incoherent mumblings of a procrastinator: Go go Mighty Morphin Zyuranger!

For those of you born in the mid to late 80's and grew up in the United States, many of you probably remember watching the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers as a child. I remember that I used to come home from school everyday, excited to turn on the TV to see what evil schemes Rita Repulsa would come up next! Despite only being a little kid at the time, I was already very conscious of the fact that I was not like most of my white classmates and I remember watching the Power Rangers specifically because it was among the few shows on television that regularly featured someone who seemed to be in the same predicament. Obviously, I am referring to Trini the Yellow Ranger (did you ever notice how they made the one asian character the Yellow Ranger and the one black character the Black Ranger? Not to mention that the other female character became the Pink Ranger) played by the late Thuy Trang. After Thuy Trang and much of the original cast left the show, I lost interest and gradually stopped watching altogether. This is not to say that I only watched Power Rangers because of Trini and the appearance of an Asian American cast member (many problems appeared after the change in cast) but those certainly were contributing reasons. These new teenagers clearly did not have nearly as much attitude.

Feeling nostalgic for Power Rangers recently, I wound up looking for the opening with the original cast on YouTube.

Now among those of you who remember watching Power Rangers, how many of you knew that the show was originally Japanese? Mighty Mophin Power Rangers was actually an "Americanization" (a word that should be included in the official English dictionary after films like The Ring, Dark Water, The Grudge, Shall We Dance?, The Departed, etc) of the Japanese show "Kyoryu Sentai Zyuranger", which literally translates to "Dinosaur Squadron Zyuranger" even though Mammoths and Saber Toothed Tigers are actually mammals and Pterodactyls are technically reptiles. For the American show, Saban merely re-shot scenes where the Japanese cast appeared out of their ranger outfits with American actors. Fight scenes where the Japanese cast remained in costume (hiding away those asian faces...) were spliced into the American scenes.

While searching for the Power Rangers opening, I started looking for footage of the original Japanese Zyuranger and found this awesome video.

Here are all six (yes, that's right, including the Green Ranger) of the rangers together. It's Morphin time!

Among everyone who saw the original Power Rangers, I'm absolutely certain that all of you hands-down remember the "death" of the Green Ranger. Well, here's the Japanese version (ignore the fan-made music video that follows).

Now that most people who watched Power Rangers as a young child are in their twenties and after several iterations of the show, Power Rangers feels like it has a lot of history in the United States. However, the ranger series has a much much longer history in Japan. Whereas Power Rangers only appeared in the US in 1992, in Japan the Super Sentai series (as Power Rangers was called) actually started in 1975 with Himitsu Sentai Goranger!

I actually managed to find some rare footage of the original opening for Goranger.