Power Rangers Jungle Fury

Super Sentai Equivalent: Juken Sentai Gekiranger (Beast-Fist Team Fierce Spirit Ranger)

Long ago, the Beast War occurred on Earth. Mighty transforming robots known as Maximals battled against the evil Predacons to harvest the planet's energon... okay, yes, I'm getting tired of this gag too. It has a passing similarity to something else, let's move on.

Long ago, the Beast War was fought among the animal spirits, between those who followed Dai Shi in his belief that humans had no place on Earth, and the Order of the Claw, also known as Pai Zhuq (pronounced "pie shwa"). The Pai Zhuq masters prevailed and sealed Dai Shi away inside a magic box. There he remained for 10,000 years, until some jerk named Jarrod came along and donked it all up. Freaking Jarrod, am I right?

Anyway, with Dai Shi free and the Pai Zhuq master Mao slain in the battle, the three remaining students will travel to... some city the name of which we never learn. There, at Jungle Karma Pizza, they will find the last Pai Zhuq master, kind-of-a-dick New Age slacker bro R.J. With his help and their totally lame sunglasses, they will become... Jungle Fury Power Rangers!

In terms of story, Jungle Fury starts off pretty strong, actually. The heroes are likeable (even R.J., in spite of his being kind-of-a-dick) and with good personality. The villains have a level of complexity approaching In Space and Lost Galaxy. The show was able to teach the occasional moral lesson without coming across as (too) contrived or condescending. The writing was tight and focused. It was going somewhere.

...and then the Writers' Guild Strike of 2007 to 2008 happened, and all of that went away. The story fell dead in the water. It became stagnant and mired in plot holes and out-of-character moments. They even attempted to introduce a new character during this time, the Rhino Ranger, and he ended up being a black hole of plot almost on tier with S.P.D.'s Omega Ranger... almost.

Fortunately, at least, the strike did end in time for the last few episodes to not totally suck.

The series also managed to have some pretty cool ideas, like the animal spirits being means to an end that were neither good nor evil and could be used by both the heroes and villains. I also felt that this series formed an interesting counterpoint to Wild Force, with Wild Force's Orgs representing industry and pollution, while the Dai Shi and his minions represent uncontrolled nature. I would have loved to see a crossover between the two series exploring this, but that doesn't happen. Actually, Jungle Fury is the first series of Power Rangers since the Zordon era to not have any crossover elements with any other series. Even Mystic Force had a guest appearance from S.P.D.'s Piggy!

They also took some more risks with the source material, creating their own Rangers for the first time since Lightspeed Rescue. It is slightly undercut by the fact that they - by their own admission - only did it to have some more toys to sell, and the three Spirit Rangers have very little to do in the show... but it's still pretty cool.

In all, Jungle Fury is a good series that might have even been great if not for the writers' strike. I honestly feel like I owe Bruce Kalish an apology. Nothing I said about Kalish or the shows he executive produced is necessarily untrue, but I just don't feel like it's fair to put it all on him. Disney gave him an absolute mess and told him to fix it, then gave him basically zero resources with which to do so, and in spite of that he still managed to turn out two passable series (S.P.D. and Operation Overdrive), one good series (Jungle Fury), and one of my top 5 favorite series to date (Mystic Force).

At the time of my writing this, my reviews for the Kalish series actually still haven't gone up (at the moment the latest review I have up is for Lightspeed Rescue) but I'm not going to rewrite them. Like I said, nothing I said in them is really untrue, and also I feel it's important to write about them as I thought of them at the time.


GOOD

PROS:	CONS:
+ A solid start and finish. Really, very good writing and characters for at least half the series	- The Writers' Guild Strike screwed up everything in between.
+ Had some really cool ideas.	- Having cool ideas means nothing if you don't explore them.

Power Rangers Operation Overdrive

Super Sentai Equivalent: GoGo Sentai Boukenger (Rumbling Team Adventure Ranger)

Many years ago, Last Sunday A.D. The elemental brothers Moltor and Flurious wrought havoc on the universe searching for the magical crown of the gods, the Corona Aurora. They were defeated and imprisoned by the mystical Sentinel Knight. In order to prevent the crown from being fought over any longer, Sentinel Knight took the crown jewels and scattered them across the Earth. In the present day, adventurer Andrew Hartford discovers the crown, accidentally releasing the evil brothers into the world once more. In order to correct his mistake, he'll gather a team of the most talented individuals in the world, to become the Overdrive Power Rangers!

As always, I'll start with what the series did right. The Rangers aren't bad. This is the second series after Lightspeed Rescue where the Rangers are explicitly recruited for their skills and they actually have a certain degree of competence and maturity to them, though they can still be a bit whiny at times too. There's also a pretty interesting plot twist involving the Red Ranger, Mack, which I won't spoil. In all I found them pretty likeable, I enjoyed the interactions between them... not bad.

On the downside, the plot is pretty weak and it's all Disney's fault. According to the crew, the show was pitched as the Power Rangers take on Indiana Jones, with "a new exotic locale in every episode." Disney loved it so much that they gave the show a shoestring budget that made that impossible, and demanded the use of even more stock footage. One has to wonder why Disney even wanted this franchise if this is how they were going to treat it. Haim Saban might be a greedy dick, but at least he kind of cared about what he was doing.

The villains are pretty weak too. They get their small victories, which is important as I mentioned in my review for Mystic Force, and that at least puts them a step above Lightspeed Rescue's villains. They're just... not really interesting. And they come so close too...

For example, let's talk about the aforementioned elemental brothers, Moltor and Flurious. These two actually used to be human, but they turned themselves into monsters in order to gain power. "OMG! Spoilers, man!" Except not really, because in order to be a spoiler it has to be an actual plot point and it isn't. The only reason I even know about this is because of a single throw-away line in the penultimate episode, in which Mack calls Moltor out on sacrificing the "precious gift" of humanity. It means nothing.

Oh yeah, and even though they're brothers, they hate each other! Why? Well, when they were kids, Moltor broke Flurious' favorite toy sled. Haha, that's sure silly, I guess... but wouldn't it be cool if it was replaced by an actual backstory instead?

Oh yeah, and the kalishplosions begin to reach critical mass, to the point of watching things like the villain Flurious shooting the Rangers with ice, and causing them to explode in a giant ball of FIRE. What?

There's a little bit to like here, but not enough to make up for the show's flaws.


MEDIOCRE

PROS:	CONS:
+ Rangers are pretty okay.	- Story is pretty weak and never does much to stand out.
+ Villains get their small victories.	- Ice beams explode into fire because Bruce Kalish is a lunatic.
+ Multiple villain groups creates the potential for some interesting interactions.	- The villains' potential is totally squandered.

Power Rangers Mystic Force

Super Sentai Equivalent: Mahou Sentai Magiranger (Magic Team Magi Ranger)

In a world where Lord of the Rings is a hot new property and Pottermania is in full swing, one soulless megacorporation will stop at nothing to cash in on the fantasy trend!

Meanwhile, in the city of Briarwood, a great evil is emerging. In the nearby mystic forest the dreaded Morticon is rallying his armies of the undead, preparing to emerge from his dark pit and wage war upon the world of men. The only hope of stopping him is five warriors of prophecy, humans who will take on the power of magic to become Mystic Force Power Rangers!

Going in, I honestly didn't expect a lot from Mystic Force. It's still executive produced by the much-maligned Bruce Kalish, plus it's heavily focused on magic which I assumed meant less cool martial arts. Well, the first of those two things is more or less true. Kalish' taint is all over this series; the story is basically unchanged from Magiranger, and bad CGI and kalishplosions are everywhere.

That said, no, Mystic Force is pretty solid. The focus on magic didn't have any real negative impact on the Rangers' ability to be kickass martial artists. The Rangers are all likeable and the writing is pretty enjoyable. There's also a memorable reappearance from Rita Repulsa near the end of the series. In all, this is definitely one of my Top 5 Rangers series and in my Top 5 Ranger teams too.

