Someone recommended Power Rangers RPM to me

[RespectTheIMD]

Said it was actually pretty mature and a surprisingly good show. Is she full of ****?

[Zelos_Zensation]

hmm. Looked it up, and considering it's a Power Rangers show, doesn't seem half bad. Has a completely different premise than other Power Rangers and the characters seem to have stuff going on. Might as well give it a shot.

[Pinflan]

She tells the truth. It's also legitimately funny.

[yusiko]

it tries to be as dark as a kids show can possibly be and that actually works for the show
it has alot of the same problems other power ranger seasons have but all in all its one of the if not the best season of power rangers. one that adults can enjoy with their kids.

for one it has on screen death
not many but characters that die stay dead. hell there is even blood in a scene but its only a little bit.

you know how power rangers usually have the rangers fighting to stop an evil being from taking over the world
well RPM takes place in a world where the bad guys have already won
the entire human population has been killed except for a few humans who were made into slaves.
the world is a barren wasteland where plant life cant grow
the only save haven is the dome city of koren which is sealed inside of an impenetrable dome and the last human city.
naturally the monsters want to destroy koren and finally wipe out the the few humans that remain alive inside the dome.

similar to how in time force had the pink ranger be the main character this series has the black ranger be the series protagonist

[STT_Zidane]

Recommend yourself

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tdtfm9gpBbY

[Mega Mana]

Episodes 10 & 11 are easily in my top ten episodes for the entire series, probably top 5.

[Pilaf555]

Yeah, RPM is worth a watch. Its a really good season for Power Rangers. Its one of my favorite seasons besides MMPR, Time Force, and In Space.

[Lord Seth]

I recommend checking it out. It's my favorite season of the show.

It's really sad to see that we went from a season this good to a season as weak as Samurai...

[yusiko]

im surprised at how much people dont like samurai
i mean ive never seen samurai but i hear its pretty much a shot for shot remake of samurai sentai shinkenger

and shinkenger was great
but maybe samurai just couldnt capture the same charm shinkenger had.

also RPM is nothing like its super sentai counterpart
it was a weak sentai season and a great power ranger season

[EternalNether]

im surprised at how much people dont like samurai
i mean ive never seen samurai but i hear its pretty much a shot for shot remake of samurai sentai shinkenger

and shinkenger was great
but maybe samurai just couldnt capture the same charm shinkenger had.

also RPM is nothing like its super sentai counterpart
it was a weak sentai season and a great power ranger season

I think the hate for Samurai mostly comes from the older audience that was a fan of RPM's style. Samurai isn't necessarily bad, but it is definitely trying to appeal to the younger crowd, and rightfully so, since it's on Nickelodeon. I haven't been keeping up with it much, though.

[Mega Mana]

This is a bit of a rage post on Samurai, so feel free to skip.

im surprised at how much people dont like samurai
i mean ive never seen samurai but i hear its pretty much a shot for shot remake of samurai sentai shinkenger

and shinkenger was great
but maybe samurai just couldnt capture the same charm shinkenger had.

also RPM is nothing like its super sentai counterpart
it was a weak sentai season and a great power ranger season

I can't speak for the Samurai-only crowd because I watched all of Shinkenger and loved it, but for me watching Samurai is just a chore. It's not that everything is a shot-for-shot remake of Shinkenger. I wouldn't mind that if it were completely true. Samurai removes most of the things that made Shinkenger more fun than average.

Samurai's actors and characters are the most wooden and vanilla I've ever seen in Power Rangers. Hector David Jr. is the best with what he's got, but it's helped that he's got a fun character with at least some personality. Jaden is leader. Blue's serious business. Yellow's clumsy and lacks confidence. Pink... can't cook? Everyone's just extremely toned down from the Sentai counterparts, especially Mike and Not-Ryuunosuke. Hell, I can't help thinking Blue and Pink hate being there every time they're on screen. Mike's at least having fun.

Can't completely fault them though for bad acting when the writing's the cheesiest ever. And Mentor Jii... *facepalm*

If Saban was trying to recapture the original spirit of MMPR, which itself was hokey, they did it all wrong: the actors aren't marvelous fighters, the plots are so strictly tied to the Sentai that there's no new creativity, half the cast seems to hate it (where the original team always seemed to be having a blast), Bulk & Spike's time on the show fails because they never ever interact with the others (even if it often is the best two minutes of every episode), and Ron Wasserman cannot save them.

The problem with Samurai is not that it's not RPM. It's that it's terrible. Period. But again, I'm biased by the Sentai footage and having seen everything once before. I don't have fresh eyes.

Also, if the Richard Brown episode never happens with Bulk and/or Spike in his role, Saban completely messed up. There's no forgiving such strict adherence to the source material while adding a humorous wannabe Samurai Ranger without doing the episode about the humorous Samurai wannabe.


tl;dr - The shot-for-shot remake is ruined by massively toned down characters, characters where nice is the one of the most definable character traits, half the cast doesn't seem to be having fun, and the dialogue is written absolutely terribly.

P.S. - And somehow, even while re-using and updating the original MMPR theme... Shinkenger's theme is more kickass. I'm not sure how that is possible. I would not say that about any other Sentai theme.

