It's time yet again for me to take a look at Zyuranger and Power Rangers and through very advanced mathmatics, determine which is better. When we last left the series the score was
Power Rangers Zyuranger
2 5
He introduces himself with a laugh that is so delightful I cannot represent it phonetically, but for your benefit, dear readers, I will try. "Hoo hoo hoo!" Then he immediately asks the kid "If a horse is facing right, which way his his tail facing?" Before he can ask "WTF who are you? STRANGER DANGER!" the kid is overwhelmed by smug satisfaction and reveals that "A horse's tail always faces down." "Bingo," responds the delightful gentlemen, now with a visual aid of a horse. The only reason that this man hasn't earned Zyuranger 5 points for sheer delightfulness is that I feel sorry for Power Rangers.
The man repeats his delightful laugh and says the boy is correct and clearly fond of riddles. Then he yells fanfare and... this happens.
Must... resist... urge... to declare Zyuranger the winner right now. The man says the kid is now a contestant on "Ultra Riddle Fun Time" and that if he gets all the riddles correct, he'll win a trip around the world. But he only has 10 seconds to answer each one or he loses. The kid is pretty smart and gets two great pun based riddles right away. However, when he's asked literally the easiest riddle ever "What walks on four legs than two than three" he answers a ghost. Maybe it's a cultural riddle?
The man makes a buzzing sound, and suddenly goes from absolutely delightful to "Failures like you don't deserve to walk the Earth," transforming into the deadly DoraSphinx! The kid screams, but DoraSphinx flaps his wings and the kid goes flying away, causing the new monster to cackle evilly. We then see him doing the same to a few other kids. We all know Power Rangers can't possibly live up to this intro, but lets see what's going on over there just to be sporting.
We open on - where else? - the GymJuiceYouthCenterBarAndGrill and I promise to stop using that joke. We hear Ernie, the establishment's owner, counting. "989, 990, 991" and we reveal Jason is... bench pressing. Wait 991 bench presses that..... Look. I am a nerd. Not just that. I am fat and have been to Disney Land more days than I've been to a gym, but... but I am pretty sure that is not how bench pressing works. I'm pretty sure that at some point you increase the weight you're lifting and lower the reps. But nevermind because we cut to Kimberlee wearing this skin tight little number.
Who needs panty shots when we... wait I've just been handed a note from my editor. I guess I'm not allowed to post unedited pictures of teenage girls in tight outfits, even if they're actually 20-something girls pretending to be teenage girls in skin tight outfits. Let me just leave it at this readers: mmmmmm daddy like.
Anyway Jason bench pressing... somehow even though... that is right next to him. Ernie reaches 1000 and tells Jason he just needs 10 more and he breaks the record! Ok, so that makes a little more sense, a quick Google search reveals most bench pressing records are actually set by weight rather than number of reps, but they didn't have Google in 1993 so I'll cut them some slack. Will he break the record? It's not very exciting, so let's cut to Zyuranger to build suspense shall we?
Dan and Boi are out on the town, wearing their ceremonial robe things... but no one pays any attention to them. Must be Comi-Con this week. Dan wants to flirt with some girls, finding their modern fashion attractive, but Boi stops him because the others are expecting them. Dan wants to live a little since they've been sleeping for 170 million years and so far have mostly beaten Bandora. Speaking of sleeping, Geki is having a dream! He walks through a desert waste, sweating and struggling until he falls down, begging for some one to help him. Mei wakes him up, and he reveals he's had this dream every night when he goes to sleep. Mei thinks he's just worried about Bandora.
Speak of the Devil, Goushi reveals that children have been disappearing and witnesses saw a monster blowing them away with its wings. Cut to the moon where...
Bandora, her cronies and the new monster are dancing together, and it is so beyond delightful. Can this monster please stay around forever? "Children just can't resist riddles," exclaims Bandora with glee. "So we'll destroy them with riddles!" she declares with even further glee... this would seem like a terrible plan if we hadn't already seen how awesome it is and how well it seems to be working. Bandora orders a stop to the music, and declares to Great Satan that she renews her pledge to destroy all of Earth's children. Adults are never more upset than when their children are in peril and without children, the future of humanity is doomed.
First and foremost, my editor tells me that I have to tell you that Last Time on Video Games does not condone summoning, fiddle battling, or bargaining with Satans, Greater or Lesser. With that out of the way, let's talk about her pledge. We've seen how she hates children before, but this actually gives Bandora a nice flavor. When her minions ask why she hates children here, she silences them, which hints at a deeper personal reason which is cool. Also, witches traditionally get their powers from Satan, so this is a cool call to mythology, in addition to making her a lot more interesting than her counterpart Rita, even if Power Rangers couldn't use Satan for obvious reasons. It's not quite worth a point, since the Power Rangers are still more fleshed out and have better personalities than the Zyurangers themselves, but its very nice to see Zyuranger finally throwing some characterization into the mix.
