Kyuuranger Reaction Post #1

[akinoame]

So far, the feel is Fourze meets Star Wars meets Star Trek, which I'm totally okay with. Lucky is an idiot, but a Gentaro-style idiot, at least, where he's mostly situationally oblivious (for example, crashing his speeder in just a way that he clears a path for the others to evacuate civilians, Uchuu Kitaaa-ing two mooks in the face, etc.) as opposed to a complete meathead (Kai from Magiranger, whom I love, is a textbook meathead, as is Takaharu from Ninninger). Garou looks really interesting, and I'm trying to get a feel for Hame (TVN's spelling, and it's just odd enough that I'm guessing it's official?), Spada, and Raptor, but I haven't gotten much at all for Champ. The biggest problem is this first episode tries to do too much--it introduces us to 4 established crewmembers and two new ones. There's enough to be a full Blue episode, but we don't have enough time. Likewise, there's not much for Lucky's introduction that feels all that special beyond "he's extraordinarily lucky"--he shouldn't be sharing the spotlight in this case. I know that Power Rangers tends to do this, as with Tyler and Shelby in the first episode of Dino Charge and Brody, Preston, and Sarah in the first episode of Ninja Steel, and given how well DC did, I suppose that Sentai thought it best to copy their formula. But PR has fewer episodes to work with. When they have a large cast, they have to work to give them all enough time to shine in a 20 episode first season, then up everything in the story for the second season. Sentai doesn't have that kind of constraint; with 9 rangers, they should be devoting more time, especially if four characters already know each other, then another two know each other, and so on.

It's not bad, though. It just feels rushed. Same goes for the songs. The opening theme is really catchy, but the lyrics repeat words so much that it feels like they ran out of time to come up with new lines, and it's worse for the end theme--even the dancing feels like it doesn't have any steam.

I don't want to make it sound like I didn't enjoy the show. I very much did, but like with Ninja Steel, I'm being cautious. Where Ninja Steel has to worry bout the shadow of a very good predecessor, Kyuuranger has to deal with what's probably going to be a budget stretched thin--they're on a space ship, and this time, they're actually traveling to different planets--we are FINALLY getting a Sentai counterpart to Power Rangers in Space, and of course I'm excited about that. And like with PRiS, they're keeping things as easy as possible--to the point that I honestly think the planet they used in the first episode WAS Mirinoi--the images looked similar. Just Mirinoi with the planets from Helheim. Their aliens look cheaper than PR ever put out, however, since at least Andros looked alien because they dyed his hair oddly; aliens in this season tend to have face paint smeared on them--which, now that I think about it, might actually be something Ultraman Orb pulled once or twice, so got them there for stealing everything else.

Anyway, I've got a soft spot for it already, so let's see how it goes.