As many of you know, Saban decided to celebrate Power Rangers' 20th anniversary using Goseiger footage. The series, officially named Power Rangers Megaforce, will also use Gokaiger footage for the series' second season. Despite using Goseiger footage, Megaforce will not use Goseiger's angel motif. Instead, it reverts back to MMPR's theme, five teenagers with attitude.
I'm personally mixed on Megaforce. There's a lot of things I don't like. To start off, why is Goseiger being used for Power Ranger's anniversary? Ok sure, the colors are the same as the MMPR colors, but Gokaiger would have been a better series to use for the series' anniversary. Sure, they're using Gokaiger footage in the second season (I'm imagining we're going to get 20 episodes of Goseiger footage and 20 episodes of Gokaiger footage), but the route they're using disturbs me. Are they going to have the same characters for both sets of footage? Are we going to have characters like Emma (to play Megaforce Pink) transform from the airhead that Erin was in Goseiger to the graceful (and also quite competent) princess that Ahim was in Gokaiger? Or even worst, Troy (Megaforce Red) go from the rather innocent character of Alata to the bold, brave and adventurous alpha male character of Captain Marvelous?
Saban's reasoning for not using Gokaiger as the main series for an anniversary season adaptation also doesn't make a lot of sense. He fears that the Pirate motif may cater too much to boys, might not work, and may even be too grown-up for a younger audience. Uh, hello. Power Rangers is a series aimed at boys already, why not use a theme that will cater to boys? Furthermore, how could a graceful, kind, princess-like character like Ahim not be liked by girls? Frankly, has Saban not recognized the success of pirate themed shows in the United States like Pirates of the Caribbean and Captain Hook? You're going to tell me they don't have followings of a younger audience? Seriously, I think Saban is starting to get too old to make competent business decisions. It's already bad enough that Nickelodeon is meddling around by splitting shows like Power Rangers Samurai over two seasons, and now we get this crap.
Also, as regards to the "teenagers with attitude," it's nice to know that Saban does care about the older fans, but repeating MMPR nostalgia is starting to get old and tiring. I understand it's an anniversary season, but Samurai had tried to reap the benefits of MMPR nostalgia, and failed miserably. If you want to learn how bad Samurai did with MMPR nostalgia, you check out this post. Now I could be wrong. It can work, and Power Rangers has made MMPR nostalgia work well with Dino Thunder. However, with Tzachor at the helm (and without Judd Lynn) I'm not exactly confident it will work out.
Despite all of the possible negatives I see, there are some things that are encouraging. One is the cast. The two female actresses (Ciara Hanna and Christina Masterson) do have previous acting experience. Hopefully this means Megaforce won't have Samurai's craptastic acting. I'm also a bit optimistic that Megaforce will be more original and not another copy and paste job from its Sentai counterparts like Samurai was. When Power Rangers tries to copy and paste its Sentai counterpart, it usually does a terrible job. Plus it gets boring seeing the same stuff that I already saw in the original Sentai. It's like there's nothing to new and exciting to look forward to. With the teenagers with attitude motif, and the fact that they're using two series circled around Power Rangers' anniversary, I have hope that it will force Tzachor and the writers to come up with some original ideas.
