#samurai is the season that got me back into power rangers

[quietgamelover]

I super enjoy making fun pokemon teams so here's another! This time its one of my favorite reds, Jayden

Arcanine looks very majestic and regal and I think that with his fire typing he makes the perfect candidate as the pokemon favored by the Shiba family. Jayden’s had him for as long as he can remember

Kilowattrel is a fairly recent addition, with Jayden’s symbol power getting stronger and branching into symbols of lightning he drew the attention of this bird pokemon who was intrigued by the red ranger

Umbreon was Jayden’s second teammate, an injured Eevee he found outside the Shiba house who he cared for when he was still young. It evolved into Umbreon after forging a fierce bond with Jayden, often staying up with him during his late night training sessions

Bisharp joined Jayden’s team during a trip away from the Shiba manor, she noticed Jayden’s flimsy sword skills when he was first learning and acted as a sparring partner for him as he grew up

Wishiwashi was a gift from Jayden’s best friend, a present to remember him by. Though he may not be the strongest pokemon Jayden never leaves home without his pokeball and he someday hopes that both he and Wishiwashi will get to see Antonio again

[theswissgirl]

They don't need me- A Jayden Shiba imagine

So I am 18 years old and I still find myself crushing on the red ranger of the Power Rangers Samurai aka Jayden Shiba (in the first season) and I just feel like I have to write my imaginations I feel like it'll be fun. Plus, no one knows who I am here so I wont get mocked :)

Imagine this: you switch places with Kevin when the nighlock takes possession of him, believing that the team need him more than you, especially jayden but little does she know...

Episode : I've got a spell on Blue

PS: Her name is Ember, imagine her as you want, and she has the ability to manipulate fire and able to preform protection spells (think of her as bloom from winx club I guess)

Yes, I know this is a major twist in the plot but this is how I always imagine it.

credits to power rangers, they own everything.

____________________________________________________________

After a fight with the Nighlock had gone south, the rangers and Ember were on their way back to the dojo where Mentor was waiting for them. Concern clear on face.

It only grew as he saw the cuts and bruises and torn clothes.

"this isn't good, its going to very hard to break that monsters spell on the tiger zord and Kevin" he said as he followed them inside and walked along side Jayden.

Mike, Emily and Mia all sat down whilst Ember leaned against the wall, groaning in pain as her entire body ached from being slashed by Kevins spin sword. She wanted to use her powers to defend herself but at the same time, she didn't want to risk hurting Kevin with her fire power.

Jaydens head turned quickly after hearing the noise, feeling the smallest bit of concern but quickly covering it again and turning to mentor.

"we need a plan" he said firmly.

"Jayden, you must be prepared to make tough choices if need be" mentor says to him.

"I know Ji" Jayden replies.

a pause takes over the room before he speaks again.

"But lets figure out a way to break the nighlocks hold on Kevin before it gets to that"

The rangers look solemnly at one another.

But Ember had her own thought progress going on.

The rangers look really upset, I can imagine they are all very worried for Kevin. I understand why, Kevin is the brains of the Samurai rangers and trains harder than anybody else. He gets along with everyone, well maybe not so much with Mike but its gotten better

She quitely snickers to herself at that last bit before she continues to think.

They need him, otherwise the whole team might fall apart

A thought popped into her head.

What if… What if I could trade places with Kevin? I mean I am probably more valuable than Kevin because of my powers, I would be of more use to the nighlock. Besides, I’m not one of the rangers or part of their group, they need Kevin more than they need me. 

Hopefully the protection spells will enable me to break the nighlocks hold before the rangers find out

Suddenly, she feels determined to return Kevin to the rangers.

"Excuse me for a second" she says quietly to the others before dashing off the her room, hoping that the others think she just needs to lay down.

When the rangers start to chatter again, she quietly walks to double doors, pulls them open and walks out, closing the door quietly behind her. She takes off for the forest.

__________________________________________________________

"Show yourself nighlock!"

As soon as she got to the forest, she immediately starts trying to attract the nighlocks attention. She spins around in circles, hoping to catch a glimpse of him somewhere.

"I have a deal for you!" she yells into the air.

When that doesn't spark anything, she tries again.

"I am more useful than the blue ranger, I will be able to inflict more damage and pain on the rangers. Release the blue ranger and take control of me instead!!" suddenly, she hears the sound of lightning

He's here.

"hmm I know you, you're the rangers little pet who always stays behind and does nothing" he retorts.

"that's one way to phrase it" she shrugs her shoulders.

He points a claw at her "how do I know you're not lying"

Ember smirks.

She closes her eyes and when she opens them, her eyes are a bright burning orange. She raises her hands up and out comes fire, growing larger and larger, she moves her wrists to spread the fire around them, creating a ring and trapping them both. With two snaps of her fingers, the fire is gone.

"hmmm color me impressed" the nighlocks hums and Ember nods her head in acknowledgement. A pause follows after.

"you have yourself a deal!" the nighlock exclaims loudly.

In a cloud of blue mist, Kevin appears and is still wearing his ranger suit. A mass of dark blue and black colored substance rises out of him before exploding in the air, cleansing Kevin of the monsters possession. He falls to the ground and catches his breath and his suit disappears from his body. He stands up and he is taken by surprise when he lays eyes on Ember.

"Ember, what are you doing?" he asks alarmed when he spots the nighlock not too far away from him.

"Kevin, before you do something stupid please listen to me. You are free to return to the rangers. They need you okay? more than they need me, especially Jayden" she says, her voice taking a sorrow tone.

"Ember, what did you do??"

"She traded places with you, claimed that she is more useful" the nighlock laughed and Kevin is shocked and can't figure out what to say. This was quite a heavy sacrifice she was making.

" Please tell them I'm sorry for leaving without telling them" she whispers.

"Run!!" she yells one last time.

Kevin takes off to the Dojo, running as fast as he can to warn his fellow rangers

The nighlock unleashes a blast, directly targeting her. The impact of the blast sent her to the ground, where the spell works its way into her body and into her brain. She groans in as the spell takes ahold of her. After a few seconds, she stands up and her eyes are bright purple. The nighlock has control of her now.

"The rangers don't know what's coming for them"

______________________________________________________________

After running for what seemed like eternity, Kevin finally made it to the Dojo. He frantically rips open the doors and runs inside to find the rangers sitting in a circle on the chairs surrounding the map table.

The heads Jayden and Mentor shoot up and quickly stand up once they see Kevin standing there, completely frantic and breathing heavily. The rest of the rangers had retired to their rooms to get some rest and recuperate.

Jayden walks up to Kevin carefully, not sure if they are being tricked or not. He places a hand on Kevins shoulder and finds out that it really is Kevin. He smiles and squeezes his shoulder.

"Welcome back Kevin" Jayden says, relief filling him. Then he asked "how did you get here?"

"Ember, she... she... she took my place, she traded places with me so that the Nighlock has control of her instead of me" he says quickly.

"She did what?!" Mentor exclaims

Jayden could not comprehend the words Kevin has just said. Immediate concern and sorrow fills him as he thinks of the girl whom he's begun to feel things for. Sure, he didn't think anything of it to start with, but as she remained with the rangers and spent more time with them, Jayden grew to care for her. Yes, he cares for all of the rangers but it's different with Ember. He gets nervous when their eyes meet across the room, he gets scared whenever she is injured in battle, he admires how close she's grown with Mia and Emily, he loves how she checks up on him every now and then. And most importantly, she makes him feel good and at ease, like the rest of world and it's problems just faded away. One might say, he developed feelings for her.

"She said that you guys needed me more than we needed her, especially you, Jayden" Kevin mutters quitely.

"She thinks we don't need her?" Jayden asked sorrowfully, feeling great sadness that she came to feel this way.

Kevin nodded sadly.

" Okay new plan. We need to get Ember back, she is now our first priority" Jayden says fiercely, determination crossing his features.

"We need to destroy that nighlock before he hurts her or makes her hurt innocent people" Kevin says and the rest agreed with her. Suddenly, everyone knew what to do and they would do everything in her power to do accomplish the task. Get Ember back at all cost.

"No, I'll go alone, you need to rest just like the others, you need to make sure you okay before you can fight" Jayden tells him. Kevin knew he was right and nodded his head before going to his room.

Jayden runs to doors, pulls out his sammurizer and morphs into his ranger suit. He goes to find the Nighlock that has taken Ember from him.

____________________________________________________________

The Shib alarm starts sounding out in the entire house and the rangers run to Mentor who has already opened the water map.

"Mentor, where's Jayden? Mike asked.

"He's already gone to battle the Nighlock" he informs the rangers.

"Are you kidding me? what about Ember? the Nighlock will make her fight Jayden" Mike states irritated.

"Hopefully that won't happen but it our duty to protect the people. He may have no choice." Mentor sighs.

"There's always a choice!" Mike exclaims

"This is bogus"

Mentor turns and walks around him "Have faith in your leader, Mike"

"Mike, we have to help Jayden" Mia says.

" And hope Ember comes to her senses" Emily adds on.

The rangers run to the join Jayden at the battlefield.

______________________________________________________________

Jayden stands in front of the Nighlock, Ember standing right behind him with a cold expression on her face as she observes Jayden.

"It's about time red ranger" the nighlock bellows out but Jayden's focus is solely on Ember.

"Ember please wake up" he says to her. She smirks and only shrugs her shoulders in response, the spell forcing her.

"Not going to happen, red" The nighlock says before turning to Ember.

"Make this fight count" he says and she nods her head and moves closer to Jayden.

"Or I'll make her use her powers on herself"

The rest of rangers arrive just on time, holding up their morphers.

"Jayden, we're here to help" Mike states.

"No, I can't put anyone else at risk" Jayden rejects Mike's and the others aid.

"You want a show? I'll give you the show of your life, Nighlock" Jayden says beforing morphing into his suit.

"I wish I had some popcorn. Fire girl, attack!" The Nighlock yells before jumping on top of some containers to watch the battle.

She moves her hands to her side, fire sprouting out of them immediately and she advances towards Jayden and the two slowly start to circle each other. Jayden goes into a stance and Ember sees that as her sign to attack. With a flick of her wrist, she throws the fire fire ball towards Jayden

Jayden deflects her attack by using his sword as a barrier, immediately after, he lunges for her. He swipes his sword, Ember holds up her arms, a magical armor protecting her from getting cut and she blocks his attack. This left her flank open and Jayden used that to his advantage.

Before she could see it, Jayden kicks her to the ground. She wheezes as air is knocked out of her and she holds her sides.

"What are you thinking thats Ember!" Mike yells out but his statement goes unheard.

Ember quickly stands up again and moves to launch another attack but.. she stops and lets out a a gasp as she falls to the ground again. Ember is trying to take back control and the rid the control the nighlock has over her.

Groaning, she clutches her head as a headache begins to form but she has to push through the pain, she just has to. She starts thrashing and shaking on the ground, fighting the monsters control over her. The pain is building but she can't give up, she's so close.

"Ember?" Jayden asked concerned and confused.

"Jayden" Ember whimpered.

"Jayden please" she doesn't know why she's saying please, she just wants him to know that she's trying.

"Ember, you can fight this, I know you can. I know you think we don't need you but we do, we all do.. especially me. So please, come back to us... come back to me" He says softly.

That was all she needed to hear. Her screams and cries grow louder and her thrashing becomes more violent and just when she thought it was never going to end, she lets out a final scream and the same black and dark blue substance was pulled from her eyes and mouth, completely expelling the dark magic from her body.

She relaxes and lays flat on the ground, trying desperately to catch her breath and let her senses return to her.

"No!! what on earth did you do !!!"The nighlock screams, angry that his plan did not go accordingly.

Ember sits up carefully and looks the monster dead in the eye.

" I broke your spell. Did you really think I was just going to let you control me that easily?" she laughed dryly.

"But how?? only I can reverse that spell!!" He yelled.

"Guess I'm just stronger than you think" she smirked, happy that she foiled the nighlock's plans.

Her eyes move over to Jayden, only to find him already looking at her with pride and admiration, a small smile present on his face. He nodded and she understood.

They were going to talk later.

(Authors note: my patience was wearing thin so I decided to go ahead and skip it)

______________________________________________________________

The rangers were enjoying a board game where their zords where the game pieces. Suffice it to say, it was not going well for Mike...

Ember was sat next to Emily, she didn't have enough energy to play but she was happy to observe them and watch the smiles on their faces. She leaned her head on Emily's shoulder as her eyes flicker over to Kevin and Jayden who were having a quite discussion.

Anticipation and nervousness came over her, she and Jayden hadn't talked yet and she was only growing more anxious.

Was he mad at her? was he sad? disappointed?

her thoughts were going haywire.

Suddenly, she needed fresh air and walked out the open door to sit on one of the stone benches. She moved to the furthest one away from the laughter and chatter from her friends, wanting to enjoy the open night sky.

But she had a feeling she was not alone and she knew who it was.

"You scared me today"

She turned around and she was right. Jayden followed her outside.

He sat down beside her and examined her face more closely. It was still a little bit banged up but the cuts and bruises were healing fast, thanks to her exacerbated blood. He was relieved and Ember smiled at him.

"I'm sorry" she whispered out before moving her eyes back down to her lap

"Why did you do it? Why did you let that Nighlock do that to you? Jayden asked her quietly and she let out a sad sigh.

"I just thought that you guys needed Kevin more than you needed me. I wanted to help the team, even if it meant sacrificing myself. I don't know, I just feel like I'm a burden to you guys and I'm not even part of the group and I thought I was finally doing something to help you" she opens up to him.

Jayden grabs her chin with two fingers and moves her face so she was looking at him.

"Ember, you are not a burden and you are needed. Mia and Emily need you, Mike needs you because who else keeps him from wrecking the house and Kevin doesn't show it but he needs you to, he believes you provide a great advantage in battle. And I need you too" she blushes at his heartfelt words and moves to pull her face away but is met with resistance.

"There is something else. Ever since I met you, I've come to care for you and you make me feel things I have never felt before. Your smile makes me feel at ease, the way you laugh seems to make my heart race. Every time a monster hurts you, I feel this urge to protect you, Everytime I can see you are scared, I want to comfort you and the way you just are, it amazes me so much. I have feelings for you, Ember and I've tried to fight it but it's pretty difficult when a person like you is so beautiful and caring"

Ember could not believe it, all this time he felt the same as her?? She thought she was insane for developing feelings for the red danger, believing full well that he was never going to see her more than a team mate or friend. But here he was, proving her wrong.

Surprise and shock flitters across her face and she processes his confession before joy and elation start to fill her until the smile that is spreading on her face begins to hurt.

"Jayden, I feel the same way" she finally gathered the courage to speak and her face moved closer to his. Slowly but surely, they lean in closer and closer until their noses touch. Ember closes her eyes and pray he won't reject her. Slowly, she feels his lips against hers and he breathing picks up along with her heart.

Before she chickens out, she closes the gap and seals their lips together in a kiss. Their lips moved slowly against each other, Jayden brings his hand up to caress her face and pull her a little closer with his other hand. Ember moves her hands and interlocks them behind his neck and craning her head.

Their kiss becomes more passionate and deeper as they continue exploring each others mouths. The butterflies in her stomach are going awol, she never thought she was going to be so lucky.

After 5 minutes of passionate kissing, the pair had to pull away from each other to catch some much needed air and lean their foreheads against each other.

"Finally!"

_________________________________________________________

3212 Words

okay my head is killing me now, that took way too long to write. But I actually liked it, finally being able to write down one of thought imaginations.

I just felt the urge to suddenly just write and so I just pulled a random imagine from my head and it was the one with Jayden Shiba.

I might come back and do another, if the mood strikes you know :)

-- Swiss girl.

[the-greatest-magic-of-all]

I know it's been months since you posted about it but. I want to hear about the Bad Moms.

No worries! I'm always happy to chat, no matter the time! This one's gonna be a long one though, so strap in!

First things first, all of the Bad Moms are at least 15th-level adventurers, if not higher. All of them, excluding Sklonda, have canonically either adventured or did something like it. And Sklonda is high-level because she's just that badass.

In order of first appearance, we'll start off with the imposing Hallariel Seacaster, who, side note, I truly believe is almost seven feet tall. Just a tower of a bored housewife who used to be the best swordswoman in Spyre (Think Morticia Addams but slightly less goth). This leads me to believe that she'd be a straight Fighter (all of the Seacasters are) with the Samurai subclass. A heavy hitter who just won't drop yet still smoothly transitions into being an elegant courtier when need be. Oh, and I'd love for them to bring back the sober trigger mechanic from Unsleeping City S2 for her! It'd also be a treat to watch her deal with other Elves who make pointed backhanded comments about her finally settling down with another Elf and how it's good to see that she's done playing house with that human husband and half-human son of hers.

Next up is Wilma Thistlespring! My most precious Artificer Bard! With the subclasses Battle Smith and College of Creation, respectively. Battle Smith because in "Family in Flames", while Digby had a Tesla-coil laser canon (a hallmark of an Artilerist), Wilma had a fleet of spinning gyros instead. It'd probably take a little reflavouring but I think she could have her Steel Defender be this swarm of bird-like constructs that fuck a bitch up. And for the College of Creation part, I mean... It's the Bard subclass all about having a Song in your heart and that Song being one of the most ancient and powerful magic of all. If that's not Wilma Thistlespring to a T then I don't know what is. Also, btw, I'd love for her to be played by Elaine Lee because, if I remember correctly, Brennan took inspiration for the Thistlesprings from his parents!

