saban: hey kids! come watch as some unrelatable beverly hills 90210 high schoolers have Problems together! sometimes they turn into big dinosaur robots that your parents are not going to buy for you, and i have personally removed all the scenes made by people from another culture that you might become intrigued by. smooth sailing ahead!
k. a. applegate: well if you don't mind a little reading, you can follow along as these angsty tweens learn that humanity isn't perfection, base animal instinct is terrifying but also appealing, and also there's no winning in war
I was probably too old to get into power rangers when it came out. I was 12, power rangers was for babies, but I loved it anyway. The hints of continuity in an age where most children's entertainment was a series of one offs. I devoured everything I could. It felt weird though. The action scenes film stock didn't match the out of suit scenes, and sometimes the action would feel really disconnected from the narrative.
After the loss of the Green Ranger in the original power rangers, there was a big ramp up to reveal the new White Ranger in the press. I read a TV Guide interview with the producers of power rangers, and the interviewer asked point blank why the green ranger stopped appearing. One of the producers said they simply ran out of green ranger footage. I don't believe they ever named the show they were getting the footage from, and I spent the next few years drifting out of power ranger fandom, but the idea that Power Rangers was actually something else stuck with me.
Cue 2004. Being a perennial hipster, I was in search of something new to watch, as anime was becoming too popular now. A friend on irc mentioned the new super sentai, Abaranger, was dinosaur themed and how excited they were. I spent the next months devouring all I could learn about super sentai, having finally unlocked the keywords. The modern day toku fansub community didn't exist yet, as TVNihon would tackle their first super sentai, Dekaranger the next year.
Hong Kong bootlegs did exist however, and within a week of Abaranger ending ebay had a few listings of complete subbed sets for $50, a great deal. I grabbed DVD sets of Abaranger and Hurricanger, and VCDs of untranslated Jetman, Zyuranger and Dairanger.
Finally getting to put all the puzzle pieces together on why power rangers felt so weird opened a world for me. From then on out I was a toku fan, though like a lot of other interests of mine I would drift in and out. I never actually sat down to watch a kamen rider until Fourze for instance.
