King-Ohger Series Discussion and Poll

[takenoko]

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[TokuGeek1999]

Just to let you know episode 50 is a special one that will have Boonboomger.

[Ruffinn Kein]

We've still got a bit of the story left. But I've really loved it. It definitely isn't Donbrothers(in terms of the human dramas and complexities), but it brings its own charms and complexities to the table which I really enjoyed. Also, this season taught me a lot of things related to politics. Who knew a kids show would tackle something this complicated? Also, a team of kings... This was tackled better than expected. Everyone had a country to lead, something to protect, something bigger than themselves on the line. Not every character was equally well-written or likable (looking at you Yanma), but overall, it has been fun. And this show made me start tearing up from episode 40. And every episode since that one, I was sad thinking... "It's coming to an end." This is all I have to say without going too much into the details.

[TheDarkApprentice]

I am actually going to miss this series when it ends. I have loved every single episode. The writing was excellent, the characters has their quirks but they are all enjoyable and from the start the King-Ohger mecha looked extremely powerful. I loved that robo since it first appeared in Donbros. I have loved the personal journeys of all these characters, they all developed in ways that i never expected and i am sad to see them go.

[HowlingSnail]

This last arc has been enjoyable, now I've finally caught up. But it's been a long slog to get here. I'm not going to miss King-Ohger, and I'm really looking forward to going back to relative normality with Boonboomger in 2 weeks. Dunno what it is about Toei and kings that makes terrible shows. Ohranger, Zi-O, and now this.

[takenoko]

>Ohranger, Zi-O, and now this.

Was Ohranger unpopular? As much of a mess as Zi-O was, that show was obviously bad at straddling the line between telling a story and nostalgia baiting the fans. Normally the story is anchored and circles around the grittier secondary Rider. But all I remember is Geiz decided that maybe he was friends with Zi-O, and that was his story arc

[Yaiba]

Ohranger had nothing to do with kings though. It's modern military using ancient hidden powers. Rumors was it was supposed to be darker themed but got more light-heated due to real world disasters happening, but as a kid watching it I didn't notice any of that and found it super epic and cool. It's still one of my favorite sentai.

As for King-Ohgers, when it hit the right spots it absolutely nailed it, like the first real team up at ep10, God King-Ohger with all the followers, the body swap and this final arc. These were super awesome and I loved every minutes of it. The actors were also very skilled and fun to watch. But there's also a lot of dragging out, especially in the last quarter with the Jesters because there's no MOTW you're just seeing them fighting the same monsters with the same powers over and over again. It got tiring fast.

I'd say it got some of the things very right and some just totally missed the spot. And I'm really glad it stuck to it's king-theme because I loved shows with medieval backdrops. One of my disappointment with Ryusoulger was it didn't do any knight-related stuff at all despite being knight-themed.

It was ambitious in its storytelling and overall I still enjoyed it very much. 4 from me.

[takenoko]

So I gave this series a 5. I feel like from a week to week perspective, I do a lot of nitpicking and complaining. But overall, I feel like the sum is greater than its parts. I very much appreciate the stories and themes that they attempt. And some of the writing can be very good at times (like that Himeno/Jeremie episode about death was surprisingly touching!)

It's also fun to look back and note how far the writer seeded some themes and ideas and storylines

I feel like the comparison to Game of Thrones very much was to the show's detriment. GoT is a show that's super expensive and has tons of compelling characters, that can uphold a compelling narrative when the focus is away from the main groups you care about

King doesn't have that luxury. Besides the rangers, we do have the aides, but only Morphonya matters among those guys. The rest are there, and have moments, but are functionally not really characters on their own. I really liked Suzume, and as a background schemer she's super fun. But then we get an episode about her, and it wasn't fun

On paper, what a group. Himeno with her style, Rita with their distant coolness, Kaguragi being a classical trickster. But what a series of halves. Gira never really sold me on his acting or his character (sorry!) and felt very much upstage by his much cooler and smarter brother. I feel like I should have liked Yanma and his relationship with Shiokara, but besides being a fun stereotype of a sort of macho coolness, there wasn't that much for me to bite into. Jeremie's storyline about saving Bugnarku, very neat from an empathizing with your enemy perspective, but I never really saw him as anything but glib with a shallow permanent smile on his face

Would I have given this series a 5 if Racles hadn't planned it all? Probably not, but I like a long game and feel like that sort of intricate planning deserves some acknowledgement.

Is it worth talking about the detour into Kyouryuuger land? I dunno, but we're a couple weeks out from the finale. It had its ups and downs, but I surprise myself in saying that I think I landed on a higher estimation of this series than I would have if you had asked me during the first or second arcs

[HowlingSnail]

>Ohranger, Zi-O, and now this.

Was Ohranger unpopular?

I have no idea. I just know I despised it when I watched it.

And I know it's nothing to do with kings. The name is though, hence why it fits coincidentally with the other 2 shows that I can't stand.

[Gokider]

>Ohranger, Zi-O, and now this.

And I know it's nothing to do with kings. The name is though, hence why it fits coincidentally with the other 2 shows that I can't stand.

That would be why there's the resemblance between KingRanger and Ohma Zi-O (with Power Rangers Zeo just adding irony).