Next is Mom of the Year, Sklonda Gukgak, who is obviously a straight-up Inquisitive Rogue, just like her son! This one is one of the more obvious picks for her and one of the only ones really. None of the other Rogue subclasses fit quite right while still making sense for her character. Like, maaaybe she could be a Mastermind Rogue, but I think it's a stretch. And it's the only subclass that she could conceivably get to a high enough level without her being a straight-up adventurer. I honestly think it'd be so funny to watch her get pulled into an adventure. Because I think she's a lot like Carameldina and Steel in the way of absolutely hating that they live in a DnD world, but instead of being utterly baffled by why her son is acting like an adventurer, she knows. She knows she lives in a world where adventures happen and the Call to Adventurer is a real phenomenon that wraps people up with Quest Fever. She's been trying to keep Riz from it ever since Pok died. So getting to watch her finally get the Call herself would be fantastic.

Sandra Lynn Faeth, the messiest bench ever, is next up and she's pretty straightforward, just like Sklonda. She's a Beast Master Ranger and that's all she wrote! Obviously, most of the fun of watching Sandra Lynn take center stage would be in witnessing her past come back to haunt her and seeing how she deals with it. The most glaring plot hook for a Bad Moms season (as long as they don't do it in Junior Year) would be her serving justice to the older adventurer creep who got her blacklisted from adventuring! I want her to kick ass, take names, and call Jawbone whenever she wants to make out with someone because she's still too anxious to do it impromptu even though they've talked about it!

Second to last, we've got Cathilda Ceili!!! Fight me if you think she doesn't count as a Bad Mom!!! She does!! She and Roz are picking up the slack that fucking Arianwen and Donna are dropping, okay? Okay. Now, while her being a Swashbuckler Rogue is a given. What else was she going to be? I'm also kinda leaning towards her multiclassing into Banneret Fighter, is that crazy? It's just that it feels that she'd also have some support mechanics in her roster (like Rallying Cry) and having Action Surge and Second Wind could tie why her work ethic is so tireless. Plus, as a Fighter, she'd fit in with the rest of the Seacasters! Listen, i want to see Cathilda let loose for once. And I feel like the other Bad Moms could get her there.

Finally! Roslyn "Roz" Fukumoto! She's such a wild card because we literally know nothing about her, but I think it'd be fun to include her in a Bad Moms season. Getting to know another Aguefort Alumni like Sandra Lynn and learning about what life is like outside of Elmville in another small town in Solace. I don't know if there'd be any tension between her and Wilma, (mostly because Wilma's such a sweetie) but getting to see their dynamic would be a treat. Now, for what class she could be. Another spellcaster would round out the party nicely, leaning more toward like a Warlock or even a half-caster, like a Paladin. But if she'd had to be a martial, a Fantasy High hasn't had a Monk PC yet and they are always a joy to watch.

Whew! That's about it for the Bad Moms class wise. It's such a pipe dream but it'd be such a joy to watch a group of older women play DnD as this badass team of Moms. I hope this satisfies your curiosity, @deconstructthesoup!!

[augment-techs]

PR UNFAVORITE CHARACTER RANT! GO!!!

Okay, let's start with the live action and work our way into the comics:

MMPR--Turbo: I'm sorry Jason, you are so boring and basic, I wasn't that sorry to see you go. At least Rocky had half a personality.

Dulcea; because there was no reason for her to wear that wardrobe and I kind of hate her for being a little creepy with the teenage boys. Mr. Stewart; I never once saw him in canon, which really just makes me hate him more for not surrendering his parental rights so Justin could be legally emancipated and move in with literally any of the older Rangers.

Jerome Stone: FUCK YOU FOR NOT NOTICING BULK AND SKULL WERE MISSING AND SHOWED MORE FEELING FOR THE CHIMPS THAN FOR THE YOUNG ADULTS!! Alpha 6:--tell me I'm not the only one that wanted to shoot him in the head each time he spoke.

Professor Phenomenus...Why is he here.

In Space: ...Andros before Zhane came alive. The whole time he was a prick, but at least Zhane offset that behavior.

Lost Galaxy: Trakeena's dad is disgusting for forcing the transformation on his daughter. And all the rest, but especially that.

Lightspeed Rescue: Jinxer, Vypra, Loki--why are any of you here?

Time Force: Mr. Collins throughout 90% of the season can go fuck himself. Also Alex in the second half of the season. Also...can I count the entire civilization of the 31st Century? Like, this is kind of fucked up.

Wild Force: I hate you Animus, I hate you Shayla, I hate you Master Org.

Ninja Storm: ......................Unfavorite is a biiiiit of the stretch, but I can I give you a total lack of feeling for Hunter and Blake and call it a day? Also Choobo, but that's just because he's kind of irritating.

Dino Thunder: ...Wow, this is gonna make me look bad, but for the sake of answering the question as truthfully as possible...Dr. Oliver. I'm sorry, but Tommy here was purely for filler and his haircut fills me with boiling rage. Especially during the Frozen in Place and Invisible to the camera episodes. Fuck right off, please.

SPD: ....Birdy was meaningless. But I also dislike Doggie when he's such a fucking self-important prick that needs to be kicked in the dick by Kat. So...59% of the time.

Mystic Force: Please don't kill me, but...Udonna IMMEDIATELY after she found out Nick was her son. Like, I get it, she got her child back, her husband is still under mind control and out in the world, she's on cloud nine. But this makes her look really, really, really insensitive. And presumptuous. Every time she called him Bowen I felt a little bit violent.

Operation Overdrive: Andrew Hartford can take a red hot poker up his entire ass. I haven't finished the season yet, but ideally, Spencer would get a divorce from him and full custody of Mack.

Jungle Fury: ...Dom is a perfectly nice guy, but he is so very boring that half of the people that watched this season forget he exists. And I am one of them. I also hate that they hooked him up with Fran. NO.

RPM: Colonel Truman. Especially when he pulled a gun on Dr. K. Who is a CHILD. He lost ALLLLLLLLLL respect at that moment.

Samurai: *picks up a rifle and sets it up in a sniper's nest* Mentor Ji. Not an actual mentor. Just someone who maintains the status quo for the sake of "honor" and "tradition" and all those other terrible terrible things that basically guarantee no Red Ranger ever made it to forty.

Dino Charge: James Navarro is a fucking deadbeat. I don't care if he stopped aging and was tasked with great power, he's a fucking dickhead.

Ninja Steel: I don't care for Redbot. He's a sweetie, but I do not care about him in any meaningful capacity. Also Dane Romero is kind of a waste of...any meaningful screen time.

Beast Morphers: Steel Silva is wonderful as a robot, but I failed to see the point of turning him into a human. Also, can I register the Heteronormative Romance EVERYTHING to do with Zoey and Nate as an Unfavorite Character? It seems tangible enough that it's its own entity.

Dino Fury/Cosmic Fury: Santaura's monster form was awesome, but I very very squicked when I found out she was heavily pregnant in Cosmic Fury--like, how? Also Zayto is a little bit too much in one season and a little too little in another. Ollie is oddly safer from me when he's a single entity or evil or unlocked from evil--or right next to Aiyon and nowhere near Amelia. This could be your fault. Boom! Comics: HAAAAAAAAAAA, we are in for a wild ride.

Drakkon from being broken out of his prison dimension and all the way up to being shot in the chest by Ranger Slayer. He was great in Shattered Grid and the early comics, but very little else. I am sorry, but the minute he got that haircut, he became extremely annoying.

I know we are supposed to be sympathetic to Kiya's plight. We are supposed to be aware that she has been fucked over every which way. But the second she turned to murder and made everything worse because she couldn't control herself or seek help for her PTSD? Buh-bye.

Marleau Eskin is the supreme bitch that doesn't realize she's in an action adventure series and while I hate her, I kind of wish she'd come back and give the Rangers more things to deal with as actual teenagers.

Dayne was interesting for a moment, but I really don't see why they keep bringing him back. I get he makes an excellent excuse for lore dump, but...

Dark Specter is the most boring cosmic entity that has ever graced these pages and he also was the one that turned Coinless Zack and Skull into Lava Zombies. And worse than that, he used Skull as a his own personal Viewing Globe before assigning him the task of letting the other zombies into the Coinless base before he got decked by Bulk. Also he steals children to use them as vessels. Also he apparently is the reason Rito Revulto is a walking skeleton and an idiot.

Last but certainly not least: Finster. An actual, factual murderer who killed his wife and ritually resurrects her only to kill her again when she shows fear of him every single time. That's not getting into the shit he pulls experimenting to create new monsters and what he probably helped Drakkon do to Goldar, Baboo, and Squatt. Of all the characters on this list, I hate him most of all.

[regaliasonata]

Do u have any unpopular PR opinions?

Ooh some fun

-Power Rangers does not need to be as big as Star Wars or DC etc. it can be bigger sure but realistically it’s never going to get that huge, plus it’s probably for the best as bigger franchises tend to attract some crazy individuals and then the people working on the show try to appeal to fans and let me be honest a lot of fans don’t know what they want when watching shows or movies. Take it easy and make the show enjoyable first before branching out.

-Megaforce is bad but it had some concept that I did enjoy like Vrak, the introduction to the Sentai exclusive teams for the comics and gave us Gia and Orion.

-Liking Samurai or preferring it over Shinkenger does not make you a weirdo or racist, yes Samurai could’ve done way better with some of its choices like the casting for Lauren and Jayden but it seems as if some fans treat others wrongly for enjoying the season, Always piggybacking to the Sentai with every conversation and like…some people need to shut up, there was a conversation on Twitter about how PR failed to market Samurai due to the fact that it had a big impact back in the day and could’ve been marketed to be as huge as MMPR and people brought up Shinkenger for some reason and it was just UGH. We can all share criticism about the show but stop being assholes to people.

-Ollie really isn’t that bad imo, I think he’s pretty cool tbh.

-A lot of the seasons that haven’t been adapted since Gokaiger and up to Zenkaiger can be adapted in some way but the company doesn’t have a wide thought process and only thinks on a surface level when making reasons why they can’t adapt. LuPat is understandable from both sides because SPD exists and you can root it to that but also with police etc in the west it’s understandable why they can’t adapt it. But things like ToQger not being adapted due to trains is stupid…also tell me this…how are you going to say trains aren’t marketable to children when you yourselves don’t make toys for Cosmic Fury🤨😭 answer me that.

-To anyone complaining about the series being “woke” or whatever go screw off somewhere, where have you guys been for the past 30 years? PR’s been inclusive throughout the franchise are y’all blind?

-Shipping is fun, hell I partake in it from time to time but let’s all respect each others pairings. I guess that’s more of a fandom thing then a PR thing but if we disagree on something let’s call it a day and keep it pushing, I’m on the side of hey you do you and leave me out of it if it’s nothing that interests me. I’m only really making the dude characters kiss each other anyway so it is what it is😭 but seriously let’s all just be peaceful and enjoy the show and characters without arguing.

-This has been said many MANY times but the inability to market anything outside of MMPR is the reason why the franchise continues to prioritize it. They really need to branch off, hopefully say if a new comic run happens and it’s Zeo or In Space we can go from there. “Oh but what about the fans” not everyone wants to see the original team all the time, the zordon era isn’t really that much of a thought to me outside of in space and stuff, the least they could do is show the Canyon Trio or Tanya off.

-The way they treated Hayley along with those gross fart jokes with Victor and Monty in Ninja Steel needs to be studied as things that should never touch power rangers again. Haim Saban should stay the hell away from the franchise(horrible person and a few other reasons) cause if this was all apart of him then yeah screw off somewhere.

-Amelia being red was a nice concept in theory, though do I really see her as a leader? Not really, I kinda picture that roll could’ve gone to Aiyon or even Izzy for the team. Like don’t get me wrong Amelia is alright but just on more consideration she’s not really a leader to me, that’s just how I feel, but was happy that we got a more prominent role with a female red ranger, I just hope we get a season eventually that full explores that instead of ten episodes.

-When I mean THE red ranger I’m not talking about Jason, I’m talking about Carter Grayson because that man was crazy in a good way. They need to be plastering him around instead that dude, Jason is okay I guess but he doesn’t have much to offer show wise, comic wise he seems better…also to any fans that are against ASJ being blacklisted from the fandom cause “he’s your fave” y’all need to go off somewhere cause that’s clown behavior, YOUR FAVE IS JASON AND HE’D BEAT THE SHIT OUT OF THAT MAN.

-The Jenna Frank situation, look I’m all for conventions allowing for her to go. Like if she wants to honor the legacy of her father and such that’s totally fine, I’ve seen people against it, I guess my own issue would be if events try to take advantage of this keep the Tommy appeal going for money and such, that’s very scummy if they ever go down that route but from the looks of it she seems pretty happy and stuff being at events so as long as it’s all fun then I’m alright with it.

-I’m down to watch the 2017 movie but I’ll be honest with you in the fact that the suits and zord designs are not appealing to me…I bet the film is good but I cannot get behind those designs at all.

-I’ll be honest in saying power rangers doesn’t need to be mature to be a good show but the directing and choices behind the scenes needs to change. It seems as if they keep holding back in what they can show kids or in where they can be more experimental, I know having to compare Sentai can be annoying to people as I know some demographics are different with children here and overseas but you can manage to make a fire season with 40ish episodes. That being said we need more of the Disney era directors back PLEASE.

-I don’t hate Simon Bennett as much as a lot of people do, I have my disagreements on a lot of things that he’s said or stated in interviews about the series but we have to remember a lot of things made by the show were done by Hasbro(like giving CF 20 episodes, or the fact that the writing room thought it’d be offensive to have Zayto as a white ranger which…Who’s working in the room🤦🏾). That being said we need people passionate about the series working on it.

-The hate that Samuel Benta got for the accusations of that banner being stolen all those years apart needs to be studied, people were so quick to demonize him and blacklist him from events but ASJ’s stupid ass gets on camera doing the most wild shit imaginable and he gets a pass? Even Lucas’s actor gets to go to cons after the stuff he did????…I just find it very questionable, and a little racist with how some of the crazy people in the fandom just climb out of the shadows to defend ASJ…, anyways yeah I think they should bring Benta back to PMC, throw out ASJ’s table and give him a spot.

-The did not need to demote Jack at the end to SPD, could’ve had three reds or said that Jack went to be a red on standby while doing his own thing. Sky really shouldn’t have become red in the end but that’s just me 🤷🏾‍♂️

[biomic]

Bad news, Rob. He clarified and what he meant was “take all the cool parts out”

i mean... i get it? not sure what he specifically means by "sped-up action sequences", i don't think PR's action is the thing that's holding it back and could easily be transported over to whatever reboot they wanted to do, but the other things ARE generally seen as corny in a bad way by general audiences. im certainly not happy about that but like. it's just the truth

again, japan was introduced to tokusatsu and suitmation techniques through genre-defining works like godzilla and ultraman, made by people who took the material seriously. america was introduced to it through often goofy (or just straight up racist) kaiju dubs from people who didn't get it and power rangers, which im guessing the original crew thought would be some dumb forgotten flavor of the week before it became a worldwide phenomenon. power rangers evolved as it went on and produced some great, iconic (certainly iconic to ME 😤) seasons of kid's television, but that's not what people remember. people remember the kiai noises tommy would make when he did karate, the cheesy acting, and bulk and skull falling face-first into a giant cake at the end of every episode. and to them that's all it'll ever be, unless something new comes along to pique their interest

i know people say "well, power rangers has succeeded for 30 years under this formula!" but... when was the last time it was actually relevant? i think it got a brief blip from the original cast returning for that 30th anniversary special, but before that? nickelodeon pushed samurai hard when they first acquired it but ever since then it's felt dead in the water. from anecdotes i've heard it seems like a lot of kids think power rangers is lame and something their dad used to watch, its days as must-watch kid's tv have been over for a good long while now. it's survived not by continuing to be a hit but just through sheer momentum. hasbro could work something out with toei and make Power Rangers Beast Cubers or Crystal Guardians and it could be the most incredible season we've ever had, surpassing all the greats, but i still don't think that'd be enough to get anyone who's not a longtime fan to care

power rangers has had an unbelievable run, by any metric it should not have lasted this long. but it's not possible for anything that goes on 30+ years to continue without change. super sentai's not like it was in 1975, kamen rider's not like it was in 1971, ultraman's not like it was in 1966, and power rangers can't be like it was in 1993. whether they go for another movie franchise, a teen netflix reboot, or an animated series, it's clear that the direct adaptation process is over. if it turns out to be good, we're in luck! if it sucks, well, we've got 30 years of Classic™ power rangers and TONS of tokusatsu to go back to. there's worse ways for a show to go out

[thetimelordbatgirl]

🌤, ☔️ and 🌨

🌤 Share your favorite piece of dialogue from your WIP.

From Chapter 3 of Labour Of Love, aka when Una is meant to be getting into the limo, but Harry, having been sent by Uma to give Una something upon learning of why Ursula took Una out of the shop with her, pulled her aside:

Una stared then at the item in his hand- it was a knife, sure- but it wasn't just any knife: it was one of Uma's favourite knifes, with its dark blue handle and its cleaned silver dagger part, Uma always let Una hold it- and Una stared as she held it now, as she gawked at Harry then, who shrugged simply, "Just keep it on you" he advised, "May never know when you need to deal with a fight in Auradon.....or a traitorous dragon" at this Una smirked and nodded, pocketing the knife carefully into her jacket then. That was when they heard Ursula shouting then for Una. Una shook her head before she signed to Harry then, "Take care of Uma- she'll deny it, but she needs it" Harry nodded, but then Una smirked as she signed an addition, "Oh, and tell Uma Maleficent cant open a fridge freezer off all things just to get a spell book....that she stores in the fridge like a sane person" Harry at this, laughed his head off, before he bowed to Una and then, just like a shadow, disappeared, and Una sighed sadly before she left the alley way and quickly dived into the limo before Mal.

☔ Is there a fic concept you have that you’d like to just explain and share because you’re not sure you’ll ever write it? If so, what is it?

