Purportedly being a more comedic Sentai series, I found Go-onger's handling of humour hard to stomach in comparison to RPM's more natural, witty humour between the characters. Say what you want about how the writers pulled off RPM in general, but they pulled off Ziggy, and especially his dynamic with Doctor K. And yes, RPM had plenty of moments of lamp-shading and lightheartedness. One episode where they ask why the Zords have cutesy anime eyes and the reason for the explosion behind the rangers every time they morph. Anyone who thinks RPM was exclusively a dark, miserable and uber-serious show should probably revisit it.
That being said, I absolutely did not care for the whole post-apocalyptic setting. So a virus created by one young woman was enough to wipe out nearly the entire world, when a whole Machine Empire and a conglomeration of allied evil forces failed to. Yet they can't seem to destroy a domed city, even though DESPITE THE SHIELDS, they keep getting in somehow. It's a baffling choice of setting because given the footage, either the rangers sporadically have to either go out into the wasteland, or mostly fight in the city. The latter of which they mostly do. How inept are your security systems?
I appreciate the grander, ambitious scope of RPM with the footage they had to work with, compared to the creative bankruptcy of the succeeding PR series, but the setting just does not work for me as a Power Rangers show. Still, I'm glad we got it, even if I don't agree with the idea that it's the best Power Rangers series. It's a good show, but one that feels like it was filed under the wrong intellectual property. Go-onger, I just couldn't find much in it to care about.
