Saturday, September 26, 2009

Power Rangers RPM - Episode 25 - "Key to the Past"



New opening with PaleoMax. A recap is shown of Dillon's sister, the twins telling him about her, the key he found and Tenaya telling Shifter to watch his back.

Episode Summary:

Tenaya is tweaking with the new robot (Horonderthal) Shifter worked on. She leaves the bot once the other generals arrive. Shifter offers it to Venjix for him to enter it. The bot attacks Venjix. Kilobyte attacks the bot. Shifter blames Tenaya. Venjix vanishes Shifter and he takes his new bot away. Venjix sends Tenaya and her heat bot. Back at Corinth, some lady (a mayor?, according to the ending credits, she is the mayor) and Mason have a big thing (event where everyone is present except for Dr. K) with two keys. They put the two keeps to unlock a depot. This gives Dillon an idea, since h has two keys. He puts one key in another, they fit. One key was his sister's. The depot is attacked, the seven morph and go after the Heat Bot. The twins and Summer fight the Grinders while the four boys fight Heat Bot.


Heat Bot runs away. Black goes to check on Yellow. Tenaya attacks Yellow and they fight. Dillon then fights Tenaya. She calls him D44, saying a cyborg hybrid is no match for a robot like her. She blasts him and he protects it with his shield and the blast hits some metal stuff and it falls on her. After the commercial break, Tenaya says human compassion is a weakness and throws debris at Black. She says when she gets damaged, it is a simple repair but when he is damaged, he bleeds. She leaves. Elsewhere, Grinder and his bot are in an area of junk. He has a new device. Dillon puts the two keys in the locket and it plays The FARMER IN THE DELL. He runs off and gets in his car and races off, surprising Ziggy and Summer. Back at the evil lair, a Grinder fixes Tenaya. Crunch and Tenaya spot that Dillon is out in the desert.


Tenaya wants to deal with it herself. Dillon plays the song, she whistles it. He then plays the sad song from the beginning. This triggers memories for her, of her as a child and an grandfather giving it to her and a little boy. He says that she is his sister. He tells her that she is a human, a hybrid. SHe says she is a robot, she blasts at him, he morphs and blocks it. An explosion occurs behind her. They then behin to fight. He doesn't want to fight her but she continues, in a fury. He bests her, de-morphs and she... bleeds. She is shocked. She is shocked and dismayed, she runs off. Dillon returns to the garage, Summer approaches him. She says if he talks to her, she can help. He says he wishes she could, but she can't.


Tenaya returns to the evil base and analyzes herself, the dna match is with D78 and her sibling is D44, video is shown, she is blind and Dillon helped her escape. Kilobyte was involved, he put Dillon down and the Grinders grabbed her. Kilobyte says he will miss her, saying she won't be able to fight Dillon, because she is weak and human, and that Dillon made her remember. She says she has to stop the memories. She has to stop them at the source because she worked way too hard to make Venjix succeed to stop now. Meanwhile, the heat bot fight the seven. The twins manage to freeze him. In the evil base, Kilobyte tells Venjix he will fix things. In Corinth, Tenaya attacks the seven. She says she has come for 'the hybrid.'


After the commercials, the Rangers defend Black, Tenaya sends Grinders and they all fight. Black doesn't want to fight Tenaya, she fights him, determined in getting rid of him. She says she is more concerned with the future than the past. She throws him off a bridge and he de-morphs, she continues to fight him. He goes down and she is about to blast her. The three blast their blaster at her and Dillon blocks it. She falls off the bridge, hangs on to the railing. Dillon is hurt. Summer is concerned, a Grinder grabs her. Dillon reaches his hand out to Tenaya. She refuses but then remembers the Grinders taking her away--cameo from Sat Bot! The Grinders drop her into a vat, Dillon grabs her hand, the Grinders take him away and she fell in the vat.


In real time, she grabs his hand and he helps her up. Everyone takes their helmets off. He reveals to them that she is his sister and they deduce that her eyes are robotic. Heat Bot is made big and they ruse the SkyRev and it goes down. Tenaya looks up at them, distressed. Red boards the Paleozord. He puts the Heat Bot on deep freeze. He makes Paleomax and destroys the Heat Bot. Dillon de-morphs, looking for Tenaya but she is gone. Back with Grinder, he puts his robo online, it is huge and attacks SkyRev. Dillon looks up. The Generation 15 bot (Horonderthal) attacks SkyRev and leaves Corinth.


