Saturday, June 19, 2010

How to watch Super Sentai

It used to be real hard to watch Super Sentai back in the day (90's and early 2000's) because there was no streaming, no youtube and no constant subtitlers like #TV-Nihon. but oh well. What you had to do was buy online from websites tapes with subtitles, but 4 episodes per tape, that could go from $20 to $50 and to get a whole series of 50, let's not event talk about it! Nowadays, people download the episodes for free. TV-Nihon subtitles it for free, many fans complain about how long it takes them to release an episode but I say be thankful for what you got. Anyhoo, I am making this post for whoever doesn't know how to see episodes.

Youtube changes from time to time, what you can get for sure is the latest season and ones from a couple eyars ago, for example like Gekiranger (2007), Go-Onger (2008) and even as far as Abaranger, at times. Older series are hard to find with subtitles and even harder with good subtitles. Tv-Nihon is currently working with Dairanger, that's awesome. I own the whole series of Dairanger but 2 episodes are bad quality and all of them have no subtitles.

Anyhoo... you can see episodes online live streaming the day they air. You can use KeyHoleTv that let's you see Japanese TV live, you just have download it and look for TV Asahi. I have a mac and there is a mac version.

Super Sentai episodes ALWAYS air at 7:30 am on Sunday mornings in Japan. They are ahead of us, so when it is Sunday morning there, it is Saturday afternoon here. Here is how to watch in the U.S. and Canada:
EASTERN STANDARD TIME - Saturday 6:30pm (March to October/Spring & Summer)
EASTERN STANDARD TIME - Saturday 5:30pm (October to March/Winter)
CENTRAL STANDARD TIME - Saturday 5:30pm
WESTERN STANDARD TIME - Saturday 3:30 pm (March to October/Spring & Summer)
WESTERN STANDARD TIME - Saturday 2:30pm (October to March/Winter)

Kamen Rider episodes ALWAYS air at 8 am on Sunday mornings in Japan. Here is how to watch in the U.S. and Canada:
EST - Saturday 7pm (March to October/Spring & Summer)
EST - Saturday 6pm (October to March/Winter)
CST - Saturday 6pm
WST - Saturday 4 pm (March to October/Spring & Summer)
WST - Saturday 3 pm (October to March/Winter)

My take on the Teamups Repeats and GoseiKnight's true identity

This has been going on for a couple of weeks but TV Asahi (the channel that Super Sentai airs on) is broadcasting one half of each teamup special with introductions, mid-breaks and outros with the Goseigers. It is only a half-hour and airs before Battle Spirits, which is the show that airs before Goseiger. It airs at 6:30am in the morning, which is 5:30 pm Eastern in the United States. Each special is an hour. This week they showed the first half of Megaranger vs. Carranger, the 3rd special and it will end next week. I wish it was a whole hour but I guess they are milking this for months.

As for Gosei Knight, it turns out he is just GroundLion, not even a human or angel. That's cool and all, maybe he will become human at the end or die and someone else will get his powers, since he has a transformation phone.

Friday, June 18, 2010

Power Coins avaliable through figures, but where is the morpher?

So it has now been confirmed (maybe a month ago through the other Fall figures), that the only way to get all the Power Coins is to buy the figures. The Ninja coins are apparently available with the armored Fall line figures. This picture above is from the Bandai America Twitter account, it is of White and Green, both with their power coins. Green (with 'super armor') has the Dragon coin and White has his White Tiger coin--the correct one, not the one we got in 1994. The one we got in 1994 was the tiger from the Dairanger jewels, but we wanted the one on his chest and that's what is available now.

Like this one above, the armored figures come with one Ninja Power Coin. This Blue one (Spin Action Blue Ranger) comes with the Bear.

Coin : Figure
Dragon Coin : Power-Up Green Ranger
White Tiger Coin : White Ranger
Dino Tribe Coin (the one with the five dinos) : Spin Action Red Ranger
Black Frog Coin : Green Cycle Accelerator
Pink Crane Coin : Spin Action Green Ranger
Blue Wolf Coin : Blue Cycle Accelerator
Yellow Bear Coin : Spin Action Blue Ranger
Red Ape Coin : Red Cycle Accelerator

Lightening bolt : Red Cycle Accelerator
Different Lightening Bolt : Power Up Red Ranger
So apparently all we are missing is the Falcon Ninja Coin and the five Dino Coins (which we did see in the Toy Fair pictures).

But were do they go??!!! Some suspect this morpher above but it is the Mix and Morph Base and the Dragon coin is not removable.