Anyway, back to the Power Rangers. Ernie asks Jason what number they're on, and an exasperated Jason tells him. Jeeze, Ernie, you have one job! Kimberlee finishes on the balance beam and comes over to watch. She tells Jason he's awesome and going to do it. Unfortunately, this encouragement makes Ernie forget what number Jason was on, and for some reason this means he has to start over again.
Cut to Rita: "He's not so tough when he's on his own." The dude just did over a thousand bench presses! It was only because Kimberlee came over that he failed to break the record; this is not a guy you want to mess with! However, she comes up with the plan of dividing and conquering by getting Jason alone, killing him, and then finishing the Rangers off without a leader. It's... not the worst plan, but Jason isn't a great leader and he can do 1000 bench presses. As we're about to see, he can do this twice in a row, so maybe he's not the guy you try to take out first?
With both evil plans established, back to Zyuranger. Dan and Boi are staking out a park, hoping that the monster will show up... well, I guess it's a plan at least. Dan wants to leave, though, because he has a date, and he abandons Boi to the stake out by himself. Of course, as soon as he leaves, DoraSphinx shows up and asks Boi a riddle. Boi refuses to answer, trying to attack the creature, but each time he strikes, the Sphinx disappears!
Boi runs out of time and DoraSphinx reveals the answer and his true form, blowing Boi away with his wings. Dan returns just in time to see Boi being flung away, so I guess that date didn't go very well. He reports Boi's capture back to the Zyurangers, brooding about it all being his fault. Barzza explains the myth of the sphinx. It's kind of cool how so far all of Bandora's monsters have come from Greek mythology: a titan, minotaur, and now a sphinx. It doesn't quite gel with the Great Satan/witches thing I mentioned earlier and I'm not sure if it will keep up, but it's a cool touch.
Dan runs off, planning to get a riddle wrong so that he can find out where DoraSphinx is sending everyone, but the other Zyurangers point out that's kind of a stupid plan. He says since he made it wrong he has to make it right, and Goushi says that they're no team. Geki starts running after him, but passes out, only to have the dream about the desert again.
Back with the Power Rangers, Jason has started doing bench presses again, and with Kimberlee's encouragement is up to 1007 again! Kimberlee chewing gum starts blowing a bubble and we also see... Zach is... for some reason skateboarding in the Gym... It's already an arcade, juice bar, gym and youth center; it doesn't need to be a skate park, too. Just as Jason is up to 1009, Zach crashes into Kimberlee, causing her bubble to pop all over, and distracting Jason so he drops the weights, and has to start over again.
Cut to the moon "He can't do anything right today! This is going to be too easy." Dude has done over 2000 bench presses. I'm pretty sure Spider-Man calls that a good day, even the version of Spider-Man who doesn't have a giant robot to call down. Don't mess with him! They repeat their plan, even though they just came up with it five minutes ago, and Finster suggests he use King Sphinx to blow the others away. It's a perfect plan! Well it's better than Dan's anyway.
Speaking of Dan, the Zyurangers are out looking for him on their sweet motorcycles. Since Dan's has the pink side car, Mei is in the yellow one, which, after years of watching Power Rangers and seeing their absolute devotion to keeping the colors right, seems... wrong. They see Dan flying through the sky and chase him to a forest. They start yelling his name, and start hearing screams for help. Geki puts his ear up to a tree, and realizes that's where they're coming from. Dan, Boi and the kids have been turned into trees!
DoraSphinx shows up and begins to reveal his plan, and like everything about this character, it's absolutely fantastic. The forest is about to be cleared out in order to make a golf course. The adults who don't care about making children places to play, and instead are building a place for their own amusement, will kill them while deforesting the place in a bout of irony. It's dark and twisted and delightful all at once. The Rangers try to attack him, but he pulls the disappearing trick again, then yells "Fanfare!" using a wipe cut to transport them to a game show stage.
Golems begin attacking them - and I realize that Golems are Jewish, not Greek - and the Zyurangers transform. DoraSphinx echoes Goushi's earlier statements that they aren't much of a team, so I guess that's going to be the theme again this episode. As Mei is distracted with the fight, the monster asks her "What bird is twice as big inside?" She doesn't know, and while fighting the golems desperately answers "An eagle?" Only to be told its an owl, because of the double-u in the middle. Like the others, she's blown away and turned into a tree.
Meanwhile, on Power Rangers, Zach is buying Jason and Kimberlee milkshakes to apologize for skateboarding in the gym and... man, I'm starting to think all the no skateboarding signs that were around in the 90s might have actually had a point. Jason says he's sort of bummed about the bench press thing because he doesn't want to be known as a quitter. Before the others can tell him that no one would ever call some one who did 2000 bench presses in one day a quitter, Bulk comes up and tells Jason that he's a quitter who will never beat his bench press record.
Wait... Bulk set the bench press record? 1010? Look, I love the kingpin from Marvel comics, and the idea of a character who looks fat but is super strong is cool, but... Bulk? Why does he even have to be in this episode? Luckily, Jason tickles him until his pants rip...
