LupinRanger VS PatRanger series discussion (Spoilers)

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LupinRanger VS PatRanger series discussion (Spoilers)

Post by takenoko »

Vote in the poll: viewtopic.php?f=240&t=22732

What did you think of the series?
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Re: LupinRanger VS PatRanger series discussion (Spoilers)

Post by Lunagel »

Overall, I enjoyed the series. Not the best but decidedly not the worst, and definitely pulled Sentai out of the slump it's been in for the past few years.

Characters were memorable, enjoyable and clearly had a great rapport with the other actors. I think most everyone got a focus episode with every other ranger? Didn't keep beating the Reds over our head every single episode so that was nice.

Villains were a bit lackluster. I kinda wish they had more backstory or maybe a more involved reason to take over the Earth? I will, however, defend Dogranio's "I wanted it so I took it" to my dying breath. Honestly it's kinda perfect. He's a gangster, he wants it, he takes it. I don't think he really needs a deeper reason than that, as-is makes complete sense and just reinforces his nature.

Fights/Mechs we see some behind-the-scenes wrangling as there were the power-ups that went all to the Lupins instead of being shared equally. Clearly the Lupins were more popular but what did they really expect? Zenigata's never going to be more popular than Lupin.

On the whole, it was a new, unique concept for sentai and while I won't say it was perfect, it was enjoyable and quite a few episodes really stood out (haunted house, aerobics, dewgong manatee, Christmas). Ultimately it had a lot of heart and a lot of style and I'd definitely recommend it to anyone who hasn't seen it. A very solid 4/5 from me.
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Re: LupinRanger VS PatRanger series discussion (Spoilers)

Post by takenoko »

I thought it was a good ass Sentai. Like Luna said, all the characters were great and they actually had good interactions with each other. I would have liked to have seen them go further in some of those relationships (and maybe less with the Sakuya/Umika thing), but overall these characters are a breath of fresh air after the last 3 years.

Props to Komura Junko for honing her craft. It's only been two years since Jyuohger, but really, can you name any significant character traits for the Jyuohgers, or recall any character interactions on the same level as LuPat?

Poor Ganglars, you guys were just kind of there. Maybe the series could have used a little less Ganglar action and just had some episodes where the Lupins and Pats just really antagonized each other without the monsters getting in the way.

But I have no significant complaints about the series. At heart, anything I complain about stems from wanting more time and development with the heroes, which is a good thing. And the series ended on a good ass finale too, which is always impressive when they can pull it off.
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Re: LupinRanger VS PatRanger series discussion (Spoilers)

Post by BreadToku »

I don't think there's many issues or positives that haven't been brought up and discussed over the many episode threads again and again.

I will say this about the merchandise stuff one last time. Has anything like that ever happened before in these shows? It was kind of surprisingly blatant, as even little kids would easily recognise that the toys weren't going to who they are clearly made for. (Super Lupin X has a giant police badge on his chest for pete's sake). Because of that, I severly doubt it helped the toy sales any bit anyway.

I'm just curious because I can't think of any other instance where a higher-up or marketing decision had this much visible and obvious influence on a toku show, other than the extreme example of Kamen Rider Hibiki. Or Blade changing theme songs(?).

Anyhow, the characters are the heart of the show, and the action and cheography were a consistently amazing high point. Maybe it's hoping for too much that next season will give us lots of impressive swordfighting, maybe not quite on par with LVSP but still exceptional? Well, one can hope.
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Re: LupinRanger VS PatRanger series discussion (Spoilers)

Post by ViRGE »

Now that the series is over, this is a post I've been looking forward to writing for a while now. Both to praise Lupin VS Pat for what it did well, and illuminate where the show struggled.

Plot & Characters

On the whole, the concept of a VS series for a whole season proved to be an interesting one. I don't think it worked without a hitch, but it definitely gave Sentai a shot in the arm. Having opposing teams meant that stories could naturally focus on each group, without the need to artificially break up a larger group (ala Kyuuranger). And while the amount of fighting between the groups was low since the focus was always first and foremost on getting rid of the MOTW, that it also didn't turn into Kamen Rider is in my book a benefit.

