far my favorite 90's Sentai theme song. The song starts out kinda slow but it still has a fun beat.

I like the Timeranger theme song a whole lot better than the Power Rangers Time Force theme song. It has a strong beat, it's fast pace, and goes quite well with the intro. It's a pretty intense song for a pretty intense season.

Dekaranger's opening theme is awesome. It's by Psychic Lover, and just about every song by Psychic Lover is awesome. By far my favorite Sentai theme song and I often catch myself singing along with it. It also surpasses all of my favorite Power Rangers theme songs.

The Gekiranger theme song is also pretty awesome. Like Deka's theme, I often find myself singing along to it and it fits the intro quite well. The intro is also pretty awesome with all the martial arts action, except for some parts in the early part of the intro where the foot soldiers look more like they're dancing instead of fighting.

Go-Onger's theme song is also quite catchy and fun. Much like the series is. Not quite as awesome as the Dekaranger, Gekiranger, or the Shinkenger theme song, but still fits the series quite well.

Shinkenger's theme song is another totally awesome song. It's a collaboration between Psychic Lover and Project R. Catchy and energetic. It's my second favorite Sentai theme behind Dekaranger's. The intro is pretty cool as well.

Happy Birthday Ayumi Kinoshita

Today Ayumi Kinoshita (Jasmine/DekaYellow) turns 28. Three days from now, another Deka alumni, Mika Kikuchi will be celebrating her birthday as well. Happy birthday to both girls.

Executive Meddling, Power Ranger Seasons That Were Screwed by the Network

While Power Rangers has been a successful show, lasting for 18 seasons, there's been times where some of its seasons could have been more successful than they were. Here's a few examples.

Initially, the first half of Lost Galaxy was very successful. At the time, it had the highest ratings ever for a Power Rangers season. However, the ratings during the second half of the season went downhill a bit, not because the second half was bad, but because of some of the behind the scenes moves. The second half aired four months after the first half, which was common for PR seasons at the time. However, advertisement and promotion of the second half of Lost Galaxy was shunned by Saban in favor of promoting Digimon. Also, on set, Danny Slavin (Leo), had a fall out with the production crew and there was the contract dispute with Patricia Ja Lee (Cassie) who was set to replace Kendrix after Valarie Varone left the set due to having leukemia.

Power Rangers SPD also suffered a bit from executive meddling, regarding the Omega Ranger scenario. Disney didn't want an extra actor hanging around on set, so eventually the character Sam (the Omega Ranger) was written as a CGI ball of light whenever he was unmorphed due to time travel. This alienated many fans. Though strangely, Disney did nothing on RPM when there were even more actors on set than SPD.

Power Rangers RPM received an even worst treatment than Lost Galaxy did. Disney thought RPM was going to be the lame duck last season of Power Rangers, so they switched it from Toon Disney to ABC. RPM was also given terrible time slots, such as airing at 5am in some places and other places being subject to ABC's college football broadcast. In fact, in some cities RPM didn't even air. To top it off, promotion and advertisement was poor at best. As a result, RPM had the lowest ratings ever for a PR season, until MMPR v2 came out the next year.

Ideas That Power Rangers and Sentai Borrowed from Each Other

A few weeks ago, Sean Akizuki requested me to do a post on what ideas Power Rangers borrowed from Sentai or vise versa. I haven't had time to post on my blog that much during the last couple months because of school, but now that I'm off for winter break I decided to follow up on his request. So here are some of the ideas that I feel that Power Rangers and Sentai borrowed from each other. For similar posts, check Sean's blog.

Ideas Power Rangers borrowed from Sentai

Ideas Sentai borrowed from Power Rangers

Power Rangers borrowing from Sentai

The most obvious would be changing the cast, suits, stories, themes, and series every year. Changing the suits wasn't done until Zeo, while changing the cast annually started with Lost Galaxy but wasn't completely decided on until after Lost Galaxy was done. The original cast of Lost Galaxy had a two year contract. Every since Lost Galaxy, the franchise has tried to make each season as stand alone as possible.

Another idea taken from Sentai was the annual team-up episodes with the previous year's team. This was first done in Power Rangers Zeo with the two part episode Rangers from Two Worlds when the Zeo rangers teamed up with the Alien rangers. This however, wasn't fully implemented until Lost Galaxy teamed up with In Space during the episodes To the Tenth Power and The Power of Pink. However, when Lost Galaxy came out, originally there were no planned team-ups with In Space. But when actress Valarie Varone (Kendrix/Lost Galaxy Pink) was diagnosed with Leukemia, she had to be replaced quickly. The plan was to have a team up with In Space, kill her character off, and have Cassie (Turbo/In Space Pink) replace her. After the team-up, Patricia Ja Lee filmed one additional episode but then left due to a contract dispute. Despite this, the production crew was still able to use the team-up, and eventually replaced Kendrix with Karone, the former villain Astronema. After lost Galaxy, annual team-ups became a yearly occurence.

Anniversary team-ups such as Forever Red and Once A Ranger were borrowed concepts respectively from Gaoranger vs. Super Sentai and Boukenger vs. Super Sentai respectively. While the plots in each episodes are completely original, the idea of having all red rangers team up, for example, was borrowed from Gaoranger vs SS. The same goes for Once A Ranger.

As mentioned in a previous post, Power Rangers RPM had a very Sentai-like cast with many characters being similar to previous Sentai characters. This includes Dillion being similar to Gai from Jetman, Summer being similar to Ran/Gekiyellow, and hyperactive comic relief power rangers such as Ziggy, Gem, and Gemma that while are pretty common in Sentai, are pretty rare in Power Rangers.

Sentai Borrowing from Power Rangers

Magiranger vs Dekaranger introduced the canon immigrant, literally. Sentai borrowed the red ranger battlizer from Power Rangers SPD to give Ban/DekaRed a new weapon from the Fire Squad that he was promoted to.

Head or floating head like characters such as Mr. Voice from Boukenger and Master Head from Goseiger are likely partly inspired by Zordon.

Jan/GekiRed seems to be inspired by Cole, from Power Rangers Wild Force. Both characters have essentially the same story. Both being red rangers, both being newbies to their teams after growing up in the jungle. Both had their parents killed by their series respective main villains (though the stories are slightly different). Both also tend to overact at times, and both characters were on beast-themed seasons.