And the villains? Well...

Let me be real for a moment. Look, we all know the villains are going to lose in the end. That's not to say there aren't works that let the villain win, or that the story can't still be good in spite of that... just, let's face it: Power Rangers is not Chinatown. The villains are going to lose, and we want them to.

That said, even if we know the villains are going to lose in the end, if they always lose at every single tiny thing they try to do, that's a problem. It makes them look incompetent, and when they're incompetent it makes it hard to feel threatened by them or to care about what they do. That was one of the major things that hurt Dino Thunder and S.P.D. - the villains never won, not even small or temporary victories. "Oh, look, Zeltrax has a plan to destroy the Rangers. I'm sure this time it totally won't end with him retreating after taking a single--wait, he's already run away? Shocker."

On this front I'm glad to say: Mystic force does it right. The villains get their small victories, and that makes the Rangers' bigger victories more satisfying. The villains also manage to be fairly interesting... some of them, anyway. There are still plenty who are just your typical mindlessly evil monsters, but they're mostly pretty cool.

I've also heard complaints about Mystic Force giving too much focus to the Red Ranger compared to the others... and while I guess that's sort of true I also really didn't even notice... maybe because giving all the cool plots and powers to Red Ranger is something EVERY series of Power Rangers EVER has done.

KR Rating: [4] GOOD

PROS:	CONS:
+ Pretty decent action, usually.	- Plays it safe with the source material.
+ Villains are actually threatening, get their small victories.	- Still an overreliance on bad CGI and kalishplosions.
+ The Rangers are pretty good too.	- Go away, Bruce Kalish!

Television Review: Power Rangers S.P.D.

Super Sentai Equivalent: Tokusou Sentai Dekaranger (Special Investigations Team Detective Ranger, "deka" is a Japanization of "dick", the slang term for detective)

It's the not-too-distant future, Next Sunday A.D. The battle against illegal immigration has finally been lost and Earth has become a planet-wide sanctuary city for aliens who've basically just gone ahead and taken our own homeworld away from us. Earth for Earthlings, I say! Send the aliens back to Alpha Centauri!

But the future isn't all liberal Democrat fantasies. Evil Emperor Gruumm has come along with his vicious and quasi-loyal minions to conquer Earth for himself! The only hope of stopping him is Space Patrol Delta and their elite team of A Squad Power Rangers! ...who immediately go MIA in their first battle. So now it's time for the S.P.D. B Squad to step up and take the fight back to Emperor Gruumm!

As usual, I'll start with the good. S.P.D. does a lot to set up the future world established in Time Force. Space Patrol Delta, with their "take the villains in alive" policies, and their teams of Power Rangers feel like a worthy predecessor to the Time Force Patrol, and a successor to Lightspeed.

Also, the series starts off pretty strong, actually doing something new to the franchise. The first ten or so episodes play like a police procedural, with each episode involving the team investigating to track down alien criminals.

Unfortunately, that disappears pretty quick. As with Turbo and Time Force before it, the series totally wastes its premise. For the vast majority of the series it's just bog-standard Rangers Save The Day action, and unlike those other two series you can't blame Dekaranger for this one.

With Wild Force and Ninja Storm Disney stumbled their way into the franchise, struggling to figure out what to do with it. Dino Thunder proved that they could do it right and if they built on that it would be really great. Then this series... this series is where they gave up.

Disney brought in a new executive producer, Bruce Kalish, to take the franchise in a new direction. That direction: cheaper and faster. The writers were pushed to stop writing their own stories and start just adapting Super Sentai stories. The general thought process among the production crew, according to Kalish himself, was "why bother, it's just Power Rangers."

Worst of all, they shifted away from practical effects and choreographed martial arts, and came to rely heavily on wire-fu and the infamous "kalishplosions." What is a kalishplosion? Imagine, if you will, that you're an evil space monster. You want to kill the guy in front of you, so you shoot at him... but for some reason all you can manage to hit is the dirt, ten feet in front of him. For some reason, this causes a gigantic 50-foot fireball to erupt a good thirty feet BEHIND him.

That's a kalishplosion, named after the aforementioned Bruce Kalish. To be fair, Kalish didn't actually create this effect; nonsense explosions had been a thing from the beginning, and this particular variant was invented by Mark Harris for Ninja Storm. S.P.D. is where they really came into prominence, though, as dictated by Disney, allegedly as part of the company's frankly ridiculous anti-violence policy. Do you think putting the explosion 10 feet behind a character makes the fact that they got shot with an assault rifle no longer violent? If so, you might be an idiot!

I guess I also have to talk about the characters. If the effects are where the whole thing fell apart, the characters are where the pieces crumbled into ash and blew away in the wind. The Rangers are unlikable and whiny little snots. Look, I get it. They're teenagers with attitude, that's the entire point. I can't expect them to totally have their act together. The point is to watch them grow and mature, and yeah, they do get less insufferable by the end. Still, these kids are buttheads even by this franchise's standards, and it's especially weird since they're meant to be military cadets but I find it very hard to believe they could have made it through boot camp without washing out.

At least their commander, Anubis "Doggie" Cruger (guess what kind of alien he is!) is pretty cool, both as the commander and as the Shadow Ranger. And I guess the villains... well, they get the job done. They're not as bad as Divatox or King Mondo, but they're not great either.

The worst, however, is the Omega Ranger. How bad is he? Well, his civilian persona is a CGI energy ball because the producers didn't feel like hiring another actor. Alright, I'll admit that could have been cool, but they totally squandered it. They gave the character a bunch of "things." He's an energy being! But he used to be human! Also he's from the future! But just having a bunch of weird things doesn't automatically make a character interesting, especially when the list of things he DOESN'T have includes a personality, character development, a backstory... His backstory is literally just "I'm an energy being from the future who used to be human." We don't even know how or why he became an energy being. Freaking YAWN.

Oh well, at least it's bookended by a solid start and a decent finish.


BAD

PROS:	CONS:
+ Takes good steps in setting up the future world of Time Force.	- The Rangers are unlikable and whiny.
+ The first ten or so episodes are good, running like a police procedural.	- The Omega Ranger squandered a neat idea.
	- An overreliance on CGI, wire-fu, and kalishplosions.

Better Than Bear! (Survivorman, Alone, Dual Survival)

I talked last time on the blog about Bear Grylls and why he sucks. I've known that he sucks for years now, ever since I watched Man vs. Wild and heard his brilliant survival advice about how wonderful finding a farm was because you could kill and eat all the animals. No, Bear, finding a farm is great because they have a telephone there. If you've found a farm, you're done. You're home, you're saved, survival situation over.

But it's not surprising. Bear Grylls is a spoiled rich boy whose entire existence is a lie. He camps out next to five-star hotels, is "surviving" alongside a full team of camera crew and paramedics, his advice is more likely to get you killed than help you survive, and as I also mentioned he's the type of guy who readily self-identifies as a "philanthropist" which I've found is almost always a sign of an awful person. (What kind of person feels the need to make such a show out of all the good deeds they do? It's basically the same question as "do you tell jokes to see people laugh, or so that people will think you're funny?")

Just to drive the point even further home, below are three other survival TV shows that are much, much, MUCH better than absolutely anything Bear Grylls has ever done, listed here in no particular order.

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Not to be confused with Duel Survival, which involves pistols at high noon.
Dual Survival follows a similar premise of the old Man vs. Wild; each episode presents a different survival scenario and tasks the survivalist (or survivalists in this case) with making it out. Where it differs is that every one of the ten guys who has appeared in Dual Survival over the years is, on their own, ten times the survivalist that Bear Grylls is.

The other major difference is that, while the show has had ten separate survivalists over the years, it always has two at a time, hence the name Dual Survival.