Honestly? I have a-lot of those, really, but if I was to pick one that I'd love to actually write one day, it'd be my New Titans fanfic, aka my semi-next gen on Teen Titans where I literally have the plot of the first arc/season figured out and even got an idea involving Talon and Sparrow/Primrose Davis, but for some reason I can't seem to be able to write it??? Like its a struggle with all my DC/Marvel fic ideas really, but think this one bugs me cause I have stuff figured out a lil and have ideas, but writing it is a whole other issue.

🌧️ Share something angsty from your WIP.

...Again, just one??? I shall continue to avoid Ninja's Unite for this one (you all would actually be concerned if I posted a snippet of that), and instead, go for Power Rangers The New Samurai, aka Chapter 5 where Reese has a nightmare after having had passed out the chapter prior after the failed fight with the Ice Nighlok:

There were too many voices, they were all talking at once. She wanted mama- where was mama- mama was supposed to come back last night from her night out with papa- There was that shiny box being lowered into the ground, dirt being thrown over it- but she didn't get why everyone was crying, why was papa looking like he was just barley keeping it together with Uncle Ji, where was mama- Papa puts his hand on her shoulder then, turning her away from the shiny box being slowly covered up with dirt, and she looks at him with curious brown eyes that look out of place in the land of graves, "Where is mama? Is she still out?" But papa doesn't respond, his grip on her shoulder just gets worser until its hurting and she feels like shes choking, "Papa-" but that's when her papa's brown eyes turn red, and the choking in her throat was stopping her from screaming as all the voices get worser then, speaking of mama and suddenly her- No, this was wrong- this wasn't how it happened, but everything felt too real, papa was hurting her, she couldn't breath anymore-

[canadianramen]

30. Power Rangers Samurai (Season 18)

Power Rangers Samurai bottoms this list and it's not even close. Right away something about this season feels really off. The acting is just flat and lethargic and the dialogue is terrible. You can tell it's the writing and direction because Jayden shows up in later seasons (we will get to that later on) and he sounds and acts like a normal human being which makes me question what the hell happened. It makes this season extremely painful to get through and that coupled with poor writing and characterization is what pushes it all the way down here. It's so SO hard to watch and was an absolute slog to get through.

The New Saban era is pretty rough overall and is probably the worst in regards to consistency and quality out of the 4 Ranger eras (of which I will get into more detail in later entries).

Antonio is an absolute delight and Power Rangers deserves props for portraying a homoerotic and queer character in a serious light, he's hands down the best character in this season. There's no actual confirmation of his sexual orientation in the show but there doesn't need to be. This seasons demographic is clearly a younger audience, the nuances of sexual identity is a complicated subject matter and it doesn't need to be explored thoroughly in this show in order to have good representation. He's a very flamboyant and at times androgenous character but he's taken seriously, the other characters aren't laughing at him and the rest of the team accepts him because he's a damn good Power Ranger and good person, even though he's "different". And this is all the way back in 2011, 4 whole years before Caitlyn Jenners influence would change society as a whole to be more accepting of the LGBT+ community, I got to give the writers props. Antonio has some of the best character moments in the show "Unexpected Arrival", "Room for One More", "The Blue and Gold", and "Boxed In" come to mind. This is queer representation done relatively well (in spite of the poor writing of this season).

You'll notice throughout the rest of these posts that I am generally not a fan of comic relief side characters that contribute next to nothing to the plot. There's one or two in every season. Sometimes they're genuinely charming, and other times they make me want to put my forehead through a window. Bulk and Spike are the former. They are both equally hilarious and charming and seeing Bulk again is both nostalgic as hell and a nice reminder that this season exists in the same world and continuity as the other seasons.

(It's already timestamped if you're on pc so you can just click play but if you're on mobile the theme starts at 16:59. For some reason if you're on mobile the embedded link doesn't care that I added a start time.)

The suits and overall aesthetic of this season are absolutely fantastic. I think the production teams absolutely nailed it in regards to the overall presentation of the show. It hits with just the right amount of nostalgia. The opening theme is also fantastic and hits nicely with some good nostalgia sprinkled throughout.

Jayden is a perfectly fine red ranger and over the course of the season gets the most development out of the Samurai rangers aside from Antonio. He goes from a closed off arrogant asshole and over time softens and learns to trust his team but never has any standout moments after the first couple of episodes. He's not the gold standard for Red Rangers by any means but he's just fine.

The team as characters overall are forgettable in this season. Each of them aside from Jayden gets maybe one episode if we're lucky of actual development, other than that they are the exact same person from the start up until, and including the end.

Where this seasons gets complicated is the villains. I don't understand why Cole Ev- I mean Deker, isn't the main baddie. He's a far more interesting villain than Master Xandred. The relationship between Deker and Xandred wasn't explored enough in either Samurai or Super Samurai even though it was very compelling. Props to the concept artists who came up with Dekers design. He is hands down one of the best looking villains in the franchise and I want a Death Battle between him and Yoshimitsu from Tekken so badly. But that's the problem, Deker isn't the bad guy. He's in 21 episodes across 2 seasons (12 in Samurai, 9 in Super Samurai). He's got a compelling look, ironically stands out because he has okay acting in a show where all of them feel like they have AI generated actors and lines. Xandred on the other hand is a one dimensional psychopath who just doesn't do anything. Samurai is a season that suffers from having goons be far more interesting than the main villain, given that this is the first season of the Saban Era, and the 18th season overall, it really should have learned from previous mistakes.

In closing, aside from the production quality, Deker, and Antonio, it wasn't hard picking Samurai as the bottom of the list. No team-up, a confusing and one dimensional main villain and a plot that feels like it's never moving forward, all work together to bog this show down. However it's the acting and writing that truly cement it at the bottom because it genuinely makes it unbearable to watch. If those two things were a lot better, Samurai's other mistakes would be a lot more forgivable and you would probably see this season shoot up a few places.

[crimson-ace-reviews]

Crimson Ace Reviews: Power Rangers Samurai, a Nostalgic Translation

Let's be honest, if you're a fan of tokusatsu, Power Rangers is most likely one of the franchises that got you hooked in the first place. It's hard to deny the cultural impact the franchise has had in its nearly thirty-year run, in spite of its various ups and downs. Today, we're going to take a dive into one of the entries in the franchise that sparked a new generation of fans of Power Rangers, myself included. But first, let's go into the history of the circumstances behind this installment.

In 2001, Disney bought the rights to the Fox Family Channel, which Power Rangers was airing on at the time, leading to a lot of major changes behind the scenes. Despite the recent acquisition, the higher-ups wanted almost nothing to do with the franchise, and were about to cancel it until they were convinced that they could lower production costs if future installments were filmed in New Zealand as opposed to filming in California like it had been since the original Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers. In addition, Disney decided to make the show non-union, meaning a lot of the old crew was let go.

These changes, in addition to action scenes relying more on pyrotechnics, questionable performances from actors trying their hardest to hide their New Zealand accents, and a lack of strong continuity compared to when Saban Entertainment was running the show, ended up alienating a lot of long-time fans of the franchise, and causing a major divide in the fandom. And don't even get me started on how much of a nightmare production was. However, common consensus has changed over the years, and the Disney Era is looked back with more fondness than when it was first airing, though there's still debate on whether its better than the Saban era overall.

Eventually, after Power Rangers RPM finished airing in December 2009, Disney decided to officially pull the plug for a number of reasons like low toy sales, production costs increasing, and a general lack of interest in working with this franchise. However, in May 2010, Haim Saban, the man behind Power Rangers in the first place, bought back the rights to the franchise. He even managed to hire back one of the older executive producers for the franchise, Jonathan Tzachor, to aid in production.

This all sounds awesome, right? After almost a decade, Power Rangers is back in the hands of its creator, one of the older producers is coming back to work on it, and it can get a fresh start on another network. How can this lead to anything going wrong? Well...

Because Saban wanted the next season to premiere in February like most seasons did, the production team only had about six months to film the whole thing, coupled with Nickelodeon having weird rules for the franchise that would affect the airing schedule until the end of Dino Fury's first half, but I'll get to that later.

For now, let's take a look at Power Rangers Samurai

THE STORY

Centuries ago in Japan, Nighlok monsters invaded our world, but samurai warriors defeated them with power symbols passed down from parent to child. Today, the evil Nighlok have risen once again and plan to flood the Earth with water from the Sanzu River (which hydrates them but is deadly to everything else in the human realm) by causing human misery. Luckily, a new generation of heroes stand in their way. They are the Power Rangers Samurai.

This team consists of Jayden (Played by Alex Heartman), the charismatic, yet quiet Red Ranger with control over fire, Kevin (Played by Najee De-Tiege), the team's stoic Blue Ranger with the most traditionalist mindset and control over water, Mia (Played by Erika Fong), the Pink Ranger who is the most compassionate of the five and has control over wind, Mike (Played by Hector David Jr.), the Green Ranger who is arrogant, but still has a good heart and control over the forest, and Emily (Played by Brittany Anne-Pirtle), the Yellow Ranger who was actually forced to fill in for her sick older sister, and has control over earth. Later on, they're joined by Antonio (Played by Steven Skyler), a childhood friend of Jayden's who forged his own gear and becomes the Gold Ranger, with control over light.

The Rangers main ally comes in the form of Mentor Ji (Played by Rene Naufahu), a stern, but caring man who acts as Jayden's primary confidant and father figure. In addition, while they don't directly interact with the team for most of the season, we occasionally follow the comedic antics of returning Mighty Morphin' character Farkus “Bulk” Bulkmeyer (Played by Paul Schrier), and his young nephew, Spike (Played by Felix Ryan), as the two train to become samurai themselves.

As for the Nighlok, they consist of Master Xandred (Voiced by Jeff Szusterman), an angry warlord who spends most of his time waiting to be free while he drinks alcho—I MEAN MEDICINE, Octoroo (Also voiced by Jeff Szusterman), a more intelligent general who orchestrates a few of the group's schemes, Dayu (Voiced by Kate Elliot), the snarky female general whose music is able to help Master Xandred calm down, Deker (Played by Rick Medina), a human/Nighlok hybrid seeking to break his curse by finding a worthy opponent in battle, and Serrator (Voiced by Derek Judge), a deceptive intellectual with an agenda of his own.

Due to the rushed production, a lack of original Ranger footage, and Jonathan Tzachor generally being a huge fan of the Super Sentai season he was adapting, Samurai Sentai Shinkenger, the writing for the episodes fluctuated in quality. There would be some times where the dialogue didn't match the Sentai footage or story it was adapting, like in the very first episode, where Jayden tells the other Rangers that it's important they work together... right before charging off into battle on his own. The show generally tries to make Jayden out to be a more open leader without really acknowledging the struggles his Sentai counterpart had to go through while accepting the help of his teammates.

Then there are the episodes that try to adapt Shinkenger plots without understanding that there are moments where they tend to fit the Sentai characters more instead of making more of an effort to tweak the writing. “Forest for the Trees” is an episode that is supposed to portray Mike as lazy and not worthy of getting to pilot one of the new Zords on his own, but it doesn't work because in Shinkenger, Mike's counterpart was shown to slack off and didn't take things as serious as his teammates did, which justified the plot of the Shinkenger episode.

There are also times where even without the use of Sentai footage, episodes that adapt stories from Shinkenger tend to be iffy, either with the conflict or dialogue. A particularly glaring example comes from the episode “Jayden's Challenge���. Basically, Jayden runs away to fight the Nighlok on his own because he doesn't want the other Rangers to get hurt for his sake (long story short, only the Red Ranger can use the sacred sealing symbol to defeat Master Xandred for good, so the Nighlok start to target him more when they find out), but once the other Rangers catch up with him during the next Nighlok attack, Jayden says “I don't like putting you in danger, but someone has to stop the Nighlok... and I'm glad it's us.” The teamwork message isn't bad on paper, it's just that it doesn't really resolve the guilt Jayden feels regarding the other Rangers being willing to sacrifice themselves for his sake. I feel like the episode could have worked more if the conclusion he came to was that if he didn't want to endanger the other Rangers, he needed to focus on being a better leader instead of running away from his problems.

That's not to say all of the episodes are bad, as there are a handful of gems like “The Team Unites”, “There Go the Brides”, “Team Spirit”, and a few others in the second half. But before we get there, let's talk about the reason why I need to clarify the second half of this show is different: Nickelodeon.

For some odd reason, not only did the higher-ups at Nickelodeon mandate that that Samurai be split into two different twenty episode seasons, they also mandated the two part pilot episode, “Origins”, aired last in the first half when it's crucial for establishing the conflict of this season and introducing the characters. Seriously, even though the first episode that aired was called “The Team Unites”, the team is already united, and if you watched this as it premiered like I did, you were just thrown in and forced to understand what the hell was going on from the brief narration that plays at the beginning of every episode.

Then there was also how the writers tried to loosely connect the two seasons by extending an arc in Shinkenger and making it continue into the next season. When the battle with the Nighlok intensifies in “The Tengen Gate”, Mentor Ji suggests obtaining a mystical, yet unfinished talisman called the Black Box for Antonio to unlock the powers of. With how the conflict is framed, you would assume that the next episode, “Boxed In”, would focus on that power being on display, wouldn't you? Unfortunately, this concept gets dragged out/abandoned for the next few episodes since Antonio fails to complete the Black Box so it can be saved for the first episode of the second half of Samurai, Super Samurai... Except the one hour special that aired inbetween the two halves, “Clash of the Red Rangers”, not only featured the Black Box in action, but it also revealed another powerup that hadn't been revealed yet either, meaning that all that effort to make the premiere of Super Samurai all the more exciting was once again a case of Power Rangers getting screwed over by the network it airs on.

Thankfully, Super Samurai is a much-needed improvement in the writing department. There's more original footage and deviation from Shinkenger, character dynamics are explored more, and the stakes are higher, leading to more drama and more interesting conflicts. We even get more episodes where Bulk and Spike interact with the Rangers for more than a few seconds like “Runaway Spike” and “The Strange Case of the Munchies”.

The final arc is very hit or miss in my opinion, as while it does have some good moments, there are a lot of problems related to certain characters and how they act that impacts the story, but I won't give anything away. For now, let's tall about...

THE HEROES

In my opinion, Power Rangers Samurai has one of the more underrated casts in the franchise. While I wouldn't call the characters outright phenomenal, there's still a great deal of effort put in by the cast where you can see how strong their chemistry is. Compared to later entries like Megaforce or Ninja Steel, the characters still display a lot of personality, and you can tell the actors are having a good time.

As a Red Ranger, Jayden is a bit of a mixed bag. I like how Alex Heartman gives more of a relaxed performance around the others, showing he can be open, but is more than capable of playing the role of the serious leader. He's somewhat friendly, but when faced with the slightest challenge, he won't hesitate to jump into action, a trait that is put in a new light with a reveal late into the series. “Day Off” is an episode that really shows off his acting chops, as you can really see the struggle Jayden goes through trying to master a new technique.

At the same time, he also doubts his skills more than most Red Rangers, even his predecessor, Scott from RPM. He worries about the good of the team, and will go off on his own if it means they'll be safe... even though he's the one to talk about the importance of working as a team in the first place. This is the biggest problem I have with Jayden as a character. Some episodes, he's the one who tries to rally the team together and does a decent job at it, but other times, he'll abandon them if his ideals are challenged in the slightest.

I feel like making Jayden more friendly also messes with some of the moments where he tries to be more aloof, but I don't mind what this show does with the character. He's nowhere near my favorite Red Ranger, but he's still a serviceable lead.

Kevin is arguably more dedicated to the cause than Jayden is and gets more development as the series goes on. Before the Nighlok attacked, Kevin had dreams of being an Olympic swimmer, and he had to give it all up to fight for the greater good. He's so dedicated that he doesn't hesitate to find ways to keep training. When the Rangers get a day off in “Day Off” (I know, shocking, right?), Kevin's first thought that it was a test of their loyalty because “A samurai never takes a day off”, and while he's bedridden after several injuries in “Jayden's Challenge”, he spends his time coming up with a new Megazord combination instead of just resting. In a way, it's like he wants to put as much effort into this role as possible after giving up his dream, and it's why he has the most traditional views on being a samurai.

Most of Kevin's focus episodes revolve around testing his will as a samurai, whether it be finding a Zord to heal the Rangers with in “A Fish Out of Water”, growing to accept Antonio to the team in spite of his differences in “The Blue and the Gold”, and struggling to accept the fact that he had to abandon his swimming career to fight as a Ranger. Granted, that last example is kind of muddled by how the episode ended with Kevin subbing in for someone on his old swim team, but I digress. He honestly goes through the most development of everyone on the team, still maintaining the high standards he puts on himself, but still finds ways to open up to the others more. Overall, a decent character in my opinion.

I'm probably going to get accusations of copying what Linkara said during his review of this season, but Mia is honestly my least favorite character in the team. While she's compassionate and tries to serve as the heart of the team, more often than not, you can boil her character down to “likes to cook, even though she's bad at it”. So many episodes mention Mia's inability to cook, and even when a Nighlok with the ability to hurt people with his insults points it out, nobody ever flat out tells her how they feel, instead choosing to make quips about how bad she is at cooking behind her back. Because that's a good lesson to teach kids, right? They don't even do anything funny like exaggerate how terrible her food tastes. There could have been a really nice episode where Antonio tries to give her some advice on how to improve her cooking, given that he's no stranger to food himself.

She also has a bit of a rivalry with Dayu, which I'll get to later, but other than that, she arguably gets the least amount of focus out of the cast. Most of her major roles in Super Samurai basically involve her being the target of Spike's affection, but that never goes anywhere. The only episode she gets that really focuses on her is “He Ain't Heavy Metal, He's My Brother”, and even then, it focused more on her relationship with her brother Terry. The conflict of the episode revolved around Terry starting a rock band while his family tried to get him to focus more on getting into medical school. Instead of actually supporting his dreams and being happy he can do what he wants since she's in a different position being forced into life as a Ranger, she decides to tell him to “be realistic” and blows him off for most of the episode. You would think this would be a conflict where Mia helps her brother achieve his dream, but instead, she just repeats what she was taught since she was a child, only instead of being forced to be Ranger, she tells Terry that he has to be a doctor. To be fair, she does come along, but the episode never draws any comparison between their lives, which is a real wasted opportunity.