After the commercial break, Venjix wants Tenaya and Kilobyte to destroy Shifter. Kilobyte reveals that Tenaya knows the truth and unless she destroys D44, they might loose her. Back at the garage, Dillon wants to find her, they have search Corinth. The others tell her if she doesn't want to be found, she is going to be hard to find. Dillon is about the leave, Scott says they will all help find her. Dillon smiles, they walk out until they find Tenaya. She says she wants to help.


Review:
Finally our questions answered, everything about the flashbacks went smoothly. They didn't forget about SatBot. They even added Kilobyte into it. It was clearly new footage shot. But they did not use Tenaya's cane. I have to look back and see if she had it when the Grinders grabbed her in the flashbacks of previous episodes. Great episode, nicely done.

Thursday, September 24, 2009

Six Degrees of Marvel

In 1939, Timely Publications began, and by the 1950s, it had generally become known as Atlas Comics. It adapted the name Marvel in 1961, and with the success of Spider-Man (who first appeared in Amazing Fantasy in 1962), it lead to a team-up with Toei Company Limited of Japan in 1978. Spider-Man was adapted into a tokusatsu with a robot and new origin, he would transformed with a brace. It only lasted one year. The second co-production between Marvel and Toei was Battle Fever J, which originally was going to be based on Captain America. It became a group series instead, taking a hint from Goranger and JAKQ, Battle Fever J started the Super Sentai franchise. Until 1994, Goranger and JAKQ were not counted as part of Super Sentai. Anyway, Marvel and Toei never collaborated again, Super Sentai continued but only under Toei's reign. Haim Saban found Sentai and decided to adapt it in the early 90's and made the Power Rangers franchise. In 2002, Disney bought Saban's share of Fox Kids and Fox Family, including the Power Rangers.

Disney started shooting the Power Rangers in New Zealand. In corporation with Disney, Toei shot footage for Mahou Sentai Magiranger (2005) and Jyuken Sentai Gekiranger (2007) in New Zealand. In 2006, Disney teamed up with Toei Animation to Robodiez, an action-adventure series that will combine live-action and CG animation. In 2008 it was announced Disney would make a short children’s animation series to be aired in April in Japan called Fireball. And recently it was announced that Disney bought Marvel. I think it is an interesting cycle. I think only some Spider-Man fans know about the tokustasu and mainstream people are unaware of this connection.

I also forgot to mention that Marvel produced Power Ranger comic book issues, they did it in 1995-1996, did six issues, featuring the Ninja Rangers, and VR Troopers (Season 2). VR Troopers had their own separate comic on the other side. Marvel started doing Power Ranger comics with the adaption of the MMPR Movie, PR comics had already existed before then.

Disney buying Marvel perhaps effecting its relationship with Toei has been discussed in the forum Rangercrew.

Monday, September 21, 2009

Voltron/Power Ranger Spoofs premiere this week

Sunday September 27th 11:30pm
Adult Swim/Cartoon Network
From the creators of Robot Chicken, a stop-motion pastiche of Voltron. Green is chubby, Black and Yellow are female (Black is African-American), and Red and Blue are male. Breckin Meyer plays Palmer (red), Seth Green plays Gibbs (blue), Rachel Leigh Cook (She's All That) plays Jody (yellow) and Eden Espinose ("Rent") plays Sasha (black).


MegaBot
Webisodes premiere Wednesday September 23rd
Stars Fran Kranz from "Dollhouse" and Miles Fisher, who played Tom Cruise in Superhero. Pink is the only female, Black is African-American and Yellow is Asian. It's live-action.

The Future of the Power Rangers 3: Clarifications

Okay, here are couple of confirmations, rumors and speculations...

There were rumors of an animated series, I do not know if it was true or not. I do not know if this illustration above is official or why it looks like a stamp. The picture comes from this YouTube post, link below. Because of the bizarre interpretation of Rita Repulsa, I think this is merely fan-made. Or maybe it was a proposal but wasn't accepted. There was two rumors for 15-minute pilots, one was a Mighty Morphin Power Rangers re-telling and the other was a series in the style of the Super Legends game with Doggie Kruger in charge of a team. These animated series have been dropped, they were not 'picked up.' They will not air on television ever. I say it like this, because many stupid people need to be told repeatedly.
Confirmation: Animated Series NOT Happening.
Possibility on Happening in 2010: 1 out of 100
Possibility on happening in the future: Who knows



Now, why go animated? Rumor is that Disney wanted control of the Power Rangers property. With how it is now and traditionally, they have to share money with Toei, Bandai and Plex (which designs everything). Disney wants to design and make everything. This is the main reason Disney has stopped production on Power Rangers, they wanted to be control of everything and Toei did not want to let them. The rumor is that Toei did not approve of the animated series, because it would cut them out the equation.
Confirmation: A new Live-Action Power Rangers series will not air in 2010. I do not know about later on.
Possibility on a new live-action series in 2010: 1 out of a million
Possibility of new live-action series in the future: 40 to 60%

