Nelson: These headphones are hilariously big. I look like a f*** ing air traffic controller.
Ethan: They go well with the top bun.
Nelson: I’m not keeping these on at all times. Ridiculous!
Andrew: No, I love those headphones. They sound so good.
Nelson: They sound great, they sound great.
Andrew: You ready?
Nelson: Oh, yeah. [Camera beeps.] Boom baby! We’re live!
Ethan: Alright.
Nelson: Well, not really, but you know.
Ethan: Should we clap?
Andrew: Yeah.
Ethan: Okay.
Nelson: Clappin’?
Ethan: Yeah.
Everybody: Three, two, one. [Clap.]
[“It’s morphin’ time!” + intro music.]
Ethan: Minna-san yokoso, welcome to your favorite cross-cultural deep dive analysis and recap podcast covering Super Sentai and Power Rangers, Kenkyuu Sentai Podcast Rangers. My name is Ethan; I use he/him pronouns, and with me is my usual co-host Andrew.
Andrew: Hey everybody, my name is Andrew. I also use he/him pronouns.
Ethan: Also joining us today, as I’m editing the script, is Nelson, our producer.
Nelson: Hey, I’m Nelson. You guys know me, you know what’s up.
Ethan: You know Nelson’s deal.
Nelson: You know my deal. I’m just, you know, I’m here. I’m here and I’m happy to be here.
Andrew: Nelson, what is “king of sports pro wrestling?”
Nelson: Oh, that is New Japan Pro Wrestling.
Andrew: Oh. I can’t see the other side.
Nelson: International Wrestling Grand Prix. King of Sports, greatest wrestling on the planet.
Andrew: Can we start a show about that?
Ethan: It’s massively, massively popular right now.
Nelson: Oh, no, we- there’s so much. There’s too much. There’s too much history.
Andrew: That makes me sad, because I love pro wrestling.
Nelson: No, it’s great and I mean…
Andrew: Could we just start with the like, 1992 debacle over the WCW belt?
Nelson: Oh, when Ric Flair left and they had to…
Andrew: No, when when Ric Flair lost the belt in Japan and then lied about it.
Nelson: Oh, yeah, I thought you were talking about when he left.
Andrew: So it’s the lead up to all of that. But no, Flair lost the belt in a mat- anyway. Yeah, it’s the worst. It’s the worst.
Nelson: There’s a lot of debacles of belts and Ric Flair in 1992. There’s a lot of debacles of Ric Flair in general.
Andrew: What a dude.
Nelson: But that’s a whole other can of worms. If you ever want to see Ric Flair on a daily basis, go to Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He goes to the same bar like every day.
Andrew: I bet he does.
Ethan: That’s so strange.
Nelson: You got a hair on your shoulder.
Andrew: Thank you, Nelson.
Ethan: I have several hairs on my shoulders, but they’re under my shirt so you can’t see them.
Andrew: Okay.
Nelson: What a comedian.
Ethan: Today we’re discussing Kyoryu Sentai Zyuranger episode 11 “Goshujin-sama! (My Master!)” and Power Rangers, season 1, episode 11 “No Clowning Around.” Before we get into the recap, though, I wanted to return briefly to episode 8 of Zyuranger, “Kyofu! Shunkan’ui!” In our coverage of that episode, I called attention to the timeline discrepancies regarding Dora Circe’s previous misadventures in Greece, which did not exist in the time of the ancient tribes.
While I was watching episodes and working on scripts last night and this morning, I was watching our video cut of our episode 8, and I noticed that Goushi mentions that Dora Circe was active in Greece 2000 years ago, which does make a lot more sense than 170 million, but it does raise some other questions: Has Barza have been chronicling monster incidents for the entire time the Zyurangers have been asleep? Were there more monsters than just Dora Circe wandering the earth in that time? And did Goushi wake up and immediately memorize the entire Dino Denki? I just feel like this raises more questions. It answers the one question of “How do they have a record of Greece from 170 million years ago?” It wasn’t from 170 million years ago, and obviously I can see Barza keeping that chronicle.
Andrew: Sure.
Ethan: But I do have other questions.
Andrew: So while we’re doing continuity fixes, I also have a problem I noticed while I was watching episode 2.
Nelson: Episode 2. Of the podcast?
Andrew: Of the podcast, and the show. And this is something we’ve discussed a couple of times.
Ethan: Sentai or Rangers?
Andrew: Rangers. This is something that we’ve discussed a couple of times in the show. When we first started this, we watched “Food Fight.”
Ethan: Out of order, yeah.
Andrew: Out of order, and I was going through the show in my media library. I ripped some DVDs into Plex and “Food Fight” shows up as episode 2, and I was noticing this as I was getting ready to watch these episodes, and… it really pissed me off. It made me very angry. I did some digging and… so, we have already established that “Food Fight” was the second VHS released. Episode 1 and 2 were released on one tape, “Food Fight” was the second tape to be released.
Nelson: So technically it’s episode 3.
Andrew: Right. You would expect it to be episode 3, right. But “Food Fight” was actually broadcast second. They skipped episode 2 and broadcast “Food Fight.”
Ethan: Well, they would have skipped 2 through 5, right?
Andrew: Right, right, right, yeah. It’s episode 6. They just threw episode 6 into the broadcast schedule early. Apparently they were redubbing some audio for episode 2 and “Food Fight” was finished, so they just threw it in.
Ethan: This makes perfect sense to me.
Nelson: What a mess.
Ethan: This fits with our with our perception of the initial Power Rangers production as like, extremely hectic.
Andrew: Yeah. I will say having revisited some of those earlier episodes–I’ve been going back and watching our show as I’m going back and revisiting those earlier episodes again–the show has gotten so much better.
Ethan: Oh, yeah.
Andrew: And I think that today’s Power Rangers episode is a great example of how much better the show has gotten. I hated this episode. But I think it’s a great example of how much better the show has gotten.
Ethan: Really bad on multiple levels, but like in terms of production quality, significantly higher. We’ve watched three episodes for today’s recording session, and I don’t remember which one was in it, but you mentioned in a recent episode how well they were matching Rita’s dialogue to her speaking motions…
Andrew: Yeah, yeah, there are a couple of really good moments in this one.