However the 6th ranger concept suffered badly for it. Noel has character problems period, but in particular the series tried and failed to split one 6th over two teams. Instead he was a Lupin with an incredibly odd level of interaction with the Pats, and this didn't serve the plot well. Maybe the series needed two 6ths (siblings/twins) so that each could have one?

I would really have liked to see the two teams work together more often. The series gave us the VSX robo just half-way in, and then it had to continuously find reasons to keep the teams apart. I still believe the series would have been better served by having the two teams come together as a single team at the half-way point, essentially dropping the VS and having them intentionally work together towards their common goal. Instead the VS aspect got dragged out to the absolute end.

The greatest strength of the series is definitely its characters. The core 6 are all well written, and while the Pats may have had their personality quirks amped up a bit too much, it still worked in the end. Equally important, if not more so, is that the casting on the 7 rangers was all excellent. They're all good, charismatic actors, and it came through in their performances. Even Noel, despite the character's flaws, was played by someone with a clear knack; and casting someone who can do some actual stunts (parkour) was a fantastic touch.

In fact in a lot of ways they outpaced other parts of the show itself. Which meant a whole lot of the show was carried by the characters instead of the plot, the villains, etc. The show greatly benefits from strong characters, but when the rest of the show can't keep up, their greatness makes those other parts look awkward.

Speaking about the plot itself, I could probably write a small book here. But instead I'll keep it short and go with this: this show ran out of steam at the half-way point, and I'm not sure it's accurate to say it ever fully recovered. The first half of the series kept us busy enough, introducing the characters, the villains, the big goals, the new toys, the 6th ranger, etc. It's not the strongest first-half of a series, but it was good enough. But then we hit episode 30, and boy did things go off the rails. Admittedly, the Sentai 30s is practically a trope in and of itself, but this one was especially bad.

For reasons that are clearly tied to behind-the-scenes issues, Lupin VS Pat dropped the ball hard starting at episode 30. Not only did the Lupins start getting a clearly outsized proportion of the attention, but the stories themselves just started going nowhere. Worse, Noel's story outright ground to a halt and never recovered. The character never evolved beyond the slightly enigmatic 6th ranger. I don't know if there was more planned that they never got to, if they suddenly decided to take his character in a different direction, or what. But what i do know is that if it wasn't for the strength of the characters themselves, there's a good chance this show would have flatlined by about 36.

Part of the struggle here, I feel, is because of the villains. Now to be clear, these are far from the worst villains in Sentai (that honor might go to Kyuuranger); and in fact I'll give the writers credit for the basic schtick behind Dogranio. Having the series essentially start at the peak of his criminal empire was a good touch. Making him a mafia don who has done it all and is looking to find a successor and retire was just thick enough of a characterization to make it work. It was a very functional way to explain why he wasn't involved in the MOTW antics or particularly bothered by his underlings losing - and why he didn't just immediately clobber the Rangers - which is something a lot of other Sentai series have struggled with. But it also means that there wasn't much build up around him going into the finale. And worse, this backstory doesn't help out the rest of the Ganglars. Destra and Gauche were just stock Sentai generals; the strong man and the mad scientist.

A special shout-out here goes to Zamigo, who despite how cool the character should have been, was a total waste. Despite being the critical element that kicked off the Lupin side of the story, he accomplished nothing during the series itself. He was the Lupin's big bad, and yet all he did was taunt them a few times throughout the series until he was finally defeated. Giving the Lupins their own big bad was a reasonable choice, but if he was going to be as absent as the Don, he needed an equally good backstory that could justify it.

I also want to quickly touch upon Kogure, as his little arc was quite weird. I can only assume that the writers had a more sinister backstory planned for him; the entire first half of the series he was the mysterious butler that somehow was always one step ahead of the Lupins and seemed to be orchestrating a plan of his own. Instead we find out that he's actually a non-human who is human in everything but name, and that he's really loyal to Arsène Lupin? He was a far more interesting character at the start of the show than he was at the end, that's for sure.

Action & Mecha

I like that the show didn't just experiment with the basic plot concept with the VS series, but also experimented with the action as well. Like the VS concept as a whole, not everything landed. But I think more on the action side did land, which isn't too surprising since Toei continues to excel at the action parts of Toku.

