Power Rangers (Super) Samurai
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Behold, the season that started the downfall of Power Rangers and an era where crap would start hitting the fans.
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Power Rangers Samurai and Power Rangers Super Samurai are the 18th and 19th seasons of the Power Rangers franchise. It is based on the Super Sentai series, Samurai Sentai Shinkenger.
Bad Qualities
- Making a Japanese-based PR season is a very unique idea. Unfortunately, due to Saban recently buying back the franchise from Disney, the production team had only 6 months to produce this season instead of the usual 2-year production, a problem that would eventually plague its way into the franchise from this season onwards.
- The plots for each episode are translated from the Sentai. Speaking of which, the translation sounds like it was done by Google Translate. Speaking of which, it even credited Shinkenger's writer Yasuko Kobayashi in the opening credits!
- Not helping is that the translation is so bad, that it sometimes makes the lip-syncing for the villains feel off.
- The suit acting was entirely backward. In the Shinken footage, the actors were bouncy and active in specific ways. In the Samurai footage, the actors were otherwise until the Megazord cockpit, where they were bouncy and active which was not only very unnecessary, but very distracting too.
- Sub-par acting, which can possibly give Operation Overdrive a run for its money.
- The occasional flashbacks in some episodes, which are only there just to consume screen time.
- Some of the Rangers, villains and characters in these seasons are bland and less memorable compared to the previous 17 seasons who all just have no purpose to be in there whatsoever:
- Jayden is an extremely unlikeable and hypocritical Red Ranger. In some episodes, he says that the Samurai team should always work together regardless of the situation, even though he barely interacts with his team and mostly tries to battle alone. To be fair, that did happen in the Sentai, but it's justified there instead of here.
- Mia is an uninteresting Pink Ranger. Her bad cook joke also got annoying, really quickly.
- Kevin is an unlikable Blue Ranger.
- Mentor Ji is one of the worst mentors in the franchise along with Gosei from Megaforce/Super Megaforce as not only does he not take part in combat, but he also shows blatant favoritism to Jayden and gives poor advice to the team. When Antonio tries to join the team, he not only rejects him because of his heritage, but he takes his Morpher away, which is stealing.
- The return of Bulk and the addition of Spike felt like discounted fan service without the development, especially since Skull was sidelined outside of a small guest spot.
- Speaking of which, Bulk is really unlikable in Samurai and Super Samurai.
- The Bulk & Spike parts are so silly and childish and it feels like watching a bad episode of Ed, Edd n Eddy.
- Master Xandred is a very boring and unintimidating villain, who spends most of the season drinking medicine (which is alcohol in the Sentai).
- Speaking of which, not only is he technically drinking alcohol, but his name is based on a type of drug brand called Xanax. Considering this show was made for a young audience, especially since this show aired on Nickelodeon, it's a rather hypocritically inappropriate reference.
- Octoroo was an annoying villain, who kept saying "ooh-ah-ohh" in every episode.
- The dialogue is very cheesy, especially the one-liners.
- Antonio is a Hispanic stereotype, which is racist as his actor was not Hispanic, but rather Thai.
- The rest of the Rangers are talking props that worship Jayden in every single sense of the word, which can get very irritating after a while, which could also possibly give the Operation Overdrive team a run for their money.
- Adding on to this, in one episode of Super Samurai, when Lauren reveals that she is the true head of the Shiba Clan, the other Rangers treat her like she's invisible, and constantly mope about how much they miss Jayden.
- Some poorly written episodes, such as Broken Dreams, He Ain't Heavy Metal, He's My Brother and The Strange Case of the Munchies.
- The Samurai & RPM Team Up Episode (Clash of the Red Rangers) was one of the worst team-up episodes of the Power Rangers franchise.
- Some of the episodes are misleading and nonsensical, such as the episode "Trickster Treat", which is advertised as a Halloween special for Super Samurai, even though it barely has anything to do with Halloween and is more of a story-oriented episode.
- The final episode for both seasons was a Christmas special (which in turn, was a clip show), which will be a recurring theme for later seasons except for Super Megaforce.
- Some moments can get very anti-climatic, one noticeable example is in Samurai's episode, "A Fish Out of Water", where Yamiror, the main Monster-of-The-Week, is about to spew out poisonous breath on a woman holding a baby before the Red Ranger comes to the rescue by literally blocking Yamiror's breath and tells the woman and the baby to go. This is one of the most anti-climactic action-packed moments to happen in not only the Neo-Saban Era but in the entire franchise. Plus, it's also not a bright move if you think about it as the breath could have easily passed by the Red Ranger and hit the woman and the baby.
- The Mega-Mode suits for the Megazords only exist just for toy sales. This will be even more common in Super Samurai.
- The theme song, while catchy in terms of the beat (being the original 1993 theme with edited lyrics), has the Rangers shouting out their names for some reason, which is unnecessary. This will be continued until Dino Charge.
- The casual sexism. This is a holdover from the Japanese-made sentai, which don't have the same values as the Western world.
- Poorly done censorship, such as Xandred's medicine, as stated above.
- Overuse of Sentai footage. Speaking of which, its' finale, "Samurai Forever", relied HEAVILY on Sentai footage.
- The airing schedule was nonsensical, with several episodes constantly airing out of order, one such example is Origins, even though it did the two-part pilot episode of the entire series, it doesn't get aired until much later on in the show. Unfortunately, this wasn't even fixed during the show's reruns on NickToons, which just goes to show just how very little Nickelodeon cares for this franchise.
- Thankfully, it was fixed in the Netflix re-release of the Power Rangers Samurai series.
- It started the trend of midseason summer hiatuses, which eventually resulted in a significant rating drop for later seasons.
- It started the downfall of Power Rangers and it hasn't recovered very well.
Good Qualities
- Its second season, Super Samurai, despite being mediocre, is a slight improvement over it.
- The ranger and villain suits are great.
- As stated before, the theme song is catchy.
- The Megazords look amazing.
- Some likable characters, such as Emily/Yellow Samurai Ranger (XVIII), Mike/Green Samurai Ranger (XVIII), Antonio/Gold Samurai Ranger (XVIII) (despite the Hispanic stereotyping), Lauren/Red Samurai Ranger (XIX), Deker, and Serrator.
- The finale and Christmas epilogue of Super Samurai (Samurai Forever and Stuck on Christmas, despite the latter being a clip show) are well written.
- While he is unlikable, it's great to see Bulk back.
- Skull's return was somewhat decent.
- It's not as bad as the next two seasons.
- These two seasons are aired concurrently with both seasons Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger and Tokumei Sentai Go-Busters, which are pretty well-received.
- Some fans of the Power Rangers series may enjoy it.
- Antonio Garcia reappeared on Dimensions in Danger from Power Rangers (Super) Ninja Steel, where he was a much better character than he was in Power Rangers (Super) Samurai.
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