What the hey, may as well throw my hat in. I warn you now: I'm a strange, strange man.
MMPRS1: Same as most pepole; pretty bad till Tommy came in and made PR "cool" somehow.
MMPRS2: When Lord Zedd first appeared, I loved him to death. He wreaked havoc, and was truly menacing. I thought they did a good job with him at first, especially after having to hear Rita moan about her headache for the 5,000,000th time.
...of course, then he had to go spoil it by a) making even worse putties than Rita (Hey, guys! Go for the
immensely huge targets on their chests and they die in one shot! Wow!) and then getting wussified by being forced to marry Rita. But for a time, he was awesome. And I still love to use him in the SNES fighting game.
White Ranger was neat too. Thunderzords were pimp. White Ranger/Tigerzord vs. Green Ranger/Dragonzord was a masterpiece of cobbled-together footage from separate sentai shows that I am still in awe and amusement of today.
MMPRS3/MMAR: ...yeah, I prefer not to get into this one. I'll start throwing things.
Zeo: Turned me into a regular watcher. The stories were fun, jokes were funn, the robots were
freaking sweet, Gold Ranger blew me away with everything he did. Pyramidas forever, man.
Turbo: My first words: "What the living crap is this? Did they finally run out of ideas?" (This was a full decade before I found out that Carranger would be my one true love, but whatever.) We've got a kid who
grows into a ranger, a bunch of car things, an Alpha with a New York accent (that part I actually liked) and a mentor who doesn't... ment. I hated this for a long time, but I then decided to give it one more shot about a year ago, and watch it all the way through.
Y'know, Turbo's got its good points. Must as people rag on Justin (shoot as much as
I rag on Justin), I can't actively dislike him anymore. That one episode where he actually used his powers to get away from that one bully showed him as more human than any other Ranger character on the show before him (and before TJ and Cassie hit the scene), who were all squeaky clean and could do no wrong unless they were on a spell or something. To this day, I still don't exactly
like him, but there are other Rangers who I find are much more worthy of my annoyance. Also, I found the characters of TJ and Divatox to be highly underrated.
Also, Turbo gave me Cassie Chan.
Cassie. Oh My God Cassie. Let's put it this way; most people fell for Kimberly. I didn't. Cassie was
my Kimberly.
Heck, even the music's catchy. So yeah, I don't irrationally hate Turbo. Weird, I know. The movie, however, needs to be erased from history.
Space: And I got Cassie for another entire year! Yay! After the dreck that was Turbo, I stopped watching the show altogether, and would have stoped completely if I hadn't caught this show being run for the second year in a row (It seem producing Lost Galaxy took a long, LONG time). For a long time, Space was my favorite (and most everyone's). It isn't anymore, but that thing was packed with something I'd never gotten in a PR before: drama, and semblance of a cohesive storyline. And villains actually fighting each other. Oh, and Countdown to Destruction. And the Psycho Rangers. And Zhane. Zhane was the epitome of badass for me for so many years, right up there with Tommy. SUPER SILVERIZER!
Ecliptor was the man through and through, I loved him.
Lost Galaxy: Another series I went through really late. Man, this thing blew the budget. Too bad it was based on Gingaman. All the cool effects and Starship Troopers homages in the
world couldn't disguise
that fact. And they brought back Cassie again
for omg so much hidden sexual tension between her and Kendrix! Yay.
Ecliptor and Villamax seriously should have met.
Lightspeed Rescue: It's weird. If I simply think of this as
The Joel and Miss Fairweather Show, I can live with LR. If I try to take it for everything it is, though, I fly into this massive unbridled rage, frothing at the mouth at its irrationality. And don't get me started on the Titanium Ranger. Mind you, I liked the execution of that guy... unfortunately, since he wasn't in the GoGo V footage, it was always "RYAN! GO HELP THOSE IMAGINARY OFFSCREEN PEOPLE WHILE OUR FOOTAGE FOR THE ENTIRE FIGHT SCENE IS PLAYED! WE'LL MEET YOU BACK AT THE ZORD THAT ISN'T REALLY YOURS!" Man, that got old real quick.