Ethan: There’s some good ones. Like, they are they are working within the bounds of the material available to them. They’re doing a good job.
Andrew: They finally figured it out.
Nelson: It only took them about ten episodes to get there, which, you know, it’s about the same here.
Ethan: Well, I mean, like we talked about, this is like a-
Andrew: Brand new territory.
Ethan: This was not simply dubbing something, which had been going on for, I mean-
Andrew: Decades.
Ethan: Decades at this point, even 50 years. This is a different sort of a thing.
Andrew: Okay, I guess that’s enough ado.
Ethan: I guess that’s enough ado. Without further ado, let’s get into the recap.
[“Kyoryu Sentai… Zyuranger!!”]
Ethan: “Goshujin-sama!” was written by Sugimura Noboru and Araki Kenichi, two names we’ve seen before, and directed by Watanabe Katsuya, which is a name we haven’t seen before.
Andrew: So Noboru has directed a lot of- or he has written a lot of these, right?
Ethan: He’s the chief writer on Sentai, like the Sentai franchise, for decades. Yeah, I looked into him briefly because I considered, and I might still do, a research topic on him specifically, but he is like the head writer for the studio. The episode opens with Totpat doing some fishing from the Bandra Palace on the moon. Please do not concern yourself with the orbital mechanics involved. Totpat dredges up a magic lamp containing a genie, or Jinn as he’s called in this episode. He looks a little bit like if Anubis was the god of weird parties. Totpat and Bookback send a challenge letter to the Zyurangers, thinking that Jinn is their new trump card, but in the tussle between the Rangers and Jinn, the magic lamp gets blown away and found by a group of kids. The kids meet up at their extremely safe and OSHA-approved hideout in an abandoned warehouse.
Nelson: I was digging the vibe of that, because it-
Ethan: Oh, no, I would have been all over that place if I was 10.
Nelson: Yeah, like as a kid? Like-
Ethan: Rusty nails? Tetanus? I don’t know what that is.
Nelson: The most sketchy places.
Ethan: Oh, yeah, it’s like, on the on the wharf, like, there’s boats going past, and the river’s just right there.
Nelson: Yeah, I mean, sometimes I’ll like, go on these hikes, like, taking my dogs for walks and like, I’ll find these little spots, like, in the woods.
Ethan: Oh, yeah, just like, abandoned houses and all kind of stuff.
Nelson: Yeah, high school me would have loved smoking weed back here.
Ethan: Jinn almost immediately starts granting their wishes for Ferraris, all-you-can-eat chicken, and manga. They also play video games and have a dance party. I can’t find a single fault with this. I mean, the Ferrari doesn’t make sense, really, because it’s like you don’t even know how to drive. It’s not just that you can’t legally, but you don’t even know how.
Nelson: Okay, how he’s getting future wealth.
Ethan: That’s true.
Andrew: But I gotta be honest, if I was 10 years old and was- I would have absolutely been wishing for that. Give me a Lamborghini, give me some fried chicken. I’m all about it.
Ethan: Oh, yeah the Ferrari is the only one I have even a mild quibble with. The rest of this just is awesome.
Andrew: Did you not know any car kids when you were a kid?
Nelson: Car kids?
Andrew: Car kids. Kids that were obsessed with cars.
Ethan: I mean, I had Hot Wheels, like…
Nelson: ‘Cause I’m thinking like, car guys. Like guys, you know, put all their money into like, a beat-up Toyota, but like a seven-year-old?
Andrew: I mean, so my cousin, he’ll be on this show at some point probably-
Ethan: Lawson?
Andrew: Yeah, Lawson. Anyway, my cousin has been obsessed with cars his whole life. When he was a kid, he absolutely would have wished for some kind of fancy car.
Ethan: Yeah, sure. It’s just funny that it’s a whole Ferrari, but it’s just in this abandoned shack of a warehouse. Yeah, it’s not doing anything or going anywhere; he just thinks it’s cool to look at and sit in the seat. Which I can’t argue with! The kid with the fried chicken is just having a blast. He’s like, transcending.
Nelson: See, they flew too close to the Sun. Literally, when the little girl wished to be able to fly. Which I thought was cool, that the Jinn gave her a magic carpet.
Ethan: Yeah, I made a note that the magic carpet like, practical effect is like, perfect.
Nelson: Yeah, it’s really good.
Ethan: I mean, it just lifts up off the ground. You can’t see any of the guidelines, and it just flies, and it’s so cool. As Nelson mentions, one girl goes for a magic carpet ride, and while she’s out and about, she’s spotted by both the Zyurangers and Bandora’s minions, and both forces converge on the kids’ hideout.
The Rangers and the minions fight over the lamp until Bandora herself appears, rather magnificently, and destroys the lamp, making Jinn both powerless and homeless. However, Jinn is fairly certain that Bandora will construct a new lamp, and he will be forced to inhabit it and do her bidding. The Zyurangers and the children resolve to find all the pieces of Jinn’s original lamp so that this does not come to pass, but they are not successful before Bandora returns to earth with an evil red lamp and Jinn takes on a giant monstrous form.
The Rangers summon Daizyujin, but only Geki and Goushi remain to fight Jinn. The other three Rangers leave to continue searching for the missing pieces of Jinn’s lamp. Just before Dora Jinn goes in for a killing blow, the children find the last piece of Jinn’s original lamp and he returns to his home. Mei destroys the evil lamp with her arrow and Bandora retreats. Everyone celebrates, and the Zyurangers agree to seal the lamp and return it to the sea so that Jinn’s powers can never be used for evil again. The end.
Nelson: Yeah, see, this episode got like a legit like, ‘oh s***’ moment out of me when Bandora showed up and was like, “Alright, come on.”
Ethan: She appears with like lightning and thunder. It’s very cool.
Nelson: Yeah, it seems like she’s gonna like, telekinesis the lamp over to her, but she just picks it up and blows it up. I was like, “Oh!! Oh, okay!”
Ethan: This really demonstrates like-
Nelson: She’s evil!