[takenoko]

As of Feb 24, the day when the finale aired in Japan, the average is 4.25 with 12 votes

[zerferus]

I gave this season a 3 mostly because the main cast, especially Rita and Hymeno. I loved their interactions and personalities. Although the series had some interesting plot points they were sparsely introduced and developed. I feel that Gira being immortal was an afterthought and he never displayed any godly powers before or after this reveal. Yes, he survived a fall from a cliff after his first duel with his brother, but so did his brother in the second duel. He also almost died when the Cosmic Bug king teleported him to another world. He also summon the shugods to form the first big robot, but could also be because he ate Kuwagata's soul and they saw him as one of their own.

It's weird that in the first couple of episodes the show made it seem that one needed to be of royal blood to henshin, but later on we find out that Rita and Kaguraki weren't. For a while it seemed that Yanma was just an brilliant orphan boy until they revealed in the last 10-ish episodes that his father was the king and he runaway after his kingdom fell. Also, for the majority of the season we only learned how the Wrath of God affected Hymeno. There wasn't an episoded focused on the other characters dealing with that when children.

I also didn't liked that it was a sequel to Kyoryuger. At first I thought it would be revealed that this season was taking place in a children's book much like The Neverending story, but I'm okay with being in another world and Daigo even stated that there was a bigger villain than the Doboth Army so at least it makes sense. The problem is that it was never mentioned before the crossover that the populace where descendants of refugee from Earth. The Bugnarak where just humans that ate shugods soul until it was changed to natives from that planet. The mechas are also too different to see their correlation.

The villain is an "immortal" god. It's a just too powerful to be reasonable that it was defeated by a single sentai. At first it seems that Kyoryuger would have helped out, but even then it would only made sense if all other sentai joined the fight like they did against the Zangyack in Gokaiger. Besides that, I don't like how they made a weapon capable of killing an immortal being. Gekiranger dealt with similar plot in a more interesting way.

[Lunagel]

I gave it a 4. There were a lot of things that didn't work (the massive amount of green-screen/chromakey'd scenery mostly), but there was a lot that did. King-Ohger was very ambitious in its storytelling, especially in trying to do the whole thing off-Earth. If you stop looking at it as an adult and look solely at it as a child would, without noticing the frankly horrible greenscreen work, the sheer scale of the sets gives King possibly the best worldbuilding in all of sentai. This is what Kyuuranger should have been, a vast world full of unknowns and completely unlike Earth.

I'm going to compare it to another sentai here: DonBrothers. Despite (because of?) being the successor to DonBro, King is just about its mirror image. DonBro was a character-focused, primarily episodic series that didn't have much overarching story. King is a story-focused, almost filler-less series that doesn't have any stand-alone episodes. Taken as individual episodes, DonBro is probably more interesting, but taken as a whole story/series, King is clearly the winner. I will say though that a lot of this is thanks to the actors for King-Ohger. It's not easy acting on a greenscreen, especially for a whole year, but these guys were excellent. I think everyone can agree that Rita and Himeno basically stole the show a lot of the time, but the guys don't do too bad either.

Actually, thinking about it, I'm changing my vote to a 5. The stuff that didn't work was a technical/budget issue, and I don't think that should knock a whole point off of what was otherwise a pretty outstanding series.

[takenoko]

Wow, amazed you changed it to a 5

The comparison to DonBros is an interesting one for sure. Overall, I probably liked that one better than King, since the DonBros are arguably better characters who have stronger mini stories

Like as much as I liked Himeno and Rita, they were always the best as the quirkest side characters to whatever the main plot was. Himeno being sad about her parents and Rita become an idol for an episode, probably not the best character arcs? I guess we had an explanation for Sebastian and sort of a backstory for Morphonya, but the show was never about "What is Himeno or Rita's big character story?" Instead of getting a deep episode about Rita and Morphonya's relationship, we sorta get it, but it has to stand aside to be a part of this greater plot that we have to keep moving. No time to screw around when there's god to be killed

Meanwhile, the Donbros have a bunch of cool little story arcs. Momotarou and his relationship to Sonoi, Haruka with her manga, the dog guy and Sononi's budding love affair, Tsuyoshi and being the ultimate wife guy, but these were all plots that were in service of nothing but themselves. So when you finally got to the end of the series, I guess Sonoshi was the big bad, because he flicked some earwax at you and sucked up people with his vacuum?

And like Luna said, the CGi backgrounds allowed a lot of worldbuilding to happen. But as an adult, it was amazingly distracting, and I wish it just happened on a stage instead or outside or something. Like when they're in Ishabaana and they greenscreen a field. Just go outside! It looks less weird that way! Props to King for being an amazing experiment, but let's hope Vroomvroomger is a little more practical

Ultimately, did you guys like the weird robot arm cockpits? Watching the finale, and being reminded they were there, I can't really think of an episode that made them cool or fitting emotionally. Even in the finale when it was substituting for the mecha punch, it just seemed weird and gimmicky. Like just have the suit actor do the motion and have the robot mirror it at that point

[HowlingSnail]

Himeno is basically the only character I liked, and that's really because she had some funny lines. Everyone else I found incredibly annoying. Which is a shame, coming off Donbrothers, where basically everyone was great fun.

The green screen honestly makes it more distracting when they DO film in a real place. Like that Ishabana courtyard with a table and chairs they seemed so fond of in the 2nd half. Really I'm just looking forward to a return to normality next week.