Oh, and: RARGH VYPRA KILL ARGH.
Time Force: What the hell happened? When did Power Rangers suddenly stop becoming a guilty pleasure??? This was In Space on crack. The acting was the best ever (well, for a Saban series). The characters were well-thought out, and they
worked. The Timeranger story localization went off with as few hitches as possible. The Quantum Ranger was a total
asshole, and it
still worked, both individually and together. To this day, I
still prefer TF to Timeranger. TR, while godly, was half angst-bait. Great for Final Fantasy players, not too great for people who don't like pity parties. Time Force showed people making the best of a bad situation more often than not, and wasn't afraid to poke fun at itself. This runs neck and neck for my favorite series, along with another one that people will probably kill me for...
Wild Force: ...but this wasn't it. Man, this was just
weird, yo. All of it. However, it still gets a fair amount of respect from be because of
shirt-ripping the AWESOME crosovers, and the fact that Alpha Stunts really seemed to want to try some new stuff. The stunts in WF were unlike anything we'd seen before; the fights were kicked up about three notches, and though a lot of it was performed more slowly than usual, the elaborateness of much of the choreography made up for it. Don't watch WF for the story or characters or anything--watch it to see where the beginnings of our uber-flippy Power Rangers of today came from.
---
End Saban Saga: Enter Disney Saga
And here's where I'm going to catch it. I have a confession to make: I think Doug Sloan did a very good job, and was sad to see him and Ann Austen go. I
am nuts about SPD, though; but I'm getting ahead of myself.
Ninja Storm: Tied with Time Force for my favorite PR series of all time. Why? It was the American Carranger. I kid you not. It made fun of everything we knew about Power Rangers, ever, and homaged everything else. Ninja Storm is one big parody, with people who blew away the Saban era in terms of acting. All of the "dude"s aside, these were the most "human" ranger characters yet. They weren't always helping some orphanage kids while maintaining their squeaky-clean GPAs or being public figures; they were practicing the art of fighting (sometimes dirty), they made mistakes, they were selfish, they disobeyed orders, kept secrets from one another without stressing about it, they whined... and yet, they still pulled through, learned their lessons, grew up a bit. The jokes that were bad were horrible, but the jokes that were funny were spot-on. Lothor is easily the most quotable PR villain ever. Cam was a sarcastic crazy geek man who also had ninja skills for some reson and I will always love him for it. Ninja Storm, for me, was the feel-good series of the PR dynasty, and I was so very sad to see it go.
Dino Thunder: Most dysfunctional ranger team ever. I was actally hoping it'd stay that way, stay as a team of rangers who couldn't stand each others' guts yet had to go save the world anyway. I had a bit of trouble wondering where this show was going sometimes because while the whole "from different worlds" angle can be good when done right, all of these people were jst
too far apart. No cohesion. Still. OMG TOMMY BACK YAY, Mesogog made a good villain, Elsa made an even
bettter one (mrrowr), Zeltrax was fun to watch, White Ranger should have stayed evil, best crossover in my opinion, wit was even more biting than in NS. You could seriously cut yourself with some of those one-liners and comebacks getting thrown around. Yowza. I like DT, but I sort of have to be in the mood for it, knowwhatImean? There are a lot of things to like about it, just not many to go absolutely
nuts about. Solid, but not much else.
Which brings us to...
SPD: Some of the acting needs work, but I can see they're trying--and the people who are good, like Doggie, Kat, and the villains' actors, are
phenomenal. The writing, however, is
off the chain. I seriously respect Kalish and Co. for putting togeher some really nice stories for these guys, I respect the crew, the directors, all the stunt and special effect and set people... all of it. SPD is just really nice work so far, and I hope they keep it up. I've said, "wow, this was even better than the Dekaranger version of that episode!" no less than five times now. These guys really know what they're doing, and you can tell they're doing their best. SPD has heart, and right now, I'm not asking for anything more than that.
And that's it, I'm done. Y'all can wake up now.