Ethan: One, she’s evil, and two, she is a witch. She knows how magic works. She’s a powerful sorceress and she will use her power to mess things up for people. I mean, basically like, stealing this Jinn, who by the way mentions Aladdin by name multiple times, is apparently supposed to be THE Genie from the story of Aladdin, which is crazy, but she like has a fundamental understanding of the rules of this magical being. Like, “If I blow up your lamp and present a new one you have to live in it. That’s your whole deal.”
Nelson: Dem’s da rules.
Ethan: It’s a really cool evil red lamp too.
Nelson: It’s more a teapot than a lamp.
Ethan: Oh, I wonder if she sold anything that looked like that in her curio shop??
Nelson: Ohhhh! Talking about the lady who played Bandora, who we have a research topic on.
Ethan: Maybe that’s where it came from. Yeah, Soga Machiko. That was like episode three?
Andrew: Yeah, it was early.
Ethan: Yeah, this is a good one. It’s not as good as “Food Fight” is, for being a one-off, and- not “Food Fight,” but “Kyofu! Shunkan’ui.” And like there seems to be maybe some degree of strange Orientalism happening with the genie, that’s a little bit weird. He’s got like, harem pants on, he looks like a jackal, but it’s not really focused on and it’s like- It’s more of a pop culture, Arabian nights, I don’t know.
Nelson: Yeah, it’s a thing that like, I feel like somebody would take offense to it, but I…
Ethan: It’s like, background radiation level… exoticism, it’s not- it’s less jarring, for example, than Ernie walking out of the kitchen at the Youth Center with two Hawai’ian women in leis and hula skirts like, flanking him.
Nelson: I would say it’s less jarring than, say…
Andrew: Mr. Ticklesneezer?
Nelson: Or yeah, or if you want to take somebody that looks similar to the Jinn, Mr. Popo from Dragon Ball Z. I’d say it’s a little less jarring than that.
Ethan: Significantly.
Andrew: Maybe we’ll talk more about Dragon Ball Z at some point, but Mr. Popo is such a fascinating character, because he looks like a racist caricature of a black man, but he is also like-
Nelson: When you find out what it is, it’s like, “Okay…”
Andrew: Deeply steeped in in Japanese folklore and not actually- yeah.
Nelson: Yeah, it’s one of those things where once you like actually do the digging, you’re like, “Alright, well, I’m not mad about that. That’s fine.”
[Transcriber’s note: Some quick research shows that Mr. Popo may be partly based on the Hindu and Buddhist deity Mahakala, sometimes called “The Great Black One.”]
Andrew: Yeah, I liked this episode. I don’t have much more to say about it. This is the first episode of Sentai that I watched on my large TV, instead of at my desk.
Ethan: How was that?
Andrew: The intro to this show goes so hard.
Nelson: Yeah, dude!
Andrew: And like, I know I’ve been saying that about Power Rangers recently, but like the cinematography on this show really stands up to being-
Nelson: The little jumps at the beginning, man? They get me so hyped.
Ethan: At this point, I mean this is 1992 or 3, and then Gorenger came out in ’75. So almost 20 years straight of experience.
Andrew: So that’s the other thing, is that I’ve also been watching Gorenger. I’m like six or seven episodes into that now and it is fantastic, it is so good and-
Ethan: I really enjoyed that manga, and I do want to watch the show at some point.
Andrew: Yeah, there are a couple of movies as well and-
Ethan: Oh, there’s tons of Sentai movies.
Andrew: Yeah, but Gorenger specifically. But no, I’ve been watching that and it’s been really interesting to contrast that against both Zyuranger and also against Power Rangers, because no Zords, it’s very much a hand-to-hand and weapons kind of thing, but the pre-giant robot bits are very, very similar, and the composition of the team from Zyuranger to Gorenger is very, very similar. And Zyuranger is is executed with a lot more practice, but even Gorenger has qualities about it that would have been completely unseen on American television at the time. It just visually looks so much different than anything that was coming out of American TV at the time.
Ethan: Mhm. We’ve had superhero stuff… I mean, what- when did Batman debut in comic form?
Andrew: Superman is ’38, Batman’s ’39 or ’40.
Ethan: So like, we’ve had superhero stuff, and I know there was superhero-esque TV shows. But like you said, nothing like, with this level of panache was coming out.
Nelson: I’d be interested to take a look at that.
Andrew: I think you’re gonna have to. I think you’re gonna have to put some clips right here.
Nelson: I’m gonna have to take a look at it to put some put some clips in so people will watch this.
Ethan: Nelson’s to-watch list never gets shorter. It only gets longer.
Nelson: Yeah, well…
Andrew: And it’s mostly my fault.
Nelson: It’s, yeah, I mean, yeah, it’s funny. I think it was episode nine, where you started talking about The West Wing. And I was like, “Alright, hold on.” Which, that part oh my god that was going back to that part cracked me up so much. ‘Cause we were already going and then you just lean over, “…you ever watch The West Wing?”
Andrew: Well, we were pretty far down a rabbit hole… So speaking of which, down a rabbit hole, let’s do a Rangers recap.
Ethan: Alright.
Nelson: Alright, Rangers recap. This is “No Clowning Around.”
Andrew: Yeah.
[“Go! Go! Power Rangers!!”]
Andrew: Power Rangers episode 11, “No Clowning Around,” was written by Mark Hofmeier and directed by Adrian Carr. This is Mark’s first episode, but we’re gonna see him in the next several. He goes on to write four episodes. Adrian Carr has previously directed “Day of the Dumpster,” “High Five,” and “A Pressing Engagement.” So, some of the best episodes that we’ve had so far.
Ethan: And also just like… the first.
Andrew: The first.
Ethan: The first couple. That’s cool.
Andrew: This episode is real bonkers. This one- it goes at such a pace that like, if I was telling somebody who had never experienced Power Rangers where to start, of the episodes we’ve watched so far, I think this might be the one.
Nelson: This would be a good… good jumping off point.
Andrew: It is just all killer, no filler. They open at a carnival, with basically no exposition. Zack is walking on stilts and the shots they did of him and his stunt double here were very well-executed. The wide shot makes it look like Zack is on stilts; they don’t use the wide shot very often… it worked. Obviously Billy is overly verbose, because that’s the thing that they are really leaning into these next three or four episodes.
Nelson: Oh, I hate it. I hate it so much.
