Tuesday, April 19, 2011

The Gold Samurai Ranger will appear in the next episode...

After "Jayden's Challenge" (Episode 10), the next episode of Power Rangers Samurai "Unexpected Arrival" will feature the appearance of the Gold Samurai Ranger, Antonio. Also, online TV guides have listed another 2 additional episodes all premiering in May.

From the synopsis, they are straight adaptations of Shinkenger Acts 17-19 which means that 4 episodes (13-16) from Shinkenger will be skipped...

Below is a review of what happened in the Shinkenger episodes and the possible reasons for skipping them:

Act 13: Heavy Cry

This was the girls' focus episode for Pink and Yellow. The monster of the week resorted to stealing parents by replacing their children with white dummies (mannequins), so that the heavy cries of the children could flood the Sanzu River fast. Therefore, Pink and Yellow took on the role of babysitting the abandoned children, as well as fighting the monster when it managed to paralyze the male Shinkengers by attaching the similar red dummies on them.



Obviously, this episode would be skipped because the concept was rather weird for American audiences. Plus, there are a lot of scenes which are kinda obscene with the dummies (see the above screenshot). Hence, to adapt the episode would involved a lot of re-shooting and focus on female rangers was never a priority in PR.

Act 14: Foreign Samurai

A foreigner by the name of Richard Brown approaches ShinkenBlue and begs him to teach him the path of a Samurai, which resulted in a comic relief episode. However, Richard Brown was able to inspire ShinkenBlue to defeat the monster of the week when it overpowered all the other Shinkengers.



Now, this would be a great episode to tie-in with Bulk and Spike's "Samurai Training" therefore, I am not sure why it was skipped. Perhaps, this will appear in later episodes because PR has shuffled adaptation orders in the past as well.

Act 15: Imposter, Genuine, Big Catch

Chiaki (ShinkenGreen) gets frustrated at his own incompetence and runs off during a training. During an attack, the monster of the week changes his appearance and posed as Chiaki in attempt to divide the Shinkengers. It is up to Chiaki to turn the events around and save the day by mastering the "Shirahadori".



This would have been a fun episode but it probably would have conflicted with Mike's development as he was nowhere as playful as Chiaki, kinda like when "Forest for the Trees" (Episode 8) was adapted.

Act 16: Kuroko Power

ShinkenBlue, Green and Yellow realized the help that the Kurokos (stage hands in black) rendered behind the scenes so that they can concentrate on defeating the enemy.



Needless to say, there are no "Kurokos" in Samurai so this episode is redundant anyway.

To end off, more episodes would probably be skipped over as well since the total episode count for Samurai is only 40 episodes compared to Shinkenger's 49. Therefore, it is only natural to not adapt everything, unless Saban is going to follow Disney's route to squeeze 2 episodes into 1 like Mystic Force.

Sunday, April 17, 2011

Returned Mobirates

So I returned the DX Mobirates back to Uncle Ng today; nothing much interesting at CSC though.

Friday, April 15, 2011

S.H. Figuarts ShinkenGold

Since I was at VivoCity, I figured why not go CSC to take a look as well?

Things over at Japan are still pretty bad (which indirectly affected Bandai Asia), so I wasn't expecting any new stocks for Gokaiger. Nothing new for Gokaiger but seeing the S.H. Figuarts ShinkenGold (with Kuroko) was a surprise.

The price was a little more steep at S$60.00 compared to ShinkenRed earlier though. The only justification would be the more detailed accessories but ShinkenRed had the Rekka Daizantou which needed more plastic. LoL.

As there were only 3 sets left, I originally intended to request Uncle Ng to reserve one for me so that I can return the Mobirates in exchange for it another day...



However, the uncle told me to take it first instead! He explained that nowadays he is afraid to reserve items for customers, in case his wife becomes annoyed at the huge number of reserved items and takes them all out again to sell. Apparently, S$60 wasn't exactly a big sum to him so he trusted me for it, which he equated to taking out S$10-100k bank loans!

So I took the ShinkenGold first and promised him to return the Mobirates on Sunday; however he was quite relaxed and told me to take my time!