First, you have the naturalist. (Originally Cody Lundin, later Matt Graham, and then a bunch of other guys over the last three seasons.) His philosophy is to play it safe. He already knows he can survive for the long haul, so taking risks and burning resources to gain a momentary edge is unnecessary to him; he'll get out when he gets out, and he know how to make it until then.

Second, you have the military survivalist. (Originally Dave Canterbury, then Joseph Teti, and then another bunch of dudes over the last three seasons.) This guy is who Bear Grylls wishes he was - a real military hardass with combat experience. His philosophy is to use whatever tactics you need to, spend your resources, take the risks, get any advantage you can no matter how small, and get out as soon as you can.

Showcasing these two conflicting survival strategies, and forcing them to work together to survive, is the major dynamic of the show, and does make for an interesting experience. There is still a film crew on hand, though, so it's not a real true survival experience. There's also a host of other scandals, including editing to make things look harsher than they are. Even so, at least their advice is generally good and not dumbass crap that will actually get you killed, like Bear's advice.


MEDIOCRE

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Nothing says "survival" like Blair Witch stick figures.
The creation of musician and badass survival dude Les Stroud, Survivorman was originally pitched to the networks as Survivor, if Survivor was for real. There's no tribes, no immunity challenges, and no getting voted off. It's just one man all alone in the wilderness. And yes, he is all alone, as it's shown repeatedly that he packs and sets up all of his film equipment himself. There are emergency crews on call, but they're all miles away from him at all times.

Each episode puts Les into a different remote wilderness location, ranging from the dense jungles of Grenada, all the way to the heat of the Kalahari Desert and the frigid forests of northern Ontario, and asks him to make it for one week on his own. He meets with survival experts before each excursion to learn about the terrain, but once he's in country he survives entirely on his own experience and the tools at hand, and absolutely no blueberry pancakes.


GREAT

---

Nothing says "alone" like two people within shouting distance of each other.
Now take Survivorman, put it one step back towards Survivor by adding in an actual competition element, and you've got Alone. Ten survivalists are each sent out to the wilderness, with several miles of water or mountains separating them. They each have a camera, ten items they've selected for their survival kit, and a satellite phone which they can use to "tap out" by calling for an immediate evac. The last man still in the wild after all others have tapped out (or been forced out due to medical emergency) takes home $500,000.

While there are always a few who fail right away (half of the first season's contestants tap out within the first week) most of them make it for the long haul, easily lasting for months. The point is, they do know what they're doing, and they're not even professional adventurers who spent three years training with the SAS Reserves like Bear is!

All kidding aside, the show is pretty engaging. Of the five seasons produced so far, three of them take place in the beautiful North American rainforest of Vancouver Island, specifically around Quatsino Sound. Seasons three and five switch it up, sending contestants to Patagonia, Argentina, and to Khonin Nuga, Mongolia, respectively. The sixth season is set to premier in June of this year, and will task competitors with surviving in the Arctic.


GREAT

Television(Ish) Review: You vs.Wild (Bear Grylls Sucks)

You Vs Wild is the latest in the long line of terrible Bear Grylls catastrophes, the most famous of which is his first show, Man Vs Wild, which got cancelled following a scandal involving Bear checking into a hotel and eating blueberry pancakes when he was supposedly surviving in the wild instead.

You Vs Wild is Bear's first foray into interactive media. Yes, this is a Netflix Interactive series, hence the title YOU Vs Wild.

I've hated Bear Grylls for a long time, and allow me to explain why by way of pointing out a few of the dumber moments in the first episode. (Click on any of the screenshots for a larger version.)


There was absolutely no reason for Bear to jump out of this plane. On Man Vs Wild it was often presented as a dynamic entry from a crashing plane or something to explain why he was there with limited supplies, but the story here has no such thing. He's looking for a "Dr. Ramos" who has some medicines she needs to deliver to a village. There's a bit of a time factor, but nothing to explain why he had to jump out of a moving vehicle into crocodile infested waters instead of coming to a stop and taxiing to shore.


I almost didn't complain about this choice. Look, one of these choices is obviously wrong and I shouldn't need to explain to you which one that is. Since I do have to explain... bushwhacking is an obviously terrible choice. Follow the river. Don't go whacking through snakes and jaguars, expending massive amounts of energy, in a damn wilderness survival situation. In a survival situation where you may not have easy access to food and clean water, the path of least resistance is always best.

That's not necessarily a bad thing. Present two choices, and afterward explain which of the two was best and why... but that's not what Bear does. Neither option is presented as being wrong. Neither option is really even explained all that adequately. How is this supposed to be teaching me anything?


In case you can't see it clearly, yes, that is a crocodile that Bear is choosing to piss off for no reason. This isn't even a choice I made, he just decided to do it because Bear Grylls enjoys living life on Hard Mode.

But seriously, I could see having the slingshot ready just in case, but there was no reason to shoot the crocodile when it wasn't doing anything. It could have just as easily turned and went for the person antagonizing it instead of crawling away, and there'd be nothing you could do. Leave the crocodiles alone!


Yes, you can make Bear Grylls eat a giant bug in the first episode. (There's a later episode where you can make him eat bear poop too.) His reaction when you pick for him to eat the grub (shown above) is also the only intentionally funny moment in the episode.


Here we see another one of the many choices in the series where both answers are wrong and terrible. If bushwhacking through the jungle is a stupid idea, then taking stupid risks at a ravine is an even worse idea. If it seems even a little questionable, GO AROUND. Do not try to balance-beam your way across a two-inch wide log. Do not Tarzan-swing on a vine. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200.

The thing is, Bear Grylls is a professional adventurer. He was trained in survival tactics by the SAS, he climbed Mount Everest... he clearly does know what he's supposed to be doing, but you'd never know it from watching any of his TV shows, where he shows all the survival instinct of a sheltered city kid whose only experience with nature is climbing a tree in the city park.

Then again, he was also born into money as the fortunate son of a politician, he was only a reserve member of the SAS who never received a deployment, and he climbed Mt. Everest as part of a large expedition with lots of help. He's also one of those people who readily self-identifies as a "philanthropist" though apparently that doesn't mean much to anyone but me.

Even if you ignore all the dumb stuff and just take the show on entertainment value, it's still very short, not particularly interesting, and has a bare minimum of story to it. It's not nearly the best Netflix Interactive series there is. Just ignore this awful show.


HORRIBLE

Television Review: Power Rangers Dino Thunder

Super Sentai Equivalent: Bakuryuu Sentai Abaranger (Burst Dragon Team Outrage Ranger)


After retiring from being a Power Ranger, Tommy Oliver becomes a professor of paleontology. He begins experimenting with the integration of recovered dinosaur DNA and cybernetics, because that just sounds like such a great idea that couldn't possibly go horribly wrong. His experiment ends in a very predictable disaster, creating an evil mutant named Mesogog who wants to revive the dinosaurs and destroy humanity in the process. Earth's only hope lies with three teenagers with attitude, who will join Dr. Oliver in becoming a new team of Dino Thunder Power Rangers!

Let's get this out of the way first: Tommy Oliver is back! As I mentioned back when I reviewed the original series, he is pretty much the most iconic and popular Ranger of all time, and his return is a big part of why this particular series is so beloved. Indeed, Dino Thunder has gotten a lot of praise from basically everybody and is often cited as one of, if not THE best series of the franchise. But does it deserve it?

I'll start by saying that Dino Thunder definitely feels like a worthy spiritual successor to Mighty Morphin'. In fact, I'll go one step further: Dino Thunder is what Mighty Morphin' should have been. The teenagers with attitude actually have real attitude problems and flaws. The villains never once get humiliated by ten-year-olds with water balloons. Dino Thunder perfectly captures the feel of the original series, only far more polished and basically just better in every way.