Andrew: Especially the next one, I think.
Ethan: Well, the next one is “Power Rangers Punks.”
Andrew: Oh, no, so the- thirteen-
Nelson: Thirteen is what I’m thinking about.
Andrew: While Billy is being overly verbose, the Power Rangers walk off, and they do a shot of the clown that they have been kind of goofing around with and um…
Ethan: Alarm bells.
Andrew: Yeah, well, with absolutely no context-
Ethan: Sirens, klaxons, everything.
Nelson: Yeah, evil clowns.
Andrew: Yeah, with absolutely no context, they just drop a monster face over the top of his face. Just do an overlay and it’s not explained- He’s just a monster clown and we’re supposed to know this right out of the gate.
Nelson: Yeah, he’s a Putty and then the other one is the monster, right?
Andrew: So the episode rockets along. It moves very quickly, especially compared to the languid pace of some of the like, middle episodes that we’ve seen. This one felt intentional in a way that a lot of them leading up to this have not, and I’m gonna put that down to Mark Hofmeier actually writing an episode, as opposed to just trying to string some elements together.
Ethan: I can believe that.
Andrew: At the carnival, a clown is juggling. Trini shows up with a young girl.
Nelson: It’s her cousin Sylvia.
Andrew: It is her cousin Sylvia. Bulk and Skull steal some cotton candy and this leads to one of the more iconic visuals from the intro, where they’re waving the cotton candy next to their face.
Ethan: There’s like, a girl, like, doing a ring toss or something-
Andrew: Two girls doing a ring toss.
Ethan: And they just like, pluck their cotton candy off of the little paper cones. It’s very in-character.
Andrew: It’s one of the first examples that we’ve seen of Bulk and Skull being bullies successfully.
Ethan: Right.
Andrew: And it like, it rescues their characters in a lot of ways
Nelson: They can bully everybody except the Power Rangers.
Andrew: The Power Rangers! Because the Power Rangers are the bigger bullies.
Nelson: Yeah! I mean pretty much, yeah.
Andrew: Billy is offered the option to juggle some eggs, and obviously he cannot do this, so the eggs smash on Bulk and Skull, because we have to humiliate them with food.
Nelson: Yeah, he’s just like, “Alright, well, I’ll try juggling, but also f*** these guys.”
Ethan: And the clown, it’s worth mentioning, is trying to get Sylvia, Trini’s young cousin, to do the juggling.
Nelson: Again, alarm bells. Going crazy. Like why does this clown want a child.
Andrew: So we cut to Rita, and Rita confirms the clown is evil, and then monologues a bit about the plot and…
Nelson: The clown’s name is Pineapple.
Andrew: Yes, the clown’s name is Pineapple. This bit with Rita was very, very quick and felt a little rushed, not necessarily in a bad way, but just like… it was perfunctory. We needed to get past Rita, we needed to establish that this was her plot. Pineapple the clown then just kidnaps Sylvia. The Rangers are doing some kind of gymnastics thing, that they do very badly.
Ethan: Human pyramid, which is like (I think) one of the most–I mean Ryan would be able to tell us–one of the most basic, easiest things to do in gymnastics, and they’re like struggling, which doesn’t make any sense.
Nelson: Again, Incredibles theory. Just saying.
Ethan: Oh, I see.
Andrew: So Sylvia is kidnapped by Pineapple, and according to Rita, Sylvia has been turned into a cardboard cut-out. Now, later in the episode, she’s not a cardboard cut-out, and she’s just dehydrated. She has been dehydrated. So apparently humans, when you dehydrate them, turn into cardboard.
Ethan: It’s like those novelty towels you can get that are like, compressed into a little brick and even if you take them out of the plastic, they just stay that way until you wet them and then they unravel.
Nelson: Or like those little dinosaur things.
Ethan: Right, the little dinosaur capsules, that kind of stuff.
Andrew: So further antics ensue. Jason causes a stampede at the carnival.
Ethan: I made a note of this. “Oh, now they’re just creating a panic. What is this episode?”
Nelson: Yeah, they straight up cause a riot.
Andrew: He grabs a bullhorn and he shouts, “Everyone get out! It’s a trap from Rita!” or something to that effect.
Ethan: “Rita is attacking!” and it’s like… hey, you can’t tell a couple hundred people to just run, because that’s how people get trampled and die.
Andrew: But also, why would anybody know who Rita is?
Nelson I think the town knows who Rita Repulsa is.
Ethan: The’ve seen multiple giant monsters in the city…
Andrew: But no one has said Rita Repulsa is responsible for these monsters. The Power Rangers don’t have a spokesperson. Did Jason just out himself as as a Power Ranger?
Ethan: I don’t know, I feel like there’s been…
Nelson: I think they just make it seem like, “Monsters! Everybody run!!” You know, fire in a crowded building.
Ethan: Well, so like Rita has appeared multiple times on Earth like very prominently I don’t know if she’s done like TV broadcasts per se.
Nelson: Yeah, I think they know. They know who Rita Repulsa is.
Ethan: I think it’s plausible that some of the crowd might know. That’s a good point to bring up: that Jason is a total rando in a red tank top who’s just there with everyone else. Now, is he technically correct that the fair is a trap? Yes. But that is totally incidental, and it is a miracle- And if this was a different kind of show then like, multiple injuries, potentially deaths, would have occurred as a result of this, and that’s something he’d have to like, carry with him and deal with. And maybe like, get some emergency response training. There’s multiple Sentai and Power Ranger shows that are based around just the concept of emergency rescue workers.
Andrew: What does the collateral damage from this look like?
Ethan: Exactly. But because this is Power Rangers season one, it’s just-
Nelson: We’re not thinking about it.
Ethan: Everybody’s fine, it’s not a big deal, you can shout fire in a crowded theater and everyone gets away fine.
Andrew: So in the meantime, Trini has taken Sylvia’s cardboard cut-out to Alpha, and uh…
Nelson: Billy’s garage. Actually, I have this noted, Trini takes Sylvia back to Billy’s garage because he has a quasitronic molecular generator.
Ethan: Yeah, we’re back to the quasitronics. I also made a note of how like, high def and well-printed that cut out was. Like that was a really well-made prop. They only made the one, but it was really good.
