« Funny Zombie Shit | Main | This is why we don't do acid. »
November 28, 2009
On Power Rangers
First of all, I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving. This year it didn't happen at my house, which is only about the second time since I've been alive that's happened. Now with Christmas coming in about a month, I'm starting to make preparations for that now.
Anyhow, on to the meat of this post. It's relatively late in the night when I made this post, and I had nothing better to do, so I though I would make a post of something I've been thinking about for some time. This post is totally random and totally weird, so brace yourself.
When we were kids, the Power Rangers were incredibly popular. We were a little older than the targeted dynamic, but I still watched the show on occasion, as did many of my friends. I pretty much totally lost interest in the show sometime during the third season of the show, when it had finally gone through it's first total make-over and they were no longer the "Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers," but were now "Power Rangers Zeo," or some shit. However, they were still collectively known as the "Power Rangers," so that is how they will be referred to for the remainder of this post.
My interest in the show peaked when a particular Power Ranger made his debut, creatively named the "Gold Ranger," his outfit was still similar to the other Power Rangers, but was different enough to stand out from the rest (and I have to admit, it looks pretty kickass). He shows up, kicks everyones asses, and leaves without revealing himself. To make a long story short, he turns out to be some alien from another world, loses his power, gives it to one of the former Power Rangers only to have to return the power later in the season, and leaves again.
That's not the point of this post. I found out several years after Power Rangers debuted that it was actually based off a Japanese show called "Super Sentai," and even used the exact same uniforms and vehicles and stuff. What I didn't know is that the American version of the show directly ripped off portions of the Japanese show (although there had to be a Japanese and American base of operations all owned by the same company to produce the show).
With the advent of YouTube, I hunted down clips of the Gold Ranger. I actually found the debut of the same character from the Japanese counterpart, except he's called "King Ranger (the symbol on his helmet is "King")." Watching the clips, I notice several large differences in the two shows.
First is that the Japanese version seems more violent than the American show. The King Ranger doesn't give a damn where he hits or how he kills dudes, but the Gold Ranger does it all flashy and with proper form and shit. They even pan in so you can't actually see his whole body as he performs certain actions, rather they just show an appendage. Second, it seems that the King Ranger doesn't give a damn who knows his identity, while we all know that the Power Rangers go to extreme lengths to hide their alter ego. Third, I'm just flat out amazed how the American producers of the show are totally uncreative and have to take so much from the Japanese version. Pretty much the entire battle scene is random clips from the Japanese show, and I believe the entire vehicle vs. enlarged monster battle scene is from the Japanese show.
I had always known something was up when the Power Rangers used certain abilities and the background as well as the general look of the clip looked completely different, I just couldn't pin it until several years ago.
Anyhow, here are two clips from both shows. The first is the King Ranger's first fight from "Ohranger:"
And here's the Gold Ranger's first fight from "Power Rangers Zeo (I couldn't find his entire fight in a convenient clip, so this is something like half that entire episode. Let it load up a bit, and jump in about two minutes into the video)." You'll see where everything overlaps:
Here's another one, this is just a bunch of clips of the Gold Ranger kicking ass, and getting his ass kicked, all set to his own theme:
Weirdness over, take care everyone.
TYRANOSAURUS!!!
Posted by Ninja McFear at November 28, 2009 12:43 AM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.churducken.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/371
Comments
Wow, that king ranger kicked a lot more ass than the gold ranger ever did, good find Kevin!
Sadly, parents in our country are super sensitive to violence in children's television. So they probably edited the shit out of the original footage to look cool, but not too violent.
But again, that first clip of the king ranger is everything I wished Power Rangers could be back when I was a kid. Outstanding post.
Posted by: Vilhelm 
at November 30, 2009 8:12 AM
Yeah, that King Ranger is a little Bruce Lee-esque, is he not? I was seriously astonished and amazed at how much better the Japanese version of the show was, and again, how much the American version ripped from the Japanese show.
I agree that parents would not have been too happy with what happens in "Ohranger," hence the differences between the show. God forbid we expose children to martial arts talent, because that is the root of all that is wrong with our youth. Maybe that's why Japanese kids are more well adjusted than American kids.
Is "Power Rangers" even on anymore? I'm usually not home during the time when it would have been on when we were kids. It's probably some crazy incarnation now, something like "Super Ultra Ninja Power Dinosaur Dragon Transformer Rangers," or some shit. Anyway, thanks for the compliments Will. Hope all is well with the studies.
IT'S MORPHIN' TIME!!!
Posted by: Ninja McFear at November 30, 2009 9:40 AM
Post a comment
Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)
(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)