Why I Can’t Stop Thinking About ‘The Power Rangers’?
Why Am I Doing This?
I must initially start this essay by acknowledging the fact that I do not enjoy the Power Rangers franchise. I’m not anti-Power Rangers, but as a piece of media that I have ingested, I cannot say that I actively enjoy the experience of watching it. I can admit that I am in no way close to being the target audience for this show nor do I have any nostalgic attachments to the media. So that brings us back to the question - “Why can’t I stop thinking about The Power Rangers?”. I have recently taken a personal oath to watch every piece of media ever released and the order of which I have chosen has started with me watching multiple seasons of Power Rangers in 2024 at 23 years old. Is this an experiment in patience? Perhaps it’s a cultural exploration of the idiot box? Or maybe it’s my way of expressing my deep-down special interest in media. So, what’s so special about ’The Power Rangers’?
Initial Thoughts & Feelings
On the surface “The Power Rangers” acts as a generic Saturday morning, live-action, kids show, but it is truly more. I am extremely well aware of the position that this puts me in - straight to nerd town, dork master general, a true geekazoid - but, as a distant enjoyer of the series uncoated by nostalgia-covered glasses I find value in this show. The first layer of this series is the most basic as each episode is full of 90s cheese, from martial arts explosions to the important life lessons of each episode. The Power Rangers act as the epitome of right and wrong with rock-solid moral compasses that are always being challenged by the current series Big Bad and their band of merry men. The Power Rangers are cool, riding skateboards while also getting straight A’s, truly perfect role models for kids and parents alike. These ideas and opinions are nothing that you wouldn’t be able to find in the depths of Power Rangers forums across the web. In ultimate whilst watching the series I had no strong feelings one way or the other; it’s inoffensive television. But as it began to exist in my brain space it seemed to grow bigger and bigger.
First, We Need to Talk About WWII
‘The Power Rangers’ is an American television program that was released in 1993 and was built around a Japanese tokusatsu franchise ‘Super Sentai’. Each episode follows the adventures of a rag-tag bunch of kids as they lead double lives of regular teens and monster-fighting superheroes. As stated before, the ‘Power Rangers’ was built around their Japanese counterpart, and they did this by stitching footage from ‘Super Sentai’ (mainly martial arts and monster battles) and subsequently filming American actors around these spliced-in scenes. As a bridge between cultures, it’s somewhat seamless in executions but it adds a layer of dramatic irony that is stuck in my head. ’Super Sentai’ is known as a tokusatsu franchise which roughly means live-action television or films with heavy use of practical effects. The Tokusatsu genre was first popularised in Japan around the first ‘Monster Boom’ in the mid-60s. As a result of the American bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the unofficial “father of “tokusatsu” Eiji Tsuburaya was inspired (or translated his trauma) to create the character of Godzilla in a film sharing the same name in 1954. Using suits and miniatures Tsuburaya converted his love of monster films such as ‘King Kong’ (1933) with his (and the cultural) nuclear phobia that was birthed during World War 2 into the phenomena that is Godzilla. The exploitation of nuclear fears that Tsuburaya explored in his first Godzilla film directly led to the subsequent Japanese ‘Monster Boom’ which spawned more mutations of monsters using tokusatsu techniques (including Kaiju). Fast forward to 1975 when Shotaro Ishinomori, a popular manga artist and tokusatsu creator in association with a Japanese production company Toei Ltd, and Bandai Entertainment (a toy distribution company) created ‘Super Sentai’. Maybe it’s the cynic in me but, I don’t believe that the creation of ‘Super Sentai’ was a personal journey akin to Godzilla, with the attachment of the toy company ‘Super Sentai’, it appears as a capitalistic gain made to sell toys despite the creative explosion of the visuals. As a money-making venture ‘Super Sentai’ was nothing but a success (with more to come) despite being a watered-down yet stylistically faithful version of the genre of tokusatsu.
Marvel Joins the Battle
In the 70s during the initial successes of ‘Super Sentai’, Toei Company was beginning to spark interest in Western markets, as comic book creator Stan Lee was having equal ideas. The two nationally monolithic companies agreed to pitch each other’s properties to their respective markets, both dealing with superheroes, it should be easy! Well, for Stan Lee it was. The Japanese Spiderman television series was a massive success thanks to Toei Company but alas, Stan Lee remained unsuccessful in pitching the dubbed versions of Toei’s most successful programming to HBO. In 1980, Haim Saban was on a business trip in Japan when the only thing on his hotel television was a Toei Company tokusatsu program. Saban became obsessed with these five costumed characters fighting monsters, so in 1988, Saban approached FOX Kids networking president Margret Loesch who previously helmed Marvel productions and was familiar with ‘Super Sentai’ as a series. Saban didn’t pitch a dub of the series as Stan Lee had tried years prior but a collage of the Japanese’s production and brand-new English-spoken scenes. Using ‘Super Sentai’s’ predisposed nature for merchandising Saban went in hard on toy production alongside the series, and it quickly became American kids’ new favorite obsession.
So Why Can’t I Stop Thinking About This?
The inherited irony of Western culture (and companies’) colonization of the genre of Tokusatsu to make boundless profits, which was created from the ashes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The American-created fear of the nuclear enemy spawned fantastic Japanese Cinema but when it got boiled down for capitalistic gain, it resulted in lining the pockets of America’s 232nd richest man. Despite the role model messaging of the Power Ranger characters, the show in every respect is designed for profits, and in just 2001 made 6 billion dollars in toy sales alone. The Power Rangers are dynamically processed to stick in your head.