Andrew: Alpha determines, through analysis, that Sylvia is dehydrated, and proceeds to just dump a bucket of water on her. This doesn’t work, and then it does work.
Ethan: Yeah, it takes a second.
Andrew: And then Alpha throws a bucket of water in her face, which she blames on Trini, and Alpha tries to hide amongst the detritus.
Ethan: Tries to pretend to be… I don’t know, an empty…
Nelson: Works perfectly!
Ethan: Yeah, Sylvia doesn’t notice him, so…
Andrew: In the meantime, Pineapple the clown turns into Pineoctopus.
Nelson: God, I hated this monster.
Andrew: And Pineoctopus tries to dehydrate the Rangers, but he can’t.
Ethan: Yep, it’s just, “Oh your suits protect you from my magic!” Well, that’s… Thank you for this thrilling drama.
Nelson: And it seems like Rita knew, because she immediately sends Goldar down to help him. It’s just like, “Ugh, get- get down there. Help Pineoctopus. He sucks. Help him”
Andrew: In addition to Goldar, Rita makes the monster grow. The rangers summon the Zords and they fight as small Zords for a while and then go tank mode.
Ethan: We saw some mixed-unit tactics in this one, which I always love.
Andrew: This is, I think, the second time that we’ve seen them do anything with the Zords other than just right form the tank or the Megazord.
Ethan: Yeah, we got the Triceratops chain horns and we got the Mastodon ice breath. It’s like, “Yeah!!”
Andrew: That bit was great.
Ethan: Tactics!
Andrew: But then they go tank mode, which is always a bad idea.
Nelson: Never works.
Andrew: And then they transform into the Megazord, and I don’t even think they use the sword, I think they use their their head beam, but neither here nor there.
Ethan: Oh, yeah the horn crest blast. Just awesome. Again, love to see more techniques and attacks than just the sword. Don’t get me wrong, I love the sword slash, but it’s so cool when other things get used.
Andrew: Later, they reopen the carnival. Trini and Sylvia share a tender moment. And they have a moral of this story, which is that children shouldn’t run off.
Nelson: Yeah, don’t run off without your parents in a crowded place, or you’ll get turned into a cardboard cut-out.
Andrew: So I have two notes here that I want to make sure that we call out. One is that the Rangers all shouted “Morphin’!” in unison as an exclamation. I don’t remember them doing that before but it was real, real silly.
Ethan: So we’ve we’ve seen ‘morphitudinal’ and ‘morphenomenous’ and all those sorts of things, but this one is just ‘morphin’!’
Andrew: And that they all did it in unison, as if they had been practicing It didn’t scan.
Ethan: It doesn’t hit.
Andrew: The other note that I have here is that the Megazord talks in this one. I don’t remember the Megazord talking before, but the Megazord says, “Megazord sequence has been initiated!” and “Megazord activate!”
Nelson: Yeah, that caught me off guard.
Ethan: I can’t remember if it’s been in previous episodes, but I think this is a mainstay from this point forward.
Nelson: It is! Like because when it happened I was like… heard that before, but I think that’s the first episode that it’s…
Ethan: Super, super noticeable.
Andrew: And I didn’t like it. Why would the Megazord talk?
Nelson: Because that’s a feature they can put! in! toys!
Andrew: But they didn’t.
Nelson: They did!
Andrew: Recently, though. Not not at the time.
Nelson: Yeah, but I’m sure at the time, they still tried.
Ethan: I don’t remember an electronic Megazord that uses this specific audio. I had a few notes about this one. I mean, I’ve already brought up just that the stranger danger sirens are f***ing going.
Andrew: Oh, the entire time. These clowns are so creepy. This might be why so many people from our generation have a fear of clowns.
Nelson: I mean, that’s one of ’em.
Andrew: More than “It.”
Ethan: Definitely contributes, but specifically, I mean, I don’t know. How do y’all feel that the perception of stranger danger has changed since we were kids?
Nelson: Well, I mean with the Internet, I mean, it’s more prevalent, but also I feel like people are dumber.
Ethan: Yeah, that’s like a whole new different dimension of…
Nelson: Yeah, because with me growing up, stranger danger also coincided with the whole To Catch a Predator thing. And so it’s like, I’ve always been on that like, DTA, Don’t Trust Anybody, you know, unless they give you a reason to trust them, and even then, you know, keep one eye out.
Andrew: But also, the important thing to remember is that kids, especially, but anybody: you are much more likely to be harmed by someone you know, than by a stranger.
Ethan: The statistics do not bear up around that.
Andrew: And in this particular episode, the way that they have the clowns, in particular, behaving was designed to set off alarm bells, but it is also not the way that someone would behave if they were actually trying to kidnap that child.
Ethan: Right. So like I can remember my parents giving me a talk, just like: “If we’re out somewhere, stick with us. If someone tries to get you to go somewhere with them, don’t do that.” And that was basically the talk. I just said, “Okay. That makes sense to me. Like I know y’all. I live here with y’all. I don’t know whoever at the mall or whatever.” But like you mentioned, this is not how that actually happens. Human trafficking is a real thing and is a real danger and should be eradicated, but this is not how it happens. It is almost always a family member or a family friend or you know, mom’s new boyfriend or who knows. And so this just feels very jarring.
Nelson: It’s very of the times.
Ethan: It is very of the times. Some of the other notes that I have here is: one of the Putties walks behind the carousel and transforms into a Putty, from a clown, and comes out, but he’s still wearing his neck ruff and holding his umbrella, and he is like, twirling it in the most menacing possible way you can twirl an umbrella, and that cracked me up.
Andrew: So I don’t know if this was intentional, but a lot of the the Putties as clowns bits really harkened back to A Clockwork Orange.
Nelson: Yeah, oh snap! I didn’t even think about that, dude.
Andrew: That is that is where my head went immediately, and like, I’ve watched A Clockwork Orange twice, which is not something I would recommend anybody do.
Nelson: Yeah, that’s a real one’n’done movie.
