KyuuRanger year in review: Were we too harsh?

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Re: KyuuRanger year in review: Were we too harsh?

Post by Catastrophe »

takenoko wrote: Thu Feb 08, 2018 5:50 pm
Mojikara wrote: Thu Feb 08, 2018 5:02 pm I know this is somewhat off-topic, but if I'm correct, the staff at TV-N was also pretty harsh on Ex-Aid, even though it was extremely popular with most of the forum members here (myself included).
I don't really remember how the other staff members felt about it, so just speaking for myself, I hated Ex-Aid. Or rather, I hated it, loved it, then hated it again. I've seen people in other chats say that they loved it, but I honestly didn't get it.
This is my thought as well. Ex-Aid is plagued by poor writing and shitty end game pacing. It’s propped up by the fact that Ghost was rubbish.

Kyu suffers from some of the same issues. Poor writing in places and wasteful characters.
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Re: KyuuRanger year in review: Were we too harsh?

Post by ViRGE »

Final verdict: no we weren't too harsh.

Pros:
  • Space!
  • PimpCommander
  • Balance
  • Octopussy's personality changing every time she came back
  • Tsurugi (even if he couldn't keep his damned shirt on). And his verbal tick/catch phrase wasn't actually all that bad
  • The Dark Naaga arc
  • The Orion arc (hell, let's just say everything in the 20s other than the clip show)
  • Episode 7 v4.1
  • That Toei somehow let Kyuutama Dancing v1 out in the first place, despite the obvious problem of having repeated hip thrusts in a dance
Cons:
  • Lucky!
  • That Kyuuranger didn't actually spend more than a handful of episodes on worlds that were actually alien in some fashion
  • Too many rangers meant that most of the characters were underdeveloped
  • I'm not going to say that suit characters are wholly inappropriate (see: Balance), but it really doesn't help matters that they can't emote like the humans can. So this ended up being a series with the normal number of face actors, and then a bunch of gimped actors
  • Any time Stinger sung
  • That the plot thread of Don Armage hiding the existence of Tsurugi and that Earth used to be more advanced was almost immediately dropped
  • Garou after episode 1
  • The villains in general. They were poorly defined and, outside of the one that corrupted Naaga, didn't do much that ended up memorable
  • But especially Don Armage himself. This was yet another year where the Big Bad did plenty of evil, but for no discernible reason. "I want to rule the world" can work, but the Big Bad better be damn charismatic and appear frequently to pull it off
  • That Octopussy came back two times too many
  • The mecha. 9 of the 12 Kyuurangers were technically just limbs for Red and Purple. And even "limbs" is being generous since they mostly just filled ball-shaped holes in the body.
Ultimately the series isn't as bad as Ninninger, which sets the low bar for a bad modern Sentai, but it's certainly down there. What saves the series is that it had some nice arcs in the middle; some good highs. But it's equally damned by all of the arcs that sputtered (Prince Lucky), and the general problems listed above. Whereas Jyuohger was mediocre all the way through, Kyuuranger is a mediocre series on average.
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Re: KyuuRanger year in review: Were we too harsh?

Post by takenoko »

I dunno, I'd argue Ninninger is the stronger Sentai if you ignore the red. Sure, both reds are annoying, but the individual Ninningers had actual character episodes and Toei still had a budget for them to interact with other people. Ninnin Dad was good, he had some emotional moments. Nagi and Kasumi were awesome characters in their own right. We learned from blue that British people bang their mowers. And the best part is a consistent villain (despite the fact that most other people thought he was a girl for most the show). I mean, yeah a lot of the commanders after Gabi were pretty much crap, but Kyuuemon really stole the show by being a good villain, up till his weird last minute redemptive arc.
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Re: KyuuRanger year in review: Were we too harsh?

Post by ViRGE »

Red is the main character though, especially in a modern Sentai. So ignoring the Reds is like saying "the food at the restaurant was terrible, but at least the decor was lovely." It can be a true statement, but it also is a pretty large leap to ignore the primary attributes to begin with.
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Re: KyuuRanger year in review: Were we too harsh?

Post by takenoko »

I know it's a pretty big ask, but I'd rather take a series where the side characters were interesting over ones that didn't interest me. The KyuuRangers really didn't work for me, but I know it works for others.
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Re: KyuuRanger year in review: Were we too harsh?

Post by Kuchiri »

The main problems with a majority of sentai post Kyoryu is the fact that we are watching Ranger Red and his amazing friends. Toqger is the only one that at least had great character building for the whole team and it wasn't just the Right show. Ninnin was just boring for what could've been a great ninja season... what's sad is I actually enjoyed a couple of episodes of Ninja Steel. That's more I can say than Ninnin.

I loved the concept of KyuuRanger, I wished everyone had more of a story. Maybe... what if they did the 10-man team again and had more episodes that focused on duos. I felt the strongest episodes of Kyuu were the episdoes that focused on two of the non-reds. Such as the Balance and Naaga episodes, the Stinger and Koguma episodes, the Stinger and Champ episodes. I mean have Red be the big good guy and give him his solo episodes like in most Sentai. Hell have him be the 3rd wheel on the focused episodes. Maybe work extremely hard on the plot and maybe a Blue/Pink episode halfway through the seasons have two reveals for those characters that was hinted at with a Blue/Green episode and a Yellow/Pink episode.

The last five years of Sentai is the reason why I'm excited for LupVsPat. We have to get more story developments from having two reds. Maybe they will have Blue/Green and Yellow/pink episodes too.
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