There are also a few really cool episodes, like "Fighting Spirit" where a comatose Tommy meets and battles against each of his previous Ranger personas.

Of course, this is still Power Rangers, so there are also a lot of really corny episodes, like "Game On" where the Blue Ranger gets trapped in a computer game. Still, even in these episodes the show manages to maintain a certain level of dignity. Dino Thunder can get campy, but it never gets STUPID.

All of that being said, the show has its flaws too. I mentioned in my review of Ninja Storm that the sixth ranger storylines from that show felt too rushed. While Dino Thunder's sixth ranger story takes more time, it ends up feeling just as forced. With apologies and a SPOILER WARNING beforehand, the character who becomes the white ranger finds his dino gem purely by accident and becomes evil because it was experimented on by the villains. He then has his "evil encoding" get destroyed, also purely by accident, at which point he instantly turns good and is very easily forgiven.

That right there is the biggest flaw of this series, and it isn't just with regards to the white ranger. Most of the time plot points just "happen" with little or no foreshadowing. They never really feel earned at all, and oh yeah, spoiler again - the series finale is a huge letdown compared to other finales. At least it ties up all the loose ends and gives us closure on character arcs, but it doesn't manage to feel very climactic or epic at all.

Coming in off of Wild Force and Ninja Storm I thought this would be the series to make me start enjoying Power Rangers again. Instead, this was the second time I legitimately considered breaking my promise to review the entire series and giving up.

To be fair, unlike the first time this happened (that being Alien Rangers) it's not because Dino Thunder is bad. I think it was more just series fatigue. Power Rangers is NOT the kind of show that you binge watch on Netflix, and I did take a several month hiatus at this point before coming back to finish this series and then go through the rest of the Disney series after it.

When I did come back I didn't find the show nearly as grating as the first time... but I also didn't find it particularly engaging. More polished than Mighty Morphin', sure, but it's not like that's hard to pull off. Honestly, if it weren't for Tommy Oliver I would probably have found this series to be entirely forgettable.


MEDIOCRE

PROS:	CONS:
+ Good blend of campy and serious.	- Major plot points just happen and never feel earned.
+ Fewer Rangers means we get a lot of time with each one.	- As creepy as Mesogog is, he's still kind of a joke whose plans always instantly fail.
+ Tommy Oliver is back.

Steven Universe

What if the protagonist of a magical girl anime was a boy, and also it was made in America and not Japan?

Okay, but seriously now. Steven Universe is the story of... Steven Universe, half-human son of failed musician Greg Universe and magical space warrior Rose Quartz, who inherited some of his mother's powers and her responsibility of protecting the Earth against the fascist Gem Homeworld and their evil rulers, the Diamond Authority!

I'll start with the good. I always start with the good, and it's especially important to get it out of the way first before all of the show's fans ragequit out of reading this review.

So yeah, I'll admit I did like some of the ideas they had. The show's science-fantasy style universe is very creative. The songs, which the show has a lot of, are generally really good. I also like a lot of the characterizations. As an example, I appreciate the way they handled the Diamond Authority, the evil rulers of the Gem Homeworld. These are individuals who keep slaves, who genocide entire planets, and who rule the universe with an iron fist... and yet, who will then also spend 6,000 years either in mourning or plotting vengeance, because one of their own got killed, because they're seriously that self-centered. That's pretty clever, and a very insightful look into the mentality of a narcissistic evil oligarch.

That being said, on to the bad.

I was introduced to Steven Universe by some friends who keep insisting to me that it's just sooo gooood and after watching it myself I have to say I have no idea what said friends are smoking. I don't even feel like this is debatable. If you like Steven Universe, that's fine. I liked the Dungeons and Dragons movie. It's okay to like things that are objectively not good.

And yes, Steven Universe is objectively not good.

The graphics are terrible. Characters are so frequently off-model that it makes you wonder if there was ever a model to begin with. Rebecca Sugar has tried to justify it by saying they didn't have limits on the art because they wanted to encourage "stylistic freedom."

This is a total crock.

Lots of shows allow artistic freedom. An excellent example is Love, Death, and Robots which features a different artist and a radically different art style in every episode. Steven Universe... is not that. Using cel-shaded art for one episode and then ultra-realistic CGI for another episode is a style choice. Drawing the character 7 feet tall for a scene because you sent a rough draft on a napkin off to the Korean animators and didn't realize they'd take it serious? Not a style choice.


LEFT: Actual artistic freedom.
RIGHT: "How tall is our main character again?"
There's exactly ONE time in the show where a model change was probably intentional - that being when Connie becomes a main character and shrinks from being way taller than Steven, to being his own size.

Every OTHER time is just the artists being lazy. They had model sheets. That alone should prove that they had a consistent look in mind and they couldn't manage to hold to it, then Sugar made up that ridiculous retcon excuse that's about as convincing as that friend who insists that he's not misusing the word "ironic", he's "expressing the fluidity of language as a social construct!"


LEFT: Actual artistic freedom.
RIGHT: "Such freedom! I can make the character's hair as poofy as I want!"
The story is terribly paced, dedicating less than half of each 20+ episode season to the actual plot of crystal gems fighting against the evil forces of Homeworld. Again, yes, a lot of shows have filler, but this show... honestly, I hesitate to even call it "filler" because I get the feeling that these are the stories they actually wanted to tell and yes, they are usually reasonably well-told. It's almost like Steven Universe enters into some sort of reverse pacing rules where the filler stories are the ones that actually move the A-plot along while they work on their next script about freaking Lars and Sadie. Maybe you like that, which is fine, but it's not how a good show works.

Continuity is also a problem, as you may have heard. What happened to the weapon upgrades Bismuth made for everyone? Does Gem Fusion require a dance, or just holding hands? Do the show's creators even remember?

...and I think that's about it...

Can't think of much else...

Let's see... oh, I guess the theme song is totally ripping off Space Oddity by David Bowie...

...

...okay, fine. It's now time to tackle the elephant in the room.

People who follow the blog know that I have a rule about keeping politics off it. A lot of shows have political messages and I don't usually talk about them or judge the show for them unless I find them to be particularly notable. In this case... you kind of can't talk about Steven Universe without talking about the politics. The show's writers practically beg for the show to be judged on its politics.

Honestly, it's to the show's detriment, and I'm not saying that because the show's politics are right or wrong (though I'll get to what I think of them in a moment) but because the show very clearly prioritizes its politics over everything else. Hell, just look at their casting decisions. They hired on people who had never done voice work before and gave them starring roles just because they're minorities. And yes, most of those people do a more or less... at least acceptable job, but that's not the point. The point is that these are the decisions they made. Couple this with the sloppy animation, plodding pacing, and the fact that the show in its original run went on hiatus after every tiny handful of episodes. It's blatantly obvious that Rebecca Sugar and her "Crewniverse" set out to make a show that was political first and foremost... and good a far distant second.

It's also stupid whether you agree with the politics or not. Is Steven Universe a show about lesbian relationships? No, it's not, because none of the gems are actually female. They're magic rocks that project an artificial image that looks and sounds and moves like a female but is actually just a hologram. There are also no male-on-male relationships in the show, only straight relationships and pseudo-lesbian gem relationships. This isn't LGBT, it's just playing.


LEFT: An actual lesbian couple.
RIGHT: None of these characters has a vagina.
I also really dislike Steven Quartz Universe as a character. He clearly cares a lot about things which is something that I would give him credit for except that he cares about all of the wrong things. He defends terrible people, like Mayor Dewey who is laughably inept at best and heinously corrupt at worst. He spends multiple episodes crying over the fate of some random Ruby he left stranded in space - this is someone who wanted to kill him and take his friends away to be tortured, by the way. He turns against Bismuth, whose only crime was wanting to treat the war against Homeworld like a real war and being willing to kill if it was the only way to win.

