Zyuranger the 1992 sentai that became the power rangers of
1993 the series is actually really different the 5 zyurangers are 3 knights a
princess and a prince from different tribes fighting Bandore a witch who hates
children and wants to make earth desolate –which is why she likes and lives on
the moon –she also bursts into song and dance several times as to her
minions-its funny and weird but that was the 90s
The zyurangers were put into suspension to guard against her
return after she almost wiped them and the dinosaurs out.
PRs plot is a lot more simplified –rita is a witch who wants
to conquer earth after being release from a space dumpster Zordon recuits 5
teenagers with attitude –personally I had enough drama in my teen years I don’t
know if I could deal with that too. And
the 5 man band fight evil
So here is the rub when I was watching zyuranger and power
ranger one after the other I noticed that there was so much more to zyuranger
(which is now subbed officially in English)
When comparing the episodes I found a lot more was in each zyuranger
episode than in the power ranger episode also Zyuranger deals mainly with
bandore attacking children –its part of her deal with the series true big bad
DAI SATAN who gave her the power –he was used as locar in mmrp. But each episode after the first couple
frequently have children in danger and it teaches lessons not just to kids but
also to the adults –one of the episodes show a kid how makes mistakes but runs
away from them because his mother is abusive to him making him less likely to
talk to her when he has a problem and that she is also at fault. But also a lot of the episodes have a lot
more to them several episodes in mmpr are actually 2 parters or have way more
significant. SO the best way to compare these 2 series is an out line of which
episodes actually did something important to the plot of the series that isn’t
just you normal monster of the week episode which both series have. There is one thing I will bring up first is
that there are several episodes in mmpr that were from much later in zyuranger
this was because they didn’t feature the 6th ranger which was brand
new for sentai at the time and could be put in but due to that some elements
were edited out and there are minor editing changes you can find when you watch
both –its worth doing. But lets begin
–the Power rangers first as they have fewer episodes that matter as much
The first major episode is the pilot they are GIVEN their
morphers and zords right off and fight off goldar and the putties –this episode
is made of bits from all over the series and the footage is reused so often its
kinda scary. Suficent to say that the
team comes together and win the 3rd episode the are given their
power weapons –indivitualized weapons for each character and combine to form a
Power blaster to finish off monsters before they grow, the 4th episode is actually one I
will bring up because it is possibly the actual second pilot of the series –I
don’t have a lot of evidence to this but it has no zordon or alpha in it –our
support team and features weird edition mistakes the pink ranger being greyed
out and the weapons of 4 of the rangers renamed –my theory is that after the
original pilot which is just that a low buget pilot this was made as a test
with the new actor for trini and since they didn’t have the sets all build it
was lower buget its also possible that they were testing if a pink ranger would
be ok –since she is the only one suffering from the grey out effect but the
episode is a basic plot to take out the ranger and has no major significants
other than these odd parts about it.
After this the next major episode is the 17th
were tommy the green ranger is introduced as an evil ranger brainwashed by rita
to be her secret weapon he can enter the command center with his power coin and
takes out zordons connection to this world this was actually a good ploy
cutting the rangers off from their mentor and trashing their command center and
disabling alpha –though temporary. For 5
episodes the rangers are actually on the defensive more so and scorpina a new
villain character is introduced as well.
And having the rangers lose a major fight and the megazord when goldar
scorpina and the green ranger all attack together during an eclips with drains
the megazord of its solar energy.
However the rangers recover figure out who the green ranger is and
zordon and the megazord return and they defeat tommy and the dragon zord rita
gives him control of and free him this gives them a 6th team member
and a new zord to combine with though tommy will not be in a lot of fights as
the green ranger footage is more limited why ill explain I a bit but as their
limited by there being few fights after his introduction where he is morphed
and fights he is usually off some where else and rita slows him down joining
the others by sending putties to fight him –it gets old quick. After this there
is are 3 episodes that go together 25-27 with the super clay that rita mines
while having her frankinstien monster attack the rangers at a party –the
monster is beaten but the super clay is used in the next episode to make
putties that are immune to the normal weapons of the team and duplicate when
shattered tommy and Jason go and get new weapons –which are then never used
again from a temple like structure guarded by titanus another zord. After they work together and get the weapons
and defeat the super putties the next episode is partly related using kims
spinning wheel-family heir loom –they makes a spinning wheel of destruction to
attack the rangers the rangers now can call on titanus and form the ultra
zord-this is not exactly a direct connection but its worth noting that this Is
continuity. That being said the next 2
episodes 28-29 is a clip show for most
of the second episode---rita summons 2 beings a monster named mutitas –and a
floating giant head call locar who powers him up and attack the city defeating
the zords and sending the rangers to the island of illusing to make them doubt
themselves and disappear. It’s a reason
to use stock footage-a hall mark of the early power ranger series to fill in
the episodes. They over come the
illusions and escape and form the ultra zord and destroy the monster but locar
escapes. At this point there is another
odd episode 30 which doesn’t feature tommy though he is in the opening and I
think actually goes after episode 35 as tommy wasn’t in the series at that
point it’s a standard plot of the week with a mystical artifact that is
destroyed so it can’t be used for evil.
