Tuesday, April 5, 2011

My Thoughts on Power Rangers Samurai through 8 (10) Episodes

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I've been planning to give my thoughts on Samurai and Gokaiger at episode 10, but with Samurai, I couldn't hold out any longer. At the moment, I don't think Samurai is a good season, and here's why.

Bad Acting
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Judging acting can be subjective, and I usually don't like debating who's a good actor or who's a bad actor because it's so subjective and at times hard to tell, but on Samurai the acting is so terrible that it can't be ignored. Power Ranger fans complain a lot about the bad acting in Wild Force, but Wild Force at least had a few actors that were passable. Here, almost everyone is terrible. Kevin overacts, Emily is awkward, Mia and Jayden are more wooden than Keanu Reeves. The voice actors (except for Dayuu) are equally terrible. It feels like the cast were selected for eye-candy fanservice instead of their acting abilities. The only descent actor so far is Mike. Above we have a child actor playing young Emily and another actor playing Emily's sister. Both of them put on better performances than Emily did that episode. It's pretty sad when your guest actors out-perform your lead actors.

Bad Dialog
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I remember when the promos came out Fantasy Leader talked about the cheesy one liners and corny jokes. After watching 8 episodes of this, it has gotten on my nerves. Most of the bad dialog has come from corny jokes made by the MOTW. To be honest, I'm not really much of a fan of Power Ranger style humor (except for Bulk & Skull and RPM). Most of it is just lame corny puns that aren't really funny at all, which is also what I don't like about Ninja Storm, but that's off topic. Then there's that lame pun that the rangers always say (this. should. change. your. tune.). The rest of the dialog isn't always bad but occasionally we get some klunky dialog from over-translating the Sentai material, like Mia in one episode shouting "unforgivable." It sounds pretty strong in Japanese when you hear "yurusenai" but in English it just sounds wierd.


Handling of the Sentai Source Material
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Generally, how they've handled the American fight footage as well as the Sentai fight footage has actually been pretty good. They're making good transitions from the American footage to the Sentai footage, which I partly credit to the location in New Zealand. However, the big issue I have is how they're handling the Shinkenger plots. I've never been a fan of copying Sentai plots and making them your own. To they're credit, at least in the opening credits they are citing the original writers from the Shinkenger episodes. The problem here is they dumb down the plots so much that they lose their effectiveness. For example, the first episode we saw (technically episode 3) Mike had to leave his friends behind to help serve the team. In the same Shinkenger episode, Chiaki had major discipline issues that were introduced as a character flaw. Another example is when Kevin gets the swordfish zord, he's helped by a random old man. In the same Shinkenger episode, Ryuunosuke was helped by a former Kuroku who screwed up in the past and realized he wants to help again.

Mega Mode

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Many PR fans complain about the battlizers. I've never really cared for them but never really hated them. But this Mega Mode is absolutely stupid. At least the battlizers proved useful. The Mega Mode however, is never used for battle and only used when they're piloting their zords. Whats the damn point if they're not going to use it during battle? It's just another lame gimmick to sale toys.

The Characters are Dry

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Lastly, the characters are just bland. This is partly due to trying to make them exact carbon copies of their Shinkenger counterparts, and also due to the poor acting. Just like the actors themselves, the only character that I do like is Mike. The rest of them are just boring.

From what I've seen so far and what I know about Shinkenger, I don't have a lot of hope for the rest of the season, unless they tone down the cheesiness, the acting gets better, or the writers come out with something completely original. Samurai isn't as bad as Operation Overdrive. Some of the episodes are actually watchable, but I'd give them 6/10 at best. Some are downright terrible like the Swordfish episode or the premier. At the moment, Samurai feels like Wild Force 2.0. Actually it's worst than Wild Force.

17 comments:

  1. Yeah, I agree with everything you said. Samurai is easily on it's way to becoming one of the worst seasons of PR to date imo. Give me Wild Force or Turbo any day.