And yes, I get it, he's a child and as such holds onto naive ideals, wants to see the good in everyone, has a fear of violence and losing his "moral purity", so on and so forth. The problem is that he doesn't get better with character development. Actually, the show doesn't seem to think that any of that stuff is any sort of flaw he needs to overcome at all and ends up insisting that he was right all along and that even the heinous, slaving, genocidal space monsters can totally change thanks to the power of love. How did the people who made that "insightful look into the mind of an evil oligarch" I mentioned also make this? Did I just read way too much into that and the truth is we really were supposed to take it at face value and feel bad for the omnicidal maniacs?

And because I know people are going to say it: "Oh, you're just saying this because you're a conservative fascist and you hate everyone and want them all to be the same!" Yeah, no, and if you're going to say that then there's really no point in me saying anything else to you but I will anyway.

"Why do you want everyone to be the same?" I DON'T. I appreciate the freaks. I AM a freak in my own way. I believe that all good and innocent people have the right to the pursuit of happiness... but in order to make that work, evil must never be allowed to prosper. It's not about taking away freedom to make everyone good, it's about protecting freedom from those who choose not to be good.

"Why don't you support gay people?" I DO. But I don't support pandering, nor do I believe in trying to define yourself entirely by something so shallow as who you want to sleep with. Am I gay or bisexual myself? who the Hell cares. I am a person who believes in saying what I believe is true even when it's unpopular. That is what defines me.

Besides, anyone who's really paying attention knows I'm just as quick to call out right-pandering too.

So yeah...

I'll stop here because I don't want this review to turn into an overly-long tangential rant. (Too late.) So what's my overall judgment?

I've given my opinion on the show's politics. I don't like them and I'm never going to like them, but I'm also not going to judge the show on them. Rebecca Sugar's "stylistic freedom" lie also does bother me and it makes me question a lot of the other things with the show... but I won't hold that against the show either. After all, I didn't hold Haim Saban's actions against Mighty Morphin' and Rebecca Sugar is more decent a human being than he is by a factor of about a million.

Taken as it is...


BAD
I've found the works I give a 2 out of 5 are usually ones where I liked the ideas but disliked the execution, and this is no different. The show has some good ideas. The gems, their powers, and the way they work were really cool. Some of the characterizations were pretty neat. Steven slowly coming to learn that his mother was actually kind of a terrible person was pretty well handled, even if I didn't care so much for the rest of his character. I had fun watching the show. I never found myself looking at the clock wondering when the episode was going to end. And I'll admit that a lot of the show's problems are inherent to the format of being a kids' cartoon on Cartoon Network.

Going into this review I was planning on giving the show a 4 out of 5 as a good show held back by notable flaws... but the flaws in this case are SO bad... the show is over 50% filler... characters are consistently off-model in notable ways that are exactly as bad as if they'd just painted someone red for an episode... these are not things that good shows do. I'm convinced the only reason so many people swear by this show is because so many other people also say they like it and the only reason I've even been as nice to it as I have is because I was worried about upsetting friends of mine who also like the show. But it's not good, sorry.

PROS:	CONS:
+ A lot of very good ideas and world-building.	- Consistently off-model, and it's not on purpose no matter what Sugar says.
+ A lot of really good music.	- Slow, plodding story that is mostly what other shows would call filler.
	- Prioritizes political pandering over being a good show.

Television Review: Power Rangers Ninja Storm

Super Sentai Equivalent: Ninpuu Sentai Huricanger (Enduring Wind Team Hurricane-ger, with Ninpuu also being a play on Ninpo, or "Ninja Magic")


In a world where nobody remembers what Power Rangers are but ninjas are basically all over the place, evil space ninja Lothor returns from exile to make the Earth's ninjas pay for banishing him. He draws all the world's ninjas up into his spaceship, leaving behind only three young ninja cadets who will don magic suits to become Wind Ninja Power Rangers! ...what, you thought they were going to be called Ninja Storm Rangers? Ha!

Ninja Storm was Disney's second stumbling step into the franchise. Alright, alright, I will start by admitting there was some good - the action scenes were pretty good, and that's not just because of Huricanger either. There were some really well choreographed fight scenes done using the western actors out of costume too.

That said, the story just took a nosedive. How should I put this... it's at least one step above Alien Rangers? Sure, that works. We're talking some of the worst parts of MMPR camp here. The Rangers are entertaining to watch and are generally likeable but they're never really compelling. There are actually two "sixth ranger" storylines here - one involving the Thunder Ninjas who have been brainwashed to serve the evil Lothor, and one involving the sensei's son Cam coming into his own as the Green Samurai Ranger. They're also both way too rushed and don't take the time to build up any suspense.

Oh, and the villains... the villains are the worst. There is nothing interesting about them. They're mostly just obnoxious and screamy. I feel like they were trying to evoke memories of Rita Repulsa and Lord Zedd, but... first off, we've come to expect more from the series at this point than just watching the villain scream about how he or she has a headache, and second, Lothor is no Rita Repulsa.

Let me say this to any aspiring writers out there - there is a huge difference between telling jokes and being a joke. And no, before you say it, I'm not just someone who hates fun. I love parody. But like I said, and I'll say it again just so everyone is absolutely clear - THERE IS A HUGE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN TELLING JOKES AND BEING A JOKE.


MEDIOCRE

PROS:	CONS:
+ Solid action scenes and fight choreography.	- Doesn't take its time with the story.
+ The rangers are generally likeable.	- The villains are a big pathetic joke.
+ It isn't Alien Rangers.	- Except the joke isn't even funny.
	- Seriously, they suck.

Television Review: Power Rangers Wild Force

Super Sentai Equivalent: Hyakujuu Sentai Gaoranger (Hundred Beasts Team Roaring Ranger, Gao is a Japanese onomatopeia for a beast's roar)


In a world where Power Rangers is no longer owned by Haim Saban, but instead by Disney, one question remains... which of this franchise's two owners is MORE greedy and evil?

Alternately, when the Earth finds itself under attack by the Orgs, living embodiments of pollution, Princess Shayla, the guardian of nature who lives on a floating turtle island in the sky, calls forth a team of five young heroes to form her Wild Force Power Rangers!

Wild Force was sort of a return to the series' roots, at least in terms of focus, with Wild Force placing much greater importance on the combat action as opposed to the plot and character interactions. (It wasn't as much of a return in terms of tone, though. Wild Force was overall much less cartoonish and idealistic than the original series.)

There is an overarching plot that does manage to get fairly decent into the latter half. Sadly, that's mostly just because it follows the story ofGaoranger to a tee. I know that's not exactly something new, but it's worse than ever here, with fans of both series even pointing out shot-for-shot remake moments.

The best part of the story was the friendship between Toxica and Jindrax, the villain's two lieutenants who had worked together for a thousand years awaiting their master's return and who had a lot of good chemistry together. Even that was just ripped off 100% from Gaoranger, though.

It's obvious that Disney's writers had no clue what to do here and all the stuff they made themselves was a flailing, confused mess that couldn't stop bashing you over the head with environmental messages.

Oh, also Ann Marie Crouch as Princess Shayla was a definite low point. Her line readings are stilted and wooden and never come across as sincere. She's not quite as bad as Vypra from Lightspeed Rescue, but... she's BAD.

KR Rating: [3] MEDIOCRE

PROS:	CONS:
+ Toxica and Jindrax are really fun to watch.	- Too scared to deviate from the source material.
+ Decent action with lots of zords meaning there's always a new power to see.	- Environmental messages as subtle as a bag of anvils.

BONUS!

Of course, any Power Rangers fan knows that a review of Wild Force would be incomplete without mention of the famous - or perhaps infamous - episode "Forever Red" which brought together every red ranger in the franchise (aside from Rocky DeSanto, the second Red Ranger of Mighty Morhpin') for a massive battle to stop the remains of the Machine Empire from re-activating Lord Zedd's lost zord, Serpentera.