The long takes, first person camera shots, and frantic handicam fight scenes were by and large done well. And they were a nice way to mix up the action by not just changing the choreography, but changing how we viewed the choreography. I do feel like Toei needs to a bit of a better job matching the handicam's colors to their regular cameras (lighting/saturation is different), but past that I have no complaints.

The direction they took on the mecha CGI was also quite interesting. This season was without a doubt the best mecha CGI the show has ever offered, hands down. There are several instances here where I outright can't tell if I'm looking at a model, a guy in a suit, or CGI, even though I know all 3 are being used at the same time. And even when Toei went pure CGI, at times it came damned close to looking like a guy in a suit. The use of what I'm assuming is physically based rendering worked really well here.

However there was very clearly a trade-off here: quality vs. quantity. I can count on my hand the number of times where Toei brought their A-game: the VS vehicle fight in episode 2, the first fights for Lupin Kaiser and Pat Kaiser, the first X Emperor fight, the first appearance of Good Feeling VSX, and Lupin fight against the Don. Toei did not bring their CGI A-game the rest of the time for what I can only assume are cost reasons, which is why we never got a second VS vehicle fight or mecha fights with as equally extensive CGI. The worst offender here is VSX: it was only used 3 times, and each and every time they reused the same fight animations. It was essentially the same fight 3 times over, with each version proceeding in a slightly different order, and Toei removing explosions or the like so that it wasn't literally the same clips. The original VSX fight was really damn pretty, and for the first time ever Toei made a cluster robo fight fast-paced and dynamic. But I'm not sure it was worth it if it meant they'd have to recycle those animations for the rest of the series.

Past that, the mecha designs in general were interesting. Limiting everything other than VSX to being a 3/4 part robo avoided a lot of the cluster issues in past series. And in particular. giving each vehicle a dedicated spot just works a lot better than Kyuurangers' poorly executed attempt at allowing vehicles to freely switch between being hands or feet; the robos look better and it allows for more suit fighting. However making the two teams share a single body robbed us of a Lupin Kaiser vs. Pat Kaiser fight, or even a team-up for that matter. I'm left to wonder if it would have been better for each team to get their own robo later on, so that the writers wouldn't have to keep writing out one team.

And while not specifically action related, as a grab bag item I want to throw in a shout out to the music of the series. Lupin VS Pat had a lot of good music tracks; the OP was as catchy as all hell, the Lupin BGM was perfect, and the Pats had an excellent insert song (Searching For Truth) that I really wish we got to hear more often.

Final Thoughts

On the whole, Lupin VS Pat was an enjoyable series, and a badly needed recovery from the Ninnin/Jyuoh/Kyuu tailspin of the previous 3 years. It did a lot of things well, and it also stumbled at points. More than anything else, I feel like it's clearly demonstrated the importance of well-written, well-acted characters. The show was carried by its characters, and while this isn't really desirable, bad characters would have sunk the series even if everything else was great. Lupin VS Pat keenly avoided retreading the same character mistakes that made its predecessors so painful to watch at times.

I just wish the plot was a bit stronger and that the show had ended on a better finale. While emotionally satisfying, the plot holes and Noel's character arc crashing and burning robbed the show of the epic finale it deserved.
Last edited by ViRGE on Sat Feb 16, 2019 12:56 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: LupinRanger VS PatRanger series discussion (Spoilers)

Post by Catastrophe »

I'm going to stick with a 3/5. Not horrible, but not the greatest. Had some nice character episodes here and there, but a lot of it was uninteresting.

The characters are a mixed bag. Keiichiro is an excellent red, getting a mix of hotblooded and serious. The others range from bland to offensive. Noel is worst on the heroes side, being intentionally obtuse for no real reason and being a show off at the same time. Hilltop is also criminally underused.

The worst thing for me personally, was how underdeveloped the Ganglars were. One of the better things about Sentai is that the antagonists are usually fairly interesting characters (Deboss and Shadow Line for example). The Ganglars have no real contribution to the story and rarely take the field. Hell, there aren't any generals that the Red rivals. Zamigo is the worst offender by far. For all his importance, he does fuck all, apart from messing with Destra that one time for the hell of it.
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Re: LupinRanger VS PatRanger series discussion (Spoilers)

Post by takenoko »

>I don't think it worked without a hitch, but it definitely give Sentai a shot in the arm.