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  2. I avoid power rangers, except RPM. And, as a writer, I do get pissed when they don't give enough credit to the original writers. If you're going to copy it word for word, then you shouldn't be giving English writers credit. I may copy some of the plot of Maskman for my Maskman adaptation, but at least I own up to it, and I give it some originality, and make some changes to make it better (such as focusing more on the team than Takeru). Yeah, shameless self-plugging.

    Oh, and puns. The japanese language is full of puns and automotopia, but they don't drench sentai in it. I mean, the "maji?" pun is great, and the "one two--" "Sun Vulcan." That's funny.

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  3. ThatChick:

    When watching Power Rangers shows that are as bad as Samurai is atm, I can understand your sentiment. However, I grew up with Power Rangers, which also helped me become interested in Sentai. So even when it gets bad, I find it hard to abandon. I also agree with you about the Japanese puns. They are usually quite clever.

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  4. About the Mega Mode, though it's not outright stated, it's pretty clear it exist so the rangers can used their zords and I don't have a problem with it.

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  5. @sperry

    Yes I know Mega Mode is used to pilot their zords and thats the problem I have with it. No other ranger team ever needed something like Mega Mode to pilot the zords, and it's not used in battle at all. To me it's just a lame gimmick with little purpose except to sell toys.

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  6. A major issue I had in one of the recent episodes was when Mia gave her disc to Mike in the cockpit. Seriously, they copied every single line and every single arm movement from Shinkenger in that scene! They have this chance to do something completely original, and they just get lazy and completely blow it off. This just makes Mega Mode look even more pathetic.

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  7. I would also like to complain about the following too for the series:

    1.) They lack creativity in handling the different rangers and try to copy the Shinkengers' plot into them and IMO doesn't work well. For example, if I were the writer, I may make Jayden a much nicer fellow than Takeru was or well, Mia can skip the whole bad cooking scene to be more original plus she just lacks the charm to portray that type of awfulness IMO.

    2.) The Mega Mode is USELESS. Can't they just stick to Shinkenger footage for it? Toys don't make a good series.

    3.) I don't know what's wrong with the voice dubs really. Most of them are just awful or am I getting biased?

    Please do note however I don't find it as bad as the Bruce Kalish season of Operation Overdrive. They just need better writing and I hope they do get better writing. Too bad Judd Lynn isn't writing the series.

    By the way, I am trying to get the Zyuranger arc done in Super Sentai vs. Power Rangers but well, I'm out of ideas. As for this series, I may end up not using it into the fan-fiction and rather use my own Shinkenger adaptation instead.

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  8. FL and Sean, I agree with everything you guys said. It lacks creativity and originality. ATM, this series is copying even more than what Wild Force copied from Gaoranger. I do agree that Operation Overdrive was much worst. It had all this stuff wrong with it and much more. I could conceivably add Mystic Force and Jungle Fury as being worst than Samurai, but both series did at least have a few good points. That said, I'm not trying to compare Samurai to different Sentai's that are not its counterpart, but even Goseiger is a better series than Samurai, and that's saying something.

    P.S. Sean, if you can give me until tomorrow afternoon I can read the Zyuranger arc and help out.

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  9. The Zyuranger arc has not yet been written. It's still brainstormed. I will email you the ideas.

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  10. It's okay Mr. Smith. I agree. Any of the 35 Sentai seasons are better than Samurai imo.

    I'd say Samurai is around the same level as Mystic Force. But I think Jungle Fury is much better than Samurai (even though I don't care for it either).

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  11. Just thought that I’d put this idea out there.
    If Saban really wanted to go back to its roots I thought that it might go back to incorporating messages since that was one of the things that made the original series sort of special, particularly if they had a kid on the show and had them do something like get over a fear or insecurity. If I remember correctly, they had actual public relations messages at the end of episodes as well. Maybe back then that sort of thing made kids feel almost like they could also be strong like the Power Rangers. When I think back to this show, the combination of these messages and the action is what made it special during its time. Perhaps that's not the style that kids shows are done nowadays, though.
    This series appears to be taking a drama/action route, but I guess Power Rangers has been doing that for a while from the bits of other series I have seen. In any case, although I am aware that there are kids from the 90s who are still fans of the show, honestly it's for the kids. Kids of the 90s had their time with it, and if a new generation of kids are enjoying it, that's all that we can ask for.