"Forever Red" is... well, I'll just say it: it's awful. Actually, Serpentera is a perfect metaphor for this episode. Serpentera was constantly referenced throughout Mighty Morphin' as being this unstoppable menace that would conquer the Earth in a day if it was used, but whenever Zedd brought it out it always seemed to conveniently run out of fuel just before it could reach Earth or do anything of importance.

That's "Forever Red" in a nutshell. It has potential, but ultimately it was just too packed, too rushed, and way too full of plot holes. For example, Jason Lee Scott (the original Red Ranger) and T.J. Johnson (the Red Turbo Ranger) both LOST their Red Ranger powers in their respective series. Jason gave his up to Rocky DeSantos, and when Jason returned it was as Zeo Gold. T.J.'s powers were destroyed by Divatox, and he got his power back as Space Ranger Blue. So how are they both back to Red? No one knows, and the episode doesn't even attempt to explain it.

I know some people are going to say "oh, you can't complain, it's just fanservice!" I disagree with that, though. For one, yes, you can totally still complain about fanservice. Second, does this even count as fanservice when all it does is disrespect the material? Is it really serving me as a fan to pretend that I'm too stupid to remember the ending of Power Rangers Turbo?

Like I said, "Forever Red" had potential. The episode should have been made as a two-parter. The writers would have had more time then to flesh out their ideas, explain how Jason and T.J. got their powers back, and give us some more time with the characters we all loved... and also Aurico the Red Alien Ranger who just has to be there by default, I guess. Thanks for not spending ANY time on him or even showing his stupid face without his helmet though, Disney. I'm not even being sarcastic here. Screw Aurico.

A Bubsy Mega Review!

Back in the 1990's we were all about the extreme, so much so that even the word "extreme" wasn't extreme enough for us. We went in for the upgraded, new and improved XTREEM. Similarly, when we made video games starring animal mascots with attitude, the word "attitude" was ironically not sufficient to convey just how much attitude our animal mascots had. No, they didn't have attitude. They had 'TUDE. And it was XTREEM.

Of all the animal mascots with 'tude, none had more 'tude than Bubsy the Bobcat. Accolade really tried hard to make Bubsy the next big thing. It never quite worked. Still, at the risk of losing my internet writer's license (and with the guarantee of repeating a joke I already used when I reviewed Wild Wild West) I have to admit that I never hated Bubsy. Maybe that's because I wasn't a hardcore enough gamer at the time to be sick of the genre. Maybe it's because I only played two of the games. Who knows?

In the interest of fairness, science, and relieving my own boredom I decided to play all four games in the Bubsy series and give my honest opinion on them. What could paw-sibbly go wrong?

(Note: I am aware that there are actually five Bubsy games out now, with a sixth coming this spring. I originally wrote this review something like three years ago but due to life circumstances I never got around to finishing it. At that time Woolies Strike Back had not yet even been announced. I considered holding off on this review until after I played the most recent game in the series... but I'm too broke for that and I'm not sure I care anyway. Instead, I just decided to post this review mostly as it was. I get a blog post out of it, and you get to watch my "salty" level steadily increase from "almost none" to "enough to cause total kidney failure." Everybody wins!)

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Bubsy in Claws Encounters of the Furred Kind
Let me start out by saying that I don't find puns nearly as offensive as a lot of people do. In fact, I love puns. I annoy all of my friends with them, and Piers Anthony's Xanth series remains a favorite of mine to this day. That should give you an idea of how I feel about puns, and this game's title should give you an idea of how punny it likes to be.

The one good thing I will say for Bubsy is that he was a character with personality. Well, sort of. More on that later. Even compared to other animal mascots like Sonic the Hedgehog, Bubsy's animations are all notably very expressive. They even gave him a diverse variety of cartoony death animations for whenever you get killed in the game, which was a nice touch.

Hell, Bubsy was one of the first video game characters to actually talk to you. (Though not THE first, the first video game with voice clips was 1980's Berzerk.) He had a sound bite of dialog before every level, though that did turn into a bit of a downside because there's only one dialog bite per level and you have to listen to it every time you die.

And oh yes, you WILL die.

If you've ever read or watched a video about Bubsy then you should already know that it is a hard game. To be completely fair, it's not nearly as hard as internet people like to pretend it is. Yes, there is fall damage, but as long as you remember you have a glide button that cancels all fall damage, you should never die from it. Yes, Bubsy is a one-hit-point wonder, but enemies and traps are generally easy enough to avoid if you take it slow.

That said, don't get me wrong. It is a hard game, and not all of that is legitimate. Alright, I'll admit it: very little of that is legitimate. The controls are wonky, you slide around a lot and if you build up too much momentum Bubsy can become nearly impossible to control. Your field of vision is too small, so you can't tell what's coming up ahead. Enemy hitboxes are off and I got hit a lot at times when I could swear I never touched an enemy. This isn't helped by the fact that, as mentioned, one hit from anything will kill you instantly.

The game also has a lot of cheap shots and blind jumps. For example, when you see this pipe, do you go down it?


Look at that smug face. He knows you're about to lose a life and he takes pleasure in it.
The answer is no, it kills you. However, not all pipes are lethal. Some of them have power-ups and yarn balls in them. So how do you know which is which? You can't. You just have to guess. To be fair, you do have 9 lives (because he's a cat, get it?) and you can get more by collecting one-up t-shirts. To be unfair, you can burn through all your lives pretty fast. It's almost like the developers were so proud of the death animations they made that they wanted to make sure you'd see them as much as possible.

Overall, Bubsy is not nearly the unmitigated train wreck you've probably heard it is. I respect the ambition that went into it and I do like a lot of the ideas they had. The game is quirky, the main character was very expressive, and I liked the idea of having multiple paths through each level. Still, the controls are just way too wonky and the game takes too many cheap shots at you.

It probably won't surprise you at all to learn the lead designer had never created a game like this before. Prior to Bubsy, his only projects had been text-based adventures, and Accolade even refused to invest in this game until he first played through Sonic the Hedgehog and wrote them an essay on why he thought it was successful. No, I'm not joking. I guess it is cool that the designer went outside his comfort zone and tried his hand at something new... just a shame this game is what he ended up with.

Looking back, I think the main reason I didn't mind the game as a kid is because I sucked at games. Every game I played back then felt super difficult to me and I used cheat codes to get through them all anyway, so I didn't notice how much BS this game was.


KR Rating: BAD

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Bubsy in Fractured Furry Tales
Although this was the second Bubsy game I played for this review, it wasn't actually the second Bubsy, that was the creatively titled Bubsy II. This was actually the third Bubsy, though it wasn't the official third Bubsy. That "honor" belongs to the notorious Bubsy 3D.

This game was more like Bubsy 2.5. After his first two games, Bubsy made his first foray into another system, on the Atari Jaguar. I never played this game as a kid, due mostly to not owning a Jaguar. It was actually the game I looked forward to playing the most for this review. Part of this was the hope that the fairy tale angle would give them some more interesting ideas for levels and enemies to work with.

On this one point, at least, the game didn't disappoint. I'm reminded of a story about how Steven Spielberg chose to make Temple of Doom as a prequel because he didn't want Indiana Jones to be defined by his fighting Nazis. That's this game, in a nutshell. It is certainly refreshing to see Bubsy get to fight something other than woolies, woolies, and oh hey look it's more woolies.


I'm not sure what mohawk flamingos have to do with Alice in Wonderland, though.
The other reason I looked forward to this game was the hope that being on a more powerful system would allow them to fix a lot of the game's problems. IT DID NOT. The graphics are... okay, I guess. The sound is just as bad as it always was, and the voices are even worse now because the sound bite now changes with every world instead of every level, meaning there's even more repetition.

The controls... they actually seem to have gotten worse. There's still the weird, floaty jumps and the momentum issues, but where starting up used to be quick it now feels like Bubsy is running on fly paper.