In general, this season just brushes over the idea of the Rangers being trained for this mission since birth, not really going into how unethical this can be. I wouldn't outright call them child soldiers, but the writers honestly needed to have more moments where the Rangers talked about how their lives have been, especially in comparison to someone like Antonio. A really interesting idea you could have done with the cooking gag was to show how strict the regimen was for the Rangers growing up. Imagine if out of all the Rangers, Mia is the only one who has almost no life skills outside of being a samurai? Show her struggling to cook a basic meal or even drive a car because she was focused so much on training, being a samurai is the only thing she's good at. But no, instead, we got easily one of the most boring Pink Rangers in the history of the franchise.

Mike is another character I have conflicting feelings on. Hector David Jr. gives a good performance showing how easygoing Mike can be at times, making him out to be a really chill guy to hang out with. The problem lies in how the focus episodes highlighting how “lazy” he can be don't really work because Mike is never shown to be behind any of the other Rangers in battle. My best guess is that the reason Mike tries to outsmart his opponents more than the others is because he's aware he isn't the best fighter, and needs to resort to trickery more, sort of like what he did in the cold open to “A Sticky Situation”.

But again, as creative as his fight scenes can be, he isn't really shown to be any less competent than any of the other Rangers. I feel like if you wanted to show Mike as the outlier of the team, maybe the writers could have made him be the one who comes into conflict with Jayden's leadership the most due to having arguably the least amount of dedication to the cause compared to the others. Have him be the one to question why he got roped into a war he never wanted to fight because he happens to be the descendant of a samurai, or call out Mentor Ji for not immediately accepting Antonio into the team because he isn't a descendant of a samurai. Basically, make Mike a cynic who isn't afraid to talk back to Jayden, but at the same time, begrudgingly places his trust in him because he's aware that Jayden is still a good leader for all the problems he has with this whole situation. I'm not saying I hate Mike, as I still enjoy his character. I just feel like out of all the Rangers this season, you could have done so much more with him.

Emily is honestly my favorite Ranger this season. The idea of her not being the first choice for the Yellow Ranger on top of having a lot of self-confidence issues leads to some really interesting focus episodes. Yeah, she can be clumsy and has a habit of needing to be helped, but she isn't really shown to be less capable than the rest of the Rangers. Like Mike, she can be very clever when the situation calls for it, like in (Sticks & Stones, Trading Places, A Strange Case of the Munchies). At the same time, the others tend to act like she's less of a Ranger due to her vulnerability, so she has to prove herself in response. Just because she appears to be harmless, it doesn't mean she's a complete coward or liability in the battlefield.

The one problem I have with Emily is how her backstory is handled. It's a minor nitpick, but I think it would have been a little more interesting if we got to know Emily's sister, Serena, a little more outside of a single flashback. Maybe there could be an episode where Emily goes to visit Serena and tells her about her adventures as a Ranger and see how their relationship could change as a result of years of training for Serena amounting to nothing. There's also a huge plot twist later on that really could have been used in comparison to Emily's backstory, but the show never acknowledged the connection.

Ironically, Antonio gets the silver medal as my second favorite member of the team. He's full of energy, genuinely wants to help people, and his friendship with Jayden is very believable. The fact that he managed to barge into the team by reverse engineering Zord technology and helped them unlock several new upgrades as a result of his skills with technology makes him stand out from the traditional setup we all came to expect for the first half of Samurai. At the same time, his overbearing nature makes it easy for others to underestimate him, like in “Room for One More” and “The Blue and the Gold”.

Generally, Antonio's computer knowledge helps one of the underlying themes of this show, finding new ways to work with tradition. It's because of him that the Rangers gain access to forms and weapons that none of their predecessors had access to. While Kevin and Mentor Ji initially struggle to accept Antonio into the team thanks to his use of technology and unorthodox fighting style, they realize that he is just as much of a samurai as the others are. For a show focused on bloodlines and destiny, Antonio's introduction was surprisingly well-done, and it adds to the appeal of his character.

As for the allies, we only have three: Mentor Ji, Bulk, and Spike.

Mentor Ji is honestly a pretty forgettable mentor, all things considered. The Rangers already spent their entire lives training, so why is he even there? We don't get a lot of scenes where he helps them train, and unlike other mentors like Master Splinter or Sensei Wu, he doesn't get to help the Rangers on the field as much as he should. Yeah, he doesn't have powers, but he's still shown to be a pretty capable fighter regardless. He just doesn't have as commanding of a presence that a mentor has compared to Zordon, Doggie Cruger, or Doctor K.

The most we really know about his past is that he pretty much raised Jayden since he was a kid, and that he has a motorcycle (implying he was a rebel in the past), and that's it. We never see how deep his relationship with Jayden goes despite being the only one to know an important secret the latter has. For the most part, he serves more as a yes-man for Jayden who occasionally scolds the other Rangers. Even Gosei was memorable for how boring he was and how he gave his Rangers power-ups every day, but Mentor Ji? I still can't really tell you much about his personality other than that he's strict.

It's pretty clear that the return of Bulk was meant to be a selling point for older fans who hated the way the Zordon Era had been forgotten by Disney, but the problem I have lies more in how not much is done to draw connections to older seasons, and even the plot for this season. Remember, this was the first season of Power Rangers I ever saw as a kid, and thanks to the incompetence at Nickelodeon preventing me from seeing the actual pilot until the first half was over, I never got a proper introduction to Bulk. Even “Origins” just casually has him mention that has a history with the Power Rangers, but he doesn't say much beyond that.

With Tommy's reintroduction in Dino Thunder, more emphasis was placed on how important of a character he was in the franchise, and how much of a surprise it was for the new team to find this out. With Bulk and Spike, you could easily replace them with any other two characters, and not much would change. You could have had made all kinds of jokes with Bulk having lived through so many monster attacks, like have him note that samurai-themed Power Rangers is a surprise, or that he's not even surprised by monster attacks at this point. I know Linkara made this a joke in his video, but you could have had a funny running gag where Bulk goes off on tangents about things that actually happened to him, like the time he and Skull got turned into monkeys, only for Spike to brush him off due to how ridiculous they sound.

Another thing I don't get is why Bulk suddenly wants to be a samurai. I mean, it's not completely out of the ballpark, considering he and Skull pretty became police officers on a whim, but at least there, it was established that they did it to attract girls. Here, it's never explained what made Bulk want to become a samurai, much less train Spike to be one too. He said that he's watched a lot of samurai movies in “Origins” (meaning that Bulk is canonically an Akira Kurosawa fan), and another line right after that slightly implies that he was inspired by the appearance of the Samurai Rangers, but there's not much of an explanation beyond that. I just think if you wanted to make this the main focus of their plotlines, there should be more of an explanation behind Bulk's sudden interest in samurai culture, and that he and Spike should actually get to spend time with the Rangers. Most of the time, they just do their own thing that's vaguely related to being a samurai or wanting to help people, and it feels like you're watching an entirely different show. Even in Mighty Morphin, Bulk and Skull regularly interacted with the Rangers in their civilian lives like supporting characters should, but they don't start to talk with the Rangers in person until Super Samurai.

That being said, Bulk and Spike's antics are still pretty fun to watch. I like the idea of Bulk being this exasperated uncle to someone like Spike, and while I have some problems with the motivation, it's nice to see Bulk take Spike under his wing and teach him about the code of honor a samurai has. Yeah, he still sees being a samurai in a superficial light at times, but at the same time, he still encourages Spike to do the right thing with no ulterior motive, like attempt to fight the Nighlok themselves in a few episodes (Sticks & Stones, Test of the Leader, Stroke of Fate). You can tell that Bulk wants the best his nephew, and when Skull (once again played by Jason Narvy) makes a cameo in the final episode, he's grateful that Bulk watched over Spike.

Spike himself is a decently written character. He's hyperactive and has a laugh that SpongeBob SquarePants would find annoying, but he very clearly wants to help people. I honestly think the show would have been more interesting if the subplots with Bulk were building up to Spike creating his own Morpher and becoming the Gold Ranger instead of Antonio, because Spike clearly has the heart of a Ranger.

Overall, this was a pretty okay cast. There were some who were more memorable than others, but I never outright hated anyone. The Samurai Rangers in particular are a lot more memorable than future Neo-Saban teams like the Megaforce Rangers or the Ninja Steel Rangers.

THEIR ARSENAL

The Samurai Rangers morph using the Samuraizer, a cellphone capable of utilizing Symbol Power. Since this is the source of their powers, they can do things with it other than transform, like create elemental attacks, access their Megazord, and pretty much do whatever the plot needs them to do. Unlike Shinkenger, the Samuraizer doesn't transform into a brush while in use, which is kind of weird, since it makes the Rangers look stupid waving their flip phones in the air. Even Antonio's Morpher, the Samurai Morpher (real creative name, fellas), doesn't resemble sushi like its Sentai counterpart, and looks like a more modern take on the Samuraizer. Either way, it's still a weird change to make, especially since another character just uses the same kind of Morpher the Shinkengers used anyway.

I really like the design of the Samurai Ranger suits. There's a nice balance of black and their respective colors, and the symbols on their helmets are unique. The way their suits are designed after samurai robes is also a nice touch.

The core five Rangers' primary weapon is the Spin Sword, a standard samurai sword with the ability to use different elemental attacks depending on the use of a Power Disk. The Spin Swords can also transform into each Ranger's signature weapon. Jayden gets the Fire Smasher, a giant sword that can transform into a cannon to fire disks with, Kevin gets the Hydro Bow, a bow that can fire off energy arrows, Mia gets the Sky Fan, a fan that can create gusts of wind, Kevin gets the Forest Spear, a spear capable of extending to serve as a pole vault, Emily gets the Earth Slicer, a giant shuriken that can be thrown like a boomerang.

Instead of a Spin Sword, Antonio gets the Barracuda Blade, a backhanded sword that he can use to attack enemies at high speeds, something none of the other Rangers can do. In Super Samurai, Antonio gets another weapon in the form of the Lightzord, a lantern capable of shooting disks that comes with a sword, and can even form its own Megazord.

Speaking of Super Samurai, once Antonio unlocks the full power of the Black Box, the core five Rangers are able to access Super Samurai Mode, a pretty elegant-looking new form which boosts their elemental powers and gives them the ability to access more Megazord combinations, but can only be used one at a time. Jayden in particular gets a new weapon to go with his Super Samurai Mode, the Bullzooka, a blaster that can be combined with the Spin Sword. They also get one more mode, Shark Attack Mode, which gives the user a red version of the Super Mode and a sword that stretch around like crazy.

Overall, this is a pretty solid arsenal. There's plenty of variety to what the Rangers can do, but it doesn't feel too overwhelming to keep up with. They saved that for the Zords.

The core five Samurai Rangers have a Folding Zord, these tiny shapes that can grow and resemble animals to fight giant Nighlok with. Jayden gets a pentagon/lion, Kevin a hexagon/dragon, Mia a circle/turtle, Mike a square/bear, and Emily a triangle/monkey. These five Zords combine to form the Samurai Megazord.

While it's a little blocky, I really like the design for the Samurai Megazord. The sword and helmet really make it stand out among other base Megazords, and I think the basic finisher, Katana Power is one of the coolest attacks in the entire series.

The rest of the Zords are themed around the various disks the Rangers use. The Beetle Zord is the first auxiliary Zord Jayden unlocks (though he later hands it down to Mike), and it can combine with the Samurai Megarord to form the Beetle Blaster Megazord, with the ability to fire energy blasts from its helmet.

It's a pretty simple looking upgrade, but I dig it. I especially like the finisher, Rotating Beetle Blaster, where the beetle head spins around and shoots a huge fireball.

Kevin's auxiliary Zord is the Swordfish Zord, which can fly around in addition to swimming, be used to cure any poison, and can even shoot torpedoes at enemies. Wow, this is a really solid Zord, so surely, the Megazord combination should be really cool, right? Well...

Because a majority of the Swordfish Zord is on the back, the Swordfish Fencer Megazord doesn't look that impressive, and is one of the combinations that sees the least action. It doesn't help that the finisher where he sticks its sword in its head and swings it down looks ridiculous.

The final member of the original three auxiliary Zords is the Tiger Zord, which Jayden unlocks. It doesn't really get to do a lot on its own, and mainly serves as a centerpiece for the other Megazord combinations.

The Tiger Drill Megazord, a Megazord which can drill through enemies, isn't that impressive, though I feel like it's more because it doesn't get to do much compared to its other combinations.

The Beetle, Swordfish, and Tiger Zords can all combine into the Samurai Battlewing, which in turn, can combine with the Samurai Megazord to form the Battlewing Megazord. All things considered, I think this is one of my favorite combinations in the series, because there's a good balance between all eight Zords combined, and giving it the ability to fly helps it stand out.

Antonio's first Zord is the Octo Zord, which naturally, looks like a giant squid.

What? Octopus, squid, they're the same thing, right? This Zord can combine with the Samurai Megazord to form the Octo Spear Megazord, giving it a freeze ray and an electric lance.

It's simple, but I like the way the Octo Zord forms all these weapons for the Megazord.

One last auxiliary Zord that only really appears twice, but is still worth mentioning, is the Shark Zord, basically a giant version of the Shark Sword in Shark Attack Mode.

It can combine with the Samurai Megazord to form the Samurai Shark Megazord, using the Shark as a giant sword.

Not much else I can say there, other than that it exists.

Antonio's primary Zord is the Claw Zord, a lobster that can transform into the Claw Battlezord. Unlike most Megazords, it has four different modes based off what head it has. East is the default mode that can weaponize the Zord's claws, South uses twin katanas, West has a fan for a weapon, and North is the only mode that can combine with the Octo Zord, using it as a giant spear.

Once the Rangers unlock the power of the Black Box, they can combine the Samurai Megazord and Claw Battlezord to form the Claw Armor Megazord, while the Beetle, Swordfish, Tiger, and Octo Zords can combine to form the Samurai Battle Cannon.

While I think the cannon looks cool, the Claw Armor Megazord is pretty disappointing. It just looks like the Claw Battlezord with the Samurai Megazord's legs with the Turtle and Ape being reduced to sword holders.

The last Zord the Rangers unlock is the Bull Zord, a giant bull armed with cannons, and can transform into the creatively named Bull Megazord.

I really like how the design for this Megazord emphasizes the strength of the animal it’s based on, as well as the focus on ranged attacks. All eleven Zords can combine to form the Samurai Gigazord.

To say I'm not a fan of this combination would be an understatement. So many Zord parts just look like they were stuck on somewhere because the designers didn't know where else to put them, like the Samurai Battlewing on the back, or the Turtle and Ape Zords at the bottom.

Overall, there are a lot of cool Zords in the Rangers' arsenal, and the only real problems I have lie in the last two major combinations. Well, those and the dreaded Megazord cockpit forms, which would be common for most of the Neo-Saban seasons.

In order to access their Megazords, the Rangers transform into Mega Mode, and their Spin Swords become Mega Blades, which can be used to control the Megazord... when it's never explained why they need to use this form in the first place. Yeah, this franchise is no stranger to promoting toys, but why spend this much money on a form that adds nothing to the team's arsenal? This season has already gotten a lot of flak for just copying Shinkenger's story, so a lot of the Mega Mode scenes could have easily been cut to focus more on original fight scenes.

And it gets worse. The super modes have a Mega form too, and they're just as pointless. There's not much I can say other than the Super Mode vest gives them more armor, but I don't see the point of giving them more armor when they're not fighting a Nighlok head on. You could have easily said something like this form is necessary because a lot of Symbol Power is needed to control the Megazords, and this form is the safest way to channel it in a high amount. But instead, there's never any real explanation for this form.

And that's not even getting into Shogun Mode. After Jayden unlocks the Bull Zord, a Ranger in Super Mega Mode can access Shogun Mode right before the Megazord's finisher... and nothing changes. You could at least argue it's necessary for the Bull Megazord and Samurai Gigazord, but then Mia goes Shogun Mode in a later episode to use the Samurai Battle Cannon with no changes. They don't even try to edit the finisher to make Shogun Mode seem more powerful.

The only time any of these forms get action outside of the Megazord cockpit is in the finale, when Jayden can suddenly use Shogun Mode, but it's not explained why he can do that. Later seasons with original Megazord cockpit scenes and Megazord cockpit modes would at least use the footage to get more creative with the setting by involving characters who weren't involved in the Sentai originally, like in Dino Charge and Dino Fury.  As a whole, these forms just don't add much to the arsenal or story compared to later entries.

THE VILLAINS

While I think these villains have an interesting idea behind them as a whole, the Nighlok as characters really leave a lot to be desired.

Coming off the heels of Venjix, arguably one of the scariest and most successful villains in the franchise, to say Master Xandred is a letdown would be an understatement. We're supposed to see him as this unstoppable demon lord, when most of his screentime consists of him sitting around and drinking booze—I MEAN MEDICINE. THIS IS OBVIOUSLY HEADACHE MEDICINE HE IS DRINKING. When he's not slacking off, he's just yelling at his subordinates for breathing wrong, all while it's impossible to take him seriously when he sounds like someone doing the world's worst Alex Jones impression. Yeah, he's shown to be pretty damn strong when he's on the surface, beating up the Rangers with ease while he's weak from Sanzu River dehydration, but there isn't really a lot of emotional drama or connection to him on the Rangers' front. The show doesn't go into detail about how brutal the war has been over the years, and even the idea of Jayden's father being the person who sealed him away originally doesn't really change how he sees Jayden, or any of the other Rangers for that matter.