Did it though? One of LVSP's strengths is that it just had better characters and stories than previous years. Maybe Pats couldn't stand on their own, but a standalone Lupin story probably would have worked almost just as well.

>However the 6th ranger concept suffered badly for it.

Ummm actually, he's technically the 7th ranger.

>Instead he was a Lupin with an incredibly odd level of interaction with the Pats, and this didn't serve the plot well. Maybe the series needed two 6ths (siblings/twins) so that each could have one?

Go-On Wings? But yeah, Noel's resolution with the Pats was frustratingly shallow.

>I would really have liked to see the two teams work together more often.

Ditto!

>The greatest strength of the series is definitely its characters. The core 6 are all well written, and while the Pats may have had their personality quirks amped up a bit too much, it still worked in the end. Equally important, if not more so, is that the casting on the 7 rangers was all excellent. They're all good, charismatic actors, and it came through in their performances.

Not to beat a dead horse, but it would have been cool if the Pats were used more often. I wanted to see Tsukasa do more cool things, but by the last third of the story, she was just really a background character. Sakuya's dumb thing with Umika doesn't ever get addressed in the end either. In this aspect, this stuff felt rushed and short changed to focus on Kei and Kairi's relationship.

> but the stories themselves just started going nowhere.

Hmmm, in what way? Not to dispute you, I just genuinely don't remember the details.

>Worse, Noel's story outright ground to a halt and never recovered.

It really feels like they didn't ever intend to reveal it, so they just made something up at the last moment.

>I also want to quickly touch upon Kogure, as his little arc was quite weird. I can only assume that the writers had a more sinister backstory planned for him;

LOL, I'll never understand the Kogure being evil thing. It always felt like a red herring to me.

>I like that the show didn't just experiment with the basic plot concept with the VS series, but also experimented with the action as well. Like the VS concept as a whole, not everything landed. But I think more on the action side did land, which isn't too surprising since Toei continues to excel at the action parts of Toku.

The show was flashy as shit, and some of it worked really well!

>I feel like it's clearly demonstrated the importance of well-written, well-acted characters.

Amen to that
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Re: LupinRanger VS PatRanger series discussion (Spoilers)

Post by ViRGE »

takenoko wrote: Fri Feb 15, 2019 5:48 pm >I don't think it worked without a hitch, but it definitely give Sentai a shot in the arm.

Did it though? One of LVSP's strengths is that it just had better characters and stories than previous years. Maybe Pats couldn't stand on their own, but a standalone Lupin story probably would have worked almost just as well.
I don't know. Maybe? The Lupins definitely got more focus. But I also think it was interesting having these two distinct (yet equal) teams. It was very fresh.
>However the 6th ranger concept suffered badly for it.

Ummm actually, he's technically the 7th ranger.
You know damn well what I mean! :P The name of the trope itself is the 6th Ranger.
>Instead he was a Lupin with an incredibly odd level of interaction with the Pats, and this didn't serve the plot well. Maybe the series needed two 6ths (siblings/twins) so that each could have one?

Go-On Wings? But yeah, Noel's resolution with the Pats was frustratingly shallow.
The Wings were definitely what I was thinking of. But instead of having them as their own group, have each side get one. So you get siblings with a rivalry, or you do twins so that you only need one actor, etc. As it is, trying to share one person didn't work, especially as he become a de facto Lupin.
>The greatest strength of the series is definitely its characters. The core 6 are all well written, and while the Pats may have had their personality quirks amped up a bit too much, it still worked in the end. Equally important, if not more so, is that the casting on the 7 rangers was all excellent. They're all good, charismatic actors, and it came through in their performances.

Not to beat a dead horse, but it would have been cool if the Pats were used more often. I wanted to see Tsukasa do more cool things, but by the last third of the story, she was just really a background character. Sakuya's dumb thing with Umika doesn't ever get addressed in the end either. In this aspect, this stuff felt rushed and short changed to focus on Kei and Kairi's relationship.
Nah, you aren't beating a dead horse. Especially starting at episode 30, the Pats really got thrown off to the side.