Andrew: It is a movie that you do not watch two times. But the second time was with someone who had never seen it, and I was like, “Well, you got to watch it once.” A Clockwork Orange, for those who are not familiar, is an incredibly brutal film about some incredibly brutal people who do some really horrible things, and over the course of the film they move and act and dance like these clowns. And the way that they are menacing is the same way that these Putties are coming out. They’re wearing very similar kind of affectations and frills and the umbrella and it was…
Nelson: Yeah, I ain’t even gonna lie, I didn’t even make that connection.
Andrew: And I don’t know if it was intentional or not, but-
Ethan: Who knows?
Andrew: It is burned into my brain.
Nelson: Yeah, no, I get that, yeah.
Ethan: The other moment I wanted to call out is when Jason is fighting Putties by the… whatever the flippy cage thing is, they’re trying to grab him by his tank top straps through the bars. And I just thought that was hysterical. They can just barely reach and there’s just those little straps to pinch and they’re just like, “Eh! Gotcha!” and he’s like, “Oh no, I can’t get away!”
Andrew: One of the things that made this episode really interesting was the amount of US footage.
Nelson: Yeah, there’s a lot of it.
Andrew: And I feel like that’s part of the reason why it was able to rocket along so quickly, is that they they just didn’t use very much mask footage, which means that this is probably one of the more expensive episodes for them to produce. And in spite of that, like, I didn’t like this. I didn’t like the clowns. I didn’t like putting the child in this much obvious like, real-feeling danger, as opposed to a lot of the other episodes where the danger is more abstract.
Ethan: No, it reminds me of that moment in “Happy Birthday, Zack” when Bulk and Skull are being genuinely menacing. And that- it has like a whole undertone there that’s not like, “Ha ha, give me your lunch money.” It’s like, something far more serious than that, and that I definitely got that feeling from this episode as well.
Andrew: That’s not to say this is a bad episode. It did a good job. It moves very quickly, and like I said, I think it would be a great like- you’re trying to figure out what Power Rangers is about? This is what Power Rangers is about. But it wasn’t fun.
Ethan: No.
Nelson: There was a moment at the beginning that got a laugh out of me, for those yaoi fans out there. When Zack falls off the stilts and Jason catches him and he’s like, “Oh my hero!”
Ethan: So I mentioned this to my girlfriend. I mean, I’ve mentioned on the show before, how in “Happy Birthday, Zack,” and there’s lots of other little moments, when Zack realizes they’ve built him this surprise party, he grabs Kim and Trini’s hands and he’s like, “Oh my god. Thank you so much!” So like my shipper brain has already been going, and then this happens when Zack falls down and it’s not played off for homophobia points, like we’ve seen previously in the show.
Nelson: No!
Ethan: It’s actually- I mean, it’s not focused on…
Nelson: But Jason gives him just a little like, “Oh, you.”
Ethan: Jason’s just like, mmm, and I’m like, HMMMM. [To Andrew] I have a question for you specifically.
Andrew: Okay.
Ethan: At the very end when Billy is on his paint can stilts, he has a computer attached to the stilts. What is that? Can you find out?
Andrew: Yeah, I’ll find out, hold on.
Nelson: Was that like an on-board balance thing or…
Ethan: I don’t know.
Andrew: It was supposed to be, and they they talk about it. Billy’s like, “With my new invention, anybody can walk on stilts!” but they cut away from it so quickly that I didn’t like…
Nelson: Yeah, I barely caught that, that’s a funny one.
Andrew: You don’t get a very good shot of it. It looks like it might even be a cash register.
Ethan: It could be a cash drawer.
Andrew: Yeah. It’s got a big piece missing where the screen would have been.
Nelson: So they just put a piece of a computer on the side on the side of some stilts.
Ethan: They took two… probably seven foot four-by-fours, glued a bunch of s*** to it.
Nelson: That looks about right. That sounds about right for the ’90s.
Andrew: Yeah, no idea. No idea.
Nelson: You got the research this week, Ethan?
Ethan: Yeah, I’m gonna handle it.
Andrew: Before you actually start on the research, I was checking the Power Rangers wiki to to get some info and there are several things about this episode that I should have included in my recap, that I just read in the Power Rangers wiki, that we should call out. Zordon’s not in this one. They never go to the command center.
Nelson: Oh, yeah, they don’t. Right.
AndreW: And I didn’t notice, but they don’t. They’re in Billy’s garage. One of the DVD extras that they did down the road, when they actually released the series on DVD, talks about the production of Power Rangers, and this is the first episode that they finished.
Ethan: Interesting. Is it the first one that they filmed?
Andrew: It is the first episode that they completed. So they were filming episodes concurrently. They were-
Nelson: That’s probably why it has the least mask footage.
Andrew: Right, right.
Nelson: That makes a lot of sense.
Andrew: They were doing all of this footage–all the American side footage–at the same time, across several episodes, and this is the first one that they finished. The wiki also calls out that this is the first time a monster disguises itself as a human in the show so far.
Ethan: In Power Rangers, yeah. That’s pretty standard for Dora monsters in Sentai, but yeah.
Andrew: And this is also the first episode where a monster is destroyed by the Megazord’s crest, which I did mention, but…
Nelson: Also this monster sucks.
Andrew: Yeah, it’s not a great monster.
Nelson: Costume sucks, I had no idea-
Andrew: The clown was way scarier. I don’t know what a Pineoctopus is supposed to be.
Nelson: Until they said the name I was like, what am I looking at here? Because it just looked like just a bundle of like, confetti and stuff, like, it looked stupid, you know? Cause like with the Eye Guy, it was like, “Ew, that’s gross.” But this was like the first one I looked at and I was like this is… this sucks.
Ethan: It’s just kind of like whatever. And so this is… the Sentai monster is Dora Endos and I don’t know what his deal is.
Nelson: On to the research!
Ethan: I just wrote it this morning, so it’s maybe not as long or in-depth as they have been previously.
Nelson: That’s all right. We’re already running close to an hour.
Ethan: But like, I just want to give an account of my whereabouts and activities of the past like 36-ish hours.
Nelson: Where you been, bud?
Ethan: So, my main gig is at a brewery here in town, and I had probably 30-something kegs to wash. They take 11 minutes apiece, I can only do one at a time, and I have to refill the chemical reservoirs in between batches.