I just feel like if you wanted to show how strong he was, have him fight the Rangers earlier in the series to give the audience an idea of how deadly he is, long before the Rangers even get the Black Box or any of their other Megazord combinations. It would put more incentive for the Rangers to get more upgrades instead of his growing power doing nothing but occasionally sending out hordes of footsoldiers. There's actually another villain who really should have taken his place as the leader of the Nighlok, but I'll get to him later.

Octoroo is arguably the second most competent of the Nighlok, and the most loyal to Master Xandred. He actually comes up with plans that would benefit his kind in the long term, like targeting Jayden to make sure he doesn't use the sealing symbol (Unexpected Arrival, Fight Fire With Fire), trying to refill an old gate with Sanzu River water for the Nighlok to travel through (The Blue and the Gold), and risking his life to power up a Nighlok to create extra misery before they get sealed away for good (The Great Duel). Of course, all Master Xandred does is, as I mentioned before, yell at the only one of his generals to not betray him in some way because he's a really stupid demon lord. I think it would have been interesting for something to happen that would test Octoroo's loyalty to Master Xandred, or at the very least, expand upon their relationship in some way.

Dayu is honestly a pretty interesting character, mainly due to the way her backstory was handled compared to Shinkenger. Without giving too much away on either side, Dayu is much more sympathetic than her Eastern counterpart, and it also connects her to Deker in an interesting way by making her half-human as well. The way her instrument (it's called a harmonium, but it looks and sounds nothing like one) is connected to her backstory gives her a much more tragic element to her, and when it's broken by Master Xandred, not only is it enough for her to leave the Nighlok out of spite, her desperation to get it fixed is given greater meaning because of how much it means to her past. She's been through so much, and her instrument is the only thing she has that can remind her of her past, when she was far happier, but it's shown to be a very self-destructive lifestyle.

She's so dependent on reliving her past where she was about to start a happy life with her loved one, she's willing to go back to Master Xandred if it means she can get it fixed, and as soon as the reality that her loved one is gone sets in on her, she feels like she has no choice but to give into her Nighlok side and help Master Xandred reach the surface. It's a pretty tragic character arc, all things considered, and I feel like the changes made from the Sentai really help to make her stand out.

Unfortunately, I can't say the same for Deker. Despite being billed as Jayden's main rival, Deker doesn't really have a lot going for him other than his backstory and how often he likes to talk about his sword, Uramasa. And don't worry, he says it all the time so you don't forget the name. Again, without spoiling Shinkenger for newcomers, Deker's Sentai counterpart is arguably more deranged than even Dayu's, and the problem here is that this show wants to have the best of both worlds with Deker as a villain. The writers clearly want him to be held in the same level of disdain as even Master Xandred, but also want him to be a more sympathetic villain. I'm not saying you can't do that, but even with Zen-Aku, he did plenty of evil things before we learned he was cursed.

With Deker, the show spends so much time trying to remind the audience of how tragic of a figure he is, they forget to have him actually do anything evil to balance that out. Yeah, he interrupts a Nighlok fight to duel Jayden (Test of the Leader), but he never really does anything else like that. The closest he comes to being evil is when he temporarily operates under Serrator's faction, and even then, it's so he can get Uramasa fixed. When he fights, all he talks about is how he wants to break his curse, but we never see him go to any extreme measures to break the curse. Instead of a noble demon, show Deker as someone who will threaten Jayden into dueling him so he can break his curse, and resort to dirty tactics so he can find a way, any way to break the curse. He's lived for over a century, but he never really shows any desperation or drive to end his misery like what we see with Dayu. It ultimately makes it hard to get invested in his final duel with Jayden because he's not too big of a threat who needs to be stopped like Jayden claims.

Again, not to parrot Linkara's views on the show, but Serrator really should have been the final villain. He's easily the most deceptive, has a bigger role in the backstories of Deker and Dayu, and he has a bigger plan in general. You'd be forgiven for thinking that Master Xandred was a red herring and that he only existed as a placeholder until Serrator took over. He has a much more unique arsenal of soccer balls, giant bladed gauntlets, and even his own personal footsoldiers, showing how he is able to keep up with the Rangers on his own. The fact that he almost came close to achieving his goal only serves to show how effective of a villain he was.

You could have easily changed the story for Serrator to take over. Show how weak and pathetic Master Xandred has become after generations of battles with the Samurai Rangers, and the first time the current generation of Rangers sees him surface, he isn't this threatening juggernaut they were taught to see him as. Instead, Serrator kills him and asserts himself as the true master of the Nighlok, throwing the Rangers through a loop as he plans to do something worse than flooding the Earth with the Sanzu River. Unfortunately, we’re stuck with Master Xandred instead.

The Nighlok's footsoldiers, the Moogers, have some pretty cool designs. I like the demonic look to them, and they have a pretty cool arsenal. They also get giant variants to fight the Rangers with in their Megazords, alongside the Spitfangs, these walking crocodile heads that can breathe fire.

The standard Nighlok monsters also have some unique designs to them, as well as some really cool powers that show a noticeable flaw in the Rangers' training. Because the Rangers are trained to be samurai, they struggle against Nighlok they can't match in sword combat. There are Nighlok like Rofer, who can extend his arms to punch enemies, Dreadhead, who is immune to sword strikes, Madimot, who can brainwash people, Steeleto, who can manipulate the blades on his body to attack enemies, Armadeevil, who has a near impenetrable shell, and Maldan, who leads a squadron of Moogers armed with laser blasters.

A lot of these Nighloks are pretty intimidating, and thanks to their abilities, prove to be a real challenge to the Rangers, which makes them finding ways to beat them all the more cathartic. If I had to pick my favorite, it would either be Dreadhead for his entertaining cowboy voice, or Robtish for his design.

Overall, these villains can be very hit and miss. While they're far from the worst villain group in the franchise, there was a lot of room for improvement.

HIGHLIGHTS

Top Five Worst Episodes

#5: Boxed In

After being poisoned by Octoroo, Jayden is abducted by Deker while the other Rangers are injured by the treacherous Nighlok, Arachnitor. So not only does Antonio have to continue working on unlocking the power of the Black Box, he also has to find Jayden, while the rest of the Rangers have to fight against Arachnitor, who had recently been mutated by Master Xandred.

This episode isn't necessarily bad, but the problem lies in how it tries to extend the Black Box arc for Super Samurai. With the way its set up, you would think Antonio borrowing the other Rangers' Power Disks would mean he would make more progress on the Black Box, but then it never comes into play during the climax. The Rangers don't even beat Arachnitor, as he just gets away while they say that he did multiple times to make sure the audience knows.

The Megazord fight at the end with the Giant Moogers is just poorly edited, blatantly reusing footage from earlier and future episodes that doesn't even match up with the current events, like Jayden's control panel having the Beetle Zord emblem when he gave it to Mike a while ago, Antonio's cockpit showing the Claw Battlezord is in South mode when it stayed in East for the entire battle, or having Claw Battlezord East's finisher lead to the footage of Giant Moogers being taken down by the Claw Armor Megazord's Double Katana Strike in “Super Samurai”.

As a whole, the episode just feels like padding because nothing is really accomplished other than a little more knowledge on Deker's backstory, and this leads to the fight scenes in the next two episodes being heavily edited thanks to the Rangers not having the Black Box yet. It's at the bottom of the list because its flaws are more in how the writers chose to handle the Black Box in general by dragging out the debut.

#4: The Blue and the Gold

While trying to adjust to his new life with the team, Antonio starts to spy Kevin to find a way to understand him better, the two accidentally uncover a Nighlok plan to refill an old well with Sanzu River water so they can use it as a portal. In addition to Octoroo's barrier blocking their cell signal, his accomplice, Antberry, uses his Sanzu Slime to make it hard for them to actually use their weapons. Kevin and Antonio have to put aside their differences and find a way to deal with the Nighlok without the help of the other Rangers.

Like “Boxed In”, this episode isn't really bad, as it's some good character focus for Kevin and Antonio, and hearing Octoroo say “The Red Ranger's gonna fry your boo-tay!” near the end was pretty funny. The problem lies in how it adapted the Shinkenger plot. In the corresponding Shinkenger episode, the villain's plan was still to use a well as a portal for his kind, but he planned to sacrifice several schoolgirls to do so. How does Saban handle this? Their plan is to break a bunch of stolen toys. I am not making this up.

Okay... first, how would breaking toys cause a lot of sorrow if the kids who owned them aren't around to see them being broken? Second, how does the axe Octoroo gave Antberry work, and why does it need to be used to break toys instead of any old weapon? Third, why does the axe need to be sharpened if it's only being used to break some plastic toys? Fourth, why would Octoroo recruit a Nighlok with the most conspicuous powers for a covert operation? And finally, why was stealing toys from kids to cause sorrow “Plan A”?

The whole story just has so many plotholes, and the idea of stealing toys just makes the Nighlok look inept instead of the fearsome demons the show wants us to see them as.

#3: A Sticky Situation

Epoxar, a Nighlok with glue powers, glues both Mike and Kevin's hands together, making it hard for them to actually fight. When the other Rangers are incapacitated by the Nighlok, it's up to Mike and Kevin to put aside their differences and take down Epoxar.

I'm not a fan of the “two characters get glued together” plot a lot of TV shows do, so as you can imagine, I'm obviously not a fan of this episode, and most of it boils down to how the story is handled. First off, the Rangers only try to get rid of the glue once, by having Jayden swing his sword at the makeshift handcuffs. Nobody tries using their Symbol Power to melt the glue or maybe make it easier to stretch a little. Second, both Mike and Kevin think that they can work together while stuck like this, and the scenes of them trying to train in this state just drag on. Third, even though they know what the Nighlok's powers are, the Rangers don't even think to be careful while chasing him, and fall victim to his glue trap.

This episode is just full of poor decisions, and it isn't even that funny. It doesn't help that this was the last filler episode before the final two arcs, and it was a pretty bad filler episode at that. Also, there was a scene where Kevin had go to the bathroom while he and Mike were still stuck together, and now all I can't get that horrible image out of my head.

#2: The Great Duel

While the Rangers get used to a new addition to their ranks, Jayden faces off against Deker for the final time.

I don't want to give too much away, given that this episode is during the final arc and involves a new character, but a lot of the problems I have with the episode boils down to how this new character is treated by the other Rangers. They don't really do anything wrong, yet all the other Rangers do is judge them for no reason.

Another problem I have lies with Jayden's final duel with Deker. Like I said earlier, there's no real drama between the two that makes you get excited for this fight, and what should be an important moment for Jayden's character arc just comes across as filler.

It's just not a good episode because even though we're this close to the end of the series, nothing really feels important here.

#1: Something Fishy

After he was almost eaten by a cat while he was in the body of a fish in the previous episode (I'll explain later), Antonio develops a crippling fear of fish to the point where he can't even draw his Barracuda Blade. When it seems like the Rangers can't snap him out of his fear, they go to face Serrator for the first time, while Mentor Ji tries to help Antonio find a new weapon to use.

While I like the idea of a Ranger having to deal with the trauma of a monster attack, the way it's handled just doesn't work. It's framed as a standard “face your fears” episode while not really acknowledging what caused Antonio to develop a fear of fish: association with a negative incident. Most of the team's attempts to help Antonio amount to “I'm going to force myself to do something I don't like so you can eat fish and overcome your fear”, and before that, they pretty much tell him to grow a pair and get over it.

In general, Antonio's fear is treated as unreasonable and even the way it's resolved feels like an insult to anyone who struggles to face their fears. Mentor Ji just goes up to Antonio, shoves a piece of sushi in his mouth and tells him to just deal with his crippling fear of fish that he only got after a near-death experience.

This could have been a great character focus episode for Antonio. You could have explored why he chose to follow his father and become a fisherman himself instead of what we got. And the worst part is with the debut of Serrator and the Light Zord, this episode is very relevant to the plot. They seriously made an episode where a major villain debuts at the same time as an annoying subplot that fails to actually explore fear, and that's just one of the reasons why I think this is the worst episode of the season.

Top 5 Best Episodes

#5: Super Samurai

When Arachnitor returns and overwhelms the Rangers, Antonio has to hurry and finish the Black Box as soon as he can and give the team the power boost they need, all while water from the Sanzu River starts to seep into the human world.

While I had a lot of problems with how the Black Box arc was stretched out so it would start in Super Samurai, this episode honestly does a great job showing off the new powers and setting the stage for the second half of this season. The scene where the Rangers see a puddle of Sanzu River water is seen as bad because we know the Nighlok need it, but the simple image of a stick catching on fire as soon as it's dipped in the water is honestly pretty chilling. It pretty much tells the audience, “You thought the Sanzu River flooding the world was bad? Wait until you see what the water does to anything that isn't a Nighlok.”

The stakes are raised even further when the Rangers encounter Arachnitor, and thanks to Octoroo's meddling, can't morph to fight him or the Moogers. We even see some of Mia's hair get singed thanks to touching some Sanzu River water. It's some pretty tense stuff, which is what makes the Rangers getting their powers back in addition to Jayden's first Super Samurai Mode transformation all the more triumphant.

I also really like the ending where Jayden acknowledges that they'll need to use the Black Box more to keep up with the growing threat of the Nighlok, as it really shows how things have gotten more serious. It's a great way to open up the second half of this season.

#4: Trading Places

Switchbeast, a Nighlok under the command of a mysterious benefactor (later revealed to be Serrator), uses his powers to switch the minds of civilians with everyday objects, including Jayden, Kevin, Mia, and Antonio, so it's up to Mike and Emily to stop on their own.

Body swap episodes are a hallmark of TV shows, especially ones aimed at children, and unlike “A Sticky Situation”, which played the cliche plot straight, this episode tries something different with the body swapping. Instead of the standard conflict of the Rangers needing to get used to each other's powers, the swapped Rangers are taken out of the conflict entirely due to being stuck as inanimate objects, leading to a more character-focused conflict with Mike and Emily being the only ones able to stop it, where earlier episodes just left one Ranger out of commission at a time (Team Spirit, The Great Duel).

Another interesting thing is the way the conflict is treated. When you first think about the plan, it's pretty tame by Nighlok standards. It's not stealing and breaking toys dumb, but it's up there. But then the episode reveals Switchbeast's true plan. Why did he place the minds of random people in inanimate objects? Simple, all so the objects could be taken out and disposed of, killing the people inside while their bodies remain emotionless husks, causing all kinds of sorrow. It's honestly a pretty demented plan, and it makes sense when you remember this Nighlok works for Serrator.

This episode also does a good job showing off how far Mike has come as a character. He and Emily have both been underestimated the most out of the team, and even when Emily brings up the events of an earlier episode where Mike tried taking on a Nighlok by himself, Mike is more focused on the fact that Jayden had to save him at the end. Even when Mentor Ji gives him the Black Box to use, Mike isn't sure if he can handle the power. It's pretty interesting to see Mike doubt himself when the stakes are so high, which only makes his and Emily's eventual triumph over Switchbeast all the more satisfying.

I also have to give credit to the actors who were playing the victims this episode, specifically the scenes where Mike and Emily are talking with Mentor Ji while the others are standing there as inanimate objects. It must have been really hard to keep a straight face, especially Najee De-Tiege when Mike put Kevin in a tutu while standing still as a joke.

It's just a really fun episode with really high stakes.

#3: Runaway Spike

When the rent on Bulk's home is overdue, Spike goes out and tries to get a job to help raise money. Meanwhile, the Rangers have to deal with Duplicator, a Nighlok who can create clones of himself.

Despite being billed as important characters in the opening, Bulk and Spike never really got a lot of focus episodes. Thankfully, that changes here. While this is still a rather lighthearted filler episode, it's a good character study for both Bulk and Spike. Spike generally wants to help his uncle out, and while him screwing up on multiple jobs is played for laughs like you'd expect, we see how it affects his self-esteem to the point where he doesn't even notice Duplicator's first attack due to how down he's feeling. After the attack, Spike vents to Mia (who went to make sure he was okay after Duplicator escaped) about how much of a loser he thinks he is, and it's some pretty engaging stuff.

It's also a great episode for Bulk. When he sets out to look for Spike once it gets dark, it really shows how much he cares for his nephew. He doesn't ramble about any ulterior motive like saying Skull will kill him if anything happens to Spike. He chooses to let Spike go out and get a job on his own, but when it gets late, he decides to go looking for him. It's subtle, but it's a great way to show the level of trust Bulk has for Spike, and when it's hinted that Spike got fired from his last job as a security guard, he tries his best to reassure him that he did his best. I really wish we got more episodes like this that explore the relationship between Bulk and Spike, because the two are great here.

Spike's brief interaction with Mia is the highlight of the episode, as not only is a clever follow-up to the running gag about him falling for the Pink Ranger (like father, like son, am I right?), but it's one of the few scenes where Mia can really shine as a character with her, an actual samurai, telling the samurai-in-training to never give up. While I never really shipped Mia and Spike, I can honestly see the two hanging out and becoming close friends after the events of the series. There was also a real missed opportunity to have Spike be one of the few people to actually enjoy Mia's cooking.

The climax here is also one of the more visually stunning fights in the series, using a lot of shadows and clever lighting. Like Duplicator says about himself multiple times in the episode, it's really cool. It's just a great episode that manages to have a fun monster fight while expanding on the characters of Bulk and Spike.

#2: Unexpected Arrival

Octoroo sends Vulpes, a Nighlok with mirror and illusion spells, to spy on Jayden to learn more about the sealing symbol, while the other Rangers try to investigate a mysterious fisherman who sent a message about seeing them soon.

This is the only episode of Samurai's first half on the list, and oh boy, is it a good one. The first half is full of suspense and intrigue as to what the Nighlok's plan is. There's a real sense of uneasiness, especially with how the Nighlok seems to target Jayden specifically. He becomes so paranoid, he actually comes close to accidentally harming Emily in one scene.

