I've been rewatching Ohranger myself these past few days. Since this thread has been made, I'll post my thoughts here rather than make a new one:
- Since it's well known that the show got derailed from its original track due to Aum Shinrikyo's terrorism that year, I've divided the episodes into three categories: the good ones which more or less stuck to the intended idea, the "average" episodes, and the truly bad ones. One thing I've noticed is that even the bad episodes will at least have a good idea, or a good scene with the characters. Also most of these bad episodes are in the 20s through the 40s. The good episodes of course still suffer from the show's inability to develop their original ideas to the fullest, particularly KingRanger and Baranoia's origins.
- Hiroshi Miyauchi has very little presence in this show. He even looks smaller than the other characters he's played: his wardrobe and glasses appear one size too large for him, as though the writers wanted to make him look like a small man. Having just come off Winspector, where Miyauchi's Masaki most definitely is a strong leader/mentor, his Miura doesn't have that same impression.
- I definitely like the idea of Baranoia, even though they lose their menace soon into the show's run. People knock their designs, and admittedly some of them are lame, but for the most pat I think they're ok. I guess they were trying to go for an "innocent looking things are actually evil" vibe like in certain horror media, but they don't compare with Spielban's Machinemen as far as creepiness goes.
It makes sense that Bacchushund wouldn't look scary since he wasn't built to be an evil dictator. He's kind of like a cross between Lore and O'Brien from Star Trek: Lore in that he bears a grudge against his creator and keeps trying to create artificial life, O'Brien in that when you remove him from his family he becomes cooler. The episodes where Hysterrier and Buldont feature heavily are where he devolves from maniacal invader to sitcom dad. His final battle is also underwhelming, even though the two episodes about it are still good. Riki doesn't even show up, and he's his sworn enemy.
- I agree that OhBlocker and TackleBoy are unnecessary and just cash grabs by Toei, yet I will confess I still like them. They look nice and the toys are fun. They do make the King Pyramider formations pointless. Gunmajin should've been used as the "third robot" instead of them: that way he'd also be given more action scenes as he barely appears from what I remember when I last saw the show.
- The movie... I do like certain moments, such as the discovery that Buldont was basically making a snuff film with his human hostages, and the speech about the value of life, but the movie doesn't focus on this. It's just a bunch of off-putting scenes that waste a lot of time. At least the action is good.
If you recut Ohranger to just its good episodes and do nothing else, you'll end up with a decent show. But if only it had stuck to its guns, maybe tacked on a message of hope over adversity (which you do kind of see in some episodes) in response to the real-life Tokyo attack, instead of trying to go for bad comedy, Ohranger could've been a contender.
