Nice post!!
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What reason drove scenarists to make villains weaker?

Nothing drove them, I think it's just a matter of the Japanese audience's tastes changing. People are into heroes and there's not a lot of interest in nuanced villians, or even giving them a lot of camera time. One of the big complaints about Gekiranger on the Japanese side was too much time spent on Rio and Mele. (I think I've seen this phrased sarcastically as, "Why are Rio and Mele the main characters of Gekiranger?")

I assume it its to tone down the "violence" supersentais are blamed for, but maybe there is another reason.

Not really a correct guess. Japanese parents don't really give a crap about violence as long as there's not a lot of gore or quasi-realistic elements to it. The last show there's any reason to believe Japanese parents objected to was the early run of Kamen Rider Amazon, where monsters were getting limbs torn off with jets of brightly-colored paintblood shooting everywhere.

I dont agree on seeing Takeru as a non vulnerable red ranger.He had a psychological fight with himself, thats a way to be vulnerable.

I wasn't talking about character vulnerability, just the way the character is depicted in fights. Takeru fights maybe one or two foes as ShinkenRed who are depicted as posing a serious threat to him. Even his final battle with Doukoku feels utterly one-sided.

Your other examples are similarly beside the point. In fights, Bioman was generally depicted as fighting truly fearsome foes who could easily win a battle with them. Red Hawk was usually portrayed as the most competent of the Jetman characters, but really had to struggle on a fairly regular basis to defeat his foes.

only ever winning the day because "we have to believe!"

I think this is a story beat the show could've gotten away with if people had liked the characters more. Magiranger treats magic in a pretty similar way (just substitute "belief" for "courage") and nobody much has a problem with that. Magiranger just has stronger overall character writing, so people are more inclined to let the cast get away with using deus ex machinas to solve their problems.
 
MagiFanboy
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I think this is a story beat the show could've gotten away with if people had liked the characters more. Magiranger treats magic in a pretty similar way (just substitute "belief" for "courage") and nobody much has a problem with that. Magiranger just has stronger overall character writing, so people are more inclined to let the cast get away with using deus ex machinas to solve their problems.

There's also the factor that the hows and whys of "Courage becomes Magic" was explained early on in Magiranger, while how belief becoming miracles was supposed to work in Goseiger was vague at best.
 
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Really? My impression was that most people compare it unfavorably to MMPR and the free pass it gets is mostly based on DragonRanger. (And maybe the fact that the toys are awesome.)

It's got the entire "I remember half this stuff from Power Rangers, so it gets the nostalgia card" thing going for it to defend its negatives. Not even "Power Rangers did this better" can totally overpower the nostalgic value people indeed do get from it.
Zyuranger's main problem was its really boring main characters, while the ultra-memorable villains (whose qualities were largely preserved in Power Rangers) is where it really shines.


As for Go-onger, the hate that series gets is ridiculous, and essentially involves grown ass men watching a campy kids show and hating on it for being... a campy kids show. Get over yourselves. I don't know how badly TV Nihon screwed up the series, but there's a point where you have to realize what these shows you're watching actually are.
Go-onger was awesome.
 
Mad Skillz
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I kind of thought the cast in Zyuranger was pretty boring all around, Bandora was cool once we learned a little about her past and Kai, but most of that came far too late for me to save the series. You had some really cool villain designs in Griffozar and Lami, but they never did as much as I wanted them to. And then Dai-Satan's just...kind of there, so I never liked him.

When I look at what shines in Zyuranger, it's purely aesthetic, the hero designs and their tribal garb are incredible, the villains look amazing, the mecha were really the first time you traits of all the pieces preserved in the final formation. The story just couldn't do much to save itself from being pretty bland. I've always seen it as a huge shame because it wasted a pretty great lead actor in Yuta Mochizuki and it was cool to see Takumi Hashimoto as something other than an annoying brat who tags along in a tokusatsu series, but most of the time Boi just felt pushed to the wayside.
 
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Does Gaoranger count? From what I heard back in the day, it was the Black Sheep of the franchise and was like, Go-onger or Goseiger level hated back when it first aired. But since most of the replies I've seen about in recent years seem the positive... does it count?
 
Nice post!!
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There's also the factor that the hows and whys of "Courage becomes Magic" was explained early on in Magiranger, while how belief becoming miracles was supposed to work in Goseiger was vague at best.

Yeah, while there are some Goseiger episodes that try to explain the importance of ~believing~, most of these episodes end up shooting themselves in the foot one way or another. The most nuanced attempts are in Mystic Runner's debut and then in the finale, where you really kinda needed to be familiar with the movie reference for the idea to get across.

A very big problem for Goseiger that isn't discussed much is that to really get what most of the episode plots were doing, you needed to understand which film the episode was referencing... and even the lousiest film Goseiger references is more entertaining than an average episode of Gosieger. Kind of the downside of being a mediocre show with great taste in movies.

Does Gaoranger count? From what I heard back in the day, it was the Black Sheep of the franchise and was like, Go-onger or Goseiger level hated back when it first aired. But since most of the replies I've seen about in recent years seem the positive... does it count?

What's happened with Gaoranger's reception is pretty interesting. The show was absolutely detested when it debuted, because it had the misfortune of following fan favorite Timeranger. Where Timeranger was seriously pushing the boundaries of what storytelling in Sentai could be like, Gaoranger opted for a more traditional story and instead focused on pushing effects.

Over time, Gaoranger's traditional aspects were viewed more favorably as Sentai progressively became sillier and less concerned with even basic narrative storytelling. Once the show was fully subbed by GSF, a full-blown second wave of fandom for it erupted. For a lot of younger fans, Gaoranger is the most old-school thing they've been able to see and completely understand.
 
I liked him when he wasn't a god
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Hm, interesting. I've always enjoyed Gaoranger, but since Timeranger is my number one favourite, I wonder if it would see a resurgence of interest were it ever to be fully subbed?
 
Mad Skillz
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There probably would be since people do enjoy dramatic seasons quite a lot.

I was actually under the impression that Gaoranger was pretty well received in its day, good ratings, really good toy sales, even some of the older fans enjoyed what it did.
 
Nice post!!
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I was actually under the impression that Gaoranger was pretty well received in its day, good ratings, really good toy sales, even some of the older fans enjoyed what it did.

This was the case in Japan. In the Western fandom, where information trickled in a lot more slowly and opinions could become incredibly strange due to the void, there was a lot of initial whining about the show being too dumb to be a worthy successor to Timeranger. Note that a lot of people at the time had to form these opinions before they had seen even a single episode of the series.
 
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The worst season I've seen had to have been Zyuranger. The first couple of episodes started off pretty interesting and then tanked hard. I think there was a musical number in there somewhere, too. Just not good or interesting. Especially now that I've seen Jetman and Dairanger, which were amazing. Dekaranger was pretty boring, too. Nobody but Dekamaster seemed interesting. Magiranger started off pretty bad, but got progressively better.
 
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