It's just my opinion, but you can decide for yourself:

Samurai - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUKQWZeJtC0
Shinkenger - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6NFcsOXxXQ

[Lord Seth]

im surprised at how much people dont like samurai
i mean ive never seen samurai but i hear its pretty much a shot for shot remake of samurai sentai shinkenger

and shinkenger was great
but maybe samurai just couldnt capture the same charm shinkenger had.

There's a lot more to successfully capturing the charm of a series than just making the shots the same, as Samurai proved. Samurai has gotten better since its early episodes, but it's still no Shinkenger. And even if you ignore Shinkenger entirely, Samurai's just not a particularly great show.

If you want to know the particulars, basically:
1) Even in places where a deviation from Shinkenger would seem to mean a change should be made to fit with the change, they keep things the same anyway. For example, when Blue is trying to catch the fish zord, he's aided by a fisherman in both shows. But in Shinkenger the fisherman turns out to be one of the kuroku (well, a former member). In Samurai, where they don't have the kuroku, the guy's just a random fisherman and thus the main point of his character is lost, but they kept him in there anyway.

2) Maybe I'm overrating the acting ability in Shinkenger because I don't know much Japanese and thus their inflections could be horribly off for all I know, but the acting in Samurai is pretty subpar. It has gotten better, but it's still got a ways to go.

3) The characters are a heck of a lot less interesting on Samurai than they were on Shinkenger. This is especially troubling because Shinkenger was a very character-driven season.

So in other words, they're copying Shinkenger, but not actually copying the things that made it a decent season. In other words, we're not getting a copy of Shinkenger so much as a watered-down and inferior version of it.

In fact, a number of the complaints I just mentioned can be applied to Samurai versus RPM. Forget Shinkenger, just compare the level of acting on RPM versus Samurai or how the characters stack up. RPM just completely trumps Samurai in these departments.

also RPM is nothing like its super sentai counterpart
it was a weak sentai season and a great power ranger season

Enh, I liked Go-Onger, though I can see why people disliked it. I do like RPM more, however.

[Mega Mana]

In fact, a number of the complaints I just mentioned can be applied to Samurai versus RPM. Forget Shinkenger, just compare the level of acting on RPM versus Samurai or how the characters stack up. RPM just completely trumps Samurai in these departments.

Hear hear. It's not just comparison to the eccentric personalities of Shinkenger (who seem more subdued than what miniscule amount of Go-Onger I've seen... is everyone there on a constant sugar high?). Every one of RPM's characters actors do a great job bringing their characters to life. It helps that they've been given excellent material to work with and great characters with lots of focus, but it can't be denied that their actors are above par for Power Rangers.

All this talk of Power Rangers reminds me I still need to watch SPD someday.

Maybe after Gokaiger... and I hope Saban learns from Samurai when they get to developing that epic season.

[Lord Seth]

Hear hear. It's not just comparison to the eccentric personalities of Shinkenger (who seem more subdued than what miniscule amount of Go-Onger I've seen... is everyone there on a constant sugar high?).

It's not really the eccentricities I was referring to, it's the personalities and conflict. Now, on Go-Onger, the characters were quite eccentric and very exaggerated. But Go-Onger was first and foremost a fun season. Not necessarily funny, but it was very fun. Now I know that aspect of it made quite a number of people not like it, but I thought it worked and it's probably my favorite Super Sentai season for that reason...I don't think I've ever seen another show that's as purely fun as Go-Onger was.

Shinkenger took a very different direction. It focused very much on the characters, particularly the conflict between them. For example, Takeru (Red) was cold to the rest of his team at first, and Chiaki (Green) especially disliked him and was often at odds with Ryuunosuke (Blue) because Ryuunosuke was practically the polar opposite of Chiaki in that he was disciplined to a fault and very loyal to Takeru. The group becoming closer as the series went on was very important to the season. This all pays off considerably at the end of the season. The reactions the characters have to the revelation are likely not the reactions that would have occurred had it been revealed at the start. Shinkenger had a very large focus on the characters...perhaps too much, as it had a fairly weak plot.

In Samurai, that conflict is removed in favor of making everyone super chummy with each other, kind of like back in the MMPR days. Which worked for MMPR to a degree, but if you're trying to copy a season that focused considerably on character conflict but are removing that conflict, then the series doesn't work well, and you're left with...well, Samurai, which has the weak plot of Shinkenger without the things that actually made Shinkenger interesting.

It helps that they've been given excellent material to work with and great characters with lots of focus, but it can't be denied that their actors are above par for Power Rangers.

It's not even that RPM had great acting. The acting on Samurai is below par for Power Rangers. Granted, outside of Time Force, RPM, and SPD, the series has never been particularly known for great acting (not to say the acting is bad most of the time, just nothing particularly impressive), but there's a difference between the acting being good enough and the acting being as poor as it has been at times in Samurai. Mia's delivery sometimes reminds me of Isobel from The Vampire Diaries...the difference being that Isobel was, I assume, supposed to talk that way to show her general apathy and disconnect towards the world. Not so much in Samurai.

But to be more back on topic, yeah, RPM is worth watching. Time Force is also a good seasons, and be sure to check out their team-up episodes in the following seasons, especially the one for Time Force/Wild Force (really, Time Force doesn't feel complete unless you watch the two-part "Reinforcements from the Future" episode of Wild Force).

Another good season is In Space, but it's harder to jump right into than RPM or Time Force, because it's not standalone and continues from the first five seasons. You can still pick it up at the start and enjoy it, but you'll get more out of it if you've seen the previous five seasons.