The next episode that mattaers is 34-35 were tommy loses his green
ranger powers rita reveals that she has a candel that can transfer his power
back to her when she lights it and melts it down – this has the team try to get
it but goldar guards it and they send a monster that copies the apearnce of the
zords and they have to defend the city from it –unfortunatly the candel burns
down and tommy cant keep his powers or rita will get them giving them to Jason
who dons the dragon shield and has the dragon dagger now. Tommy basicly leaves the show at this point
until later the reason is as ive stated the 6th ranger in zyuranger
only had limited footage he left after a while as well so they had to take him
out some how this actually made tommy a fairly popular character with a lot of
the fans. At any rate we see Jason use
the armor in episodes 36-37 which is frequently refered to as the first
battlizer which I disagree with as battlizers are an American invention and
this is just not the same but the episodes are other wise your standard monster
of the week plot episodes 38 does have the first evil rangers team –putties
that just look like the rangers and a monster leading them and this is also a
standard for the series and evil rangers team –they actually do this 2 times
this season but we will get to that in a min. the next ones are episodes 39-40
doomsday rita brings her palace to earth and summons a war zord for goldar to
attack the city –she also sends all the people to another dimention to keep
them out of the way so she can find the rangers more easily –the rangers manage
to defeat cyclopsis with great difficulty but she destroys titanus and summons
back locar to reform and improve cyclopsis this leads into another fight were
the zords get trashed pieces cut off and they appear destroy and the rangers
abandon ship billy reveals that this was a security feature to get them back to
their hiding places to recharge –they manage with some difficulty to contact
zordon and teleport back to the command center and with alpha having hacked
ritas computer to get her spells and secrets found that Cyclops has a weakeness
and if they keep changing the modes of the megazord it will overload it
adapting system and allow them to defeat it which they do releasing the civilians
and tommy makes a cameo for the power ranger day that the rangers were invited
to –over all the episode would have served as a finally to the series but it
was so popular that it was pushed to keep going. They had a few episodes worth of footage from
episodes not yet used to make episodes 41 and 44 and they reused the footage
from the pudgy pig episode to make 42 and 45 was more stock footage and a clip
show, but at this point is were the episodes are diverent from the
zyurangers-the Japanese company was contacted to make Entirly new fight scenes
and monsters for the show which included episodes 43 and everything after 46-60
were new episodes that had no Japanese counter parts also things that were new
were that since the Japanese show wasn’t dictating what the footage contained
you would see the blue ranger wielding devices he built and the pink and green
rangers covering or concerned about each other in battle as they were in a
relation ship over all most of the episodes were good but stood on their own
the green ranger did return in return of an old friend which used a lot of
unused till that point footage and new zyu 2 footage as it became known and is
the last really significant set of episodes of the first season –the kids
parents are captured and ransomed for the power coins and billy gets
hypnotisted a recurring gag and steals the dragon dagger the kids have to fork
over the coins but are double crossed –not the best move –and they try a risky
temporary recharge of the dragon coin to give tommy his powers back it works
for a bit and he gets the coins and dagger back and his powers are temporarily
restored but they are said to be temporary and could fair a nice way to allow
for the green ranger not being in every episode of the zyu 2 footage as many
didn’t include him or the dragon zord –the only other interesting point is that
rita created another team of evil rangers who wore the putties belts and gloves
–other wise being the same but wielded the zyuranger weapons in their civilian
form –with the green ranger wielding the sword of darkness and a much shinier
gold armor-the zyu 2 footage has it looking much more worn and darkened. At any rate after the last episode with an
oyster monster and an under water battle the series first season ended. This lead to its second season that used the
zyu 2 footage for part of it but was mostly dai ranger and original footage
after that ill get into that in a later.