Worst of all, the ability to figure out different paths through the level is also gone. The levels are still big, but now you actually need to go through every nook and cranny in order to open up the way forward. It makes every level last way too long and turns the game into a slog.

The first game could be fun once you got past its problems, but this game has nothing going for it.

Also, I feel like they wasted the potential for a good pun by not calling it "Fractured Furry Tails." That alone is enough to earn it a rating of...


KR Rating: HORRIBLE

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Bubsy II
The big problem with the "animal mascots with 'tude" genre is that they tended to rely too much on the wackiness of their premise and the charisma of their characters, and so gameplay tended to suffer. The most successful of these games were the ones that managed to find a happy balance, like Ratchet and Clank and Spyro the Dragon.

Comparatively, Bubsy's gameplay is barely passable at best, its premise isn't really all that wacky, and as much as I respect the expressiveness in Bubsy's sprites, the character has basically zero charisma.

The point I'm making here is that Bubsy was always bad, but at least the first game was trying. This game? Not even a little. There's even a story going around about the lead designer from the first game visiting the studio during this game's development and seeing Bubsy dolls hanging from the ceiling by shoestring nooses. That's how much the developers of Bubsy II cared about making a good game. They couldn't even be bothered to give it a wacky pun title. For shame.

All I have to say about this game is that it sucks. The gameplay sucks, Bubsy sucks, and his obnoxious nephew and niece, added in this game, are two of the worst characters ever made.


KR Rating: SHOVEL

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Bubsy 3D in Furbitten Planet
Along with the first game in the series, this is the second of the two Bubsy games that I actually played as a child. It's also hands down the worst one they made, and the only one of the four games that I refused to play again for this review. "But what about journalistic integrity?" That went into the same meat grinder that I'd rather shove my face in than play this game again. Look, I'll still defend Claws Encounters of the Furred Kind to a certain extent, but not this game. Never this game. Claws Uncounters might be "Love It or Hate It" but this game? This game is just "Hate It or Hate It." Anyone who claims to enjoy this game is either trying to be ironic, or is a drooling imbecile.

I guess I do need to talk about this game just a little bit... Bubsy 3D came out in the wake of Super Mario 64, when every 2D platformer had to become 3D. Sometimes it worked out really well, like with Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, which led to a reinvention of that entire franchise. Other times it merely turned out "okay" like with all the 3D Castlevania games.

Bubsy 3D does not fall into either of those categories. This game is a total mess. Just look at this crap, and remember this came out a half a year AFTER Super Mario 64.


Above: Bubsy 3D. Below: A real game.
Not shown - the terrible camera, unusable tank controls, or the gas oven it will make you want to stick your head in. It's no surprise this game finally killed off the franchise for good. (At least until 2017.)


KR Rating: SHOVEL

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Bubsy, the Cartoon
At last we come to the last piece of Bubsy out there. (Aside from the other two games which, as mentioned, were not out when I wrote this review.) Well, sort of. Technically there never was a Bubsy cartoon. There was a pilot, but no network was ever stupid enough to pick it up.

The biggest problem with the Bubsy cartoon is that IT NEVER SHUTS UP. Other reviewers have already pointed out how the show fills every solitary second with sound. Personally, I feel like they're selling it short. Bubsy somehow managed to fit an entire hour worth of dialog into 22 minutes of show. By the end of it all I just felt worn out.

I couldn't even bring myself to feel upset about how they milked Arnold the Armadillo's fear of getting run over by a truck for comedy. Normally I hate the Butt Monkey trope and this show's use of it is almost as bad as Meg from Family Guy, but in the end I was just too tired to be annoyed. That's how bad it is.

The worst part is, none of it even matters, even by the standards of kids' shows from the 90's.

The plot makes no sense, revolving around a "virtual reality" helmet that somehow makes things real for people who aren't even wearing it. It's basically a wish-granting genie in stupid hat form.

The writing is atrocious. Despite all the dialog they crammed into this thing, there's actually only like 5 jokes in it, each repeated ad nauseum despite not being funny the first time. The writing is definitely going for a "quantity over quality" approach. Three guesses as to whether you think it works, and the first two guesses don't count.

Oh, and the characters.... GAH! The characters! I mentioned before that Bubsy only "sort of" had personality... this is where I first realized this: Bubsy doesn't have personality, he has attitude, and there's a difference. See, I know how Bubsy acts. I've seen his expressions. I've heard his insipid catchphrase and his stupid lisp. ...but I don't know who he is. What does he believe in? How does he feel about stuff? What are his goals? No one knows.

It's the same for all of these characters. Every single one of them can be summed up in a single sentence or even a single word. They barely qualify as characters. They're just platforms for one of the five terrible jokes.

Well, at least it's still not Bubsy 3D.


KR Rating: THE CRAP GLASS IS HALF FULL

Television Review: Power Rangers Time Force

Super Sentai Equivalent: Mirai Sentai Timeranger (Future Team Time Ranger)

In the year 3000, delivery boy Fry is thawed out after 1,000 years in cryogenic suspended animation... wait, no, wrong series. Let's start over.

In the year 3000, Earth has become a peaceful planet where war and strife and even crime are a thing of the past... almost. Ransik and his army of evil genetic mutants have terrorized the world, but one by one they've all been captured and cryogenically frozen by the Time Force patrollers. Ransik comes up with one final desperate plan... stealing an entire prison full of frozen mutants and traveling back with it to the year 2001, where there is no Time Force. The only hope of stopping him is the same crew of Time Force patrollers who were disgraced by his escape... stranded in the past with him, they'll use their future tech to become a new generation of Time Force Power Rangers and transform all the villains back into action figures!

Time Force would end up being the last series of Power Rangers produced by Saban Entertainment before they were bought out and merged into the Walt Disney Corporation, who continued producing the series themselves for a decade or so before its original owners would pull themselves back together as Saban Brands and buy it back.

So is it a worthy send-off? For the most part, yes. The writing is pretty decent. The villains have a fair level of complexity to them, approaching In Space levels. The Rangers are pretty decent. There are a few moments here which could be counted among the top moments for all of Power Rangers. (Which you'd better believe is a list I'll be writing someday in the future when I've gotten through more of the series.)

That said, it isn't perfect (though, did you really expect it to be?) There are also a lot of really bad moments, and episodes where a character grabs hold of the "Idiot Ball" and starts acting like a moron just so that the audience can learn a moral lesson, or so that the villains' plan of the week can get off the ground, or even just because.

My major complaint about Time Force is that I felt it wasted its premise. (You may recall I also listed this as a major complaint when I reviewed Power Rangers Turbo. Get used to it, because it's not going away anytime soon.) When I first heard about Time Force I imagined a crazy adventure through time, visiting different time periods. They even show this happening in the show's intro sequence, with clips of battles being fought in a jungle full of dinosaurs, and one in ancient Egypt.

This doesn't really happen in the show... there's some time stuff, of course. The villains and most of the heroes are from the future. (All except the Red Ranger, who is the original Time Force Red's distant ancestor.) The Rangers hang out in a clock tower, their powers and weapons have a clock theme to them... there are a few episodes that involve actual time travel, but these number in the single digits. For the most part it's just typical "Rangers saving the city" action. Honestly, I'm not really surprised... but still a bit disappointed.

In the end, though, Time Force is a worthy enough send-off to the Saban Entertainment era of Power Rangers, and a decent show.

KR Rating: [4] GOOD

PROS:	CONS:
+ Some really good story moments.	- Also some really bad story moments.
+ A lot of cool creative ideas.	- Wasted its premise.

Seven Things that Superhero Stories Need to STOP DOING

Between the glut of Marvel movies we've been getting, and my own masterplan to watch every terrible-to-almost-decent series of Power Rangers, I've been watching a whole lot of superhero stuff lately. Below are 7 things I really wish that superhero stories would stop doing.

