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Power Rangers
1993 · TV series · 24 min episodes · 30 seasons
Created by Haim Saban
ActionAdventureScience FictionFantasyKids
A team of teenagers with attitude are recruited to save Angel Grove from the evil witch, Rita Repulsa, and later, Lord Zedd, Emperor of all he sees, and their horde of monsters.
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20 comments on Hacker News
In the first episode of Kyoryū Sentai Jūranger, the inspiration for the first bit of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, the witch Bandora (Rita Repulsa) appears on Earth riding a flying penny-farthing bicycle, and terrorizes the people by shifting a bunch of Tokyo skyscrapers around to form her palace.
Seeing the time lapse of that whole city block being moved in one lump made me think of that. Very cool.
> I defy you to watch something like a Harold Lloyd movie involving a clock and not have sweaty palms or at least a mildly elevated ... emotional response of some sort.
Be that as it may, there's probably a day coming where only a handful of people on the planet even know who that is. Or who have even seen those films. And it'll be like that for most of our now-popular cultural artifacts.
How many newspaper stories from the 1700s have you read? The culture of those people died with them, and so too will it be with us.
Nobody is going to grow up to the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers anymore. Nobody is going to watch The Andy Griffith Show or see Last Action Hero. Even if it happens on a rare occasion, those numbers will pale in comparison to the number of Fortnite players. Or whatever's popular in the coming decades.
Our world is ephemeral and dies with us. We should enjoy our media while it is relevant to us, because that's what it's good for. Telling stories in a framework that speaks to us. In the future, it'll be a relic. An artifact of a time long ago, whose people are all dead, and whose lessons may need to come with a history book.
Apart from students of anthropology, the vast majority of future people will probably find our cultural works to be boring, irrelevant, and unworthy of their attention.
Speaking of revisions, with the advent of AI technologies it doesn't seem like we're that far away from being able to fully remaster movies with drastic changes. Imagine that as part of a movie's localization process they changed every actor's race to match the destination. The closest existing example which I'm aware of is the original Power Rangers which spliced footage from the original Japanese version with American actors when they weren't fully suited up.
I wonder if that kind of thing will gain popularity. There's people that prefer dubs over subs, I wonder if the same principle can be extended to other aspects of a movie. Personally I'll probably stick with originals as much as possible.
Lots of US TV gets adapted for other markets. Check out how many US-original game shows have Chinese versions, for instance. Lots.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_international_game_shows
Sitcoms also get adapted pretty often. Talk and panel shows, sometimes.
We do the same thing in the US, just a bit less because we've got a really, really big domestic entertainment industry, so something's got to seem just right (in terms of "will this make money?") to get picked up, shouldering its way past all the US-original shows trying to get made, but it does happen. The Office, Power Rangers (half import, half adaptation), Iron Chef, Ninja Warrior (also has a German version!) and a bunch of others.
A lot of "Americanization" sucks.
But I want to point out some counter-examples.
1. Digimon Season 1 English Dub is far superior to the Japanese original. Many people choose Cowboy Bebop as the "Better in English" anime, but... Digimon S1 is night-and-day. Stronger script with better jokes/puns, cooler attack names (English "Pepper Breath" vs the Japanese "Baby Flame"), everything is straight up better in English.
2. Cowboy Bebop is probably the better known example in anime community.
3. Final Fantasy VII -- Perhaps it is more obvious that "Cloud" and "Earth" would have a doomed romantic relationship if we stuck to the original Japanese. But "Earth" was chosen as a name for the Japanese audience because English sounds exotic. To return that feeling of "exoticness", they transliterated it into "Aeris", and suddenly we return back to the original exotic feeling name.
4. Power Rangers -- Okay, I don't know how to think of this one. Power Rangers took the original Japanese stuff and changed it so much, it no longer looked anything like the original Super Sentai.
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Saban Entertainment knew how to do dubs / Americanizations. (Digimon S1, Power Rangers, Samurai Pizza Cats, Dragonball Z '96).
