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Uchujin65 wrote:

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It would be nice if they would include the uncut "Zyu2" footage as a special feature. Anyone who knows what that is gets a cookie!

Yeah, "Zyu2" refers to footage shot by Toei specifically for Power Rangers' second season. The Zyu2 footage used the ranger suits from Zyuranger and new monster costumes made by Rainbow Productions. This footage was commissioned by Saban after they had thoroughly exhausted all stock footage available from Zyuranger (and by thoroughly exhausted I mean using the same fight scenes from certain episodes over and over again) and didn't yet have all the Dairanger stock footage edited. You can always tell a Zyu2 episode because the monster were based mostly on animals (and one a Venus Flytrap) as oppose to mythical creatures which was the monster motif for both Zyuranger and Dairanger.  

Here's something I don't know, however, that maybe someone can answer. It appears, according to my research, that Rainbow Productions is a UK based company and that they still do work for Power Rangers, or at least as recently as Dino Thunder. Do they still do Power Ranger monster costumes?

Also who makes the costumes for the Super Sentai series? Is that also Rainbow Productions or are they made in house by Toei? I know all the designs for Sentai are done by PLEX. But who builds the actual suits?    

MacXoftheMounted wrote:

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>WEIRD TO THINK ANYONE WOULD WANT TO OWN SUCH DREK.

I don't want to offend anyone on the board, but that was my first thought as well. One man's trash I guess. Probably a generational thing. I was probably in my mid-30's when this stuff was on TV. It seemed pretty one-note and juvenile in my admittedly very limited exposure.

It's definitely probably a generational thing. You had to be the right age to be captivated by Power Rangers or it's Japanese source material Super Sentai. I was at that age when the show came out in '93. And honestly even now as an adult I fail to see what elevates the Godzilla and Gamera series as a whole above Power Rangers/Super Sentai or Kamen Rider or Ultraman, especially when one starts talking about any nostalgia they feel for the bastardized English versions of these films. 

LCranston wrote:

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DerGolem wrote:

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MacXoftheMounted wrote:

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>WEIRD TO THINK ANYONE WOULD WANT TO OWN SUCH DREK.

I don't want to offend anyone on the board, but that was my first thought as well. One man's trash I guess. Probably a generational thing. I was probably in my mid-30's when this stuff was on TV. It seemed pretty one-note and juvenile in my admittedly very limited exposure.

It's definitely probably a generational thing. You had to be the right age to be captivated by Power Rangers or it's Japanese source material Super Sentai. I was at that age when the show came out in '93. And honestly even now as an adult I fail to see what elevates the Godzilla and Gamera series as a whole above Power Rangers/Super Sentai or Kamen Rider or Ultraman, especially when one starts talking about any nostalgia they feel for the bastardized English versions of these films. 

Well, just by being theatrical movies does a whole lot in terms of "legitimacy," like it or not.  The best of the GODZILLA films will have a greater range of subject matter and emotions (for the genre) then the best episodes of any iteration of Power Rangers.  I now understand your unswerving defense of G:Final Wars, being a PR fan.

Personally, I saw the Power Rangers in the 90s when I was in my 20s, while I didn't discover ULTRAMAN until I gave a DVD a try, which I am enjoying very much .  Ultraman's episodes (watched ULTRAMAN, working my way through U7) could range from action to tragedy to comedy to melancholy - things I never see attributed to PR.

There are seasons of PR which display a wide thematic range as well. I'm thinking of 2000/01's PR: Time Force. But I'll admit those are few and far between and for that I blame Saban. However, if one goes back to the original Japanese Super Sentai series, as I have, one will find melodrama on par with that any Ultraman series. Same for Kamen Rider and other related series.

I still don't see what being theatrical films has to do with "legitimacy" when it comes to this stuff though. My point before was that tokusatsu TV series like Super Sentai, Ultraman, and Kamen Rider are basically on par with films like the Godzilla and Gamera movies when it comes to tone, storylines, acting, SFX and production values. In fact, many of the people who worked on those films also worked on these TV series or vice-verse. There have also been theatrical Ultraman, Kamen Rider and Super Sentai movies in Japan too. In fact, while there hasn't been a Godzilla movie made and released in Japan in almost 10-years there have been at least one to three Kamen Rider films released every year in Japan for almost the past 10-years.