Wait, did I say luckily? I meant "uggghhhhhhh why are these characters still here?" This humiliation isn't sufficient to defeat them though; that requires Bulk's pants falling down as he tries to pull them together, and then tripping over them. Just as the rangers leave, their communicators beep and they run off to ask Zordon what's up. Zordon tells them to teleport to the children's theater in the park, because Rita is at it again. "She's sent down a team of putties and an unknown monster in an attempt to gain control of the park." I love the idea that the park is somehow a tactically important location in Angel Grove and that by occupying it Rita will be poised to strike... somewhere. The three Rangers teleport into the sentai footage... and apparently forgot they have two other friends who are Power Rangers with communicators.
Sadly, the riddles have been cut completely out of the Power Rangers version, which is a crime. King Sphinx just blows Kimberlee away... back onto the balance beam on the gym.
DoraSphinx challenges Goushi next, asking him what you can shake without using your hands. He successfully answers "Your head!" His next question is "What is useless on top, but useful underneath?" He answers "Carbon Paper" unfortunately, just after time runs out, and he, too, is turned into a tree. Zach, unfortunately, is just blown away like Kim, since DoraSphinx is in his human form in this scene when he's not using his wings.
That leaves only Jason/Geki since... apparently Zach and Kimberlee don't decide to just teleport back right away. Geki finds the monster's first three riddles easy, exciting DoraSphinx. He asks a fourth and final riddle: "Is there anything eternal in this world?" which gives Geki pause. He waits until the last second to answer "Justice is eternal! Justice always triumphs!" Using a visual aid, DoraSphinx says he's wrong because, obviously, "Evil is eternal!"
Geki protests that the answer must be justice, and DoraSphinx transforms, saying they'll find out the answer in battle. I think this just passed "I'm the Doctor and you're in the biggest library in the universe; look me up." as my favorite moment in all of fiction. They fight, as do Jason and King Sphinx and, as always, it's a good scene and the red ranger's new sword gets a chance to be showcased. They're teleported to a quarry in case the fight location was too interesting.
On Power Rangers, Alpha is freaking the [removed by editorial] out yelling that Jason's isolated and in trouble. Thanks, Alpha, helpful as always. Here's where the two diverge a bit though, as Bandora makes DoraSphinx grow giant, and he goes after Geki. Geki calls on Tyranozaurus for help, and jumps to get into the cockpit, but is shot by his guardian's eye lasers and goes flying, demorphing, and landing in... the desert from his dreams! To be continued!
Except for, two weeks in a row now, Power Rangers elected to burn through an interesting two parter as quickly as possible, so let's continue with the next episode of Zyuranger: Stand!! DaiZyuJin. Geki wonders why instead of helping him fight a giant sphinx, his sweet dinosaur robot god sent him here.
Off in the distance, he sees Tokyo Tower and realizes to his horror that everything under his feet is rubble from buildings. He falls down the hill, and sees the corpses of the other Zyurangers, rotted down to skeletons but still wearing their distinctive clothes. The guardian beasts appear on the horizon and tell him if he doesn't bring unity to his team than this future will become real. They seem to have been pretty united thus far, but teamwork is an important lesson for the kids I guess. He sees an impression of a giant robot and asks what it is. The guardian beasts respond that it's their combined form, DaiZyuJin. However, if the team can't learn to work together, the guardian beasts will never combine. It seems like it would have been easier for them to tell him this in his dream before DoraSphinx showed up, but whatever.
The Guardian Beasts laser him back to the forest, so that he can swear to the other Zyurangers he'll become a better leader. Unfortunately he doesn't know how to free them or form DaiZyuJin and he asks for someone to tell him what to do. Luckily, Barzza just happens to be standing around and tells him that in order to form DaiZyuJin he needs the five dinocrystals. Unfortunately, Barzza doesn't know where they are, and DoraSphinx shows up yelling "SNEAK ATTACK!"
Grifforzer shows up too and Geki transforms. We get some good two on one fight footage that Power Rangers sadly elected not to use, probably because they thought randomly teleporting to the forest and then back was a little too much. We're quickly back in the quarry and Grifforzer shoots his laser sword at Geki, which is where Power Rangers picks up. Goldar's appearance seems a little out of nowhere, but Rita did say she was going to send him earlier, so whatever. Rita/Bandora make the two monsters grow, and Jason wishes that the other Power Rangers were around. If only they had teleportation technology they used all the time! Or the writers had bothered to throw in a line about King Sphinx teleporting Jason to the quarry so the others wouldn't be able to locate him to teleport to. It would only take one line!
Speaking of the other rangers, they're here in Billy's...
Lab? Garage? Room? Hell, I'm not even sure it's Billy's, we just get an establishing shot of a house. Zach and Kimberlee tell Billy and Trini that Jason's in trouble and "may need his friends way more than he knows." The dude is fighting two giant monsters and screaming about wanting help from his friends!! We get it, team work is important, you're lucky the message is just as hamfisted in Zyuranger. In fact...