The episode also does a great job at introducing Antonio. With how it's structured, you would initially believe that he's connected to the Nighlok's plan, which makes his appearance as the Gold Ranger just as surprising to see as it is for the other Rangers. Granted, Nickelodeon's promo outright spoiled that Antonio was the Gold Ranger, but it's the thought that counts.

After how uneasy the first half felt, Antonio's debut lightens up the tone and makes it incredibly satisfying to see Vulpes get his ass handed to him while showing how eccentric Antonio can be. At the same time, it sets up the next episode where we learn more about Antonio as a character, introducing him but not giving everything about his backstory yet, making the reveal that he and Jayden are old friends intrigue audiences. The episode featuring the debut of the Gold Ranger clearly lived up to its title, as it was clearly a golden one.

#1: The Strange Case of the Munchies

Jayden, Kevin, Mia, Mike, and Antonio are all afflicted with an insatiable hunger thanks to Grinataur, leaving Emily the only one capable of stopping him and keeping the others in order. Meanwhile, Bulk and Spike find Mia's wallet and try to return it by going to the Rangers' home, only to get roped into “Samurai training” by Emily as a diversion.

This is honestly my favorite episode of Samurai just because of how wacky it can get. The sheer amount of energy put in by the actors as they try to eat whatever they can get their hands on is just hilarious, especially Najee De-Tiege, who tries to eat flour from a bag. Even Mentor Ji gets a few good lines in as he tries to keep up with the insanity, seeing how he's the only one besides Emily who wasn't hit by the Nighlok.

The way Bulk and Spike were used was also really funny. When the two come to the Shiba house to give Mia back her wallet while the Rangers are stuffing their faces, Emily pretends to be a drill sergeant to keep Bulk and Spike occupied with a bunch of rigorous training, and she basically channels her inner R. Lee Ermey to scare them away. It's just a riot.

There's not much else I can say about the episode. There's so many funny jokes and slapstick, it's hard to really describe what I like about it. If you watch any episode of Samurai, it should be this one.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Samurai... is a very mixed bag. While its relatively standalone nature makes it a good starting point for newcomers, there are a lot of moments where the writing can be confusing when it comes to what they do and don't change from Shinkenger. At the same time, there are still a lot of good performances from the cast, and some interesting characters that, while not fully used to their full potential, are still enjoyable in their own way. Compared to later Neo-Saban seasons, you could tell there were some growing pains here, and the rushed production didn't help things at all, but honestly? I still think the writers did an okay job with what they had. Yeah, you can probably chalk some of it up to nostalgia, but I still thought this was a pretty decent show. It's nowhere near my favorite in the franchise, but it never reached any of the lows future Neo-Saban entries like Megaforce or Ninja Steel reached.

I'd say if you're someone looking to get into Power Rangers or tokusatsu as a whole, this is a pretty decent starting point. It wouldn't be my first choice for beginners (I'd go more with Lost Galaxy, Wild Force, or Dino Thunder if you were curious), but compared to other Neo-Saban shows, there's still a clear sign of effort here in spite of the rushed production schedule. Even if you've already seen it, or have seen Shinkenger before, I'd also say it would be fun to check out a few episodes of Samurai and see how the source material was handled, either with what was changed, or with the moments blatantly copying scenes from the Sentai.

Although if you were looking to get into Super Sentai, Samurai Sentai Shinkenger is still a great season to start on. It's over ten years old, and it's still considered one of the best entries in the entire franchise. If you grew up with Power Rangers Samurai and want to get into Super Sentai, I highly recommend watching Shinkenger.

[thickness-protection-program]

All 21 different variations of power rangers and their theme songs brief analysis

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: classic, can't go wrong, forever and always a bop - 9/10

Power Rangers Zeo: lost a little bit of the iconicness MMPR brought but admire the effort - 7/10

Power Rangers Turbo: Cindy my pussy's popping! - 10/10

Power Rangers in Space: hmm *refer to PRZ* - 7/10

Power Rangers Lost Galaxy: the emotion, the power, the soul, the influence - 10/10

Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue: it has emotion but it needs to PUSH - 7/10

Power Rangers Time Force: I didn't know I could throw it back and head bang at the same time, but missing a certain je ne sais quas - 7/10

Power Rangers Wild Force: ok ok I see you it's a vibe, inspirational workout music, and that BELTING?? - 8/10

Power Rangers Ninja Storm: ART - 10/10

Power Rangers Dino Thunder: so many emotions, not enough room to throw ass, perfect in every single way - 10/10

Power Rangers SPD: ok 👀 this one sneaks up on you, you got us in the second half ngl - 7/10

Power Rangers Mystic Force: they said "I'm gonna give the gays everything they want" - 10/10

Power Rangers Operation Overdrive: um here's a participation award sweetie - 4/10

Power Rangers Jungle Fury: not the best but y'know what? I definitely feel like I'm in a jungle, you knew what the assignment was - 7/10

Power Rangers RPM: 2/10

Power Rangers Samurai: ooo okay?? Back to the roots but making it your own and I'm not mad, unfortunately some iconic was lost - 6/10

Power Rangers Megaforce: they said "samurai lemme copy your homework but I'll change some of the answers" - 5/10

Power Rangers Dino Charge: ok, I had no idea this existed but this is a fucking bop wtf and why is my pussy popping - 9/10

Power Rangers Ninja Steel: ok you had me in the first half ngl but you lost me - 5/10

Power Rangers Beast Morphers: here's another participation trophy honey - 4/10

Power Rangers Dino Fury: literally didn't even know this was a season, no participation award, just get your drink and go home - 2/10

[popculturebuffet]

Static Shock: Shock to the System and Aftershock Review

“You know what? 13 years ago, me and some friends sat in a restaurant all night and daydreamed about the kinds of stories we would tell if we had the chance. We wanted to expand the concept of superhero to include characters that kind of looked like us, who had some of the same background, experiences and dreams as we did. We wanted to create something fun that a new generation would respond to the same way we responded to our childhood heroes -and damn if we didn't succeed beyond my wildest dreams. Today, Static Shock is a household name with millions of fans of all ages (Is there stuff I'd do differently? Yeah, almost all of season four but why nitpick?) Static is the most successful thing I've ever helped create and I'm both proud and gratified that people have taken it into their hearts. “ 

Dwayne McDuffie, Co-Creator of Static and Writer for Static Shock

This review is dedicated to Dwayne McDuffie and Robert L. Washington III.                                                        Rest In Power Static Shock is awesome. I grew up with the show watching it both first run on the WB and second run on Cartoon Network and loved it as much as I did other large parts of my childhood courtsey of DC like Batman the Animated Series, Teen Titans and both Justice League Shows. What makes this unique among the DC Properties is that Static wasn’t really a big name when he got a show. He wasn’t even part of the DC Universe. 

See as I had no idea for probably a good decade, Static actually came from Milestone Comics, a company ran by and focused on african americans. The goal was understandable: While black heroes existed at the time, and there were some fantastic ones like Storm, Jim Rhodes and Steel... these guys weren’t the center of their universes. The big faces of the big  companies, Spider-Man, Wolverine, Hulk, Iron Man, Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, The Flash.. were white. So milestone was a shakeup of that with the main teams and heroes all being black, from Icon, an alien who’d lived among man but rather than end up in kansas like say superman ended up imprinting on a slave woman centuries ago and has been with us since, who was encouraged by an energetic teenager named Rocket to put on a costume and do something with his powers and his community, Hardware, a tech genius who had his work stolen by a white asshole and wanted to fight back and BLood Syndicate, a group of gang members all caught in the “The Big Bang”, a huge fight between all of Dakota, the midwest city where the comics take place, that ended when the police released a bunch of experimental gas that gave them all super powers. 

As most of you who have watched the show already know, this is where Static comes from. Static was the company making their own Spider-Man, i.e. a nerdy teenager who suddenly gets super powers, in this case Virgil Hawkins who at the prodding of a friend took a gun to The Big Bang to get revenge on a bully. .but ultimately couldn’t go through with it, decided it wasn’t him and got rid of the gun and ran.. and still ended up in it, becoming Static, a young hero dedicated to using his powers to fight other “Bang Babies”.. a term that dosen’t really sound that great and they really should’ve thought through. But Phrasing aside the character was great and I look forward to reading more and only haven’t because I have to buy the issues gradually, but DC is currently re-releasing the individual issues of Static, Icon, and Hardware weekly in anticipation of a reboot of Milestone Coming in May digitally on Comixology at only 2 bucks a pop, and rereleased the original print collections that were long out of print for 10 bucks each, though i’m getting static on it’s own since i’ts really not that much less expensive as it only collects four issues while Icon and Hardware both collect 8, so I can wait a bit there on Hardware and already own Icon: A Hero’s Welcome.. and really need to review it at some point. 

While Milestone’s output was good, at least from the two books i’ve read, with Robert Washinton III, who sadly not only ahs also passed but was fucking homeless for a while  in the 2000′s.. what the actual hell, writing Static alongside Dwayne McDuffie, whose later moved onto animation writing tons of Static episodes all of them classics including the school shooting episode, the first three rubberbandman episodes and both Anasazi episodes. Point is it had good writers and artists and even had a distrbution deal with DC, so they had a leg up on the glut of other comic book companies.. but happened to start at the start of the comic book crash, a huge downturn in sales in the 90′s as the speculator boom, i.e. a bunch of people assuming every number one would be worth golden and silver age money, forgetting a character has to BUILD INTREST and this stuff takes time, and whose attempts to sell fast flooded the market with comics no one wanted,, caused the roof to cave in and with a bunch of assholes pegging milestone as a “Company for black people” rather than you know, a company trying to add fucking diversity and represntation to the comics industry, and that simply wanted a unvierse that was centered around people of color instead of white guys. The company eventually had to shut down, and was left to lisencing.  This is where the show comes in. Producers HAD been trying to make shows based on Milestone for a while, as far back as the mid-90s and the company was was all for it but the closest it got was an x-men style team series using various characters whose first draft was terrible and whose second draft by Alan Burnett, a producer on various DC Animated shows who’d go on to produce Static Shock, that McDuffie and others really liked but sadly did not get picked up. eventually though with presistance Static ended up getting a series and as I said McDuffie went on to write for it though he did not develop it. Some changes went into place naturally to make it work for an early 2000′s kids show and while i’ll probably miss so since again, only read one issue as we go. But due to Milestone coming back my intrest was peaking, hence finally reading the copy of Icon I had to buy from the library years ago due to keeping it overdue but am now EXTREMLEY glad I own as i’ts incredibly rare and really damn good, and wanting to read static, doing so lately since it’s finally on digtiial and again not too expensive. So join me as I give you a shock to the system and revisit this hell of a series to see if it holds up.. which just to cut that short it does and i’m only holding off binging MORE because I want the first two eps to be fresh enough in my head to review properly.. and also go over the various voice actors because that’s a thing with me now and charcter co-creator dwayne mcduffie because he’s awesome. 

As I like to do when covering a series first episodes, let’s run down the voice cast. 

First up is an UTTER LEGEND, and I use the term voice acting legend a lot, and mean it every time and have good reason to use it when I say it, and Phil LaMarr is a GOD in the buisness, having done a metric ton of voice acting roles, and being easily the most proflific black voice actor in animation. He’s also done some acting work, mostly in pulp fiction which I have not seen, but his true staying power and talent is in animation so here’s just the roles I feel are most notable or may not be very notable but i’m bringing up anyway because it’s my list. 

His roles besides Virgil include Lester Payton the Texas Ranger who showed up for one very good episode of king of the hill to be badass and show up the hickish, stupid and very punchable local Sheriff, Gearld’s obnoxious older brother Jamie O on Hey Arnold, Hermes Conrad from futurama, Carver from the Weekenders (PUT IT ON PLUS DISNEY), Axel Foley for exactly one bit in Clerks the Animated Series, but anyone whose seen it will know exactly which one, Micheal on the Proud Family, Black Vulcan on Harvey Birdman (In His Pants), Hector Con Carne and Dracula on Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy and Evil Con Carne, Jack on Samurai Jack something I didn’t know for decades (and I didn’t know about the carver thing till today though i’ts obvious in hindsight), John Motherfucking Stewart on Justice League and later Steel and Adult Static in the Unlimited seasons, Osmosis Jones on Ozzy and Drix, Bolbi Strogofski on Jimmy Neutron (And yes i’m just as shocked as you are.), Wilt on Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends, Marcus on Life and Times of Juniper Lee, Bull Sharkowski on My Gym Partner is A Monkey and Also a Sociopath Please Help God My Life is a waking nightmare..... okay the rest of that title is implied but we all watched the same show, we all know in our hearts that was the title

Moving on, he was also, and yes there’s MORE: Maxie Zeus on The Batman, Philly Phil on Class of 3000, Both Robertsons AND Fancy Dan on the Spectacular Spider-Man, Jazz on Transformers Animated, Kit Fisto and Bail Organa on Star Wars the Clone Wars, Gambit and Bolivar Trask on Wolverine and the X-Men, Aquaman I, L-Ron and Green Beetle on Young Justice, J.A.R.V.I.S. and Wonder Man (Simon Williams) In Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, Gabe and Carny on Kaijudo: Rise of the Duel Masters (Really miss that game and have been snapping up what cards I can get lately), Baxter Stockman in the 2012 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (And there’s also an awesome photo of him with 2003 Baxter... the two best together in one place. I got chills), Dormammu (I’ve come to bargin) in various Marvel Shows, Noville in Mighty Magiswords, Zach’s dad Marcus in Milo Muprhy’s Law, Craig’s Douchey Brother Benard on Craig of the Creek, showing he’s clearly come full circle, And Mr. Scully on the Casagrndes. And given It took about two paragraphs to cover all of this, yeah, I MEANT legend. 

Next we have Kevin Micheal Richardson as Virgil’s Dad Robert, and it’s the first time since I started introducing Voice Actors on a show that i’ve overlapped. I already covered him during the second episode of legend of the three caballeros, but for the short version he’s also very acomplished, very damn good and I somehow missed he played the old blind guy in hey arnold> Needless to say the dude is awesome. 

Virgil’s Sister Sharon is played by Michele Morgan who was in the rap group BWP and did some smaller roles outside of this the one exception being Juicy on the PJ’s, which I have not watched much of but REALLY do not like, though i’ll at least give it credit for being a decently long lasted black claymation sitcom at at time when there were, and hoenstly still aren’t, many black animated shows. 

Back to long casting sheets, next up is Jason Marsden, who is one of my faviorites as i’ve realized recently as Ritchie. As I also found out only recently he started on the Sitcom Step By Step and while that show is .. ehhhhhhhhh, he is great in it because he’s great in everything. He also apparently has his own internet variety show which I have to watch now. His roles include Max Goof, ironically given I was just talking about that role a few days ago, Haku in the english dub of Spirted Away, Micheal, the kid being yelled at by a bunch of 80′s cartoons characters not to take drugs in Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue!, Nermal in the DTV Garfield movies and The Garfield Show, Tino on the Weekenders (SERIOUSLY DISNEY), Snapper Carr on Justice League, Rikochet on Mucha Lucha! for the last season (Why I do not knkow and while I love the guy he was not the right choice), Felix on Kim Possible, Chase Young on Xiaolin Showdown (WHich I did not realize was him and now I do easily his best role and I REALLY should’ve), Red Star and Billy Numerous on Teen Titans, Speedy on Batman Brave and the Bold, Impulse/Kid Flash II on Young Justice, and Fingers on Kaijudo. He hasn’t done as much lately which is a shame but hopefully i’tll pick up again. 

Next up is Hotstreak, Virgil’s brutal bully turned unhinted pyromancer played by DANIEL COOKSY, another actor i’m happy to talk about and another faviorite I haven’t seen much of lately. Daniel was an actor from childhood, playing Budnick on Salute Your Shorts, but he quickly gained a long and storied catalogue of VA Work: His first big roll was as Montana Max on Tiny Toon Adventures and if there is a god he’ll be back for the reboot, Stoop Kid on Hey Arnold, the incomprable Jack Spicer on Xiaolin Showdown, far and away his best role and part of why Chronicles sucked so bad was he was he didn’t get to reprise the role, The titular Dave the Barbarian, Django of the Dead on El Tigre (Had no idea), Kicks utterly insufferable big Brother Brad on Kick Buttowski and apparently he’s back at it again after laying low for a bit as he’s voicing Snag in Long Gone Gultch.. which I already really needed to watch but hot damn, I missed him. Sign me up. 

Frieda, Virgil’s crush and close friend who in the comics was his main confidante and love intrest but here is eventually pushed aside, is voiced by Danica Mckeller whose work didn’t seem all that familiar.. until I found out she was Ms. Martian on Young Justice. Hello, Megan. Very talented and she did get a major role in a dc show eventually so good for her. Can’t wait for season 4. 

So with our major players out of the way,  let’s talk about Dwayne. McDuffie is an AWESOME man and my respect has grown for him more and more with time. A writer and editor at Marvel, McDuffie has a decent resume doing smaller but awesome books, which I got most of for free last year when Marvel was giving out free digital collections due to the lock down, like Damage Control, a sitcom set in the marvel universe about the company that picks up after superhero battles and the logistics and antics that insue and Dethlok, about a pacfist trapped inside a cyborg zombie. He was as mentioned one of Milestone’s founders, and wrote Icon, Hardware and co-wrote the first few issues of Static. He’d go on to a pretty stacked career in animation, writing on this show and Justice League before becoming  story editor and show runner for Unlimited , even making a return to comics as a result writing the Marvel miniseries beyond and an arc of Fantastic Four in which Black Panther and Storm filled in for Reed and Sue while the two of them worked on their marriage after Reed did.. pretty much everything he did in Civil War. He also became head writer and show runner for Ben 10: Alien Force and Ultimate Alien, revamping the franchise a bit, and Alien Force, at least the first two seasons are awesome and I feel people overreacted on the changes. Ultimate Alien is okay, but has it’s problems but the finale was awesome and left the man’s legacy on a high note.. as he sadly passed in 2011 due to heart complications. He is truly missed and produced some utterly amazing stuff whlie he was alive. So on that melacholy note let’s see what happens when his creation hits the tv screen shall we?