Now the new rumor according to Morphin Heroes, supposedly when Power Rangers RPM ends, Disney will re-air Mighty Morphin Power Rangers season 1, 're-mastered' on ABC Kids. What that means is that it will have 'better quality' and be edited to adhere to FCC regulations. There are things that were excusable back in 1993 that were not these days. And that is concerning, since in 1993, syndication was more lenient than network TV, hence why VR Troopers had more violence. And last I heard, Disney owned the rights to the Power Rangers brand but not the old music, Haim Saban owns the music and background music. That is why when the Black Ranger (Adam) appear in Operation Overdrive, he had different background music than the MMPR kind. So Disney might have to replace the music as well. Now, why are they doing this? To my understanding, it could be to cash into nostalgia and re-introduce MMPR to a younger audience. MMPR re-aired on ABC Family in America back from 2003 (let me know if that's correct) to 2005 but that was part of a special contract.
Rumor: MMPR will re-air.
Possibility on happening: 50/50

UPDATE 5/13/10
MMPR 're-version' aired in 2010 on ABC, with the same music, just visual 'enhancements' that fans consider to be inspired by comic books. And as of May 12, Saban regain Power Rangers from Disney and in 2011, new episodes will air on Nickelodeon.

Related Topics: The Future of the Power Rangers 2 | The Future of the Power Rangers | Power Rangers Comes to an End

Sunday, September 20, 2009

Shadows of AkaRed

AkaRed was a special ranger for the 30th anniversary that appear in Boukenger vs. Super Sentai and was a representation of all Red warriors of past. He transformed into MagiRed and GaoRed. There was no toy, there was no expectation to ever see him again...

But then came Yattai Banki of Engine Sentai Go-Onger. AkaRed's face appeared as a mask on this monster.

For the RangerStrike carding system, AkaRed got his own card. He is part of the 'Mystic Arms,' symbolized by the yellow star to the right side.

Then here he was for Go-Onger vs. Gekiranger press conference.

Another picture. I like his shades of red. AkaRed, 'Aka' means Red in Japanese, so basically his name is Red Red.

RPM---No Teamup, Battlizer nor New Rangers--get used to ti!

On YouTube, where I post the episodes of RPM, I keep reading comments like "I hope Tenaya is Ranger #6, there is a Ranger missing for #6, I hear there will be three new Rangers, when is the teamup?, where is Red Ranger's Battlizer?"

No Teamups
It is all about the budget. Disney barely wanted to make this season. The first Executive producer Eddie went over budget, and anyway, I don't think a teamup was in plans. This is the same reason there was no teamup for Mystic Force nor Jungle Fury--no money! Also some fans believe RPM is not in the same continuity as past seasons. The closest to a teamup is seeing a Jungle Karma Pizza chain inside Corinth. Besides, RPM doesn't really give room for a teamup since it is set in a post-apocalyptic future, it would take a whole episode to explain where all the other Rangers are. It's better they aren't mentioned.
5% likely from happening



No Battlizer
Again, Budget. Not going to happen, if it hasn't happen already, it won't. It hasn't been mentioned in the episode descriptions and they have been very accurate. There are four last episodes that have no description nor title revealed yet, but there hasn't ever been a Battlizer introduced in the last four episodes. Usually battlizers are revealed in Japanese scans, not in these pics.
15% likely from happening


No New Rangers
Triceratops, T-Rex, and Mammoth Rangers toys were made for RPM, they are based on Paleozord, the three zords recently premiered on the series. No mention of the three Rangers are on the episode summaries. It is highly unlikely they will appear. I recently found out from one of my sources, that Bandai America pay for Ranger-exclusive non-Sentai stuff like Battlizers and bikes and the Spirit Rangers. The Jungle Fury Spirit Rangers took the place of the Battlizer for Jungle Fury.
5% likely from happening


#6 and #9
There are no missing Rangers. Gator and Whale are un-manned, they don't need an operator. I am surprised RPM fans don't understand this. It's fun to make up Rangers but don't expect it on a show. If you didn't know, the zords spoke in Go-Onger and the Engines had their own personalities. #6 (Carrigator), #9 (Jumbow-hale), and the last three #10, #11, and #12 had no 'partner'/Ranger, they are special. It's the Engines who the numbers belong to, not to the Rangers.
0% likely from happening
ABOVE IS A FAN PICTURE!!!!

A series don't need all this stuff to be a cool Power Rangers season.