Saban plans to bid for ITV

No idea. I only know about Power Rangers because I've spent the summer reliving my childhood by downloading DIVX's of old PR eps (and wondering how I ever found the cornyness of it all so gripping lol) and came across the copyrighting of later seasons on an episode list.


Sentai is the japanese genre for all good warriors vs evil opressors type programmes. I don't think they even have to be kid's programmes. IIRC, Sentai actually predates Anime, even though Anime is much more prevalent now.

All the other sentai series were launched off of the bandwagon of Power Rangers. If you think about it they all launched during the unbelievably succesful MMPR era of Power Rangers, and they all died off very quickly after 1 or in some cases 2 seasons.

Power Rangers is probably going to be the only surviving US sentai series - and it itself doesn't have anything like the production values that it used to.

So I was right about Sentai then. Don't even have to be kid's programmes? Name some examples, because I don't think any adult ones have reached Europe.

It doesn't make any TV programmes at all. Chris Evans production company is UMTV.

That mean's it's history already then.

I don't know any examples, I say don't *think* they have to be kids programmes. But nevertheless, afaik if you have a programme with good guys fighting bad guys using martial arts, then that qualifies as being sentai. The black and white good/evil right/wrong distinction means that it does lend itself to children's programmes, but that doesn't mean it has to be restricted to them.

Remember that Super Sentai, the sentai series which Power Rangers is derived from, has been going in Japan since the mid 70's. Power Rangers didn't reach here (or rather, America) until 1993.

As a genre, it's not really been that succesful outside of Japan. Power Rangers is about the only success story I can think of.

The MMPR credits said "based on Galaxy Rangers and Dai Rangers" - the latter being the Japanese version of MMPR. Series 4 - Zeo - said it was based on O Rangers, series 5 - Turbo - on Car Rangers, and series 6 - In Space - on Mega Rangers. I don't know beyond that.

I don't know what Galaxy Rangers was.

The MMPR credits were never known for their accuracy.

'Dai Rangers' (more properly known as 'Dairanger') was the series which MMPR was largely based on. The 'Galaxy Rangers' credit was added in season 2. I forget the sentai name, but it's the second season concept. The 'and Dai Rangers' remained because Saban had reworked Galaxy Rangers so that the series basically looked the same (wheras in Japan, the entire series would have changed each season as PR does now).

In other words, the Zords correctly changed each year, but the Rangers should've had different costumes in seasons 2 and 3. I get it now. It also explains why they started filming their own fight sequences rather than using the Japanese ones like in season 1. The same can be said for Command Centre scenes - they only started removing their helmets in season 2.

Basically, but it wasn't quite that straightforward. That 'old zords appearing first followed by lightening flash and new zords' thing in season 2 was Saban exclusive. There was never a white ranger with the Dairanger characters, he came from another series (Tommy didn't have a different costume because he was the leader, he had a different costume because it came from a different series).

Whilst we're on the topic, why does the new series, Ninja Storm, only have three Rangers? It's always been five or six before!

It does still produce programmes. It recently produced Don't Drop The Coffin for ITV.

Strange that that wasn't An SMG Production...