Shock to the System:

This episode is written by Christopher Simmons, who is apparently a huge art designer guy.. but i’m not sure that’s the same chirsptoher simmons. Much more notable is the writer of the episode after this Stan Berkowitz, who was showrunner for season 1 and has done a LOT of DCAU work and is suprising talent, having written a lot of awesome Justice League episodes including Secret Society and The Royal Flush One. Point is we’re in first class hands.  Before the episode itself I want to talk about the intro and how it’s unique among DCAU shows. Like most Western Animation the intros for DCAU shows didn’t change much over the seasons with the most I can see is JLU changing up the footage to preview the current episode and later adding Hawkgirl to the intro after her return to the team. I THINK superman the animated series changed some of it’s footage too, but I can’t confrim it and may of just been imagining it. As i’ve talked about on my blog it’s normally a pet peeve of mine, mostly because shows you know, change after season 1, characters get added some one shot characters used for the intro never return, and after a while it can feel dated especially in more recent shows where the status quo is not at all set in stone and things change quite a bit. But sometimes it can be good enough that either the dated elements don’t matter or general enough that you don’t need to change it and i’ts just that good.. and given Batman the Animated Series has both in spades, you can see why i’ts probably my golden standard for intros and after superman the animated series DC mostly followed suit. But being part of the teen superhero boom of the 2000′s Static is unique in that it splits the diffrence: It’s intro gets the character across perfectly like a good intro should starting with Virgil getting out of bed and running a comb across his head before showing off to his sister to bug her and literally running into his dad who hand shim his bag and smiles, silently showing off his family. He then runs to school and runs into some trouble.. and said trouble changes for each intro, with Rubberband Man for season 1, Kanga (Whose name I only know because I happened to run across it) for season 2 and your guess is as good as mine for seasons 3 and 4, though Hotstreak is a constant. They still save some money for seasons 1 and 2 by recycling some animation.. but that’s alright with mea s it was good animation, and the improtant thing is cycling out old villians for new ones, while Season 3 is the only out and out redo to show off Richie taking on the Gear identity, adding about 10 seconds of intro to let him show off.  Seriously it’s an utterly great intro and like the other DCAU intros outside of superman, stuck in my brain. 

The other change that’s ENTIRELY diffrent from the rest of htem is that the music changes each time. The first two have the same formula just with a difrent vocalist and backing track: a superhero theme but with some hip hop beat boxing over it. The first intro is fine enough, not specattcular but stilll god. The second song.. is eh. Not really great and feels like a marked downgrade from season 1 and just dosen’t blend an ocrehstiral superhero theme with the beatbox elements NEARLY as well. The third song though is my faviorite.. even if I HATED Little Romeo as a  kid because I really did not like his nick show, it’s more a straight up rap song, but it has a faster beat that fits the intro better, and Romeo’s bragging fits Virgil’s character and penchant for Spidey quips perfectly. I also find it ironic that the theme that blends in with the dcau the most, the first season’s, is the one from BEFORE they decided to put it in the same universe. Still this season’s intro slaps, I just like the LIttle Romeo one a bit more.  The opening scene is picture perfect. Some masked crooks looting a warehouse are loading some stolen TV’s into a van when suddenly the lights come on one by one above one of the crooks before his tv switches to various channels before going haywire. Cue our heroes’ entrance. Let’s tak ea good look at him

Static’s Costume is awesome. While I prefer the season 3 redesign, and clearly DC agrees as the redeisgn was used for both pre and post new-52 when they used him, and while he’s getting a fresh design for the reboot, said design takes a lot of cures from said outfit. As for how the outfit differs from the comics itself  this is the design he had in the comics

It didn’t change much from the first issue, with the exception of his now iconic big puffy jacket which was added pretty early into the character’s history but I was unaware of that and just assumed he had the bodysuit the whole time. The more you know. But as you can see outside of the cool puffy jacket over a costume the two couldn’t be more diffrent. While the Dakotaverse outfit is more a standard superhero outfit, with some regular clothes touches on top the first cartoon outfit comes off more realistic, looking fantastic, but still coming off as something two teenagers could realistically have thrown together with what clothes they could buy, while still looking awesomely superheroy. IN short it’s perfect and only topped by the season 3 onward look...

But the slicker look, with an even cooler jakcet and the new colors all fitting the lighting ascetic better, but fits: not only has Virgil come along farther since he started, but with Richie now having a genius brain as Gear, he can provide a far slicker, far more professional superhero outfit on the budget the two have.  This show is just great  at costume design. 

So getting back to the episode at hand, Static puts up a huge sign in elecrticy saying “Bad guys here”, PFFFT, and then hides away and narrates that a few days ago he’d be the last person anyone would’ve expected to be a hero. Cue Flashback. 

We meet Virgil Hawkins on an average day: rapping into his razor, getting into a petty argument with his older sister Sharon, as a younger brother myself I relate to this, and talking to his dad who tries to get them to cut that out. We find out his mom has passed via his sister making really terrible eggs and saying that’s how mom made them. Exposition! Though we do get a great bit through this as when his sister gets distracted by her boyfriend calling, he uses the opportunity of her leaving the room to dump the eggs.. after having earlier jokingly prayed to his mom for a way out of breakfast. “Thanks for looking out for me mom” That’s both very sweet and very hilarious. 

This is a change from the comics it turns out as I was utterly flored to find Virgil’s mom alive and well when reading the first issue of Static. Turns out this was a change made during development and one Dwane McDuffie admitted in the interview I got the tribute quote from to not liking as he had a good reason for having Virgil have a nuclear family, as most black families in media at the time were just one single parent and a kid or two with the other having either left or died. He wasn’t too bothered by it as while he preferred what he came up with in the first place, the show DID get some really good stories out of her being gone and didn’t just have her be absent because shut up. Virgil is still working over her death and the way HOW she died ends up playing an important role in this episode and gives Virgil a dislike of guns, as she died to gang violence. So the change wasn’t for stupid or racist reasons, but likely both to keep the character count down while giving them something to work with for storylines. Or it could’ve been for stupid reasons and the writers simpily made lemonade out of that very dumb lemon, either way it ended up working.  Virgil also plans to ask his friend Frieda out. Frieda was a bigger deal in the comics, being Virgil’s friend and confidante as well as his ocasional love intrest, but here while she was inteded to at least be his love intrest here, that sorta fizzled out. As for the best friend role we meet her replacement in Richie, which McDuffie conceded was the kind of change a studio would make swapping out a female character for a male one. That being said the crew made the best of it and Richie is awesome, a bit of an overcompensating dipstick at times, but a good sounding board and pal for virgil and funny as hell too. He was also gay, something only revealed post series by McDuffie.. but unlike say Dumbledore, it’s a bit easier to swallow here: The early 2000′s were an even worse time for gay characters in tv let alone cartoons, and if they couldn’t kiss or have sex scenes on regular tv, there was no way we were getting any representation in a children’s show. So it was largely just hinted at by Richie overcompensating in how “into girls” he was and i’m once again fine with this being word of god as it was literally the best they could do and his counterpart in the comics was also gay, if not as relevant.  Ritch encourages Virgil to work on his opening to ask her out as it’s awkward as heck, hits a bit close to home.. but I do appricate the show just .. having him try and ask her out from the first episode. They likely would’ve drug thigns out a bit granted had they used Frieda more, i’m not blind to the convetions of the time. .but as someone who got the very wrong idea from tv that just waiting around meant a girl would like you eventually, when no you need to actually try even if rejection happens, I honestly wish we had more of this in media than the other garbage morals at the time. 

So he prepares to , not helped by her mentioning guy after guy is asking her out.... but before he can F-Stop, the future hotstreak, shows up.  F-STOP

That being said...... it’s not as bad as the original gangster name for the comic’s version, Biz Money B. Yes BIZ MONEY B

So yeah while F-Stop is no more intimidating, it at least means I can stop laughing. Francis, because I can’t type F-Stop without laughing and this review is already behind, shoves Virgil out of the way and agressively hits on Frieda, even saying “you smell good”, the international sign your a douchebag and also to call the police. Virgil steps up to the guy and gets PAINFULLY slammed into the lockers, something I give the animation team a lot of credit for, as you can FEEL how fucking painful that was. Virgil is saved by Wade, another local gangbanger who in the comics was a close friend of Virgils but here saves him seemingly just because.. seemingly. 

On the way home though Virg’s problems don’t end as naturally, the giant sized asshole with nothing better to do has his goons corner virgil before VIOLENTLY beating him.. off screen but the noises, and the clear brusies including a black eye, on virgil afterwords.. just holy damn i’m suprsied they got away with this but it shows just how horrifing it was and that this is a step above regular bullying, which make no mistake is absoluttley terrible and the series would later do an episode on it and school shootings, into straight up gang violence. Wade shows up again and gets the bastards to flee.. but also makes it clear he can’t keep doing this.. and forces Virgil to meet him at his base under the bridge. And it’s a tense sequence, with Virgil KNOWING this is a bad idea but having no real choice and Wade making it abundantly clear that he wants Virgil to join his crew, and makes a chilling point: while Virgils dad RIGHTFULLY dosen’t want his son to join a gang as Virgil points out.. he can’t be there for him all the time and eventually one of those times, Francis will be around. And he may not surivive that. Virgil nods noncomittaly.  At home it gets even more grim as he dosen’t open up to his family, understandably as his dad would jsut say to call the police and well.. we’ve seen how the police treat black people. At best they’d just try and use Virgil as an informant and that likely wouldn’t end fucking well for Virgil. Ritchie points out he can’t join a gang, virgil’s mom died that way.. see told you it’d be important to the plot.. but I like how the story dosen’t offer an easy answer.. well okay he gets electric powers soon enough but without the fantastic element this is just an innocent kid caught between either joining the very thing his mom hated or hoping a system not built to protect him will keep him alive. It’s utterly saddening and chilling and holy shit is it amazing a cartoon in the early 2000′s was able to get away with.. ANY OF THIS, and they handle it great, paired down a bit from the comics but even then it’s still incredibly balsy they got THIS much in. 

Naturally Wade calls in his favor and our hero is forced to come running.. and soon finds out Wade’s brought him in for a massive gang war. Welcome to the big bang, baby. He hands Virgil a gun as things get started and Virgil.. drops the thing and tries to escape, in a harrowing sequence.. and runs into Francis because god apparently REALLY hates this kid today. As if to prove that the police show up and while that prevents a beating, they demand they disassemble. then release untested gas on them because of course they do. 

As a result the big bang truly begins, with the various gang members getting mutated.. and naturally so does virgil. Though he wakes up the next day seemingly fine. How’d he get home? Does his dad know where he was?

I don’t know and we’re not getting any answers, but Virgil soon finds weird stuff happening like his clock shorting out, change being attracted to him and his razor going wild. It’s only once he get sback to his room he gets an inkling of what’s going on and calls Ritchie to meet him at the Junk yard.. though it is a bit of a dick move as he dosen’t you know, tell him anything about Wade or Francis right away. He does at the yard though.. and that he has powers, having finally figured out how to use them to a point. And the series does provide a decent justification later as to why he’d get this so quickly: Virgil is a smart kid, gets great grades at school and apparnetly there’s even an episode later where he gets a scholarship to a fancy genius school. So him getting how elctromagntisim works or being a quick study on it makes perfect sense. 

Richie suggest the obvious.. to become a superhero. And the thought.. hadn’t occured to Virgil. It’s honestly a nice twist on the old trope. That he hadn’t thought of it, not because he’s selfish or any of that or needs to learn a hard lesson, those have been done.. simply because the rush of getting his powers, and implicitly of having a way out of his current predciament, a way to keep Francis off his back and keep Wade from pulling him in further. His own path. But once i’ts brought up.. he jumps on it. Part of it is being a nerd like you or I, of course he wants to.. and being a good intetioned one, he knows this is the right thing to do. It’s waht makes a superhero a hero: Anyone can get powers in a universe like this, esepcailly the dcau, but it takes true courage and heart to use them selflessly and knowing you’ll be in danger. It’s why I love surperheroes: they often didn’t ask for this but they do it anyway because somebody’s gotta. We also get an intresting wrinkle is superman is, at least I think in this episode I could’ve missed it or misremembered things, mentioned as a fictional character. That’s because originally like the comics this wasn’t part of the DCAU.. but eventually the crew decided it shared staff from it, shared a network, both first run and on reruns, why not just make it part of the DCAU proper. I fully support this decisionf: While i’m midly annoyed unlimited never really used anything from static shock outside of Static himself in the time travel episode, despite you know Static and Gear having BEEN to the tower and not being much younger than Kara and defintely older than Courtney, I chalk it up to weird rights issues or something like that. But having Batman, Batman Beyond, Superman, Green Lantern and the Justice League itself all guest star was a good idea, and expanded both static’s universe and gave the DCAU something differnt as most heroes in it were older and more experinced in contrast to the up and coming virgil. Again really would’ve been nice if he and gear could’ve been a part of the expanded league but production might of just been too far ahead or, given he had his own series, they might just have wanted to stick to toher characters. Also begs the question why Icon or Hardware wasn’t adapted for the expanded League but hey, questions for later and the tricky logisitics of the milestone rights might’ve been the issue. I don’t know I wasn’t in the room. 

So we get a costume montage, including Black Vulcan from Superfriends, who again ironically would be voiced by Lamarr not too long after this, though weirdly they DON’T use his outfit from the comics for this montage. I mean why not? It fits the gag and would’ve been a good second to last choice.But what could’ve been aside we get our winner and cut back to present day...

Thanks boys. Static finds out one of the things in the warehouse is a shipment of computers for the school and can’t help but show off, showing up to the school, where Frieda and Richie are setting up for the dance, and dropping off the computers, and even saying his catchphrase for the first time “I’ll put a shock to your system” (Which Richie chimes in with awesome line and I agree, great catcphrase), before helping set up and flirting with frieda. 

Though as Richtie says he’s a natural. He’s not wrong as he can work a crowd. .but back it up too as his first run out had him easily taking out the crooks, and as many teen superheros and fans of heroes of hte type, myself included will tell you, getting it right in one is not easy. Not even Miles MOrales was immune. All Static needs now is a villian. 

And the end of the episode provides one as we see, in horrifc and once again damn suprising detail most of hte new metas aren’t doing so good and are melting and other stuff and we catch up with Francis whose burning up.. and naturally given that hair, though given he named himself F-Stop it’s the least of his problems, he’s got fire powers and escapes to “Have me some fun”

So with that we end episode 1. And it’s excellent, a great way to introduce the hero and while the warehouse opening is a bit superflous, it is a decent addition, showing our heroes first outing in costume and giving us a bit of an action scene to get us through the very heavy rest of the episode. But the rest of the episode is no less grippping, telling the tale of a teen caught in an unwinnable scenario who suddenly finds a way out. And speaking of which waht of Wade? Will we see him again? Is he perhaps Ebon, the series big bad as I thought when I was a kid? What comes of the man who directly caused static’s origin?

Yeahhh that’s the one mistep I think the pilot makes. Frieda is understandable as that was likely a simple change in creative direction. This though? Why build this guy up if your not going to bring him back. I mean where he went was probably the grave, as he probably did due to his mutation, but it’s still VERY weird to spend a whole episode focusing on this guy, building him up as a big personal threat to our hero.. and NOT have him become the series big bad. And maybe he WAS supposed to be ebon and they just changed their mind. I don’t know but it bothers me it bothers me a lot. Otherwise though flawless. ONe more to go. 

Aftershock: We open outside an electronics store, as our heroes watch the news reacap what happened in the first episode, with the media dubbing it the Big Bang and revealing their could be hundreds of “Metahumans”, as Virgil dubs after deciding the media’s term “Mutant” dosen’t fit, a nice wink to the fact that that’s the term used in dc comics and I believe milestone but could be wrong there. Me I like the term, has a nice ring to it. 

At the store while Richie mulls over waht this means Static finds out he’s a human CD player.... this was before mp3 players and streaming on your phone made them horribly obsolete mind you and if you don’t know what one is congradualtions you live in some sort of bubble and you made me feel really old junior. 

Frieda happens to be there and Virgil quips “What’s the matter they run out of britney cds”. Dude she’s not bad. Also be careful what you wish for man. Nickeback returned the year after this. You have not truly suffered through bad music yet my young friend. They spot a kid looking feverish, and he soon turns into a purple werewolf, as you do. It’s a bang baby.. those are richie’s exact word and you may not want to start a panic there bud. Just saying your best friend is one. THeir not all like this. Our heroes book it only to run into Francis who naturally refuses to let them leave and only doesn’t try to beat up Virgil because Virgil points otu the werewolf and nonplussed, he goes to fight it, scarring it off by revealing his own powers. He’s now dubbed himself Hotstreak which points for getting an actually good name kid. No points for what happens next as unsuprisingly getting powers did NOT mak ehim a better person and he attacks Virgil who blocks with a garbage can lid and thankfully is blasted into an ally. Richie tries to guard frieda for damn obvious reasons but gets hsi shirt burnt up because shut up Thankfully Static shows up, and we get our firsdt full on superhuman fight as both fight each other with aplomb, and it’s a damn good fight.. and one that goes pear shaped for Virg as he’s caught off guard when he finds out Hotstreak can use his powers to fly, and tackles him and his previous trauma causes him to freeze up. Thankfully , as Frieda put in a call earlier, the fire department arrive and HOt streak has to retreat, though Virgil is bummed that he “Choked”. And I love this as it not only shows Virgil’s inepxerince, as this is his first time fighting a bad guy but that just because he HAS power now dosen’t mean trauma and his previous fear of Hotstreak goes away or you won’t freeze up from time to time. It dosen’t make him weak or anything like some assholes would call it .. it makes him human. Humans make mistakes, and it makes him all the more relatable that he’s not pefect and that he did freeze up as I know I certainly would at last once in the circumstances. 