After the obligatory VS movie, it makes me wonder who (if anyone) we see come back. I feel like their popularity means we're more likely to see a Lupin than a Pat for the 50th anniversary, etc.
> but the stories themselves just started going nowhere.

Hmmm, in what way? Not to dispute you, I just genuinely don't remember the details.
After VSX, and particularly after 30, the show didn't have any more big plot points to work on for a while. They couldn't bring the two teams together, the Ganglars were never expanded upon, we had already established the core characteristics of the 7 heroes, etc. PatKaiser went missing for a good while, and the Lupins got some new toys. That's about it.
>I also want to quickly touch upon Kogure, as his little arc was quite weird. I can only assume that the writers had a more sinister backstory planned for him;

LOL, I'll never understand the Kogure being evil thing. It always felt like a red herring to me.
They changed his personality after 30. Prior to that he was this sneaky butler that was obviously hiding things, appeared out of nowhere, and was a master of disguise for no good reason. Even he and Noel were at odds, such as when he loaned Magic to Noel (despite the fact that it was a Dial Fighter). Then all of a sudden he became less threatening and more comedic. The show never really tried to reconcile the two personalities.
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Re: LupinRanger VS PatRanger series discussion (Spoilers)

Post by takenoko »

Hmm, I know Kogure kept things secret, but I always figured that as a handler, he was just acting on the "need-to-know" premise. After all, the lupins were just random people picked off the street, literally. You can probably trust their motivations, but can you totally trust any stranger with all your dire secrets at first?

I thought there was a big Kogure episode where he spills the beans. Maybe the episode where hew as split into multiple personalities? I always figured that once the truth was out, there wasn't much point to dragging out the dramatic tension there since it wasn't really functionally there any longer.
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Re: LupinRanger VS PatRanger series discussion (Spoilers)

Post by Lunagel »

Still mad there was no Hilltop focus episode
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Re: LupinRanger VS PatRanger series discussion (Spoilers)

Post by takenoko »

Poor Hilltop. Can't say I'm surprised, but did they decide to give him a small part because he's a foreigner, or did they give the role to a foreigner expecting it to be a small part?

I remember three things about Hilltop. He was confused for Eddie Murphy. He gave the order to execute Dogranio with the Lupins inside. And he got the shit beaten out of him when he was carrying a VS vehicle one time.

What would this role have been instead if a Japanese guy had been put there, I wonder?
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Re: LupinRanger VS PatRanger series discussion (Spoilers)

Post by Mandalori »

He would pilot one of the mecha all by himself, like in Jetman.
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Re: LupinRanger VS PatRanger series discussion (Spoilers)

Post by ViRGE »

takenoko wrote: Sat Feb 16, 2019 1:50 am What would this role have been instead if a Japanese guy had been put there, I wonder?
I'm not sure it would be any different? When's the last time a mentor (who wasn't a ranger) had a real focus episode? Shinkenger?
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Re: LupinRanger VS PatRanger series discussion (Spoilers)

Post by takenoko »

Shinkenger 10 Years After?!
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Re: LupinRanger VS PatRanger series discussion (Spoilers)

Post by Dante ShadowRoadz »

I kinda wish there'd been more to the whole Arsene Lupin aspect of things than they went with. Making him this (apparently immortal) being watching over a whole race of non-humans both does and doesn't fit the phantom thief mythos for him. Also we never got any straightforward answers on why there was such a disparity between some of the Collection pieces like the Strikers and Magnum versus all the other single powered objects, or what/why there were differences between the pieces the Ganglars were able to use versus the human. I get the feeling they were trying to go somewhere with that initially, but then they fizzled out and just made Noel able to modify them. Between that and the changes they made to whatever their intentions were with Kogure, it felt like they had more grandiose aspirations for the season than they were able to make happen.

Also the bit with Jackpot Striker at the end just feels so damn left field, I legitimately forgot about him since the movie and they never even cover that he left or why, let alone why they'd need a whole new trio of thieves to track him down.

Overall I liked it, but my one issue was that the pacing somehow felt very off with a lot of the series. Like aside from Noel showing up there weren't any landmark segments to the story's arc progression and I almost had to do a double-take when I realized we'd gone 40 some episodes without any real escalation or development in tone.
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