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  12. Rosemary, Power Rangers isn't ONLY for kids, it's for its fanbase, no matter how old they are. Successful shows including kids shows don't do well just because they're "for kids." The majority of the ticket buyers to X-Man and Spiderman movies aren't kids even though they're based off of kids shows. They're adults, many of whom like me are fans of the series who grew up with the series, and you'll notice that both X-Man and Spiderman movies are much more mature than what the original cartoons and comic books were.

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  13. @Mr. Smith- I have written the Zyuranger arc and I'm still thinking of a way to end the finale. Anyway, here's what I'm thinking about how PR Samurai is going into- perhaps an average season and just trying to be an exact copy compared to how Lost Galaxy and Time Force were handled.

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  14. Well in my opinion samurai does will forever suck to me simply because of the lack of originality the mega modes are pointless the voices for the monster are just lame especially that octoru monster and the acting is so bland mike and Antonio(Gold ranger)are the only good actors and Plus i know it doesn't matter who is the red ranger but come on this would be the perfect series to have an asian red ranger because we never got on in pr and they could have gotten someone i can name 2 right off the bat and every ranger looks like they should be a model or somethin like come on saban do better

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  16. I agree with Antondavis32, (old time power ranger fan since mighty morphin power rangers and a new fan of super sentai and also kamen rider for two years)they shouldn't have giving the rangers mega mode right off the bat thats just overpowering them, the beginning of the P.R. Samurai intro shouldn't have mentioned that it all started in japan many years ago and the fact that the power has been passed down from generations, they should have made the red ranger asian at least, in the past the majority of red rangers were white a few were african americans, and only once did we have a guy who was from a differant culture. they should have changed the kanji words to english text instead, they should have created original fight scenes and locations instead of using shinkengers, the beginning song is a copyright version of the one used in the first power rangers with just a few words changed, and their catch phrase "GO GO Samurai", the theme isn't race cars but warriors from japan who fought many years ago. they should have created a new storyline instead of copying from the original storyline and i agree with ThatChick, give credit to the japanese team who directed Samurai Sentai Shinkenger. but they due have some good things about it (thinking positive here) Mike is a swimmer which is original,Antonio sells fish instead of sushi which i guess its a bit of a change.i have seen some 'Good' series of power rangers that at least kept me coming back for more, but samurai has to be the worst i can't even last 5 minutes of it that wouldn't make me turn of the tv and read a book. Hopefully they stop at samurai cause i couldn't stand seeing another super sentai series turn horrible wrong due to lack of imagination of american tv company's. and gods have mercy if they think of dueing gokaiger like this.

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  17. I have to agree with everyone on the Mega Mode thing. Its absolutely useless. Have you seen Shogun Mode? All that bulky armor, and they're in a cockpit? That is really flipping dumb.

    I do like the cast, but their acting isn't as good. One of the episodes I was disgusted with most was the one where the monsters were going to chop up toys to make kids cry or some crap like that.

    I came from the MM era up to Time Force (didn't watch Wild Force, but got back into it by Ninja Storm) and I have to say, Samurai is the fakest, lamest, more boring season.

    Rewatching Leo vs Trakeena and Andros vs. Astronema really shows how serious the plots could get, but nowadays it seems the writers are too spineless to tell a serious story.

    At least in the MM days they had life lessons, but Samurai is really fast paced, and I barely get to like any of the characters. (Although I do like Jayden, Mike, and Antonio to a degree).

    I hope the next season isn't this "fake". Deker seems okay, but I don't like Mentor Gi AT ALL. Hes kinda useless, just like the Megamode. :P

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