Nelson: Jeez.
Ethan: So, I was at work for nine hours yesterday, from like noon-ish to like 9 p.m, went home, watched three episodes of Sentai, took notes, wrote three summaries, went to bed. Got up, made a delicious steak wrap for breakfast with some homemade tzaziki sauce, pretty choice, sat down back in front of the computer, watched three episodes of Power Rangers, took notes, and wrote this research topic.
So like, anyway, this is Intro to Tokusatsu part two. So all the way back in episode five, I presented a research topic called Intro to Tokusatsu part one, and I think the time is right to continue that. We left off, essentially, with the creation of Ultraman by special effects master Tsuburaya Eiji in the 60s, in 1966, to be specific. Technically, Ultra Q was the beginning of that franchise, which did not feature the titular hero, but rather followed a squad of paranormal and kaiju researchers. Ultraman ’66 followed this up, although was not technically a sequel. Tsuburaya Productions would go on to make even more Ultraman shows in 1967, ’71, ’72, ’73, ’74, ’80, ’96, ’97, ’98, ’01, ’04, ’05, and ’06. There have also been stage shows, manga, and foreign adaptations, as well as several language dubs released. I think Netflix did like a CG anime Ultraman at some point. As we discussed in episode one, 1971 witnessed the release of the first Kamen Rider TV show, created by Ishinomori Shotaro, whose other creation Himitsu Sentai Gorenger, would be released in 1975. The Metal Heroes subgenre of tokusatsu, which we have mentioned once or twice in passing on this show, kicked off in 1982 with Space Sheriff Gavan.
The upshot of all of this is that from the late ’60s into the ’80s, roughly 15 to 20 year period, was a massive explosion of the tokusatsu genre in television, and between toy sales and ad revenue, the studios and production companies were printing money, and moreover gained themselves an absolutely devoted fan base, which is partly why so many of these series are ongoing today, because like, the people making Zyuranger, Sugimura Noboru and all these other people, would have grown up on Ultraman, and Kamen Rider, even, which was not that far before, but they would have been fans of those shows and, as I mentioned, creators like Hideaki Anno, creator of Evangelion, is like directly inspired by these and, you know, works in a different medium of animation, but now he’s also directed, I think, two different live action movies now, and it’s just like a constantly rolling thing of like growing up, watching, and then getting inspired, moving into that field, and then the kids and and teens who are watching your stuff and then grow up and get inspired.
Nelson: If only every career path was that easy.
Andrew: Ishinomori speaks at length in various interviews about how he was directly inspired by Astro Boy and how, like, his his dream job was was to just do that. And so he does, you know? You mentioned the toy sales here and there’s one kind of aspect of that, that at some point we’ll probably talk about in more detail, but that I want to call out here and that’s these toys started- late ’70s, ’78, ’79, you get the Shogun Warriors line in the US. The Shogun Warriors are like straight based on various tokusatsu characters, a bunch of different characters, and also Godzilla and Rodin and-
Ethan: We have a Super Shogun-scale Optimus Prime over there by Nelson right now, and I think there are probably still a few in this building. We don’t have any in the room at the moment. This is the size we’re talking about.
Andrew: Yeah, so they’re these giant robots.
Nelson: These things are huge.
Ethan: They’re huge. They’re blow mold…
Andrew: And they all feature rocket fists.
[Nelson fires the rocket fist.]
Ethan: They do rocket fists. Pretty limited articulation, pretty limited accessories, but they’re big, they’re bright, they’re colorful.
Andrew: And they were relatively cheap at the time. This Optimus Prime is not; he’s like $300.
Nelson: Yeah, no, this thing seems expensive.
Andrew: Yeah, so the Shogun Warriors were done at that size, but they were also done at like a three-inch scale.
Nelson: I don’t know how you put- I mean, I feel like- ’cause I’m looking at these Shogun Warriors things and like, some of them seem like they have a lot of detail to put into such like a three-inch scale thing.
Andrew: Yeah, yeah, and the little ones were diecast.
Nelson: Wait, is this on wheels?
Andrew: It’s on wheels. They were on wheels.
Ethan: I dread to think how many siblings have been beaned in the noggin with a diecast three-inch figure of a Mazinger or whoever.
Andrew: And they did a five-inch line as well, but, so in ’75 when Gorenger came out, they did a line of Sofubi, of little Japanese soft vinyl.
Ethan: Crafsman’s been on that Sofubi tip for a couple weeks now.
Andrew: So I, at a toy show I went to in February, I picked up the line, the run of the Gorenger Sofubi.
Ethan: I remember seeing pictures of those.
Andrew: From the original run, and they’re incredible, and I wish that we had gotten something like that out of the later shows, you know? Because they’re just little like, three-inch guys, same articulation, just, you know, shoulders move and the waist rotates and that’s it. But it’s the Rangers, you know?
Nelson: Do they still have like firing fists?
Andrew: No, because they’re they’re itty-bitty.
Nelson: Okay, yeah, because I was like, that’s- we already talked about the choking hazards and all that.
A But yeah, so the toy sales were big. This was a huge aspect of all of this. We see it a lot with Bandai. It took decades for Power Rangers to become something more than just an arm of Bandai, to the point that like, now that Hasbro is in control of the Power Rangers merchandising, Bandai is a much weaker company as a result.
Ethan: And they’ve pivoted a lot to like, electronic products also. Bandai Namco makes video games.
Andrew: Yeah, in the next episode we will talk about some of Bandai’s video game output. But yeah, the toys from the go–all the way back, as far as you can go–have been a critical part of this.
Ethan: There are also many other franchises and shows which have escaped mention here today, so go explore. You’re bound to find something you like, and thanks to the efforts of fansubbers, many of these shows are hugely more accessible to non-Japanese speakers than they have been historically. Now to take a sort of another little u-turn, as with the example of Andrew’s dad that he mentioned in a previous episode, bits and pieces of tokusatsu have been filtering over to other parts of the world, to various degrees, since the beginning. Godzilla, obviously, as well as Ultraman and others, but the Sabanization process might just represent the most definite and directed effort in this regard. We had a VHS of Godzilla VS Megalon when I was a kid, for example, but it was a pretty straightforward English dub with no editing or localization. Despite its many flaws and general cringiness, I can respect the vision for Power Rangers and the ambition of the project. Saban is a slimeball and a despicable human being, but he had a solid idea here, and I think the ongoing legacy speaks for itself.