But in the toy fair, they showed this morpher spinner, with a gold key with a string that pulls, so I guess they will be releasing this soon. Hopefully this morpher will come with the main 5 Dino coins. It would have been better if they released the Dino coins with the first six Rangers they came out with last Christmas.

UPDATED 6/20/10 7:30AM EST
The ORIGINAL White power coin came with the White Tigerzord and 8" White Ranger:
And the coin was recreated in platinum with the movie 5.5" White Ranger figure.

The original toy power coin, next to the toy lailai jewel. See, they flipped the images. I think what happened was that maybe Bandai America wanted the coin to look like the other Dino coins that they were animals. But fans wanted more the image that was on his vest. Kibaranger didn't have a coin, just the jewel.

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Evil Daddies and Major Hero Daddies

UPDATED 6/19/10
Father's Day is not until Sunday, but since I did this for Mother's Day, here are fathers (Super Sentai and Power Rangers) that belong to the good and bad sides.


Yamato and the Black Knight
Geki's adoptive father at the left and Geki and Burai's real father to the right.

Grifforzer
He became a father at the end of Zyuranger.

Chou Ryou TetsumenpiI forgot! I forgot about Ryu's father, he betrayed the Dai tribe and went to the Gorma, he even killed his four teammates.

Shadam
OMG! I forgot Shadam! The leader of the Gorma trio, father to twins, one good (Kou) and one bad (Akomaru). This was one bad ass dude, he turned out to be made of mud. It wasn't clear if his mud copy did the 'nasty' with Kou's mom or his real self did before he died. Or how he tricked Kou's mom and it had to be 9 or 11 years prior to the series.

DaiMaiou / Master Vile
DaiMaiou is the father of Gasha and Master Vile is the father of Rita and Rito. DaiMaiou killed his son. Master Vile let his daughter, son-in-law and brood live with him when they were under attack in Zeo. Vile didn't approve of Zedd marrying Rita. Vile was destroyed in the wave of Zordon.


Hakamenrou
Tsurihime's father Hakamenrou first appeared in episode 31. He worked with the Youkai hoping to find Daimaou's weakness. When he found out, he was turned into stone but was restored at the end of the series.

Bacha-Rage/King Mondo
Bacha-Rage is the father to Buldont. King Mondo had two sons. Bacha-Rage died before he could see Buldont's adult form. Bacha-Rage had a competition with his son. King Mondo had friendly competition with his sons. He was destroyed in the wave of Zordon.

Kaiser Buldont
Kaiser Buldont and Buldont were the same person, but Prince Gasket was the first born of two. Buldont had a kid in Ohranger, that was raised by Acha and Kocha.

Professor Mondo
Mondo was a shifty character, he created GoGoV and was their ally but then revealed he was their father. His methods could be questioned.

Captain Mitchell
Father of Ryan and Dana, two Power Rangers. He had to suffer in seeing Diabolico taking his own son. He was very protective of Dana and trusted her a lot.

Ransik
Mutant father of Nadira, he let his own personal feelings get over how he felt for his daughter but then came to common sense. He luckily got cured and was able to help the Rangers.

Mugensai Hinata
The Hurricanger's sensei who becomes a hamster and is stuck that way because he claims he has forgotten a word in the spell to turn him back.

Ikki Kasumi
The Goraijer's father. He pitted his sons against themselves. He was assumed dead, he was only seen in flashbacks.

Sensei (Kanoi)
He was born a twin but when his brother betrayed him and became Lothor, he no longer considered him a brother. He cared a lot about his son Cam and didn't want him to become a Ranger because of the promise he made to his wife.

Anton Mercer
Anton was Trent, the White Ranger's adoptive father and he made it clear, that his Mr. Hyde alter-ego Mesogog was not Trent's father in any form.

Zeltrax
He became a father, only for one episode.

Leanbow (Koragg) / Isamu (Wolzard)
Oops! I keep forgetting more fathers! Dang, there is more daddies than mommies. Before Mystic Force, a friend of mine (Jill Sylvan) complained that there weren't enough good mothers in Power Rangers, that most of the focus went to fathers. Leanbow and Isamu were both caring fathers that sacrificed themselves to save their families and were turned evil, but still cared about their spawn. They were both turned back to good by their families and in the end died and were resurrected by vampires.

Andrew Hartford
Not technically a father, well not biologically. He had 'no time' to find a woman and settle down so he built his own son Mac.

Lord Zedd
In Operation Overdrive, it was revealed that Lord Zedd had a son named Thrax.

