Originally published at: Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers was originally a mashup of a Japanese TV show. Spot the differences! | Boing Boing
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Sort of. As the series went on they needed to harvest more Sentai series for vehicles/toys and footage. The original season of MMPR was all Zyuranger. But after Lord Zedd showed up and they needed Thunderzords, they filmed their own costumed fight scenes with Zedd’s V2 Putties and used the vehicles from Dairanger, eventually cribbing Chibi-ranger as the White Ranger. But as they progressed, they needed to integrate more series while using the same cast. So they used the Kakurangers as the Aquitian rangers while using their vehicles as the Ninja zords and the Ohrangers as the Zeo Rangers.
Now VR Troopers was a genuine mashup of Spielban and Metalder.
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Interesting how these series evolve in unexpected ways. I while ago I saw a video that tracked down the origin of Transformers. It helped me make sense of why Megatron is a gun etc.
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Back in the 80s, the USA network put out a show called Dynaman. They took a sentai show, tossed out the original plot and dialog, and dubbed in their own to hilarious results. As it was shown on the Night Flight segment, I’m sure it was aimed at the stoner demographic.
I have never been able to watch any of the Power Ranger shows without thinking of it.
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Perhaps also of interest was that Power Rangers Dino Thunder (another season with Jason David Frank) had an episode in which the Power Rangers watched the Super Sentai series they were based upon. The “message of the day” was that it wasn’t bad, just different, but in that context the show was an adaptation of them. The red ranger also had to warp his head around it not being “American;” when Disney acquired it, production of the series was moved to New Zealand and James Napier sometimes slips up on Conner’s American accent (during the season, at least, not sure about that episode).
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I saw this back in the day. When the local FOX station started running promos for MMPR, I was like, “It’s Dynamen!”
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I like the Ninjaman Space Marine armour.
As someone who dips in and out of watching Tokusatsu shows and movies, I have to say the move away from suitmation and practical effects to more CG really hurt the industry. You can see a bit of it in the clip here, the animation for the toad mech and the morphing from the ninja to samurai form for Ninjaman. It takes a lot of money to make CGI look good, and the budget for most Toku shows and movies can’t stretch that far. Even a masterpiece like Shin Godzilla has a few ropey moments in it.
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