Inside the rock is a pouch containing the dinocrystals. That... may be the biggest deus ex machina I've ever seen. I mean... one random rock in the middle of a random quarry. It's especially disappointing after they just went on a big quest to get their weapons that the thing that makes their giant robots combine just sort of falls into their lap. Sure, the sword that found them is established as being sapientish but...
Power Rangers had just taken a bit of a wallop, with Zyuranger creating a well paced two part adventure and Power Rangers... throwing a bunch of morals at the wall to see what stuck. For the second week in a row, Power Rangers decided to take two episodes of Zyuranger and jam them into one, so hit the jump and see if they were more successful this time.
First of all, the titles. While Power Rangers started this category strong, Zyuranger has been taking night classes. Once more it could probably win on Scary Riddle Time alone. Stand!! DaiZyuJin is a little confusing with its proper noun, but gets solid points for use of exclamation points and DaiZyuJin roughly translates to GreatBeastGod which is pretty good. Meanwhile Power Rangers comes to the table with A Pressing Engagement. Not only is that strictly amateur hour, but there is no pressing engagement in the episode. Come on, Power Rangers, get back in the game!
Power Rangers Zyuranger
2 6
2 6
Normally I'd let Power Rangers start the recap to try and regain some ground, but as we have two episodes of Zyuranger to get through again, we'll start there. We start off, once again, with some random kid separating himself from his friends, but before you can say "here we go again" this delightful gentleman pops up.
He introduces himself with a laugh that is so delightful I cannot represent it phonetically, but for your benefit, dear readers, I will try. "Hoo hoo hoo!" Then he immediately asks the kid "If a horse is facing right, which way his his tail facing?" Before he can ask "WTF who are you? STRANGER DANGER!" the kid is overwhelmed by smug satisfaction and reveals that "A horse's tail always faces down." "Bingo," responds the delightful gentlemen, now with a visual aid of a horse. The only reason that this man hasn't earned Zyuranger 5 points for sheer delightfulness is that I feel sorry for Power Rangers.
The man repeats his delightful laugh and says the boy is correct and clearly fond of riddles. Then he yells fanfare and... this happens.
Must... resist... urge... to declare Zyuranger the winner right now. The man says the kid is now a contestant on "Ultra Riddle Fun Time" and that if he gets all the riddles correct, he'll win a trip around the world. But he only has 10 seconds to answer each one or he loses. The kid is pretty smart and gets two great pun based riddles right away. However, when he's asked literally the easiest riddle ever "What walks on four legs than two than three" he answers a ghost. Maybe it's a cultural riddle?
The man makes a buzzing sound, and suddenly goes from absolutely delightful to "Failures like you don't deserve to walk the Earth," transforming into the deadly DoraSphinx! The kid screams, but DoraSphinx flaps his wings and the kid goes flying away, causing the new monster to cackle evilly. We then see him doing the same to a few other kids. We all know Power Rangers can't possibly live up to this intro, but lets see what's going on over there just to be sporting.
We open on - where else? - the GymJuiceYouthCenterBarAndGrill and I promise to stop using that joke. We hear Ernie, the establishment's owner, counting. "989, 990, 991" and we reveal Jason is... bench pressing. Wait 991 bench presses that..... Look. I am a nerd. Not just that. I am fat and have been to Disney Land more days than I've been to a gym, but... but I am pretty sure that is not how bench pressing works. I'm pretty sure that at some point you increase the weight you're lifting and lower the reps. But nevermind because we cut to Kimberlee wearing this skin tight little number.
Who needs panty shots when we... wait I've just been handed a note from my editor. I guess I'm not allowed to post unedited pictures of teenage girls in tight outfits, even if they're actually 20-something girls pretending to be teenage girls in skin tight outfits. Let me just leave it at this readers: mmmmmm daddy like.
Anyway Jason bench pressing... somehow even though... that is right next to him. Ernie reaches 1000 and tells Jason he just needs 10 more and he breaks the record! Ok, so that makes a little more sense, a quick Google search reveals most bench pressing records are actually set by weight rather than number of reps, but they didn't have Google in 1993 so I'll cut them some slack. Will he break the record? It's not very exciting, so let's cut to Zyuranger to build suspense shall we?
Dan and Boi are out on the town, wearing their ceremonial robe things... but no one pays any attention to them. Must be Comi-Con this week. Dan wants to flirt with some girls, finding their modern fashion attractive, but Boi stops him because the others are expecting them. Dan wants to live a little since they've been sleeping for 170 million years and so far have mostly beaten Bandora. Speaking of sleeping, Geki is having a dream! He walks through a desert waste, sweating and struggling until he falls down, begging for some one to help him. Mei wakes him up, and he reveals he's had this dream every night when he goes to sleep. Mei thinks he's just worried about Bandora.
Speak of the Devil, Goushi reveals that children have been disappearing and witnesses saw a monster blowing them away with its wings. Cut to the moon where...