Oh, and before I begin, I'd like to point out one thing - this isn't necessarily a negative review for any of the stories I mention below. A lot of them are good or even great... but that doesn't change the fact that there are some things they need to stop doing.

7. Secret Identities For Their Own Sake
Do note, I'm not complaining about secret identities as a concept. I totally get why there is a need, on occasion, to fight from the shadows. I get that.

This entry is about secret identities that seem to exist just because heroes are "supposed" to have secret identities. To give an example of what I mean, I'll tell you when I first started thinking about this one. It's when I watched the original Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers. I found myself asking, "why are the Rangers using secret identities?"

The usual explanation is to avoid the villains knowing who you are for fear of them going after your friends and family. Fine, except that Rita Repulsa and Lord Zedd already know who the Rangers are, and target them out of costume regularly. The first fight in the entire franchise is out of costume, in fact. There's no one to hide from and they know it.

Alternately, sometimes it's to avoid the heroes getting in trouble for vigilantism, such as is the case with Batman. Again, fine, except the Rangers aren't vigilantes. They fight monsters that no one else can handle, and there's nothing in the show to suggest that the rest of the world has anything but undying love for the Rangers.

Maybe there was a logical reason why the Rangers needed to hide who they were, but the show definitely never told us, unless you count "because Zordon said so" as a logical reason. It felt like it was only being done because "the rules" for superhero stories say you need to have a secret identity... and yeah, that's probably exactly why they did it. Mighty Morphin' wasn't a good show, what do you expect?

6. Heroes Never Kill
Before you say it, no, I'm not saying that every hero needs to be The Punisher. No one is saying that Batman and Superman need to start just executing random street toughs. ...but seriously, why hasn't Batman just killed the Joker already?

You're never going to rehabilitate the Joker. Even if I believed that it was possible to rehabilitate somebody like Joker, why does he deserve that chance? More pertinently, why is it our responsibility to give him that chance? Why is it the obligation of all the good and innocent people in the world to just keep turning the other cheek and agreeing to let ourselves be victimized over and over until Joker finally decides he's done killing people?

Hell, not only are you never going to rehabilitate Joker, you're never even going to actually keep him locked up, and you definitely should know this now that he's broken out for the gazillionth time. Every time you take Joker back to Arkham, you do so with full knowledge that he WILL - not might, WILL - break out and go kill more people, including... wait, including Jason Todd, the second Robin?! Then you saved the Joker's life when Jason Todd came back from the dead and tried to do your job for you?! WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU, BATMAN?!

5. Heroes Also Never Cheat
Obviously cheating is bad... in certain circumstances. If you're playing a game, yes, cheating is bad because it goes against the spirit of competition. If you're in school, yes, cheating is bad because cutting corners costs you the opportunity to learn and really only hurts yourself. In those circumstances, yes, cheating is bad.

But when you're a superhero facing off against evil villains... when losing means that you die, your friends and family die, everything you care about and everything you've fought for are wiped out forever... then why on Earth would you ever fight fair? And I do mean "EVER." I'm not just talking about cheating when you have to - if someone wants to kill everyone you love and you give them a fair chance to do so, even if it's because you're sure you'll win anyway, then you're a traitor. A person who isn't willing to cheat, is a person who clearly has nothing worth winning for.

4. All the Villains are Secretly Good
Hello there, Marvel. I see you've been doing this one a lot. Every villain is a well-intentioned extremist who wants to fix the world but is going about it in a bad way, even villains that were never actually like that in the comics. If you're not sure what I'm talking about, just watch Avengers: Infinity War. Notice how Thanos is a contemplative individual, who is dedicated to his cause of trying to curb overpopulation, is willing to make the same sacrifices he demands of everyone else, and who sheds real tears for those who've fallen at his hands? Yeah, in the comics... he's trying to impress a chick, and he cares nothing for what happens along the way or who it happens to.

That's not to say that I don't enjoy this kind of villain every now and then. I really liked Movie Thanos, I did! But it shouldn't be every single villain ever. From a storytelling perspective, it's boring to see the same villain archetypes presented in every single story. It also hinders my enjoyment of a work when I find myself feeling that the bad guy's arguments are making more sense to me than the good guy's are. From a moral perspective, it feels like you're training people - either intentionally or unintentionally - to think that this is what evil looks like, especially when you combine this with...

3. Heroes Save the World (But Don't Fix It)
I mentioned Infinity War already, so I'll keep going from there. I talked about how complex and sympathetic Thanos is in the movie, but the Avengers... well, they're the opposite. They have no counter-argument to anything Thanos says, and no better plan for how to deal with the real, serious problem he's taking on. The closest anyone comes is Gamora, whose entire argument consists of one line and who is instantly silenced afterward. The Avengers themselves have no motivation beyond "we got hurt and now we're pissy."

(And before you say it, yes, I realize that this is exactly what Marvel was going for and I'm sure the next Avengers movie is going to build more on it. Again, I'm not trying to criticize individual movies, but rather to make a point.)

This is something TV Tropes refers to as "Villains Act, Heroes React". It doesn't even just apply to superhero stories, or even just to movies. In Grand Theft Auto 4 Niko Bellic, the murderous criminal, comes across as a veritable saint because all he does is in response to things other, worse people did to him first.

The short version is: it's easy to look wise and heroic when all you ever do is thwart the stuff everyone else tries to do. Everything in the world has flaws. Every grand plan has sacrifices to be made, and every creation has imperfections. Trying to make a real change in the world means losing your purity and risking being seen as the villain. It's much easier, and makes you look so much wiser and braver, to just point out and attack everyone else's flaws. This isn't heroism, it's sophistry.

2. Evil is Mindlessly Destructive
...and hates music and fun, and wants to kill everybody because smiles piss them off. This sort of black-and-white morality is one of the biggest problems with superhero stories.

"But wait!" I hear you screaming. "You just talked about how you hate superhero stories trying to have conflicted and complex villains! You don't know what you want!"

Except the issue above wasn't really about villains being too complex or interesting, it's about superhero stories presenting "trying to fix problems" as being something that evil people do.

Furthermore, this point and the two above it aren't actually mutually exclusive. Quite often they're brought together and it makes all three of them exponentially worse. The villain is doing what they do because they believe it's right, except they're also a ludicrous, black-hat pantomime villain who kills for fun so they're impossible to take seriously, AND the hero has absolutely no counter argument or better plan which makes them look stupid and lazy.

So, again... from a story perspective everyone involved looks like a bunch of morons, and from a moral perspective it feels like you're training people to think this is what evil looks like, and conditioning them to ignore any less overtly destructive forms of evil, like greed.

1. Trying to Justify All the Above
When I reviewed Pokémon Black and White Versions I talked about the villains, and how I always understood that pokéballs were a seriously messed up concept, but that it didn't really irritate me until they brought it up. Well, this is basically the same thing.

Every point that I've complained about here has a reason why it's done that way.

Evil is mindlessly destructive so that we don't get confused about who the bad guys are supposed to be, and because we want to see a struggle with lots at stake.

Heroes save the world but don't fix it because making huge changes to the status quo of your world makes it more difficult to make a serialized story.

Villains have sympathetic motives because it makes them more compelling.

Heroes don't cheat because writers don't want to encourage kids that read comic books to think "if Superman cheated to beat Lex Luthor, then I can cheat to pass my test!"

Heroes don't kill because you don't want to lose your villains.

Heroes have secret identities because... okay, this one never entirely made sense.

The point I'm making here is that, while I'd like to see more stories that are willing to push the boundaries and challenge the status quo, I totally get why they do these things so much. I can accept that this is just how stories are written... until the writers themselves bring it up, only to have all of their arguments be logical fallacies, poorly argued, or both. If you have nothing to say, just don't bring it up.