Things don’t get better at dinner as Sharon and Pops argue over the bang babies with Pops calling them a meance and Sharon pointing out Static exists so they can’t all be bad. See assuming a group of superhumans are bad because a handful of them ar edick sis why the x-men had to get their own island nation. You can only save an ungreatful populous so many times before you say “fuck it i’m getting my own island, pay me for life saving drugs, save your damn selves and stop doing genocides on us. Kay thanks”. But he does bring up a valid point that rattles his son: We don’t know anything about the Bang Babies or their biological structures and it’s likely they might further mutate into monsters, Static included. 

Virgil, understandably, wants to check this and thus he and richie compare blood samples in science, to no real conclusion. She he checks out with his doctor who assumes he’s sexually active in a great getting crap past the radar bit and a bit of realisim, but he agrees to the test though if something came up he would have to tell Virgil’s dsad and is up front about this. Nice dose of realisim.

That night City Council has a meeting and the Mayor TRIES to deflect Papa Hawkins questions about the bang babies which again, while being a judgmental ass as not every person hit was a gang member (Virgil, and as we discover later some others), and not every gang member is there by choice, some by circumstnace some, like virgil almost was, because they HAD no other option. Again years of reading x-men may of just made me a bit touchy on assholes admitely assuming superpower people bad. But it’s clear the public is upset and while she says an investigation is underway... Virgil and Richie are not only not convinced, but figure she’s actively covering it up. And unlike everyone else there who probably suspects the same, they can do something about it and tail her.  It’s during this, and cleverly as I didn’t realie till writing this using similar skills to his human cd player act, Virgil listens in and discovers whose behind it: Edwin Alva, whose apparently richer than bill gates and a beloved phinarophist Alva, as it turns out, was actually the arch enemy of Hardware in the comics, taking advantage of the guy in his civiliian idtentiy and thus casuing him to launch a war on the asshole. He does transition into this series well though, being the one behind the gas that caused it and with the mayor agreeing to back off, planning to simply dump the info about the big bang on a disc then destroy everything for now till the heat dies down. Yup sounds like a corprate douchebag. 

Static tails him, finds the lab and infiltrates it, stealing the disc.. but getting caught by Alva’s goon, and trapped in a glass prison, forced to use ALL his power to escape and barely getting out alive, but not before bouncing off alva’s car. Still he now has the proof.. and meanwhile Hotstreak, who I was wrong did get captured, is forced to take pill sbut spits them out once the orderly is gone. Dude.. WHY DIDN’T YOU WATCH HIM. Make sure he swallows that shit especially since, as he has no powers right now and can’t harm you. 

Hotstreak escapes off screen and our heroes discuss the disc before he shows up, and we get a REALLY fucking amazing scene: Virgil ducks into an Alleway and ritchie is worried.. and Virgil disarms him with just one word responses Ritchie: Virg you can’t take him.  Virgil: Gotta. Ritchie: Well at least wait for the fire department Virgil: Can’t.  It’s simpile but it gets the point across: This is his fight, he can’t wait for help, and people need him. And this is what makes a true hero: It’s easy to be a hero when everythings going well.. but it’s the true ones who stick it out against the odds and fight anyway. And he’s going to.  So we get one hell of a fight, though naturally Hotstreak burns up the disc. And I do like this as it dosen’t feel contrived.. yes Static could’ve left it with ritchie.. but he wasn’t thinking in the moment and dind’t really have time to think abotu the disc, only that people were being hurt and he was all they had between them and Hotstreak. It was no choice at all. Still that pisses Virgil off that the last night’s work is now worthless, and he fully charges up and curbstomps francis who retreats into a clearing. Hostreak brags when static follows, as even he’s figured out Static needs to be around metal, as he’s usually on his disc or the street, and in the park there suppodsidly isn’t any. But he’s not THAT smart as Virgil points out two things: one, he hoped to do this on PURPOSE so they wouldn’t be around people and no on e would get hurt and 2).. this is a city, there’s metal everywhere.. and he awesomely and cleverly proves it by unlodging a sewage pipe with his powers and dousing his foe, winning and proving his stuff. I love this solution, it’s a clever spider-man type way to disarm him, using smarts and the einvroment instead of just brute forcing it. Though the sewage part wasn’t intetional our hero still won and gets praise from the people dumb enough to follow the fight. 

However at home Virgil points out it was  Pyrrhic Victory and shows off his smarts by telling the tale behind it, which I didn’t know,because tv tropes didn’t exist yet: king pyrhus fought the romans and WON.. but had so little armies left that he still lost overall. That’s what this feels like to Virgil: he beat hotstreak but any chance at a cure for Bang Babies and Alva going to jail for causing them is gone. His mood does get a boost though as the doctor calls and reveals he’s fine, he just has a bit too much elctrolytes and just needs to lay off teh salt. He celebrates, we get a quick gag and the episode ends

Aftershock is another stellar episoe, giving us Virgil’s first super foe and a personal one at that, while showing some growth. As richie tells him he’s not virgil anymore he’s static and he can’t let his past get to him.. and he does’nt going from cowering in fear to easily beating his foe with simple logic. It’s a good followup that answers questions you may have from the first ep, like what does this do to virgil’s body, who supplied the gas, and why has no one done anything about this, and sets up another villian for Static in Alva. Great stuff. I highly recommend these episodes and the show as a whole: it’s fast paced, grounded and enjoyable, having just enough levity to not be too dour but just enough tension and stakes to be intresting. A throughly fantastic superhero show and one that i’d certainly love to revisit on this blog If you have an episode of static or the dcau in general you’d want me to cover, my comissions are open and details are on a tab on my blog or can be gotten simply by asking me via ask or dm. Tommorow we’re going deeper underground, there’s too much damage in this town as the Lena Retrospective continues. So expect gay ducks, straight ducks and some terrfirmains. See you next rainbow. 

[the-lady-bryan]

some observations i’ve made recently about my kid and power rangers

for context: i own the following on DVD - MMPR 1-3 (including the Alien Rangers arc), Zeo, Turbo the movie, Turbo the season, In Space, Lost Galaxy, RPM, Mystic Force, MMPR: The Movie (1995), Power/Rangers (2017), that one weird Live Show that they did back during MMPR days

also, my kid is 7.

SO! Power Rangers Official has been uploading entire seasons and recently added ALL of MMPR S1 to Youtube. They also have at the time of writing this, the Megaforce and Jungle Fury seasons steaming in full and on a loop. They’ve got a good portion of Dino Thunder posted as well, and some other seasons, too. Well, when I’m sick and too lazy to pull out my DVDs i just hit up Youtube or Dailymotion (for the episodes i can’t find on youtube) and watch Power Rangers to make myself feel better while stuck in bed with a cold or stomach flu or whatever’s wrong with me.

well, my son’s decided to climb up in bed with me and curl up and watch it with me.

last weekend and earlier this week, i’ve been sick with a wicked cold after getting over an even more wicked stomach flu that lasted about 5 days. so i’ve been watching A LOT of Power Rangers recently. as a result here’s a bunch of cute things my kid does that i’ve noticed...

the moment he hears “After 10,000 years I’m free!” he comes running into the room from wherever he is in the house. kid literally drops whatever he’s doing and runs in to jump up on the bed and settle in.

he loves the zord fights more than anything else

he tries to physically fight goldar. i have to keep him from punching my monitor or throwing my laptop because he really hates that guy and wants to hit him so badly every time he fights the red ranger. when it’s on the TV, he will get up, slap the TV, shout “bad doggie!” and then get back on the bed.

he shouts “oh no!” every time the putties, tengu bird things, cogs, and other henchmen show up. he does this without fail every time.

when it’s putties, he also starts making the same noises they do and then giggles about it.

when the zords are animals he’s like “raaaaaawwwwrrrrr!” when they’re cars he’s like “VROOOOOOOM!”

after Tommy, Kat, and Co. give their powers to TJ and the rest in the Turbo season, he refuses to watch the rest of the season. i have tried to get him to finish watching it with me, but he throws a fit, gets up, and leaves. or he’ll slam my laptop closed before storming off. it really makes him mad.

he doesn’t get mad about In Space for some reason though despite most of the rangers being the same people from the rest of Turbo.

he annoys me while watching the 1995 movie until i begin quoting Ivan Ooze dialogue at him. after which he shouts “hiyah!” and pretends to karate chop my arm. he does this for the whole damn movie after ivan ooze first turns up. if i don’t play along, he slams my laptop closed or turns off the DVD player in a huff.

he will watch the 2017 movie but only because he likes the music. when there’s not music playing, he goes off and colors or something else. the moment music he likes comes back on, he comes back to watch.

also from the 2017 movie, he likes billy the best, and will carry around the blue ranger figure he stole from me. (he also stole my pink and red rangers from this movie, too. but he only carries the blue one around.) he gets really upset - like full on ugly “its the end of the world” cry with snot everywhere - when billy dies and i now have to skip that part and go straight to the part where he’s alive again.

he only watches RPM for the zord fights.

he’s not fond of Lost Galaxy or Mystic Force.

he yells at Mesagog during Dino Thunder. his favorite thing to yell is “BAD DINO!” and swat the tv or my computer with his coloring book like he’s swatting a bad dog for pissing on the carpet or something. he will also sometimes yell at Trent when he’s evil. when he yells at trent, it’s unintelligible shouting. after trent is no longer evil, he will sit and say sometimes “i’m not doing anything bad”.

he now also says “i’m not doing anything bad” during MMPR where tommy is the white ranger. - i think he’s come to associate this phrase with all white rangers at this point.

every time Tommy is shown in the opening credits for Dino Thunder, he claps his hands and shouts “YEAH BOY!” and then goes back to whatever it was he was doing once the open credits are done.

Dino Thunder specifically - if he looks like he’s not paying attention, he actually is. and if i turn off the episode or pause it, he gets mad and yells until i turn it back on/unpause it. then he’ll go back to looking like he’s ignoring the thing.

he doesn’t care much about Samurai, but Ninja Steel is one that makes him lose his shit. he fucking loves those ninja stars.

what we’ve seen so far of Dino Fury - the moment he sees the T-Rex zord in the opening, he’s right there, nose to the screen, clapping excitedly. he also tries to use my broom as a sword while the episodes are on. this has caused a broken window and quite a few lumps on my head when i haven’t been able to get it from him fast enough and replace it with a much less deadly wrapping paper tube.

even in seasons where Alpha in any form is NOT there (so everything post-zordon era) when robots are shown other than zords and megazords he shouts “ai-yai-yai!” - this was fine... until seasons with lots and lots of robots as bad guys.

[braveandsnipe]

1 for the toku asks?

(tldr : i really liked power rangers, and thought the sentai looked cool + wanted to see the differences between pr and sentai)

back in 2011, i was an avid watcher of nickelodeon, and one day it just so happened that i was watching nick during the "premiere" of power rangers samurai. i really liked the show, so i kept watching.

in 2014-ish, i got an ipad, and (maybe unfortunately?) there was unrestricted access to the internet. i really got into watching power ranger compilations (i'm pretty sure past me would love all the comps on the channel now), and especially this one video (i cant find it anymore, but it was basically this but it stopped at samurai), which had sentai teams at the end and said they would be the upcoming seasons. before i knew about sentai, i thought these people were magic.

some more time goes by, and im a smarter kid, and learn about sentai through youtube; probably around 2016.

then, i heard about lupat around 2018, and really wanted to watch it, although the only source i knew about was kissasian, which sucked on my computer. later on in the year, i did watch like, 7-ish episodes of hurricanger, but then got fed up w/ ka and stopped.

going back a year in 2017, is when i stopped watching pr live. i had lost interest in the show, and kept forgetting it was on. i did watch some power rangers videos, but not much else.

going forward, late 2020, i found out chance perez was going to be in the newest series of pr (which i haven't been keeping up with for the past 3 1/2 years), and i got back into the pr world.

april 2021, dino fury hiatus. power rangers youtube channel is uploading dino charge episodes, and im fixated on dino charge. i've watched dino charge over a million times, and thought to myself, 'hey, i should watch the sentai,' to see the changes on the continuities (as my world history teacher likes to say) between the two series. so i put on kyoryuger, and have been watching sentai non-stop ever since!

—

could i have stopped at the first sentence, yes, but i liked reminiscing about the past.

tokusatsu 20 questions — come by and ask one

[cupcakes-are-ours]

👀 Have you said your opinions on PR Samurai and Super Samurai yet?

Ooh!! I have not!!! Thank u

Ok so like samurai was my first ever season at the ripe old age of 15 so of course it is always gonna be incredibly special to me. Like where would i be without power rangers?? WHO would I be lol. I owe it so much but also I know there are Flaws

I was so invested in the story and the characters and being young and happy, not knowing what a sentai was or what other seasons were like, of course it was the best. And all my lil friends on the nick dot com forums (i love and miss you all) all ADORED it with me so?? Simpler times!!

Looking back it's not the worst but not the best at all. The writing sucks p much throughout. A lot of the rangers are unlikeable to me (I love Antonio most), but like I loved deker and his storyline and dayu til she got all moody.... I'm not biased but like. If people looked past the BUH MUH SENTAI and BUH MUH HATE SABAN there are actually objectively some Good eps. Especially the last few of both seasons!! And some of the humor ones were cute

And the background music is pretty. AND I LOVE CLAWZORD OK. THE CUTEST LITTLE BABY EVER. I love their suits esp the helmets

And super is better than non super but I rlly can't bag on samurai just because it started it all. It's got charm and nostalgia and i know it's low quality BUT LIKE I SAID IT IS SPECIAL TO ME (even if it isn't in my top 5 seasons lol)

[dream-beyond-the-fantasy]

fandom meme, please: F or P or Z? :) (or all of them if you like)

F - What’s the longest you’ve ever been in a fandom

Active or not?  Some of my earliest fandoms were Star Wars and Power Rangers.  Both were early/mid-1990s aka my childhood.  I still love both franchises but don’t always actively interact.

I was pretty big into watching the Star Wars movies and Clone Wars series, reading the books, keeping up on updates and new pieces of history by reading the wiki, reading fics, and dreaming up face claims from the late 90s all the way up to about 2014.  That’s when Disney disbanded the Expanded Universe in favor of rewriting all of that history and character and picking and choosing what they wanted.  I used to have nearly 200 books on my bookshelf (in chronological order, in-universe) and sold most of them.  I liked some aspects of The Force Awakens and Rebels, loved Rogue One, but otherwise haven’t watched anything else.  The fandom got bad, really bad, and divisive.  So I don’t really interact with that fandom anymore.

I was a huge Power Rangers fan through my childhood but drifted somewhere around 2000-2001.  It wasn’t until 2002, as Wild Force was airing, that my best friend dragged me back in.  I read fics, bought VHS tapes, joined a message board, engaged in shipping discussions, read the wikis, and watched continuously up through 2010-2011.  That is when things changed hands again from Disney to Saban with Nickelodeon distributing.  I didn’t have Nick, so it was harder to watch, relying on Nick’s website.  I tried to keep up until the beginning of Dino Charge in 2015.  It also took on such ridiculous kid-level, which sounds weird as it has always been a kid show.  But they really dumbed it down, especially in Samurai.  Ever since we got Netflix a few years ago, I’ve been trying to rewatch the whole franchise from the beginning (with some breaks and hiatuses along the way).  I do stay away from “spoilers” from seasons I haven’t seen.

P - Invent a random AU for any fandom (we always need more ideas)

Ever since I really got into the A Song of Ice and Fire (as opposed to Game of Thrones) fandom, I’ve been nearly obsessed with an AU where all of Aerys II and Rhaella’s children lived and trying to change the relationships to where characters might be happier and then trying to pair up the next generation and still have interesting stories for them.  I still want Jon and Daenerys as a couple.  But I want happier endings and relationships for Cersei, Jaime, Lysa, and Lyanna.  Also, other characters, such as Joanna Lannister and Robert Braratheon’s parents might live in different variations of the same AU.  If you want more details, please just ask.  I wouldn’t want to bore anyone more than I already have.

Z - Just ramble about something fan-related, go go go (prompts optional but encouraged)

Haven’t I rambled enough already?  There are so many tropes and story types that I’m addicted to, such as Alternate Universes and Canon Divergence,  OCs, and canon characters gaining relatives, especially siblings or children, in fics.  Two of the best fics I’ve ever read were Harry Potter fanfics that were AUs in which Snape has a daughter with a fellow Death Eater.  Both series are very emotional and yet, keep true to Snape’s character.  And even better is when the author engages their readers, which both of these do.  Or rather did.  Sadly, one abandoned her fic in the Second Year before it was finished. 😭😭😭  The other, I got too busy to follow all the way through.  It was a fantastic epic story.

[camleecomics]

6 down, many more to go.

I’ve now drawn portraits of the Rangers from: Jungle Fury, RPM, (Super) Samurai, (Super) Megaforce, (Super) Dino Charge, and (Super) Ninja Steel. Excluding Beast Morphers, I’ve drawn the six most recent Power Ranger teams. Any time I do a series of Power Ranger portraits, it also means I’ve finished watching whatever season those Rangers starred in. Normally at this time, I would go on Instagram and ask my followers which season I should watch/draw next, but this time I’m not doing that because I know which team I want to draw next.

Ever since I got back into Power Rangers a few years ago, I’ve been toying with the thought of going back to Mighty Morphin and watching it all from the beginning. Now having finished all the most recent seasons it feels like a good time to do it. I know Beast Morphers (or at lest part of it?) just dropped on Netflix, and I’m really curious to see how that is, but I’m going to resist that temptation and stick to my plan. So be it in a few weeks, or a few months, the next series of ranger portraits you’ll see from me will be the OG crew.