Bandora, her cronies and the new monster are dancing together, and it is so beyond delightful. Can this monster please stay around forever? "Children just can't resist riddles," exclaims Bandora with glee. "So we'll destroy them with riddles!" she declares with even further glee... this would seem like a terrible plan if we hadn't already seen how awesome it is and how well it seems to be working. Bandora orders a stop to the music, and declares to Great Satan that she renews her pledge to destroy all of Earth's children. Adults are never more upset than when their children are in peril and without children, the future of humanity is doomed.
First and foremost, my editor tells me that I have to tell you that Last Time on Video Games does not condone summoning, fiddle battling, or bargaining with Satans, Greater or Lesser. With that out of the way, let's talk about her pledge. We've seen how she hates children before, but this actually gives Bandora a nice flavor. When her minions ask why she hates children here, she silences them, which hints at a deeper personal reason which is cool. Also, witches traditionally get their powers from Satan, so this is a cool call to mythology, in addition to making her a lot more interesting than her counterpart Rita, even if Power Rangers couldn't use Satan for obvious reasons. It's not quite worth a point, since the Power Rangers are still more fleshed out and have better personalities than the Zyurangers themselves, but its very nice to see Zyuranger finally throwing some characterization into the mix.
Anyway, back to the Power Rangers. Ernie asks Jason what number they're on, and an exasperated Jason tells him. Jeeze, Ernie, you have one job! Kimberlee finishes on the balance beam and comes over to watch. She tells Jason he's awesome and going to do it. Unfortunately, this encouragement makes Ernie forget what number Jason was on, and for some reason this means he has to start over again.
Cut to Rita: "He's not so tough when he's on his own." The dude just did over a thousand bench presses! It was only because Kimberlee came over that he failed to break the record; this is not a guy you want to mess with! However, she comes up with the plan of dividing and conquering by getting Jason alone, killing him, and then finishing the Rangers off without a leader. It's... not the worst plan, but Jason isn't a great leader and he can do 1000 bench presses. As we're about to see, he can do this twice in a row, so maybe he's not the guy you try to take out first?
With both evil plans established, back to Zyuranger. Dan and Boi are staking out a park, hoping that the monster will show up... well, I guess it's a plan at least. Dan wants to leave, though, because he has a date, and he abandons Boi to the stake out by himself. Of course, as soon as he leaves, DoraSphinx shows up and asks Boi a riddle. Boi refuses to answer, trying to attack the creature, but each time he strikes, the Sphinx disappears!
Boi runs out of time and DoraSphinx reveals the answer and his true form, blowing Boi away with his wings. Dan returns just in time to see Boi being flung away, so I guess that date didn't go very well. He reports Boi's capture back to the Zyurangers, brooding about it all being his fault. Barzza explains the myth of the sphinx. It's kind of cool how so far all of Bandora's monsters have come from Greek mythology: a titan, minotaur, and now a sphinx. It doesn't quite gel with the Great Satan/witches thing I mentioned earlier and I'm not sure if it will keep up, but it's a cool touch.
Dan runs off, planning to get a riddle wrong so that he can find out where DoraSphinx is sending everyone, but the other Zyurangers point out that's kind of a stupid plan. He says since he made it wrong he has to make it right, and Goushi says that they're no team. Geki starts running after him, but passes out, only to have the dream about the desert again.
Back with the Power Rangers, Jason has started doing bench presses again, and with Kimberlee's encouragement is up to 1007 again! Kimberlee chewing gum starts blowing a bubble and we also see... Zach is... for some reason skateboarding in the Gym... It's already an arcade, juice bar, gym and youth center; it doesn't need to be a skate park, too. Just as Jason is up to 1009, Zach crashes into Kimberlee, causing her bubble to pop all over, and distracting Jason so he drops the weights, and has to start over again.
Cut to the moon "He can't do anything right today! This is going to be too easy." Dude has done over 2000 bench presses. I'm pretty sure Spider-Man calls that a good day, even the version of Spider-Man who doesn't have a giant robot to call down. Don't mess with him! They repeat their plan, even though they just came up with it five minutes ago, and Finster suggests he use King Sphinx to blow the others away. It's a perfect plan! Well it's better than Dan's anyway.
Speaking of Dan, the Zyurangers are out looking for him on their sweet motorcycles. Since Dan's has the pink side car, Mei is in the yellow one, which, after years of watching Power Rangers and seeing their absolute devotion to keeping the colors right, seems... wrong. They see Dan flying through the sky and chase him to a forest. They start yelling his name, and start hearing screams for help. Geki puts his ear up to a tree, and realizes that's where they're coming from. Dan, Boi and the kids have been turned into trees!
DoraSphinx shows up and begins to reveal his plan, and like everything about this character, it's absolutely fantastic. The forest is about to be cleared out in order to make a golf course. The adults who don't care about making children places to play, and instead are building a place for their own amusement, will kill them while deforesting the place in a bout of irony. It's dark and twisted and delightful all at once. The Rangers try to attack him, but he pulls the disappearing trick again, then yells "Fanfare!" using a wipe cut to transport them to a game show stage.
