Mighty Morphin Power Rangers
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"It's Morphin' Time!"
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Mighty Morphin Power Rangers was a live-action martial arts-themed show aimed at children and aired on Fox Kids from 1993 to 1995. It is the first entry in the Power Rangers franchise and was adapted from the Super Sentai series Kyōryū Sentai Zyuranger for the first season, Gosei Sentai Dairanger for the second season, Ninja Sentai Kakuranger for the third season. It was later shown as a mini-series, Mighty Morphin Alien Rangers, which aired from February 5 to February 17, 1996, only for 10 episodes.
Plot
After Rita Repulsa, a powerful galactic sorceress, is freed from her prison after 10,000 years, she sets her sights on conquering Earth once more. Zordon, the wizard who imprisoned her, empowers five teenagers with attitude, Jason, Kimberly, Billy, Trini and Zack, to become the only hope Earth has against Rita and her army of monsters: The Power Rangers.
Eventually, after numerous failures, it is revealed Rita was merely a servant for the emperor of all evil, Lord Zedd. Zedd takes over the job of conquering Earth and reseals Rita before banishing her to the depths of outer space. With new weapons and Zords, the Power Rangers fight back against Zedd and his minions. However, Rita manages to escape from her prison once again and, with the aid of her loyal minion Finster, tricks Lord Zedd into marrying her, becoming more dangerous than ever.
Why It Morphs
- It started the highly iconic and amazing Power Rangers franchise.
- Adapting Super Sentai for North American audiences actually worked incredibly well.
- Intense and well-done action scenes while maintaining a family-friendly image.
- Tons of great monster designs, though some are kind of laughable (especially Eye Guy).
- Though it's an adaptation of a different series, it creates its own different story.
- While future seasons retain the Zyuranger costumes, the Zords and monsters of those seasons are from Gosei Sentai Dairanger and Ninja Sentai Kakuranger, mixing three Sentai shows into one, which is an awesome idea, to begin with.
- The most memorable and recognized Power Rangers of all: Jason Lee Scott (the Red Tyrannosaurus Ranger), Kimberly Hart (the Pink Pterodactyl Ranger), Zack Taylor (the Black Mastodon Ranger), Trini Kwan (the Yellow Sabre-Toothed Tiger Ranger), and Billy Cranston (the Blue Triceratops Ranger). A sixth Ranger would later be added: Tommy Oliver (the Green Dragon Ranger and later the White Falcon Ranger), regarded in-series as the greatest Power Ranger of them all.
- It also includes a comedy duo like Bulk and Skull
- Memorable villains such as Rita Repulsa, Lord Zedd, Goldar, Scorpina, and Master Vile.
- Adam was played by Johnny Yong Bosch, who's not only a great martial artist but is now also famous for his many voice-acting roles, including Hajime Hinata in Super Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair, Vash the Stampede in Trigun, Nathan Adams in Yo-Kai Watch and Lelouch Lamperouge in Code Geass.
- The actors who played Jason, Zack, Aisha, and Kat actually met their Zyuranger counterparts at the 2014 and 2016 Morphicons.
- Barbara Goodson and Robert Axelrod are utterly hilarious as the voices of Rita Repulsa and Lord Zedd.
- Machiko Soga and Ami Kawai (both from Zyuranger) provided new footage by Toei that was made exclusively for the adaptation to make them sound like they're speaking English without bad dubbing, which coined Zyu 1.5.
- The second and third season featured a lot of new material such as fantastic scenes with the White Ranger.
- Season 3 had a great story and an opening three episodes that were even better than the film based on the series.
- Season 3 had a decent crossover with Masked Rider.
- Season 3 had a great nine episode arc about replacing Kimberly.
- The show had a fantastic anniversary special in 2023.
Bad Qualities
- Was often a target for moral guardians.
- The story and plot is ridiculous, it also recklessly combines sci-fi concepts from the failed Bio-Man adaptation from the 80s with the Dino themed season and takes out the Dinosaur gimmick depicting them as generic teenage Sci-Fi heroes rather than magical prehistoric warriors like the Zyuranger season.
- The first episode rushes to introduce the Megazords and weapons rather than adapting the story from the beginning of Zyuranger.
- The villain dubbing is cringe and annoying.
- Zordon is a terrible and stupid mentor for the Power Rangers, the series could have been better if they just reused the Mysterious Sage Barza suit and called him Zordon. However, this mistake is probably due to reusing concepts from the Bio-Man pilot.
- Jason, Zack, and Trini's actors quit the show due to a pay dispute, as they were being paid absolute minimum wage for their work, so when Haim Saban wouldn't concede to give them more money, the three walked off set, and Saban wrote them out.
- There was one incident on set where Billy and Kimberly's actors could have been electrocuted.
- The Special effects are really bad.
- The second season is probably the weakest season having some really uninteresting weak and mostly filler episodes.
- While impressive at the time, the use of Sentai footage on the show is painfully obvious and it's poorly aged now.
- The infamous 2010 re-version made by Disney was poorly edited and was thankfully canceled after 32 episodes.
- Rito Revolto can sometimes be annoying.
- Sadly, it never used the five core Dairanger suits, being the only adaptation to not use the adapted season's core rangers' suits due to The five original Dairanger suits left on the cutting room floor, Haim Saban only took footage of the Dairanger monsters, zords, and what would become the White Ranger.
- Some of the villains seem to be off-putting for an action show, especially Eye Guy.
- The replacing, later return (albeit as a Latina), of Trini, a Vietnamese-American girl, as the Yellow Ranger due to the "Yellow Asian" insult, was actually unecessaey, as originally in Super Sentai, everyone was Japanese and thus Asian, not just her (and that's not even mentioning that her Japanese counterpart was a boy).
- "Hogday Afternoon", while not horrible and it does act as a setup for the next series, ends the series on a cliffhanger.