Magiranger: how much influence from Hurricanger and Abaranger?

[live jetabare]

When you look at the staff involved in Magiranger, there is something which is pretty striking: both the main writer (Atsushi Maekawa) and the main producer (Hideaki Tsukada) are pretty new into the sentai franchise, and both have begun in that franchise as respectivally secondary writer and sub-producer of Hurricanger and Abaranger (Tsukada has also be main producer of the very different Dekaranger).
As a result, I feel that Magiranger takes a lot from both Hurricanger and Abaranger, especially Hurricanger.
From Hurricanger:
- the heroes having "elemental powers", with the water one going to a female blue
- the heroes being young people forced to grown up because of the events of the series (it's true that that theme is shown in much sentai series, but in Hurricanger, the heroes are ninja school students who have to act after losing their school, and in Magiranger, they're forced to act after losing their mother)
- Use of mascot characters (Hamster Mugensai in Hurri, Mandora and Smoky in Magi)
- Most importantly: a big cast of characters, especially on the villain side, allwoing for a lot of storylines to be told : both Hurri and Magi are heavily storyline driven, compared to a lot of other sentai shows
- importance of world building aroung the theme of the series : ninjitsu in Hurricanger (the two schools (Hayate, Ikazuchi) and the Jakanja ) and magic and the magical universe (human magicians, Infershia, Magitopia with the Heavenly Saints)

However, one cannot forget the Aba influence as well: like having the main plot centered around a broken family that at the end at last is reunited again (Asuka, Mahoro and their daughter; the Ozu family in Magiranger); and having at least one main villain being part of that family (Mahoro/ Jeanne and Lije in Abaranger; Wolzard/ Isamu in Magiranger); Jeanne and Wolzard also share the fact that they switch sides at the end of the second tier of the series and become the heroes's allies until the end, even when keeping their villainous outfits; Wolzard shares with Abarekiller the fact that he's more interested in fighting the heroes than defeating them, the stronger the heroes are, the most interesting the fight gets; likewise, both series have one ranger being a mentor for the others (Asuka/Abareblack in Abaranger, Hikaru/Sungel/ Magishine in Magiranger); N'Ma and Dezumozorya are also similar as Big Bads.

It can also be noticed that Tsukada is also Gekiranger's main producer, and Gekiranger's main writer is Michiko Yokote, who has been a major secondary writer of Magiranger, writing as many episodes as the head writer Maekawa.
It's pretty obvious that Gekiranger and Magiranger come from the same mold, in their focus on storytelling, huge world building arond their main theme (Magic in Magiranger, "beast" martial arts in Gekiranger), important cast, especially on the villain side, and Rio shares with Wolzard the will to fight the heroes at their strongest, with himself being the stronger he can.

Your thoughts?

 

[cypsiman2]

While I would agree that overall Dekranger and Magiranger are very different, I would say that the main casts for both shows are very similar; both reds are fireballs, both greens are big goofy guys, both Pinks are bubbly free spirits, and Doggie and Swan share a great many similarities to Isamu and Miyuki; when it comes to Yellow and Blue you have to do a swap, but once that's done DekaBlue matches well to MagiYellow and DekaYellow to MagiBlue. Plus, both Deka and Magi are fairly light on the merchandise side of things; no collectible mecha weapons like with Hurricanger, no arm switching gimmick like with Abaranger.

On Hurricanger and Magiranger, I would say that another similarity there is that there is a great deal of focus on the internal dynamics, as opposed to focus on guest-of-the-week characters; granted, in the case of Hurricanger this is mostly in regards to the Hurricanger-Gouraiger dynamic, but that is significant enough I think.

 

[live jetabare]

While I would agree that overall Dekranger and Magiranger are very different, I would say that the main casts for both shows are very similar; both reds are fireballs, both greens are big goofy guys, both Pinks are bubbly free spirits, and Doggie and Swan share a great many similarities to Isamu and Miyuki; when it comes to Yellow and Blue you have to do a swap, but once that's done DekaBlue matches well to MagiYellow and DekaYellow to MagiBlue. Plus, both Deka and Magi are fairly light on the merchandise side of things; no collectible mecha weapons like with Hurricanger, no arm switching gimmick like with Abaranger.

On Hurricanger and Magiranger, I would say that another similarity there is that there is a great deal of focus on the internal dynamics, as opposed to focus on guest-of-the-week characters; granted, in the case of Hurricanger this is mostly in regards to the Hurricanger-Gouraiger dynamic, but that is significant enough I think.

Interesting; by throwing similarities between Dekaranger and Magiranger, you add some Tsukada trademarks.
Besides, I don't think that neither Hurri nor Aba are such heavier on merchandise than Deka and Magi; Abaranger had only 11 mechas, similar to Dekaranger; besides, even if Hurricanger had the collectible mecha weapons, it only had 7 mechas, which is pretty little. Besides, Hurri has no Super Mode, unlike Deka and Magi.