Golems begin attacking them - and I realize that Golems are Jewish, not Greek - and the Zyurangers transform. DoraSphinx echoes Goushi's earlier statements that they aren't much of a team, so I guess that's going to be the theme again this episode. As Mei is distracted with the fight, the monster asks her "What bird is twice as big inside?" She doesn't know, and while fighting the golems desperately answers "An eagle?" Only to be told its an owl, because of the double-u in the middle. Like the others, she's blown away and turned into a tree.
Meanwhile, on Power Rangers, Zach is buying Jason and Kimberlee milkshakes to apologize for skateboarding in the gym and... man, I'm starting to think all the no skateboarding signs that were around in the 90s might have actually had a point. Jason says he's sort of bummed about the bench press thing because he doesn't want to be known as a quitter. Before the others can tell him that no one would ever call some one who did 2000 bench presses in one day a quitter, Bulk comes up and tells Jason that he's a quitter who will never beat his bench press record.
Wait... Bulk set the bench press record? 1010? Look, I love the kingpin from Marvel comics, and the idea of a character who looks fat but is super strong is cool, but... Bulk? Why does he even have to be in this episode? Luckily, Jason tickles him until his pants rip...
Wait, did I say luckily? I meant "uggghhhhhhh why are these characters still here?" This humiliation isn't sufficient to defeat them though; that requires Bulk's pants falling down as he tries to pull them together, and then tripping over them. Just as the rangers leave, their communicators beep and they run off to ask Zordon what's up. Zordon tells them to teleport to the children's theater in the park, because Rita is at it again. "She's sent down a team of putties and an unknown monster in an attempt to gain control of the park." I love the idea that the park is somehow a tactically important location in Angel Grove and that by occupying it Rita will be poised to strike... somewhere. The three Rangers teleport into the sentai footage... and apparently forgot they have two other friends who are Power Rangers with communicators.
Sadly, the riddles have been cut completely out of the Power Rangers version, which is a crime. King Sphinx just blows Kimberlee away... back onto the balance beam on the gym.
DoraSphinx challenges Goushi next, asking him what you can shake without using your hands. He successfully answers "Your head!" His next question is "What is useless on top, but useful underneath?" He answers "Carbon Paper" unfortunately, just after time runs out, and he, too, is turned into a tree. Zach, unfortunately, is just blown away like Kim, since DoraSphinx is in his human form in this scene when he's not using his wings.
That leaves only Jason/Geki since... apparently Zach and Kimberlee don't decide to just teleport back right away. Geki finds the monster's first three riddles easy, exciting DoraSphinx. He asks a fourth and final riddle: "Is there anything eternal in this world?" which gives Geki pause. He waits until the last second to answer "Justice is eternal! Justice always triumphs!" Using a visual aid, DoraSphinx says he's wrong because, obviously, "Evil is eternal!"
Geki protests that the answer must be justice, and DoraSphinx transforms, saying they'll find out the answer in battle. I think this just passed "I'm the Doctor and you're in the biggest library in the universe; look me up." as my favorite moment in all of fiction. They fight, as do Jason and King Sphinx and, as always, it's a good scene and the red ranger's new sword gets a chance to be showcased. They're teleported to a quarry in case the fight location was too interesting.
On Power Rangers, Alpha is freaking the [removed by editorial] out yelling that Jason's isolated and in trouble. Thanks, Alpha, helpful as always. Here's where the two diverge a bit though, as Bandora makes DoraSphinx grow giant, and he goes after Geki. Geki calls on Tyranozaurus for help, and jumps to get into the cockpit, but is shot by his guardian's eye lasers and goes flying, demorphing, and landing in... the desert from his dreams! To be continued!
Except for, two weeks in a row now, Power Rangers elected to burn through an interesting two parter as quickly as possible, so let's continue with the next episode of Zyuranger: Stand!! DaiZyuJin. Geki wonders why instead of helping him fight a giant sphinx, his sweet dinosaur robot god sent him here.
Off in the distance, he sees Tokyo Tower and realizes to his horror that everything under his feet is rubble from buildings. He falls down the hill, and sees the corpses of the other Zyurangers, rotted down to skeletons but still wearing their distinctive clothes. The guardian beasts appear on the horizon and tell him if he doesn't bring unity to his team than this future will become real. They seem to have been pretty united thus far, but teamwork is an important lesson for the kids I guess. He sees an impression of a giant robot and asks what it is. The guardian beasts respond that it's their combined form, DaiZyuJin. However, if the team can't learn to work together, the guardian beasts will never combine. It seems like it would have been easier for them to tell him this in his dream before DoraSphinx showed up, but whatever.