Andrew: Yeah, absolutely. It’s kind of astounding, because just like with these television producers coming up with the the previous manga and tokusatsu series in Japan, and being inspired by those, and creating things based off of those, you end up with a similar experience here, where a lot of people saw Astro Boy and decided that they were going to get into animation because they saw Astro Boy, or saw Ultraman. I have to imagine that that at least some of the people who got involved with Power Rangers were people who had grown up, much like my dad did, with Ultraman or The Space Giants, I think, or Three Space Giants.
Ethan: I saw that mentioned in in my research for today.
Andrew: That was a hugely popular show stateside, that nobody, basically, talks about today.
Ethan: It’s funny you mention that. Two of the actors from Power Rangers HyperForce were in both Super Sentai and Power Rangers. Not the same adaptation, I think? I remember the character’s names, let me see if I can remember the actor’s names… Peter Sudarso and his brotherrr Yoshi. Their family is Indonesian, but they worked in the Japanese film industry and were in Sentai shows, and then also like, kind of double-dipped and came over to California or wherever they were filming and filmed Power Rangers stuff as well, which is just pretty neat. Pretty cool that, you know, there’s certain people who can not just take inspiration from and go to work in, but also like straddle both production chains, kind of.
Andrew: Absolutely, and you know, we’ve talked a lot about David Yost. Yost is the actor who plays Billy. He’s one of the producers on several of the more recent Power Rangers series. He has taken a very active role in this thing.
Ethan: Sure! Good.
Andrew: He’s one of the more recognizable faces from the show, and he suffered, you know? And so it’s really great, and we talked about-
Nelson: Paul Schrier. Paul Shear?
[General confusion.]
Andrew: Paul Schrier? We’ll go with that. How he comes out of the show and and parlays it into a whole career, and like, yeah, it is almost like once you’ve started doing this thing, it’s really easy to keep doing it.
Nelson: Oh, it’s funny: I was at a bar, talking to a guy about this podcast, because I’ve kind of become the talk of part of our friend group, because of this podcast.
Andrew: Of course.
Nelson: They’re just like, “Y’all see that Power Rangers podcast?” Then I’m like, “Guys. I mean, yeah.”
Ethan: “It’s not a big deal or anything.”
Nelson: Yeah, so like I started telling him about the HyperForce stuff.
Ethan: Have you listened to it at all?
Nelson: I’ve listened a little bit of it, but they started doing a comic run of the HyperForce stuff.
Ethan: Yes, there’s a crossover event in the middle of the only season of the HyperForce podcast with the Shattered Grid comics event, which was really cool and fun and interesting. And then they pick up the story of that squad of Rangers after the end of season one. I don’t know if they’re going to make another season at some point. This was- that was all pre-COVID. We live in a different universe now.
Nelson: But this dude was- he was also telling me about how they finally got Amy Jo Johnson back to like, help out on like, a run of comics that they were doing, and like strictly for like, Pink Ranger stuff.
Andrew: That’s neat.
Ethan: Yeah, she- our universe’s Kimberly gets into some cool stuff, and then there are multiple alternate universe Kimberlys who go into some crazy wild stuff.
Nelson: It’s pretty much like, kind of like a Flashpoint event. Like, Pink Rangers from the perspective of our universe’s Kimberly.
Andrew: That’s gonna be fun.
Nelson: At least, that’s that’s how he explained it to me, so can’t wait for that. So, thanks, Noah, for putting me on that.
Ethan: Do we have anything else, gentlemen?
Andrew: Nope. I think we’ve had too much.
Nelson: We still got two more to do.
Ethan: Alright, we’ll be back next time to discuss episodes 12 of Zyuranger “Papa wa Kyuuketsuki?! (Papa’s a Vampire?!)” and Power Rangers, “Power Ranger Punks.” Is it “Power Ranger Punks” or “Power Rangers Punks”? I don’t know. If you’ve enjoyed this show, please feel free to send me $5, and if you want to find me online, don’t. But you can follow the show on the Fediverse @KenkyuuSentaiPodcastRangers@Meet.CommunityMedia.Network. Andrew, how can people get in touch and what should they look out for?
Andrew: I’m @AJRoach42@Retro.Social and I just opened a bookstore. HemlockBazaar.com. That’s B-A-Z-A-A-R, like a marketplace, not like something strange.
Neslon: Yes, you sure did.
Andrew: Nelson!
Ethan: What do you want to plug?
Nelson: Folks… Hey, I’m not gonna lie to you, I don’t really have much to throw out this week besides Working Class Music. Go watch that.
Andrew: Hey, hey, Nelson.
Nelson: Yeah.
Ethan: Oh no.
Andrew: When you gonna record another album?
Nelson: I’m working on it, but I don’t know if anything that I’m making is…
Andrew: Is it gonna be a Holders album or a Jon Thefruitman album?
Nelson: Both.
Andrew: Okay. Neither.
Nelson: We’re working on, we’re working on but-
Ethan: Jon Thefruitholders album.
Nelson: We’re probably gonna record the last Holders album here, whenever Cole gets back from being a super famous musician. Woo. And you know, I’m just working on stuff at home. But yeah, go watch Working Class Music. Watch more stuff on New Ellijay TV… yeah!
Ethan: Okay.
Nelson: That’s all I got.
Ethan: That’s all the show we have for you today. Thank you so much for listening, and thanks also to Hurly-Burly and the Volcanic Fallout for the use of their song “Colossal Might (Totally Radical Instrumental version)” for our intro and outro music. Kenkyuu Sentai Podcast Rangers is licensed CC-BY-SA and produced in collaboration with New Ellijay Television at the Ellijay Makerspace, which stands on the ancestral, unceded, stolen, and occupied lands of the Cherokee people. You can learn more about the Makerspace by visiting EllijayMakerspace.org, and you can learn more about the Cherokee people by visiting Cherokee.org. Strength, love, and solidarity to all oppressed people, and in the words of a wise man, “F*** capitalism; go home.”