Just because other companies failed where Saban succeeded doesn't mean that "Americanization" is bad. Its that "bad Americanization" is bad.
Those comics were visually dark and had some darkish themes but they weren't much darker than Power Rangers or anything else on at the time. If anything they were more sophisticated shows than Power Rangers.
That's not to say Power Rangers was bad, but Spider-Man and Gargoyles were interesting in that they used multi-episode storylines with multiple acts. Outside of their visual motifs they weren't dark series. They were just offering narratives for older kids that were reading books and comics and playing video games.
I'm not sure that that's realistic though. What about if the fan project contained inappropriate/sexual content? What if it's a buggy mess that people start to associate with your brand?
This discussion reminds me of the fan made power rangers short video with Katee Sackoff in that got removed from pretty much everywhere. As an adult who watched power rangers as a child I loved it. However, power rangers is ultimately a children's TV show, having violent R-rated content flies totally against the image the company is trying to portray.
Nintendo certainly take it to an extreme but I totally get why.
I never liked MMPR when it first became a phenomenon. The characters seemed to me like perfect little balls of nothing -- no unique personality to them, and they were like a hivemind. All of the subordinate Rangers always followed Red's orders -- seemingly in lockstep -- and Red always followed Zordon's orders. It was implied that they only got their powers contingent upon using them in compliance with Zordon's wishes, which is lame. It's like being handed the keys to a Ferrari and being told you can only use it to go grocery shopping for your mom. The way superhero stories work, usually, is that the character receives powers and then has to make the choice to use them for good.
The only distinct one was Tommy, but they were careful to explain that Tommy's bad-boy-ness was due to Rita's evil magic, not his own choices. Thus absolving of any blame but also stripping him of his agency.
(Rita was the coolest thing about that show. I always love a good, sinister female villain... because at the time they were rare.)
I never saw this movie in theaters because it just seemed like more of the same. I saw parts of it on YouTube and yep, looks like it. Like, don't they skydive and then rollerblade for charity in the opening or something? It just hammers home the point that the OG MMPR are what every fortysomething suburbanite parent wishes their kids were: attractive, omnitalented, getting straight A's and scoring a perfect 1600 on their SATs (the maximum at the time), all while lettering in football, participating in all the extracurriculars, volunteering at the homeless shelter and touring with Up With People. And always, always obeying authority figures to the letter.
I wasn't that kid, so I couldn't relate. I did, however, greatly appreciate the 2017 Power Rangers film, because it reimagined the Rangers as messed up kids who gained superpowers and... had to make the choice to use them for good. And were so stubbornly independent that working together as a team was a challenge for them. They were like the kids I actually hung out with in high school. If those Power Rangers were in the original show, I would have been way more into the franchise.
Later seasons of Power Rangers got better. Same hokey production values, but the characters were more human and fleshed out. And the primary original Japanese series behind Mighty Morphin, Kyōryū Sentai Zyuranger, was pretty rad in a VERY cheesy way.
I was probably in third grade when I saw the movie. I hugely let down by it. My young self would have agreed with Ebert's review. It was just an extended episode, and the episodes were not known for their depth. My friends didn't like the movie either. It may be a coincidence but that was the year I grew out of Power Rangers.
We do children a disservice by insulting their intelligence.
> If you have seen even a few episodes of Robotech/Macross/Gundam that's plenty. Even a bit of Voltron or having seen the movie "Iron Giant" may do.
Power Rangers might be the most mainstream concept for US-audiences. (It helps of course that Power Rangers is somewhat loosely based on Sentai Zyuranger, but a large chunk of the scenes were replaced with American actors)
Power Rangers is a really good example of the mainstream trope that NGE is deconstructing.
A team of "teenagers" are given all-powerful giant robots to kick the ass of the bad guy. And... you just trust Zordon, right? Zordon doesn't have like, nefarious purposes or anything. And these "teenagers" have the right psyche for the job right? We won't need like, a sad commander constantly barking orders at these teenagers to get in the freaking robot to save the world.