The Guardian Beasts laser him back to the forest, so that he can swear to the other Zyurangers he'll become a better leader. Unfortunately he doesn't know how to free them or form DaiZyuJin and he asks for someone to tell him what to do. Luckily, Barzza just happens to be standing around and tells him that in order to form DaiZyuJin he needs the five dinocrystals. Unfortunately, Barzza doesn't know where they are, and DoraSphinx shows up yelling "SNEAK ATTACK!"
Grifforzer shows up too and Geki transforms. We get some good two on one fight footage that Power Rangers sadly elected not to use, probably because they thought randomly teleporting to the forest and then back was a little too much. We're quickly back in the quarry and Grifforzer shoots his laser sword at Geki, which is where Power Rangers picks up. Goldar's appearance seems a little out of nowhere, but Rita did say she was going to send him earlier, so whatever. Rita/Bandora make the two monsters grow, and Jason wishes that the other Power Rangers were around. If only they had teleportation technology they used all the time! Or the writers had bothered to throw in a line about King Sphinx teleporting Jason to the quarry so the others wouldn't be able to locate him to teleport to. It would only take one line!
Speaking of the other rangers, they're here in Billy's...
Lab? Garage? Room? Hell, I'm not even sure it's Billy's, we just get an establishing shot of a house. Zach and Kimberlee tell Billy and Trini that Jason's in trouble and "may need his friends way more than he knows." The dude is fighting two giant monsters and screaming about wanting help from his friends!! We get it, team work is important, you're lucky the message is just as hamfisted in Zyuranger. In fact...
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I feel remotely better now. Trini remembers they have wrist communicators and tries to get Jason on the line, but no dice. They teleport to the command center, which is something at least. Alpha and Zordon instantly locate Jason on the viewing globe, so I guess not being able to find him isn't actually a problem, but they still can't just teleport to him because... reasons. Have I used that one before? 4 columns in and I'm already running low on ways to explain the logic of Power Rangers.
Trini says it seems hopeless, and Zordon says it would be if they couldn't just telepor... I mean if not for their hitherto unmentioned power crystals. "The crystals contain the essence of [their] morphing power." The plan is for Zordon to send them to Jason and then they can teleport there.. again, I don't know why they can't just do that now.
Meanwhile on Zyuranger, Geki swears to find the dinocrystals and reunite his team. Unfortunately he doesn't know where they are and there are two giant monsters he has to fight. His sword starts to glow, shooting out blue lightning blowing up a nearby rock.
Inside the rock is a pouch containing the dinocrystals. That... may be the biggest deus ex machina I've ever seen. I mean... one random rock in the middle of a random quarry. It's especially disappointing after they just went on a big quest to get their weapons that the thing that makes their giant robots combine just sort of falls into their lap. Sure, the sword that found them is established as being sapientish but...
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As always, the suit battle looks really, really good. There is one sort of silly moment, though, where to duck an attack DaiZyuJin turns back into tank mode, then uppercuts Grifforzor as he turns back into battle mode. It might sound like a good idea, but they really don't have the effects to pull it off, and the Power Rangers play it off as a malfunction for a second, forcing them to switch to tank mode for a moment. It doesn't work in either show, and Power Rangers probably should have just cut it out entirely.
The Zyurangers still have some plot to deal with though, as they notice that the forest with the kids in it is starting to be cut down! DoraSphinx shrinks back down, and challenges them to another riddle game. Grifforzer keeps fighting for a moment, but DoraSphinx gets that villain pride and makes him stop. The Zyurangers together are able to answer his riddles, but he's just stalling for time while the trees are cut down. Geki comes up with a plan though, saying that the sphinx's riddles are too easy and he should ask a challenging one. One they couldn't possibly know, like what his weak point is.
They don't know it, so he confidently makes it the next riddle. They guess his heart, but he responds that it's not even close. It's the snake on his head. Before he can turn them into trees, they call forth "Dinosword God Horn" and use the Legendary Thunderslash on the snake, destroying him and freeing all the children.
The Power Rangers end their fight simply by calling the "Mega Power Sword" which got a new adjective since it was last used. They don't give the beam slash a name, so it just looks like they were trying to cut down the violence. Goldar bitches out again. Grifforzer does too, but this is the second time Goldar has done this under the exact same circumstances, so he comes off as the lame one.
Power Rangers ends back at the Gym, with Jason beating that bench pressing record. That's what we all cared about right? But Kimberlee is back in her... outfit so that's nice. Ernie went ahead and made Jason a celebratory cake, but Bulk falls into it and ruins the confection. For some reason, the rangers call this a victory. Even though he ruined the cake. Yay!?
Zyuranger ends the only way it can: with the team swearing an oath, this time to DaiZyuJin to work as a team.
The plan on Power Rangers is just as stupid but it's the sort of stupid I expect from it at least. Jason finds the power crystals in a rock nearby where Zordon teleported them and the other Rangers can finally come help him. They summon their Zords right away and it seems like Jason should have done that already, but they're fighting giant monsters so it makes sense at least. On Zyuranger the dinocrystals have the added bonus of un-treeing the Zyurangers, which is convenient.