Dan
Also forgot about Jan's dad in Gekiranger, who played an important part in the whole Rio/Jan thing. Played by the legendary Kenji Oba. Dan appeared in a couple of eps, Rio thought he killed Dan, but it was Ron who soften him up a bit before. Dan's spirit was used for the monster later known in PR was Whiger.

Mason Truman
Father of Scott. The usual tough as nails daddy, who mourned his favorite son and was hard on the other left behind, of course, until the finale.

Children to Evil Fathers

UPDATED TODAY
Father's Day is not until Sunday, but since I did this for Mother's Day, here are children (Super Sentai and Power Rangers) to evil fathers.

Grifforzer's Son
He just born and then trapped with his parents in a dumpster, he had a human face. That's it. And in Zyuranger, Burai and Geki had a evil daddy too.

Akomaru
Akomaru is Shadam's son, raised to be a Gorma. He had a vendetta against Kibaranger, who turned out to be his twin brother--he even disguised himself as Kou's lady love, creepy! He died in a cave collapse with his mommy.

Kou
Yes, he was the Kibaranger but he also was half Dai and half Gorma, his gorma side had to blocked with a tiger burn. He often fought his dad.

Rita Repulsa
Daughter of Master Vile, he didn't attend her wedding and didn't approve of Zedd.

Gasha Skull / Rito Repulso
Gasha was son of DaiMaou and Rito was son of Master Vile. DaiMaou killed Gasha. Rito was lucky enough to live. We didn't see him die in Countdown to Destruction, but it was assumed he did.

Prince Sprocket / Buldont
Buldont had avid competition with his dad Bacha-Rage and that sort of carried on in Zeo, he had to prove himself to Mondo, but when Mondo was gone, Sprocket was loyal to Mondo.

Kaiser Buldont / Prince Gasket
Kaiser Buldont and Buldont were the same person, but Prince Gasket was the first born of two. It was said that Prince Gasket didn't get along with his dad Mondo.

Nadira
Ransik's daughter was vapid and shallow but slowly grew a heart. She was the one to bring Ransik to the good side.

Goldenrod
Only for one episode, because Zeltrax used his DNA and made Goldenrod, who called him 'father.'


Thrax
Rita and Zedd's son, he was ashamed that his parents became good. He was destroyed by the Power Rangers.

Monday, June 14, 2010

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers The Movie Visual Goofs

Here are just a few goofs, I am not planning to show all of them. I am aware of Zordon disappearing in wide shots of Ivan attacking the Command Center, the Rangers having rollerblade gear teleporting and reappearing without it, etc.
Here where the Ape Zord is on the top of a building, Red looks down at the Ectomorphicon, we see there is no street under the robot, just lines--this is the animation grid, it had not been rendered yet. Or they didn't put the street under it.

Aisha's power coin emblem is missing when attacked.

This is not a goof, Ninja Megazord crashes through a building, it isn't a CGI robot, probably the toy or a prop, looks a bit irregular.

To the left corner, you can see, very far away, there is a crewman.

The biggest goof is the Wolf Zord running around Adam and...

The frog zord flying around Billy! I mean, come on! The animal emblem is on their chests! How hard is it to tell which animal goes around the teen? Also, the zords were pretty easy to find!

Sunday, June 13, 2010

Lord Z

In the United States, most Americans know that the letter "Z" is pronounced is 'Zee.' But in the rest of the world, the English letter "Z" is pronounced "Zed." For American fans, Lord Zedd's name is just a made up name, Zedd and that he has a 'Zee' staff. But British and Australian fans and others in the World (other countries that speak English) see Lord Zedd's name as a transliteration of the pronunciation of the letter 'Z', only with a extra 'd': Z = Zed + d. And Lord Zedd has a 'Zed' staff. I didn't notice this until I was in college and learned the letter 'Z' was pronounced 'zed.' I asked International fans before and they always thought Lord Zedd was a clever way at the letter 'Z' (zed). Even International children that didn't know how the tv show spelled his name, they wrote 'Lord Z.'

Poll Results: Favorite Sentai Villains / Favorite Ranger Color

Favorite Ranger Color
Red got 85 of 244, Silver got the least votes at 10.
Red - 85
Blue - 34
Green - 31
Yellow - 17
Pink - 16
Violet - 15
Gold - 13
Black - 12
White - 11
Silver - 10

Favorite Sentai Villain Team Last Decade?
Bandora's Gang got 52 of 145 votes; Pysma Family from GoGoV got 1 vote.

Favorite Sentai Villain Team this Decade?
The Gedoushu got 44 out of 179 while Jakanja (Hurricanger) got 5 votes.