And these teenagers won't get hurt right, in these fights? Like, if a heat-ray hits the robot and the internal fluids of the robot begin to boil, the pilots won't get severe burns or mental scars from these traumas? Oh... right.
Why 13-year-olds? I mean, there's an in-universe reason that I don't want to spoil. But its really because its a deconstruction of "teenagers in giant robots" trope that was all the rage in the 90s (like Power Rangers).
>>IMO one of the big civil rights achievements was to get rid of that divide.
>This never happened.
Speaking as an American raised in the 1990s, the cultural programming of my childhood at least made progress in that direction. I was raised on popular TV shows like Sesame Street, Captain Planet, and Power Rangers, which showed people of all races coexisting in settings where race did not divide them. When the issue of racial prejudice did surface, it was clearly marked as a backwards and wrong-headed way of thinking.
These TV shows (and movies, books, etc.) were fiction, and did not change the reality of racial prejudice or de-facto segregated communities on the ground. However, they did set my and many childrens' expectations for how the world should be, and how people of different races should treat each other (i.e. as equals and as they would want to be treated). I see the then-mainstream prevalence of such messages, and absence of countervailing messages, as a tangible victory of the Civil Rights Movement.
I worry that today's mainstream cultural programming will have an opposite effect. Teaching children to focus on racial differences, and constantly drawing attention to race more generally, only teaches them to divide each other along racial lines. I believe a happy medium exists where concrete examples of racial prejudice get called out, but race is not otherwise constantly in focus.
I think on demand TV has a bit of a Skinner effect. You discover something awesome every once in a while, but most of the time it's trash, and you get frustrated looking for something really good. It doesn't help that a lot of Netflix productions have 20 episodes or so, of which only about 3 are really good.
Back in the day, you'd have your Simpsons and Power Rangers and just learn to enjoy it and talk about it with all your friends.
I think algorithms are built wrong too. We'd probably click on some show with a sexy model, or a rom-com twist on a zombie flick, or some reality cooking show with celebrities, or a gritty remake of a children's show. We don't really intend to watch it. But they pique curiousity and a little disgust. The algorithms register these clicks and long views as an "interest", and gives us more of these clickbait-ish shows.
I think what would work is simply narrowed down genres, say, Animation > Children > Horror (e.g. Adventure Time) or Animation > Adult > Tragicomedy (e.g. BoJack Horseman). Past that, just arrange at random, alphabetically, and not even by popularity.
It sounds like one of those toy rebranding exercises. Where they take a TV character, add armour (that never appeared in the TV show), and sell it as 'Battle Pony' or something.
Or maybe Ming's Zord, in a Power Rangers crossover that I now want to see.
The USA and Japan have a very strange relationship.
As far as Asian countries are concerned, Japan has fewer immigrants to the USA than Philippines, China, Vietnam, Korea, and India. But Japan sticks out despite the relatively low migration rate.
* The USA in general does have a sense of "the importance of the foreigner" or outsider. Foreigners invite new thought, new culture, and new experiences.
* Japan seems to make an ideal outsider. They're physically on the other side of the world. Their history is basically isolated from "The West" for hundreds, or even thousands of years.
* Yet, with all of that, modern Japan has integrated very finely into the culture of the West. Japanese brands are well-liked (Nintendo, Sega, Sony, Mazda). And as far as I can tell, Japan also likes a number of USA brands (KFC, Pizza Hut, 7-11, Disney, Levi Jeans, McDonalds, Star Wars).
* The media empire of Japan (not movies necessarily, but Japanese anime and Japanese video games, which are popular in the USA) has a lot of synergistic play / counterplay with USA. For example, the "RPG" genre has been shaped by both cultures heavily. While the USA can claim the big-daddy Dungeons and Dragons, as well as Rogue, Diablo, Bauldur's Gate (Canada, but still "Western"), World of Warcraft, and Skyrim... Japan has the Final Fantasy series, Dragon Quest, Legend of Zelda (including Breath of the Wild). There's a lot of influence and synergy between the "JRPG" and "WRPG" genres.