We of course, get the full MegaZord/DaiZyuJin transformation sequence here, the first time for Zyurangers, and they're identical footage-wise. The main difference is that all the Zyurangers shout "unite" as they jump in their robots, where as the rangers have their normal lines. Except Kimberlee who gets "Let's Jinx this Sphinx."
We of course, get the full MegaZord/DaiZyuJin transformation sequence here, the first time for Zyurangers, and they're identical footage-wise. The main difference is that all the Zyurangers shout "unite" as they jump in their robots, where as the rangers have their normal lines. Except Kimberlee who gets "Let's Jinx this Sphinx."
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If Kimberlee makes a rhyme or pun every time they form the MegaZord from now on, it may just make up for what she said in the first episode. Both versions have the crystals being inserted into the cockpits and used as joysticks for the combination process, which is cool in Zyuranger, but brings up a continuity error for Power Rangers, since its clear they had the crystals last time they formed the MegaZord. I'm tempted to take points away from Power Rangers, but this entire scene is the same one they used in the first episode. It just had King Sphinx completely edited out, and watching the original footage now, I'm genuinely impressed with their editing.
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Power Rangers is on a roll! The Zyuranagers get a little dialog about working as a team from now on in the cockpit, and both teams start to fight. The Tank Mode of the MegaZord/DaiZyuJin has some pretty cool gunfire effects, and some pretty lame beam effects, but after a few projectile volleys between them and Goldar/Grifforzer's sword, they change forms.
As always, the suit battle looks really, really good. There is one sort of silly moment, though, where to duck an attack DaiZyuJin turns back into tank mode, then uppercuts Grifforzor as he turns back into battle mode. It might sound like a good idea, but they really don't have the effects to pull it off, and the Power Rangers play it off as a malfunction for a second, forcing them to switch to tank mode for a moment. It doesn't work in either show, and Power Rangers probably should have just cut it out entirely.
The Zyurangers still have some plot to deal with though, as they notice that the forest with the kids in it is starting to be cut down! DoraSphinx shrinks back down, and challenges them to another riddle game. Grifforzer keeps fighting for a moment, but DoraSphinx gets that villain pride and makes him stop. The Zyurangers together are able to answer his riddles, but he's just stalling for time while the trees are cut down. Geki comes up with a plan though, saying that the sphinx's riddles are too easy and he should ask a challenging one. One they couldn't possibly know, like what his weak point is.
They don't know it, so he confidently makes it the next riddle. They guess his heart, but he responds that it's not even close. It's the snake on his head. Before he can turn them into trees, they call forth "Dinosword God Horn" and use the Legendary Thunderslash on the snake, destroying him and freeing all the children.
The Power Rangers end their fight simply by calling the "Mega Power Sword" which got a new adjective since it was last used. They don't give the beam slash a name, so it just looks like they were trying to cut down the violence. Goldar bitches out again. Grifforzer does too, but this is the second time Goldar has done this under the exact same circumstances, so he comes off as the lame one.
Power Rangers ends back at the Gym, with Jason beating that bench pressing record. That's what we all cared about right? But Kimberlee is back in her... outfit so that's nice. Ernie went ahead and made Jason a celebratory cake, but Bulk falls into it and ruins the confection. For some reason, the rangers call this a victory. Even though he ruined the cake. Yay!?
Zyuranger ends the only way it can: with the team swearing an oath, this time to DaiZyuJin to work as a team.
Final Thoughts
DoraSphinx is my new favorite villain of all time, and I am devastated knowing he never shows up again. Other than that though, both episodes were a little rough. After that great quest last time, I can see why Zyuranger didn't want another one, but maybe they should have put off introducing DaiZyuJin instead of introducing the dinocrystals in such a half ass way.
It's still way better than Power Rangers though. They took out every riddle, the entire idea of it, and the episode feels really unfocused, with way too much Bulk and Skull and a tacked on moral that's forgotten by the end. I'd take a shot every time the Power Rangers or Zyurangers learned a lesson about team work, but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't survive.
Still, DoraSphinx, man. His first two minutes alone win the battle for Zyuranger.
DoraSphinx is my new favorite villain of all time, and I am devastated knowing he never shows up again. Other than that though, both episodes were a little rough. After that great quest last time, I can see why Zyuranger didn't want another one, but maybe they should have put off introducing DaiZyuJin instead of introducing the dinocrystals in such a half ass way.
It's still way better than Power Rangers though. They took out every riddle, the entire idea of it, and the episode feels really unfocused, with way too much Bulk and Skull and a tacked on moral that's forgotten by the end. I'd take a shot every time the Power Rangers or Zyurangers learned a lesson about team work, but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't survive.
Still, DoraSphinx, man. His first two minutes alone win the battle for Zyuranger.
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Power Rangers is starting to catch up, though. And the Zyurangers have introduced everything for a while, so we'll see if they can keep it up in two weeks when I See You, I See You takes on Different Drum. Only one episode of each next time, thankfully.
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