In short: Japanese culture is both familiar and foreign.
Cowboy Bebop is perhaps the best example of what I'm going for. Its a hardcore scifi space opera filled with Jazz: the American-influence on the anime cannot be ignored. But its still an anime with big eyes and the unique "Japanese" drawing style.
The familiarity allows American audiences a degree of comfort, while the Japanese tropes entice us with their exoticness. Its both familiar and different.
And from my understanding: the opposite occurs in Japan. The Jazz and "Americanisms" in the anime are designed to give a bit of an exotic feel for Japanese audiences and entice them. While the Anime tropes are there to give them familiarity.
And that's why its synergy. Familiar to us is exotic for them, and vice versa.
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EDIT: And then there's "Power Rangers", the weirdest thing to ever happen between the USA and Japan. Its neither fully American nor fully Japanese. Its clearly "Super Sentai" footage, but the "American Parts" with Johnny / Kimberly / Jason are still core to the series.
Its not just "Power Rangers" either. Transformers, and Sonic. Sonic is a Sega-owned video game character... but a lot of the animation was... American/France. How's that for a change? Outside of the "Sonic X" anime--- Sonic SatAM, The Adventures of Sonic, Sonic Underground, and Sonic Boom are all primarily animated in the West. With the comics done by Archie.
Haim Saban was notorious for underpaying his people. Half the cast of Power Rangers, another Saban show, quit during the second season because they were working for peanuts. IIRC, they only got paid $1000 per episode. That was low even by 1994 standards.
I don't think it was. It lasted a while, but that had to do with it being the first syndicated afternoon Disney animated cartoon. (Gummi Bears was a saturday morning one first.) It lasted a bit because of that, but around the same time you had the really popular cartoons and shows, like Tiny Toon Adventures, Batman the Animated series, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.
Ducktales was a very well done series, but what appeals to adults doesn't always appeal to kids, and the Ducktales movie bombed so bad it canceled the rest of the movies based on Disney Afternoon shows.
For comparison, the best Disney Afternoon series in the states was Aladdin, which outlasted Ducktales by several years, and spawned several direct to DVD movies.
It doesn't have a lot of contents in here (Czech Republic).
But! It has complete history of Power Rangers franchise. I think every Power Rangers episode in history is there. So there is that.
It means they'll know one thing. They won't have time to get into anything else. Every day, they'll have to make the decision to play the one video game/watch the one TV show they know they'll like, or take a risk on something new. They'll choose the safe bet every time. This means they'll not be the Amish kids, they'll just be the kids that are really obnoxious about Power Rangers, talk about Power Rangers all the time, wear only Power Rangers clothes, but have never seen any other shows or played any other video games.
It's a great strategy if you're trying to breed risk-averse, close-minded social outcasts.
Anecdote: My kids are preschool age. Obviously we regulate what and how much TV they watch; I don't let them watch violent stuff or stuff that's agressive on TV but occasionally things slip through the net like power rangers or spider man cartoons, etc. I live in the UK and I have noticed that often when they play a game that involves a lot of aggression they put on an American accent, it was amazing the effect one episode of power rangers had. I haven't spent much time in the US but from consuming plenty of US media, it always seems like violence and aggression in general is a big part of American culture and is portrayed as heroic, rather than tragic. I don't think you can change that through legislation.
I agree with the comments on the linked article, I liked the Speed Racer movie too. On the other hand, I thought the Lost In Space movie was worse than the original series. I was a kid when all three of these Astro Boy, Speed Racer, and Lost in Space were originally out, so we'll see how it goes. What's next though, Marine Boy, that's the only other major cartoon from the 70s left, that I can remember. Or maybe they'll do an Ultraman movie rather than the pukey Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers that supposedly evolved from it.